subjects they are about
to handle, carried away by party spirit, by the impetuous force of so
many diverging interests and opinions? If you do not begin by giving
them fixed ideas, by hedging them, through their constituents, with
instructions and impediments which they cannot break through, look out
for all sorts of vagaries, for irremediable disorders."

In his sad forecast of the confusion which threatened the new Assembly,
M. Malouet counted too much upon the authority of mandates and upon the
influence of the constituents; he was destined to look on, impotent and
despairing, at that great outburst of popular passions which split
asunder all ties and broke through all engagements as so many useless
impediments. "When the Assembly, in the first paroxysms of its delirium,
dared to annul its oaths and declared itself freed from the yoke of the
instructions which we received from our constituents, the king had a
right--what do I say? he was bound to send us back to our bailiwicks,"
says M. Malouet. The States-general were convoked for the 27th of April,
1789, and not a soul had yet received instructions from the government.
"Those that we did at last receive were as honest as they were
insufficient. They told us in substance to get adopted, if we could, the
proposal to present candidates for the departments, and to admit into the
list of candidates none but men whose morality, means, and fair
reputation were established, to prevent wrangles, schism between the
orders, and to carry, as far as in us lay, the most moderate notions as
regarded reforms and innovations. It was no longer the king speaking, it
was the consulting counsel for the crown, asking advice of everybody, and
appearing to say to everybody: 'What's to be done? What can I do? How
much do they want to lop from my authority? How much of it will they
leave me?" [_Memoires de M. Malouet,_ t. i. p. 249.] It was a tacit
abdication of the kingship at the juncture when its traditional
authority, if not its very existence, was brought to book.

The party of honest men, still very numerous and recruited amongst all
classes of society, went confidently to the general elections and
preparatory assemblies which had to precede them. "Hardly conscious were
they of the dark clouds which had gathered around us; the clouds shrouded
a tempest which was not slow to burst." [Ibidem, p. 260.]

The whole of France was fever-stricken. The agitation was contradictory