. The
Government attempted to save itself by obtaining concessions from the
Notables, but without success, and then the great reform which the State
was impotent to carry into execution was effected by the people. The
destruction of the aristocratic society, which the absolute monarchy had
failed to reform, was the object and the triumph of the Revolution; and
the Constitution of 1791 declared all men equal, and withdrew the
sanction of the law from every privilege.

This system gave only an equality in civil rights, a political equality
such as already subsisted in America; but it did not provide against the
existence or the growth of those social inequalities by which the
distribution of political power might be affected. But the theory of the
natural equality of mankind understands equal rights as rights to equal
things in the State, and requires not only an abstract equality of
rights, but a positive equality of power. The varieties of condition
caused by civilisation were so objectionable in the eyes of this school,
that Rousseau wrote earnest vindications of natural society, and
condemned the whole social fabric of Europe as artificial, unnatural,
and monstrous. His followers laboured to destroy the work of history and
the influence of the past, and to institute a natural, reasonable order
of things which should dispose all men on an equal level, which no
disparity of wealth or education should be permitted to disturb. There
were, therefore, two opinions in the revolutionary party. Those who
overthrew the monarchy, established the republic, and commenced the war,
were content with having secured political and legal equality, and
wished to leave the nation in the enjoyment of those advantages which
fortune distributes unequally. But the consistent partisans of equality
required that nothing should be allowed to raise one man above another.
The Girondists wished to preserve liberty, education, and property; but
the Jacobins, who held that an absolute equality should be maintained by
the despotism of the government over the people, interpreted more justly
the democratic principles which were common to both parties; and,
fortunately for their country, they triumphed over their illogical and
irresolute adversaries. "When the revolutionary movement was once
established," says De Maistre, "nothing but Jacobinism could save
France."

Three weeks after the fall of the Gironde, the Constitution of 1793, by
which a purely