On the 30th of July, the harlequin who led the insurrection at Rouen
having been arrested, "it is openly proposed at the Palais Royal[1422]
to go in a body and demand his release."--On the 1st of August, Thouret,
whom the moderate party of the Assembly have just made President, is
obliged to resign; the Palais-Royal threatens to send a band and murder
him along with those who voted for him, and lists of proscriptions,
in which several of the deputies are inscribed, begin to be
circulated.--From this time forth, on all great questions-the abolition
of the feudal system, the suppression of tithes, a declaration of the
rights of man, the dispute about the Chambers, the King's power of
veto,[1423] the pressure from without inclines the balance: in this
way the Declaration of Rights, which is rejected in secret session by
twenty-eight bureaus out of thirty, is forced through by the tribunes in
a public sitting and passed by a majority.--Just as before the 14th of
July, and to a still greater extent, two kinds of compulsion influence
the votes, and it is always the ruling faction which employs both its
hands to throttle its opponents. On the one hand this faction takes post
on the galleries in knots composed nearly always of the same persons,
"five or six hundred permanent actors," who yell according to understood
signals and at the word of command.[1424] Many of these are French
Guards, in civilian clothes, and who relieve each other: previously
they have asked of their favorite deputy "at what hour they must come,
whether all goes on well, and whether he is satisfied with those fools
of parsons (calotins) and the aristocrats." Others consist of low women
under the command of Théroigne de Méricourt, a virago courtesan, who
assigns them their positions and gives them the signal for hooting
or for applause. Publicly and in full session, on the occasion of the
debate on the veto, "the deputies are applauded or insulted by the
galleries according as they utter the word 'suspensive,' or the word
'indefinite.' "Threats," (says one of them) "circulated; I heard
them on all sides around me." These threats are repeated on going out:
"Valets dismissed by their masters, deserters, and women in rags,"
threaten the refractory with the lamp post, "and thrust their fists in
their faces. In the hall itself, and much more accurately than before
the 14th of July, their names are taken down, and the lists, handed
over to the populace," travel to the Palais-Royal, from where they
are dispatched in correspondence and in newspapers to the
provinces.[1425]--Thus we see the second means of compulsion; each
deputy is answerable for his vote, at Paris, with his own life, and,
in the province, with those of his family. Members of the former
Third-Estate avow that they abandon the idea of two Chambers, because
"they are not disposed to get their wives' and children's throats cut."
On the 30th of August, Saint-Hurugue, the most noisy of the Palais-Royal
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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