After its arrival in Paris, the Assembly continued, amid many interruptions, the work of constructing the new constitution, and the same blind attachment to captivating theories, which had wasted so many weeks in barren discussion at Versailles, pervaded its debates and its decrees in Paris. The great bulk of the members of the Assembly were determined to carry into practice the idea of the sovereignty of the people, and to observe, as far as logic could, the natural rights of man. If facts or experience conflicted with these theories, facts and experience must go to the wall. The circumstances, needs or traditions of nations seemed to them to be of little importance in comparison with the eternal principles which philosophy had laid down for the government of the world. In pursuance of these views, the slaves in the French colony of St. Domingo were immediately emancipated, without regard to the difficulties involved in so summary a proceeding, or the disaster certain to ensue. 'Let the colonies perish,' cried a member of the Assembly, 'rather than sacrifice a principle.' In pursuance also of these views, all titles of nobility were abolished, as being 'repugnant to reason and to true liberty.' It became an offence and subsequently a crime for a nobleman to sign his name in the old style. The Assembly taught the people to regard rank as something wrong; and the people, taking up the idea, and colouring it with their own fears and ancient hatreds, soon came to look on all possessors of rank as evil-doers, who had no right to fair treatment or protection from the law, and for whom the proper destiny was the guillotine. On the same vague theories the constitution was built up. The desire to place sovereignty in the hands of the people led the Assembly to impose many complicated political duties upon the great mass of citizens, who had never as yet exercised any political functions at all. At the same time they curtailed as far as possible, and hampered by a system of elaborate checks, the power which they left to those at the head of affairs, who had long been accustomed to political duties, and who had certainly fulfilled them very ill. The result was a complete paralysis in the Government, and a constitution foredoomed to fail.