The king’s speech was followed by another short one from the keeper of the seals, which received but little attention; and by one of prodigious length from Necker, which was equally injudicious and unacceptable to his hearers, both in what it said and in what it omitted.  He never mentioned the question of constitutional reform.  He said nothing of what the Commons, at least, thought still more important—­the number of chambers in which the members were to meet; and, though he dilated at the most profuse length on the condition of the finances, and on his own success in re-establishing public credit, they were by no means pleased to hear him assert that success had removed any absolute necessity for their meeting at all, and that they had only been called together in fulfillment of the king’s promise, that so the sovereign might establish a better harmony between the different parts of the Constitution.

Before any business could be proceeded with, it was necessary for the members to have the writs of their elections properly certified and registered, for which they were to meet on the following day.  We need not here detail the artifices and assumptions by which the members of the Third Estate put forward pretensions which were designed to make them masters of the whole Assembly; nor is it necessary to unfold at length the combination of audacity and craft, aided by the culpable weakness of Necker, by which they ultimately carried the point they contended for, providing that the three orders should deliberate and vote together as one united body in one chamber.  Emboldened by their success, they even proceeded to a step which probably not one among them had originally contemplated; and, as if one of their principal objects had been to disown the authority of the king by which they had been called together, they repudiated the title of States-general, and invented for themselves a new name, that of “The National Assembly,” which, as it had never been heard of before, seemed to mark that they owed their existence to the nation, and not to the sovereign.

But the discussions that took place before all these points were settled, presented, besides the importance of the conclusion which was adopted, another feature of powerful interest, since it was in them that the members first heard the voice of the Count de Mirabeau, who, more than any other deputy, was supposed during the ensuing year to be able to sway the whole Assembly, and to hold the destinies of the nation in his hands.

Necker’s daughter, the celebrated Baroness de Stael, wife of the Swedish embassador, who was present at the opening of the States, which, as her father’s daughter, she regarded with exulting confidence as the body of legislators who were to regenerate the nation, remarked, as the long procession passed before her eyes, that of the six hundred deputies of the Commons[7], the Count de Mirabeau alone bore a name which was previously known; and he was manifestly