Accordingly, as the Revolution went forward, the moderate majority found itself growing unpopular with the poor. The decrees which imposed a property qualification for all the rights of active citizenship, for electors and elected alike, were bitterly resented by those whom they excluded from power, and were clearly inconsistent with the philosophic formulas to which their authors habitually appealed. The manner in which the municipal authorities and the National Guards used the force at their disposal to support the new order and to suppress all who seemed inclined to resist it, was sometimes irritating and oppressive. The uncertainty on each occasion whether the party in power would applaud and sanction a popular outbreak, or would take fright and endeavour to punish it, deprived their action of its moral weight. The policy which first abolished the old industrial system to clear the way for free combination, and which then, in June 1791, taking alarm at the unions which sprang up among the workmen, interfered to prohibit all combinations for the future, was not likely to ensure respect. The policy which first induced the State to seek popularity by an enormous extension of public workshops, and which then, in the summer of 1791, frightened at the results of its folly and at the number of strangers flocking to Paris, drew back and suddenly dissolved the workshops, and bade the strangers return to their homes, was certain to lead to distress and disappointment. Had the party in power been consistently firm, had it shown its determination at all costs to keep order and never to yield to threatening agitation, it might have been wrong, but it might have been respected. As it was, it was never strong enough to be feared. It was only strong enough to become disliked. Thus, with the large discontented element in France, with the people who were most miserable and needy, and who were specially numerous in Paris, there was, in 1791, a growing sense that the Revolution had so far been a failure, that it had not corresponded to its own promises or to their passionate hopes, that it had not in any way materially benefited them, and that a new Revolution was needed, to do for the poor what the earlier movement had done only for the comparatively rich. The strength of this feeling it is difficult to estimate, but there seems no doubt that it was widely spread. With it there went a deep conviction that the new movement would never come from the party in power, and that new leaders and principles were wanted to carry the democratic theory logically out.