au's idea that government is based on
a social contract between individuals, the nation had sworn its
adhesion to two constitutions successively, and had ratified the act
each time by appropriate solemnities. Already the bubble of such a
conception had been punctured. Was it strange that the Convention
determined to repeat the same old experiment? Not at all. They knew
nothing better than the old idea, and never doubted that the fault
lay, not in the system, but in its details; they believed they could
improve on the work of their predecessors by the change and
modification of particulars. Aware, therefore, that their own day had
passed, they determined, before dissolving, to construct a new and
improved form of government. The work was confided to a committee of
eleven, most of whom were Girondists recalled for the purpose in order
to hoodwink the public. They now separated the executive and judiciary
from each other and from the legislature, divided the latter into two
branches, so as to cool the heat of popular sentiment before it was
expressed in statutes, and, avoiding the pitfall dug for itself by
the National Assembly, made members of the Convention eligible for
election under the new system.

If the monarchy could have been restored at the same time, these
features of the new charter would have reproduced in France some
elements of the British constitution, and its adoption would probably
have pacified the dynastic rulers of Europe. But the restoration of
monarchy in any form was as yet impossible. The Bourbons had utterly
discredited royalty, and the late glorious successes had been won
partly by the lavish use in the enemy's camp of money raised and
granted by radical democrats, partly by the prowess of enthusiastic
republicans. The compact, efficient organization of the national army
was the work of the Jacobins, and while the Mountain was discredited
in Paris, it was not so in the provinces; moreover, the army which was
on foot and in the field was in the main a Jacobin army. Royalty was
so hated by most Frenchmen that the sad plight of the child dauphin,
dying by inches in the Temple, awakened no compassion, and its next
lineal representative was that hated thing, a voluntary exile; the
nobility, who might have furnished the material for a French House of
Lords, were traitors to their country, actually bearing arms in the
levies of her foes. The national feeling was a passion; Louis XVI had
been popular en