l system can take
effect without any shock by the help of reason and its power, alone.
Poor souls! They have forgotten even that maxim which their fathers
expressed four hundred years before in the simple and forcible language
of those times: 'By quest of too great franchise and liberties, getteth
one into too great serfage.'"

However terrible and radical it may have been in its principles and its
results, the French Revolution did not destroy the past and its usages,
it did not break with tradition so completely as was demanded, in 1789,
by the memorials of the three orders, those of the noblesse and the
clergy, as well as those of the third estate.

One institution, however, was nowhere attacked or discussed. It is not
true," says M. Malouet, "that we were sent to constitute the kingship,
but undoubtedly to regulate the exercise of powers conformably with our
instructions. Was not the kingship constituted in law and in fact? Were
we not charged to respect it, to maintain it on all its bases?" Less
than a year after the Revolution had begun, Mirabeau wrote privately to
the king: "Compare the new state of things with the old regimen, there
is the source of consolations and hopes. A portion of the acts of the
National Assembly, and the most considerable too, is clearly favorable to
monarchical government. Is it nothing, pray, to be without Parliaments,
without states-districts, without bodies of clergy, of privileged, of
noblesse? The idea of forming but one single class of citizens would
have delighted Richelieu. This even surface facilitates the exercise of
power. Many years of absolute government could not have done so much as
this single year of revolution for the kingly authority."

Genius has lights which cannot be obscured by either mental bias or
irregularities of life. Rejected by the noblesse, dreaded by the third
estate, even when it was under his influence, Mirabeau constantly sought
alliance between the kingship and liberty. "What is most true and nobody
can believe," he wrote to the Duke of Lauzun on the 24th of December,
1788, "is that, in the National Assembly, I shall be a most zealous
monarchist, because I feel most deeply how much need we have to slay
ministerial despotism and resuscitate the kingly authority." The States-
general were scarcely assembled when the fiery orator went to call upon
M. Malouet. The latter was already supposed to be hostile to the
revolution. "Sir," said Mir