which the
queen was unfortunately misled into using her influence to procure a
decision which was undoubtedly, in its eventual consequences, as
disastrous to the king's fortunes as it was irreconcilable with common
sense. Robespierre brought forward a resolution that no members of the
existing Assembly should be eligible for a seat in that by which it was to
be replaced. It was in reality a resolution to exclude from the new
Assembly not only every one who had any parliamentary or legislative
experience, but also all the adherents or friends of the throne, and to
place the coming elections wholly in the power of the Jacobins.
Robespierre was willing to be excluded himself from a conviction, that,
with such an Assembly as would surely be returned, the Jacobin Club would
practically exercise all the power of the State. But the Constitutional
party, who saw that it was aimed at them, opposed it with great vigor; and
would probably have been able to defeat it if the Royalist members who
still retained their seats would have consented to join them. Unhappily
the queen took the opposite view. With far more acuteness, penetration,
and fertility of imagination than are usually given to women, or to men
either, she had still in some degree the defect common to her sex, of
being prone to confine her views to one side of a question; and to
overrule her reason by her feelings and prejudices. Though she
acknowledged the service which Barnave had rendered by defeating those who
had wished to bring the king and herself to trial, she, nevertheless,
still regarded the Constitutionalists in general with deep distrust as the
party which desired to lower, and had lowered, the authority and dignity
of the throne; and, viewing the whole Assembly with not unnatural
antipathy, she fancied that one composed wholly of new members could not
possibly be, more unfriendly to the king's person and government, and
might probably be far better disposed toward them. She easily brought the
king to adopt her views, and exerted the whole of her influence to secure
the passing of the decree, sending agents to canvass those deputies who
were opposed to it. With the Royalist members, the Extreme Right, her
voice was law, and, by the unnatural union of them and the Jacobins, the
resolution was carried.

It is the more singular that she should have been willing thus, as it
were, to proscribe the members of the present Assembly, because, in a very
remarkable le