Thouret, second only to Sieyès in the influence which they exercised
upon the form of the new constitution, with Lanjuinais and Tronchet,
and many another celebrated advocate and jurist. Among them were Camus,
the grave and determined leader of the Jansenists, who have been aptly
named the Puritans of the Roman Catholic Church in France; Rabaut
de St. Etienne, the leader of the Protestants, a brave, high-minded
man, who had already, before the Revolution, won from the King the
recognition of the rights of his co-religionists to citizenship; Dom
Gerle, the singular Jacobin monk, whose earnestness was stronger than
his reason; and Grégoire, the eloquent priest, with his fine dream of a
purified national Church, one of the best of the many enthusiasts who
contributed their high-minded errors to the work of national reform.
Among them was Garat, the accomplished professor of history, whose
facile and excitable convictions always moved with the tide, and who,
in spite of his excellent intentions, was perhaps more responsible than
any other man for the ruin of the brilliant party with which he came to
be associated at a later time. Among them, lastly, was the fortunate
Barère, in turn advocate, journalist and politician, at the beginning
of the extraordinary career, in which, by dint of never having fixed
opinions, he was to rise to the highest place in France.
But the most remarkable, and on the whole the most influential, of the
many different groups in the party of Reform, was that which followed
the lead of Duport, Barnave and Lameth. These men formed a close
triumvirate of political allies. They collected about them the nucleus
of a powerful party, and they generally controlled the policy of the
Left. This group possessed in Duport a party organiser of elastic
principles, but of considerable tact and ability; in Barnave an orator
inferior in capacity to very few men in the history of the Revolution;
and in the Comte Charles de Lameth one of the most popular and gifted
of the young, liberal-minded nobles. Led by the triumvirate, and
managed by Duport, it attached to itself many brilliant, well-bred and
ambitious Radicals, including the Comte Alexandre de Lameth, the Duc
d'Aiguillon and the Vicomte de Noailles, and it commanded a majority
which on many occasions effectually decided the policy of the Assembly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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