The omen of the ‘slouch-hats clapt on’ shows the Commons Deputies to have made up their minds on one thing:  that neither Noblesse nor Clergy shall have precedence of them; hardly even Majesty itself.  To such length has the Contrat Social, and force of public opinion, carried us.  For what is Majesty but the Delegate of the Nation; delegated, and bargained with (even rather tightly),—­in some very singular posture of affairs, which Jean Jacques has not fixed the date of?

Coming therefore into their Hall, on the morrow, an inorganic mass of Six Hundred individuals, these Commons Deputies perceive, without terror, that they have it all to themselves.  Their Hall is also the Grand or general Hall for all the Three Orders.  But the Noblesse and Clergy, it would seem, have retired to their two separate Apartments, or Halls; and are there ‘verifying their powers,’ not in a conjoint but in a separate capacity.  They are to constitute two separate, perhaps separately-voting Orders, then?  It is as if both Noblesse and Clergy had silently taken for granted that they already were such!  Two Orders against one; and so the Third Order to be left in a perpetual minority?

Much may remain unfixed; but the negative of that is a thing fixed:  in the Slouch-hatted heads, in the French Nation’s head.  Double representation, and all else hitherto gained, were otherwise futile, null.  Doubtless, the ’powers must be verified;’—­doubtless, the Commission, the electoral Documents of your Deputy must be inspected by his brother Deputies, and found valid:  it is the preliminary of all.  Neither is this question, of doing it separately or doing it conjointly, a vital one:  but if it lead to such?  It must be resisted; wise was that maxim, Resist the beginnings!  Nay were resistance unadvisable, even dangerous, yet surely pause is very natural:  pause, with Twenty-five Millions behind you, may become resistance enough.—­The inorganic mass of Commons Deputies will restrict itself to a ‘system of inertia,’ and for the present remain inorganic.

Such method, recommendable alike to sagacity and to timidity, do the Commons Deputies adopt; and, not without adroitness, and with ever more tenacity, they persist in it, day after day, week after week.  For six weeks their history is of the kind named barren; which indeed, as Philosophy knows, is often the fruitfulest of all.  These were their still creation-days; wherein they sat incubating!  In fact, what they did was to do nothing, in a judicious manner.  Daily the inorganic body reassembles; regrets that they cannot get organisation, ’verification of powers in common, and begin regenerating France.  Headlong motions may be made, but let such be repressed; inertia alone is at once unpunishable and unconquerable.

Cunning must be met by cunning; proud pretension by inertia, by a low tone of patriotic sorrow; low, but incurable, unalterable.  Wise as serpents; harmless as doves:  what a spectacle for France!  Six Hundred inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit there, on their elliptic benches, longing passionately towards life; in painful durance; like souls waiting to be born.  Speeches are spoken; eloquent; audible within doors and without.  Mind agitates itself against mind; the Nation looks on with ever deeper interest.  Thus do the Commons Deputies sit incubating.