minority that opposed them. Mounier encouraged the
suspicion and jealousy of Ministers by separating them from the
Assembly, and denying to the king, that is to them, the prerogative of
proposing laws. He attributed to the absolute veto an importance which
it does not possess; and he frustrated all chance of a Second Chamber
by allowing it to be known that he would have liked to make it
hereditary. This was too much for men who had just rejoiced over the
fall of the aristocracy. In order to exclude the intervention of the
king in favour of a suspensive veto, he accepted the argument that the
Constitution was in the hands of the Assembly alone. When Lewis raised
a just objection to the decrees of August 4, this argument was turned
against him, and the Crown suffered a serious repulse.

The intellectual error of the Democrats vanishes before the moral
error of the Conservatives. They refused a Second Chamber because they
feared that it would be used as a reward for those among them to whose
defection they partly owed their defeat. And as they did not wish the
Constitution to be firmly established, they would not vote for
measures likely to save it. The revolutionists were able to count on
their aid against the Liberals.

The watchword came from the Palace, and the shame of their policy
recoils upon the king. Late in September one of his nobles told him
that he was weary of what he saw, and was going to his own country.
"Yes," said the king, taking him aside; "things are going badly, and
nothing can improve our position but the excess of evil." On this
account Royer Collard, the famous _Doctrinaire_, said, in later times,
that all parties in the Revolution were honest, except the
Conservatives.

From the end of August the Paris agitators, who managed the mob in
the interest of a dynastic change directed a sustained pressure
against Versailles. Thouret, one of the foremost lawyers in the
Assembly, who was elected President on August 1, refused the honour.
He had been warned of his unpopularity, and gave way to threats.
Yielding to the current which, as Mirabeau said, submerges those who
resist it, he went over to the other side, and soon became one of
their leaders. The experience of this considerable man is an instance
of the change that set in, and that was frequent among men without
individual conviction or the strength of character that belongs to it.

The downward tendency was so clearly manifest, the lesson taugh