f liberty." Even at St.
Petersburg the fall of the Bastille was hailed with frantic joy. Burke
began by applauding. He would not listen to Tom Paine, who had been
the inspirer of a revolution himself, and who assured him that the
States-General would lead to another. He said, afterwards, that the
Rights of Man had opened his eyes; but at Holland House they believed
that the change came a few days earlier, when the Church was attacked.
The Americans were not far from the opinion of Burke. By the middle of
the summer Jefferson thought that all that was needful had been
obtained. Franklin took alarm at the events of July. Washington and
Hamilton became suspicious soon after.

For the September decrees were directed not only against the English
model, but still more against the American. The Convention of 1787 had
constructed a system of securities that were intended to save the
Union from the power of unchecked democracy. The National Assembly
resolutely swept every security away. Nothing but the Crown was left
that could impede the direct operation of the popular will, or that
could make the division of powers a reality. Therefore the Liberal
party looked to the king as much as the Conservative, and wished as
much as they, and even more than they, to strengthen his hands. Their
theory demanded a divided legislature. Having lost that, they fell
back on Montesquieu, and accepted the division of legislative,
executive, and judicial powers. These theoretic subtleties were
unintelligible to the people of France. Men who were as vehement for
the king in October as they had been vehement against him in June
appeared to them to be traitors. They could not conceive that the
authority which had so long oppressed them, and which it had required
such an effort to vanquish, ought now to be trusted and increased.
They could not convince themselves that their true friends were those
who had suddenly gone over to the ancient enemy and oppressor, whose
own customary adherents seemed no longer to support him.

Public opinion was brought to bear on the Assembly, to keep up the
repression of monarchy which began on June 23. As the Crown passed
under the control of the Assembly, the Assembly became more dependent
on the constituencies, especially on that constituency which had the
making of French opinion, and in which the democratic spirit was
concentrated. After the month of August the dominant fact is the
growing pressure of Paris on Ver