Too much weight must not be given to these legislative expedients. The ideas and the passions of man, not the mechanism of law, are the motive force of human affairs. Doubtless whatever steps had at that time been taken to form and regulate the Assemblies of the nation, it may be thought that war would have broken forth in all its violence between classes. Their animosities were perhaps already too fierce for them to have worked in harmony, and the power of the King was already too weak to compel them to agree. But it must be admitted that nothing could have been done more calculated than what was done to render the conflict between them instantaneous and mortal. Could the utmost art, skill, and deliberate design have brought all this to pass more surely than was actually done by inexperience and temerity? An opportunity had been afforded to the commons to take courage, to prepare for the encounter, and to count their numbers. Their moral ardour had immoderately increased, and had doubled the weight of their party. They had been allured by every hope; they were intimidated by every fear. Victory had been flaunted before their eyes, not given, but they were invited to seize it. After having left the two classes for five months to exasperate their old hatreds, and repeat the long story of their grievances, until they were inflamed against each other with furious resentment, they were arrayed face to face, and the first question they had to decide was one which included all other questions; on that issue alone they might have settled at once, and in a single day, all their quarrels. What strikes one most in the affairs of the world is not so much the genius of those who made the Revolution, because they desired it, as the singular imbecility of those who made it without desiring it,--not so much the part played by great men as the influence frequently exercised by the smallest personages in history. When I survey the French Revolution I am amazed at the immense magnitude of the event, at the glare it has cast to the extremities of the earth, at the power of it, which has more or less been felt by all nations. If I turn to the Court, which had so great a share in the Revolution, I perceive there some of the most trivial scenes in history--a king, who had no greatness save that of his virtues, and those not the virtues of a king; hairbrained or narrow-minded ministers, dissolute priests, rash or money-seeking courtiers, futile women, who held in their hands the destinies of the human race. Yet these paltry personages set going, push on, precipitate prodigious events. They themselves have little share in them. They themselves are mere accidents. They might almost pass for primal causes. And I marvel at the Almighty Power which, with levers as short as these, can set rolling the mass of human society. FOOTNOTES: [126] ‘Le Tiers-État au Roi,’ by M. Louchet, December 20th, 1788. [127] ‘Qu’est-ce-que le Tiers?’ p. 53.