d appointed commissioners to interrogate him. Louis,
however, supported by the moderate party, was silently reinstated in his
authority, and the national assembly went on as before. But this only
tended to increase the rage of the Jacobins. They wanted at once to
proclaim the republic; and, being defeated in their designs, they turned
to the people. They caused a petition to be prepared for dethroning the
monarch, and made an attempt to lay it on "the altar of the country,"
in the field of Mars, for universal signature. A violent tumult ensued,
which Lafayette quelled at the edge of the sword: much blood was shed.
But this triumph of the assembly only served to render them unpopular.
The people became as weary of them as of the monarch; so having
collected their constitutional decrees into one code, and having
presented this constitution to the king, and received his solemn
acceptance of it, on the 30th of December the national assembly declared
itself dissolved. This was a fatal step to both king and country.
Before the dissolution of this assembly, on the motion of Robespierre, a
measure was passed, declaring that none of the members should be capable
of re-election. Now, although few among them were capable of legislating
for a great country, as most of their acts had proved, yet it was
manifest that the members, generally, were wiser, and even more moderate
than the people at large. The consequence of this fatal step was, in
fact, to sink the representation of the people into a still lower grade
of society; to exalt the dregs of the people into the responsible
office of legislators. This was soon made manifest; of seven hundred and
fifty-eight members who were elected for the legislative assembly, which
arose on the ruins of the national assembly, not more than fifty were
possessed of one hundred pounds per annum. Those who were elected,
indeed, were chiefly men whose zeal had distinguished them in the clubs;
men whose sole aim was the subversion of all religion, and of that order
which is so necessary to the well-being of a state. There were three
classes of persons in this new assembly; the Feuillans, so called from
the name of their club, who advocated a mitigated aristocracy; the
Girondins, or professed republicans, who had a fixed aversion to even
the shadow of royalty which had been preserved; and the Jacobins, whose
aim was to sweep away rank, wealth, and talent from the land. The two
former of these divisions