the Constitution of the United States, which went into operation in the same year that the States-General came together. That Convention consisted of fifty-five members,1 delegates of a primitive, simple, and scattered population, among whom there were none very rich and few very poor, and who had derived from their old Saxon ancestry, through the centuries of English history, those habits of self-government and organized public work which are assumed to be the exclusive characteristics of race. The Convention had neither to dread an armed invasion of royal power, the intrigues and spiritual weapons of an alien and wealthy church, nor the violence of a turbulent and starving mob. It was an opportunity such as had never been seen in the world. For four months they sat with closed doors in that quiet Quaker city, steadily and deliberately working away at a legal instrument under the presidency and the guidance of a man who, by the successful conduct of a seven years' war against Great Britain, had acquired a position almost royal in its influence, but who was animated by the purest and most disinterested patriotism and the loftiest principles of devotion to duty.

The members of the Convention had before them the examples of the state constitutions. New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, had adopted constitutions in 1776; Vermont, New York, and Georgia in 1777, and Massachusetts in 1780. The members had the benefit also of English parliamentary history, embodying the experience and the traditions of their own race. They may be described as trained workmen, supplied with practical and efficient tools. This by no means detracts from

1 Total number of delegates elected, 65. Never attended the Convention, 10. Attended but did not sign the constitution, 16. Number of signers, 39.- ELIOT'S "Debates."

the merit of their work, but it precludes judgment of others who acted under far less favorable circumstances. At Versailles there was assembled what was in itself a mob of twelve hundred men, of whom one half had to attack and the other half to defend class privileges at once of enormous value and the most odious injustice. There were no habits or traditions of self-government, whether local or general, of organizing in public meetings or for public work, or even of debate. The only approach to

1 In his introduction to the "Orators of the French Revolution" Mr. H. Morse Stephens has pointed out that the models of oratory in France for the two centuries preceding the Revolution, "were clerical, legal, and academical, and that political oratory was conspicuous by its absence. This was due to the policy inaugurated by Richelieu, and carried out by Mazarin and Louis XIV., of preventing all public discussion of political matters, and to the fact that after 1613 no free assembly met in which public affairs could be debated. The Parlement of Paris, after its shortlived attempt to imitate an English Parliament during the period of the Fronde, was forced back into its place as a purely judicial body by Louis XIV., and all subsequent attempts of the parlements of France to interfere in politics were promptly repressed. The great ministers of Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Louis XVI. were all men of deeds, not words. Mazarin, Colbert, and Louvois were as poor speakers as Choiseul, Turgot, and Necker; and since there was no necessity for ministers to defend their measures in public, and no place or opportunity for their opponents to criticise them, it naturally followed that there was no need for the statesmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to be orators. To the priest, lawyer, and man of letters the gift of eloquence was a sure title to success and it was therefore cultivated by them; but to the politician or official it was of no importance whatever. After the meeting of the States-General in 1789, however, the value of political oratory entirely changed and the possession of political eloquence and debating power opened the way to reputation. From the one extreme the French nation rushed to the other, and instead of eloquence exerting no influence on the course of public affairs it soon became too predominant."

Yet he observes that the speeches still preserved for the most part have the character of written essays, and were spoken from the tribune and not from the speaker's place in debate. The following quotation also illustrates what has been said of the manner in which the political development of France has been modified by her history as compared with that of England:

"Yet it is hardly fair to speak of political oratory as absolutely beginning in France with the Revolution, for there had been States-Generals

leadership was in the Marquis de Mirabeau, a nobleman of dissolute and irregular life which had broken his physical constitution, reckless in expenditure and overwhelmed with debt, and who consented to receive secret pay from the court. Yet his statesmanlike instinct and force of character brought him to the front and gave promise of

before, and in them great affairs of State and of public policy had been eloquently discussed. It is impossible to resist the temptation of recalling the memory of that grand character of the sixteenth century, the Chancellor Michel de L'Hôpital, though there is no trace of his influence in the speeches of Mirabeau and Danton, who resembled him alike in their temperament and in the character of their oratory. There are passages in his speeches which might well have been spoken by them, and which have their exact counterpart again and again in the speeches of the greatest Revolutionary orators."

Compare the effect upon political oratory in the United States of the methods of procedure in Congress and the state legislatures, post, Chaps. XVII., XVIII., XXII.

Another quotation which Mr. Stephens makes from Sir Samuel Romilly is of force in the same direction.

"Some months after I had returned from Paris," writes Sir Samuel in 1789, "I received a letter from the Count de Sarsfield requesting me to send him some book which stated the rules and orders of proceeding in the English House of Commons. He thought it would be extremely useful to assist the States-General in regulating their debates and their modes of transacting business. There was no such book, and I could send him nothing that would answer his purpose. There was nothing to be done but to draw up a statement of the rules of the House of Commons myself, and I very cheerfully set about it, though it was likely to occupy a good deal of my time. When it was as complete as I could make it, I sent it to the Count de Sarsfield. He received it most thankfully and set about translating it into French. He died, however, before he had advanced far with the work, and from his hands the papers passed into those of Mirabeau. Mirabeau, fully sensible of the importance of the work, with all expedition translated and published it. It never, however, was of the smallest use, and no regard whatever was paid to it by the National Assembly. It met, having to form its own rules and mode of proceeding. The leading members were little disposed to borrow anything from England. They did not adopt these rules, and they hardly observed any others. Much of the violence which prevailed in the Assembly would have been allayed and many rash measures unquestionably prevented if their proceedings had been conducted with order and regularity."

And Mr. Stephens observes, "The noisy behavior of the deputies, who had not been trained to sit in deliberative assemblies, and the interfer

This

future results, which was cut short by early death. large body of men, disorganized, without leaders or rules or concert of action, was exposed to forces which would have been sufficient to crush any deliberative assembly that ever met in the world. First, there was the king and the court. Louis XVI. was chiefly distinguished from his predecessor, Louis XV., by the respectability of his private character, as a good husband and father, and as desiring in a general way the welfare of his people. But he disliked governing, his chief interest was in hunting, and he appears to have been a shy, awkward, and rather stupid man. Very different was the queen, a young, ambitious, and beautiful woman, given up to the pleasures of court life, without a nerve of sympathy for the reforming spirit of the time, and anxious only for the intervention of foreign powers to suppress disorders, of which the only meaning was for her that they interfered with the ordinary current of affairs. Thus the royal power, to which the nation had been accustomed for two centuries to look as the guiding force of government, was completely at fault, either for the maintenance of the old order of things or the acceptance of the new. Of the court nobles a large part began early to leave the country,1 and continued to raise outcries and conspiracies along the frontiers. Those who remained were urging the king to violence against the Assembly and joining the queen to bring about an invasion by foreign powers. If this was the case on the upper side the difficulty was even

ence of the casual spectators and visitors, helped to bring about a state of confusion which was subversive of any chance of earnest debating, and which could only be quieted by the reading of an important report or of a carefully prepared speech."

1 In the summer of 1789 "six thousand passports are issued within two months. Then no more are to be granted except on a medical certificate. But doctors are obliging and medical certificates flow in." -J. E. SYMES, op. cit., Chap. V.

greater from the lower. The Assembly sat at first near and afterwards in one of the largest cities with one of the fiercest and most turbulent populations in Europe. At a time when only the strongest executive power could have kept order, there was no executive power at all. The flight of so many wealthy members of the community had greatly increased the suffering and exasperation. The whole country was looking to Paris and Versailles for relief and guidance. When the answer came in the quarrels of the three orders, the taking of the Bastille, the abolition of feudal rights and traditions on the 4th of August, and the forced return of the king on October 6, there could be little wonder that the bonds of authority were broken.

If these were the circumstances under which the Assembly did its work, what was the character of that work? The Federal Convention at Philadelphia had nothing to do with nearly all of the most important and difficult problems of social and civil life. Those were and continued to be regulated by the state governments. What the Convention had to do was to devise some scheme by which the states could live and work together in union. It is not in any way underrating the wonderful success of their work to say that it was as child's play compared with that required of the National Assembly in France.

First, there was the question of local government. The central administrative power was too much dislocated to admit of the continuance of government by intendants, besides which the whole tendency of the eighteenth-century ideas was towards self-government. Therefore the Assembly proceeded to divide the country into departments, districts, and communes, all governed by elected officials. It established also innumerable officials and small councils to act as a check upon each other, and the result was a terrible confusion of powers everywhere.