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036 - Book 6 Chapter 2 The Constituent Assembly · The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille

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Speaker 1: The French Revolution. A History by Thomas Carlyle, Volume one,
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Speaker 1: Book six, Consolidation, Chapter two, The Constituent Assembly. This LibriVox
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Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Read by Peter Dan
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Speaker 1: Book six, Chapter two, The Constituent Assembly. One thing an
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Speaker 1: elected assembly of twelve hundred is fit for destroying, which
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Speaker 1: indeed is but a more decided exercise of its natural
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Speaker 1: talent for doing nothing. Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating,
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Speaker 1: and things will destroy themselves. So and not otherwise proved
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Speaker 1: it with an August National Assembly. It took the name
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Speaker 1: constituent as if its mission and function had been to
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Speaker 1: construct or build, which also with its whole soul it
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Speaker 1: endeavored to do. Yet in the fates and the nature
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Speaker 1: of things there lay for it precisely of all functions
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Speaker 1: the most opposite to that singular what Gospel's men will believe,
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Speaker 1: even gospels. According to Jean Jacques, it was the fixed
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Speaker 1: faith of these National Deputies, as of all thinking Frenchmen,
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Speaker 1: that the constitution could be made, that they there and
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Speaker 1: then were called to make it. How with the toughness
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Speaker 1: of old Hebrews or Ishmaelite Moslem did the otherwise light
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Speaker 1: unbelieving people persist in this their credo quia impossibility, and
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Speaker 1: front the armed world with it, and grow fanatic and
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Speaker 1: even heroic, and do exploits by it. The Constituent Assemblies,
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Speaker 1: Constitution and several others will being printed, and not manuscript
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Speaker 1: survive to future generations as an instructive, wellnigh incredible document
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Speaker 1: of the time, the most significant picture of the then
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Speaker 1: existing France, or at lowest picture of these men's picture
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Speaker 1: of it. But in truth and seriousness, what could the
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Speaker 1: National Assembly have done? The thing to be done was, actually,
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Speaker 1: as they said, to regenerate France, to abolish the old
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Speaker 1: France and make a new one, quietly or forcibly, by
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Speaker 1: concession or by violence. This, by the law of nature
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Speaker 1: has become inevitable. With what degree of violence depends on
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Speaker 1: the wisdom of those that preside over it. With perfect
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Speaker 1: wisdom on the part of the National Assembly, it had
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Speaker 1: all been otherwise. But whether in any wise it could
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Speaker 1: have been pacific, nay other than bloody and convulsive, may
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Speaker 1: still be a question. Grant meanwhile, that this Constituent Assembly
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Speaker 1: does to the last continue to be something with a sigh.
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Speaker 1: It sees itself incessantly forced away from its infinite divine
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Speaker 1: task of perfecting the theory of irregular verbs to finite
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Speaker 1: terrestrial tasks, which latter have still a significance for us.
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Speaker 1: It is the cynosure of revolutionary France, this National Assembly.
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Speaker 1: All work of government has fallen into its hands or
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Speaker 1: under its control. All men look to it for guidance
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Speaker 1: in the middle of that huge revolt of twenty five minions.
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Speaker 1: It hovers or as aloft as carroccio or battle standard,
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Speaker 1: impelling and impelled in the most confused way. If it
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Speaker 1: cannot give much guidance, it will still seem to give some.
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Speaker 1: It emits pacifatory proclamations, not a few, with more or
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Speaker 1: with less result. It authorizes the enrollment of national guards,
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Speaker 1: lest brigands come to devourus and reaped the unripe crops.
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Speaker 1: It sends missions to quell effervescences, to deliver men from
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Speaker 1: the lantern. It can listen to congratulatory addresses which arrived
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Speaker 1: daily by the sackful, mostly in kin Kambici's vain, or
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Speaker 1: so to petitions and complaints from all mortals, so that
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Speaker 1: every mortal's complaint, if it cannot get redressed, may at
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Speaker 1: least hear itself complain for the rest. An August National
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Speaker 1: Assembly can produce parliamentary eloquence, and appoint committees, committees of
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Speaker 1: the Constitution, of reports of researchers, and of much else,
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Speaker 1: which again yield mountains of printed paper. The theme of
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Speaker 1: new parliamentary eloquence in bursts, or in plenteous, smooth flowing floods,
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Speaker 1: and so from the waste of vortex, whereon all things
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Speaker 1: go whirling and grinding. Organic laws, or the similitude of such,
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Speaker 1: slowly emerge with endless debating, we get the rights of
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Speaker 1: man written down and promulgated, true paper basis of all
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Speaker 1: paper constitutions. Neglecting cry the opponents to declare the duties
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Speaker 1: of man. Forgetting answer, we to ascertain the mights of man.
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Speaker 1: One of the fatalist omissions. Nay, sometimes, as on the
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Speaker 1: fourth of August, our National Assembly, fired suddenly by an
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Speaker 1: almost preck to natural enthusiasm, will get through whole masses
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Speaker 1: of work in one a memorable night. This fourth of August, dignitaries,
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Speaker 1: temporal and spiritual peers, archbishops, parliament, presidents, each other doing
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Speaker 1: the other in patriotic devotedness, comes successively to throw their
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Speaker 1: untenable possessions on the altar of the fatherland, with louder
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Speaker 1: and louder vivats. For indeed it is after dinner too.
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Speaker 1: They abolish tithes, seignorial duws, gabelle, excessive preservation of game,
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Speaker 1: nay privilege, immunity, feudalism, written branch, then appoint a t
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Speaker 1: DM for it, and so finally disperse about three in
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Speaker 1: the morning, striking the stars with their sublime heads. Such
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Speaker 1: knight unforeseen but forever memorable. Was this the fourth of
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Speaker 1: August seventeen eighty nine. Miraculous or semi miraculous? Some seem
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Speaker 1: to think it a new Knight of Pentecost, shall we say?
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Speaker 1: Shaped according to the New Time and New Church of
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Speaker 1: Jean Jacques Crusoe. It had its causes also its effects
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Speaker 1: in such manner labour, the National Deputies perfecting their theory
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Speaker 1: of irregular verbs, governing France and being governed by it,
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Speaker 1: with toil and noise, cutting asunder ancient intolerable bonds, and
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Speaker 1: for new ones assiduously spinning rips of sand. Were there
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Speaker 1: labours a nothing or as something? Yet the eyes of
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Speaker 1: all France being reverently fixed on them, History can never
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Speaker 1: very long, leave them altogether out of sight for the present.
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Speaker 1: If we glance into that assembly hall of Theirs, it
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Speaker 1: will be found, as is natural, most irregular. As many
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Speaker 1: as a hundred members are on their feet at once,
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Speaker 1: no rule in making motions, or only commencements of a rule.
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Speaker 1: Spectator's gallery allowed to applaud and even to hiss. President
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Speaker 1: appointed once a fortnight, raising many times. No serene head
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Speaker 1: above the waves. Nevertheless, as in all human assemblages, like
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Speaker 1: does begin arranging itself to like the perennial rule. Who
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Speaker 1: Bomina's Saint, Modi's Saint proves valid rudiments of methods disclose
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Speaker 1: themselves rudiments of parties. There is a right side quote
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Speaker 1: dois a left side cote gouche sitting on monsieur le
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Speaker 1: President's right hand or on his left. The cote dois conservative,
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Speaker 1: the kote gauche destructive. Intermediate is Anglomaniah constitutionalism or two
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Speaker 1: chamber royalism, with its mooniears, its ladies, fast verging towards nonentity.
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Speaker 1: Pre eminent on the right side pleads and perorates kazals,
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Speaker 1: the dragoon captain eloquent, mildly fervent, earning for himself the
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Speaker 1: shadow of a name. There also blusters barrel Mirabeau. The
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Speaker 1: younger Mirabeau, not without wit, dusky dspremenil, does nothing but
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Speaker 1: sniff and ejaculate. Might, it is fondly thought, lay prostrate
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Speaker 1: the elder Mirabeau himself. Would he but try, which he
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Speaker 1: does not? Last and greatest, See for one moment the
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Speaker 1: Abbe Maori, with his jesuitic eye, his impassive brass face
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Speaker 1: image of all the cardinal's sins, indomitable, unquenchable. He fights Jesuity,
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Speaker 1: go rhetorically with toughest lungs and heart for throne, especially
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Speaker 1: for altar and tithes, so that a shrill voice exclaims,
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Speaker 1: once from the gallery, Monsieur of the clergy, you have
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Speaker 1: to be shaved. If you wriggle too much, you will
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Speaker 1: get cut. The left side is also called the de
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Speaker 1: leons side, and sometimes derisively the palais royal, and yet
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Speaker 1: so confused real imaginary seems everything. It is doubtful, as
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Speaker 1: Mirabeau said, whether Dorleon himself belonged to that same Dorleon party.
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Speaker 1: What can be known and seen is that his moon
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Speaker 1: visage doth beam forth from that point of space. There
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Speaker 1: likewise sits sea green. Robespierre, throwing in his light weight
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Speaker 1: with decision, not yet with effect. A thin, lean Puritan
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Speaker 1: and Presisian, he would make away with formulas. Yet lives, moves,
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Speaker 1: and has his being wholly in formulas of another sort, Purpler. Such,
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Speaker 1: according to Robespierre, ought to be the royal method of
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Speaker 1: propagating laws. Purpler, this is the law I have framed
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Speaker 1: for thee dost thou accept it? Answered the right side
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Speaker 1: from center and left by inextinguishable laughter. Yet men of
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Speaker 1: insight discern that the sea green may by chance go far.
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Speaker 1: This man, observes Mirabeau will do somewhat. He believes every
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Speaker 1: word he says. Abasia is busy with mere constitutional work,
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Speaker 1: wherein unlucky fellow workmen are less pliable than with one
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Speaker 1: who has completed the science. Ants of polity. They ought
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Speaker 1: to be garage Sia. Nevertheless, some twenty months of heroic
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Speaker 1: travail of contradiction from the stupid, and the Constitution shall
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Speaker 1: be built, the top stone of it brought out with shouting, say,
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Speaker 1: rather the top paper, for it is all paper, and
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Speaker 1: thou hast done in it? What the earth for the
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Speaker 1: heaven could require thy utmost note. Likewise, this trio memorable
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Speaker 1: for several things memorable were it only that their history
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Speaker 1: is written in an epigram. Whatsoever these three have in hand,
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Speaker 1: it is said Dupaur thinks it, Bannave speaks it, Lamethe
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Speaker 1: does it. But Royal mirable, conspicuous among all parties, raised
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Speaker 1: above and beyond them all, this man rises more and more.
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Speaker 1: As we often say, he has an eye. He is
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Speaker 1: a reality, while others are fourmullas and eyeglasses. In the transient,
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Speaker 1: he will detect the perennial, find some firm footing, even
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Speaker 1: among paper voort texes. His fame is gone forth to
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Speaker 1: all lands. It gladdened the heart of the crabbed old
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Speaker 1: friend of men himself, afore he died. The very postilions
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Speaker 1: of Inns have heard of Mirabeaux. When an impatient traveler
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Speaker 1: complains that the team is insufficient, his postilion answers, yes, monsieur,
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Speaker 1: the wheelers are weak, But my Mirabeau main horse, you see,
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Speaker 1: is a right one. May my Mirabau et excellent? And now, reader,
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Speaker 1: thou shalt quit this noisy discrepancy of a national assembly.
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Speaker 1: Not if thou be of humane mind without pity. Twelve
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Speaker 1: hundred brother men are there in the center of twenty
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Speaker 1: five millions, fighting so fiercely with fate and with one another,
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Speaker 1: struggling their lives out as most sons of Adam do,
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Speaker 1: for that which profiteth not nay on the whole. It
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Speaker 1: is admitted further to be very dull, dull, as this
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Speaker 1: day's assembly said some one, why date buqua daitt der,
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Speaker 1: answered Mirabeau. Consider that they are twelve hundred, that they
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Speaker 1: not only speak, but read their speeches, and even borrow
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Speaker 1: and steel speeches to read with twelve hundred fluent speakers,
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Speaker 1: and their Noah's deluge of vociferous commonplace unattainable silence may
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Speaker 1: well seem the one blessing of life. But figure twelve
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Speaker 1: hundred pamphleteers droning forth perpetual pamphlets, and no man to
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Speaker 1: gag them neither, as in the American Congress, do the
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Speaker 1: arrangement seem perfect. A senator has not his own desk
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Speaker 1: and newspaper. Here of tobacco, much less of pipes, there
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Speaker 1: is not the slightest provision. Conversation itself must be transacted
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Speaker 1: in a low tone, with continual interruption. Only pencil notes
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Speaker 1: circulate freely in incredible numbers to the foot of the
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Speaker 1: very tribune. Such work as it, regenerating a nation, perfecting
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Speaker 1: one's theory of irregular verbs in the Book six, Chapter three,