France -- History -- Louis XVI, 1774-1793; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799
Coming therefore into their Hall, on the morrow, an inorganic
mass of Six Hundred individuals, these Commons Deputies perceive,
without terror, that they have it all to themselves. Their Hall
is also the Grand or general Hall for all the Three Orders. But
the Noblesse and Clergy, it would seem, have retired to their two
separate Apartments, or Halls; and are there “verifying their
powers,” not in a conjoint but in a separate capacity. They are
to constitute two separate, perhaps separately-voting Orders,
then? It is as if both Noblesse and Clergy had silently taken for
granted that they already were such! Two Orders against one; and
so the Third Order to be left in a perpetual minority?
Much may remain unfixed; but the negative of that is a thing
fixed: in the Slouch-hatted heads, in the French Nation’s head.
Double representation, and all else hitherto gained, were
otherwise futile, null. Doubtless, the “powers must be
verified;”—doubtless, the Commission, the electoral Documents of
your Deputy must be inspected by his brother Deputies, and found
valid: it is the preliminary of all. Neither is this question, of
doing it separately or doing it conjointly, a vital one: but if
it lead to such? It must be resisted; wise was that maxim, Resist
the beginnings! Nay were resistance unadvisable, even dangerous,
yet surely pause is very natural: pause, with Twenty-five
Millions behind you, may become resistance enough.—The inorganic
mass of Commons Deputies will restrict itself to a “system of
inertia,” and for the present remain inorganic.
Such method, recommendable alike to sagacity and to timidity, do
the Commons Deputies adopt; and, not without adroitness, and with
ever more tenacity, they persist in it, day after day, week after
week. For six weeks their history is of the kind named barren;
which indeed, as Philosophy knows, is often the fruitfulest of
all. These were their still creation-days; wherein they sat
incubating! In fact, what they did was to do nothing, in a
judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body reassembles; regrets
that they cannot get organisation, “verification of powers in
common, and begin regenerating France. Headlong motions may be
made, but let such be repressed; inertia alone is at once
unpunishable and unconquerable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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