ugh speech after speech, strings of hollow abstractions
are endlessly renewed as in a meeting of students in rhetoric for the
purpose of practice, or in a society of old bookworms for their own
amusement. On the question of the veto "each orator in turn, armed with
his portfolio, reads a dissertation which has no bearing whatever" on
the preceding one, which makes a "sort of academical session,"[2127]
a succession of pamphlets fresh every morning for several days. On the
question of the Rights of Man fifty-four speakers are placed on the
list.

"I remember," says Dumont, "that long discussion, which lasted for
weeks, as a period of deadly boredom,--vain disputes over words, a
metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned
into a Sorbonne lecture-room," and all this while chateaux were burning,
while town-halls were being sacked, and courts dared no longer hold
assize, while the distribution of wheat was stopped, and while society
was in course of dissolution. In the same manner the theologians of the
Easter Roman Empire kept up their wrangles about the uncreated light of
Mount Tabor while Mahomet II was battering the walls of Constantinople
with his cannon.--Ours, of course, are another sort of men, juvenile
in feeling, sincere, enthusiastic, even generous, and further, more
devoted, laborious, and in some cases endowed with rare talent. But
neither zeal, nor labor, nor talent are of any use when not employed in
the service of a sound idea; and if in the service of a false one, the
greater they are the more mischief they do.

Towards the end of the year 1789, there can be not doubt of this;
and the parties now formed reveal their presumption, improvidence,
incapacity, and obstinacy. "This Assembly," writes the American
ambassador,[2128] "may be divided into three parties;--

one called the aristocrats, consists of the high clergy, the
parliamentary judges, and such of the nobility as think they ought to
form a separate order." This is the party which offers resistance to
follies and errors, but with follies and errors almost equally great.
In the beginning "the prelates,[2129] instead of conciliating the cures,
kept them at a humiliating distance, affecting distinctions, exacting
respect," and, in their own chamber, "ranging themselves apart on
separate benches." The nobles, on the other hand, the more to alienate
the commons, began by charging these with, "revolt, treachery, and
treason," and