Not a few of these persons are said to have been amazed at this degree of public favour and sudden power. They would have been far more astonished at it if they could have foreseen what was about to follow: if they had known that these same laws, which they had resisted with so much popular applause, were founded on the very principles which were to triumph in the Revolution; that the traditional institutions which they opposed to the innovations of the Government were precisely the institutions which the Revolution was about to destroy. That which caused the popularity of these Notables was not the form of their opposition, but the opposition itself. They criticised the abuses of the Government; they condemned its prodigality; they demanded an account of its expenditure; they spoke of the constitutional laws of the country, of the fundamental principles which limit the unlimited power of the Crown, and, without precisely demanding the interposition of the nation in the government by the States-General, they perpetually suggested that idea. This was enough. The Government had already long been suffering from a malady which is the endemic and incurable disease of powers that have undertaken to order, to foresee, to do everything. It had assumed a universal responsibility. However men might differ in the grounds of their complaints, they agreed in blaming the common source of them; what had hitherto been no more than a general inclination of mind, then became a universal and impetuous passion. All the secret sores caused by daily contact with dilapidated institutions, which chafed both manners and opinion in a thousand places--all the smothered animosities kept alive by divided classes, by contested positions, by absurd or oppressive distinctions, rose against the supreme power. Long had they sought a pathway to the light of day: that path once opened they rushed blindly along it. It was not their natural path, but it was the first they found open. Hatred of arbitrary power became then their sole passion, and the Government their common enemy. FOOTNOTE: [97] Buchez and Roux, ‘Parliamentary History of the Revolution,’ p. 480. CHAPTER III. HOW THE PARLIAMENTS OF FRANCE, FOLLOWING PRECEDENT, OVERTHREW THE MONARCHY. The feudal Government, whose ruins still sheltered the nation, had been a government in which arbitrary power, violence, and great freedom were commingled. Under its laws, if actions had often been restricted, speech was habitually independent and bold. The legislative power was exercised by kings, but never without control. When the great political assemblies of France ceased to be, the Parliaments took, in some sort, the place of them; and before they enregistered in the code that regulated their judicial proceedings a new law decreed by the King, they stated to the sovereign their objections, and made known to him their opinions.