d
for a National Assembly to meet on March 1 was carried (February 18) by
a unanimous vote. The following Provisional Regulation was then rapidly
drawn up by a special committee. The land was divided into districts
each containing 15,000 inhabitants; these again into fundamental
assemblies (_grondvergaderingen_) of 500 persons; each of these
assemblies chose an "elector" (_kiezer_); and then the group of thirty
electors chose a deputy to represent the district. The National Assembly
was in this way to consist of one hundred and twenty-six members; its
deliberations were to be public, the voting individualistic and the
majority to prevail. A Commission of twenty-one deputies was to be
appointed, who were to frame a draft-Constitution, which after approval
by the Assembly was to be submitted to the whole body of the people for
acceptance or rejection.

The Assembly, having duly met on March 1, 1796, in the Binnenhof at the
Hague, elected Pieter Paulus as their president, but had the misfortune
to lose his experienced direction very speedily. He had for some time
been in bad health, and on March 17 he died. It fell to his lot to
assist at the ceremonial closing of the last meeting of the
States-General, which had governed the Republic of the United
Netherlands for more than two centuries.

The National Assembly reflected the pronounced differences of opinion in
the land. Orangist opinion had no representatives, although possibly
more than half the population had Orange sympathies. All the deputies
had accepted in principle French revolutionary ideas, but there were
three distinct parties, the unitarians, the moderates and the
federalists. The moderates, who were in a majority, occupied, as their
name implied, an intermediate position between the unitarians or
revolutionary party, who wished for a centralised republic after the
French model, and the federalists or conservatives, who aimed at
retaining so far as possible the rights of the several provinces and
towns to manage their own affairs. The leaders of the unitarians were
Vreede, Midderigh, Valckenier and Gogel; of the moderates
Schimmelpenninck, Hahn and Kantelaur; of the federalists, Vitringa, Van
Marle and De Mist. After the death of Pieter Paulus the most influential
man in an Assembly composed of politicians mostly without any
parliamentary experience was the eloquent and astute Schimmelpenninck,
whose opportunist moderation sprang from a natural dislike of ext