Though he could not avoid seeing the mischievous character of many of the resolutions thus tumultuously passed, and though his royal assent to them was asked in language unceremonious and almost peremptory in its curtness, Louis could not bring himself, or perhaps did not venture, to refuse his sanction to them.  He had laid down a rule for himself to refuse no concession except such as on religious grounds his conscience might revolt from; and on the 18th he signified his formal acceptance of the resolutions, and of the title of “Restorer of French Liberty.”  It was an act of great weakness, and was rewarded, as such acts generally are, by further encroachments on his authority.  The progress of the Left was not even arrested by a quarrel between some of its members (who, being clergymen, were not inclined to be reduced to beggary by the extinction of their incomes), and Mirabeau, who, not unnaturally, bore the priests especial ill-will.  Before the end of the month, the Assembly even deprived the king of the power of withholding his assent from measures which it might pass, enacting that he should no longer possess an absolute “veto,” as it was called, and Necker, exhibiting on this question an incapacity more glaring than even his former conduct had displayed, induced the king to yield this point also; and to express his own preference for what its contrivers called a suspensive veto—­a power, that is, of withholding his assent to any measure till it had been passed by two successive Assemblies.  The discussions on this most momentous point had been very vehement in the Assembly itself; and, besides the greatness of the principle involved in the decision, they have a peculiar importance as showing that Mirabeau had not the absolute power over the minds of the members which he believed himself to possess; since he contended with all the energy of his temper, and with irresistible force of argument, against a vote which, as he declared, could only take the power from the king to vest it in the Assembly, and yet was wholly unable to carry more than a small minority with him in his opposition.

And this defeat may have had some share in prompting him to countenance and aid, if indeed he was not the original contriver of, a plot which was undoubtedly intended to produce a change in the whole frame-work of the Government.  The harvest had been bad, and at the beginning of September Paris was suffering under a scarcity almost as severe as had ever been felt in the depth of winter.  The emergency was so great that the king sent all his plate to the Mint to be melted down, to procure money to purchase food for the starving citizens; and many patriotic individuals, Necker himself being among the most munificent, gave their plate and jewels for the same benevolent object.  But relief procured from such sources was unavoidably of too limited a character to last long.  Though Necker proposed and the Assembly voted taxes of prodigious amount, they could not at once be made available,