791 perished because
its creators were thus disabled from defending the work of their hands.
This view led to a grave mistake four years later, after Robespierre had
gone to his grave. The Convention, framing the Constitution of the Year
III., decided that two-thirds of the existing assembly should keep their
places, and that only one-third should be popularly elected. This led to
the revolt of the Thirteenth Vendemiaire, and afterwards to the coup
d'etat of the Eighteenth Fructidor. In that sense, no doubt,
Robespierre's proposal was the indirect root of much mischief. But it is
childish to believe that if a hundred of the most prominent members of
the Constituent had found seats in the new assembly, they would have
saved the Constitution. Their experience, the loss of which it is the
fashion to deplore, could have had no application to the strange
combinations of untoward circumstance that were now rising up with such
deadly rapidity in every quarter of the horizon, like vast sombre banks
of impenetrable cloud. Prudence in new cases, as has been somewhere
said, can do nothing on grounds of retrospect. The work of the
Constituent was doomed by the very nature of things. Their assumption
that the Revolution was made, while all France was still torn by fierce
and unappeasable disputes as to seignorial rights, was one of the most
striking pieces of self-deception in history. It is told how in the
eleventh century, when the fervent hosts of the Crusaders tramped across
Europe on their way to deliver the Holy City from the hands of the
unbelievers, the wearied children, as they espied each new town that lay
in their interminable march, cried out with joyful expectation, 'Is not
this, then, Jerusalem?' So France had set out on a portentous journey,
little knowing how far off was the end; lightly taking each poor
halting-place for the deeply longed-for goal; and waxing more fiercely
disappointed, as each new height that they gained only disclosed yet
farther and more unattainable horizons. 'Alas,' said Burke, 'they little
know how many a weary step is to be taken, before they can form
themselves into a mass which has a true political personality.'

An immense revolution had been effected, but by what force were its
fruits to be guarded? Each step in the revolution had raised a host of
irreconcilable enemies. The rights of property, the old and jealous
associations of local independence, the traditions of personal dignity,
the