ffolding has not yet been taken down. We have no doubt
that, if the excellent author had revised these Memoirs thirty years
after the time at which they were written, he would have seen reason to
omit a few passages, and to add many qualifications and explanations.

He would not probably have been inclined to retract the censures, just,
though severe, which he has passed on the ignorance, the presumption,
and the pedantry, of the National Assembly. But he would have admitted
that, in spite of those faults, perhaps even by reason of those faults,
that Assembly had conferred inestimable benefits on mankind. It is clear
that, among the French of that day, political knowledge was absolutely
in its infancy. It would indeed have been strange if it had attained
maturity in the time of censors, of lettres-de-cachet, and of beds of
justice. The electors did not know how to elect. The representatives
did not know how to deliberate. M. Dumont taught the constituent body of
Montreuil how to perform their functions, and found them apt to learn.
He afterwards tried, in concert with Mirabeau, to instruct the National
Assembly in that admirable system of Parliamentary tactics which has
been long established in the English House of Commons, and which
has made the House of Commons, in spite of all the defects in its
composition, the best and fairest debating society in the world. But
these accomplished legislators, though quite as ignorant as the mob of
Montreuil, proved much less docile, and cried out that they did not
want to go to school to the English. Their debates consisted of endless
successions of trashy pamphlets, all beginning with something about the
original compact of society, man in the hunting state, and other such
foolery. They sometimes diversified and enlivened these long readings by
a little rioting. They bawled; they hooted; they shook their fists. They
kept no order among themselves. They were insulted with impunity by
the crowd which filled their galleries. They gave long and solemn
consideration to trifles. They hurried through the most important
resolutions with fearful expedition. They wasted months in quibbling
about the words of that false and childish Declaration of Rights on
which they professed to found their new constitution, and which was at
irreconcilable variance with every clause of that constitution. They
annihilated in a single night privileges, many of which partook of the
nature of property, and ough