for scrutiny and direct control.

The Bureaux did not last, and their disappearance was a disaster.
Party, as the term is used in the constitutional vocabulary, was not
yet developed; and no organisation possessed the alternate power of
presenting ministers to the Crown. The main lines that divided opinion
came to light in the debates of September, and the Assembly fell into
factions that were managed by their clubs. The President held office
for a fortnight, and each new election indicated the movement of
opinion, the position of parties, the rise of reputations. The united
Assembly did honour to the acceding orders. The first presidents were
prelates and men of rank. Out of six elections only one fell to a
commoner, until the end of September, when the leader of the Liberal
Conservatives, Mounier, was chosen, at what proved a moment of danger.
In the same way, the thirty chairmen of the Bureaux were, with
scarcely an exception, always taken from the clergy or the nobles.

As Mounier, with his friends, had dominated in the constitutional
committee of thirty, and was now paramount in the new committee of
eight, there was some prospect of a coalition, by which, in return for
their aid in carrying the English model, the nobles would obtain easy
terms in the liquidation of privilege. That is the parliamentary
situation. That is the starting-point of the transactions that we have
now to follow.

During the days spent in making terms between the king, the Assembly,
and the capital, the provinces were depending on Paris for news, for
opinions, and direction. They were informed that the Parisians had
made themselves masters of the royal fortress, and had expelled the
royal authority; that the king and the Assembly had accepted and
approved the action; that there was no executive ministry, either old
or new; and that the capital was providing for its own security and
administration. The towns soon had imitations of the disorders that
had been so successful, and quickly repressed them; for the towns were
the seat of the middle class, the natural protectors of acquired
property, and defenders of order and safety. In country districts the
process of disintegration was immediate, the spontaneous recovery was
slow. For the country was divided between the nobles who were rich,
and their dependents who were poor. And the poverty of one class was
ultimately due to innumerable devices for increasing the wealth of the
other. And now