much confirmed by the events that are
crowding upon us as it has ever been in royal or Christian history.

The Revolution will never be intelligibly known to us until we
discover its conformity to the common law, and recognise that it is
not utterly singular and exceptional, that other scenes have been as
horrible as these, and many men as bad.

VII

THE FOURTH OF AUGUST

We come to-day to the most decisive date in the Revolution, the fall
of the social system of historic France, and the substitution of the
Rights of Man.

When the Assembly was fully constituted, it had to regulate its
procedure. Sir Samuel Romilly, a friend of Dumont, and occasionally of
Mirabeau, sent over an account of the practice of the British
Parliament, with the cumbrous forms, the obstacles to prompt action,
the contrivances to favour a minority, and to make opposition nearly
equal to government. The French required more expeditious methods.
They had a single Assembly with a known and well-defined commission,
and the gravest danger of the hour was obstruction and delay. Every
member obtained the right of initiative, and could submit a motion in
writing. The Assembly might, after debate, refuse to consider it; but
if not arrested on the threshold, it might be discussed and voted and
passed in twenty-four hours. The security for deliberation was in the
Bureaux. The Assembly was divided into thirty groups or committees, of
nearly forty members each, who met separately, the Assembly in the
morning, the Bureaux in the evening. This plan ensured thorough and
sincere discussion, for men spoke their genuine thoughts, where there
was no formality, no reporter, no stranger in the gallery. The Bureaux
were disliked and suspected by the excluded public. The electorate,
experiencing for the first time the sensation of having deputies at
work to do their will, desired to watch them, and insisted on the
master's right to look after his man. Representation was new; and to
every reader of Rousseau, of Turgot, or of Mably, it was an object of
profound distrust. The desire to uphold the supremacy of the deputing
power over the deputed, of the constituent over his member, was
distinctly part of the great literary inheritance common to them all.
As the mandate was originally imperative, the giver of the mandate
claimed the right of seeing to its execution. The exercise of powers
that were defined and limited, that were temporary and revocable,
called