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"At the opening of the session," said a deputy, "several addresses of adherence to the decrees were listened to in mournful silence by the assembly, more attentive to their own thoughts than to the addresses read." Mounier began; he exclaimed against the dismissal of ministers beloved by the nation, and the choice of their successors.
Mounier, the new President, carried to the king the articles by which his cause had been brought to its fall. Lewis undertook to send his reply; and from Mounier came no urging word. They both fancied that delay was possible, and might yet serve. The tide had flowed so slowly in May, that they could not perceive the torrent of October.
Mounier, counting on the support of those whose interest was that he should succeed, rejected the offer. He had already been forced, by the defection of friends, to abandon much that he would have wished to keep; and the plan which he brought forward closely resembled that under which France afterwards prospered.
Mounier was their tactician, Clermont Tonnerre and Lally Tollendal were their orators, Malouet was their discreet adviser. They hoped, by the division of powers and the multiplication of checks, to make their country as free as England or America. They desired to control the Representatives in three ways: by a Second Chamber, the royal veto, and the right of dissolution.
Mounier and the friends of the English model still prevailed. By evening their chance had vanished, for the English model includes a king. Late in the day Noailles brought authentic news of what he had witnessed; and the Assembly learned, in agitated silence, that the head of the governor of the impregnable Bastille had been displayed on a pike about the streets of Paris.
The clergy were ready for a conference; and by their intervention the nobles were induced to take part in it. There, on May 23, the Archbishop of Vienne, who was in the confidence of Mounier, declared that the clergy recognised the duty of sharing taxes in equal proportion. The Duke of Luxemburg, speaking for the nobles, made the same declaration.
The death of Lally is part of the long indictment against the French judiciary, and his son strove for years to have the sentence reversed. He came over to England, and understood our system better than any of his countrymen. Therefore, when Mounier, who was no orator, brought forward his Constitution, it was Lally who expounded it.
Marie Antoinette's negotiation with Mirabeau, and the memorable endeavour of Mirabeau to restore the constitutional throne, is the central feature in the period now before us. By the compulsory removal to Paris the democracy became preponderant. They were strengthened by the support of organized anarchy outside, and by the disappearance of their chief opponents within. Mounier was the first to go.
There were sages, like Bailly and Mounier; thinkers, like Siéyès; factious partisans, like Barnave; statesmen like Talleyrand; men, epochs, like Mirabeau, and men, principles like Robespierre. Each cause was personified by what most distinguished each party. The very victims were illustrious.
For he fell, maintaining the cause of aristocracy against the nobles, and the cause of prerogative against the monarch. The Democrats triumphed by 410 votes one day, and 350 the next. The battle for the Constitution on the English model was fought and lost. On September 12 Mounier and his friends retired from the Committee. A new one was at once elected from the victorious majority.
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