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M. Pasquier, their Minister for Foreign Affairs, endowed with rare self-command and presence of mind, was on this occasion the principal parliamentary champion of the Cabinet; and M. Mounier, Director-General of the Police, controlled the street riots with as much prudence as active firmness.
Mounier, with some of his friends, deserves to be remembered among the men, not so common as they say, who loved liberty sincerely; I mean, who desired it, not for any good it might do them, but for itself, however arduous, or costly, or perilous its approach might be. They subordinated the means to the end, and never regarded conditional forms as an emanation of eternal principles.
Mounier, who presided over the National Assembly, rejected the idea with horror. The prudence and honourable feeling of several officers of the Parisian guards, and the judicious conduct of M. de Vaudreuil, lieutenant-general of marine, and of M. de Chevanne, one of the King's Guards, brought about an understanding between the grenadiers of the National Guard of Paris and the King's Guard.
The next day the Assembly adopted the single Chamber by 499 to 89, the nobles abstaining. On September 11 the decisive division took place. Mounier had insisted on the unlimited right of veto. The debate went against him. It was admitted on his own side that the king would, sooner or later, have to yield.
Quartermaster of the palace, Baron de Canouville. Equerries, Barons Van Lenneps, Montaran, and de Mesgrigny. Private secretaries, Baron Mounier and Baron Fain. Clerks, Messieurs Jouanne and Provost. Secretary interpreters, Messieurs Lelorgue, Dideville, and Vouzowitch. Director of the topographical bureau, Baron Bacler d'Albe. Geographical engineers, Messieurs Lameau and Duvivier.
"The elective assembly of Riom was not the most stormy," says M. Malouet, who, like M. Mounier at Grenoble, had been elected by acclamation head of the deputies of his own order at Riom, "but it was sufficiently so to verify all my conjectures and cause me to truly regret that I had come to it and had obtained the deputyship.
M. Mounier published a work on the convocation of the States-general demanding the formation of two chambers. That was likewise the proposition of M. de La Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, an enlightened, a zealous, and a far-sighted prelate. "This plan had probably no approbation but mine," says M. Malouet. The opposition and the objections were diverse and contradictory, but they were general.
Notwithstanding his influence in Dauphine, whose former movements he had directed, Mounier was unable to establish there a centre of permanent resistance, but the assembly was thereby warned to destroy the ancient provincial organisation, which might become the frame- work of a civil war.
He assured Mounier and his friends that the men he commanded would now be easy to satisfy. But he said nothing of the real purpose of his presence there. From the Assembly he passed on to the king. Leaving his 20,000 men behind him in the darkness, he appeared at the Palace gate, accompanied only by the commissaries from the Hôtel de Ville.
The king at once conceded all that Mounier asked for his strange companions, and they went away contented. Then their friends outside fell upon them, and accused them of having taken bribes; and again it became apparent that two currents had joined, and that some had honestly come for bread, and some had not.
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