The Assembly of the Notables had no other effect than to show in a stronger light the disorder of the finances, and the other wounds that were galling France.  It was then that the Parliament of Paris asked for the convocation of the States General.  This demand was unfavourably received by Cardinal de Brienne.  Soon afterwards the convocation became a necessity, and Necker, now in the ministry, announced, in the month of November, 1788, that it was decreed in Council, and that the king had even granted to the third estate a double representation, which had been so imprudently disputed by the courtiers.

The districts were formed, on the king’s convocation, the 21st of April, 1789.  That day was the first day of Bailly’s political life.  It was on the 21st of April that the Citizen of Chaillot, entering the Hall of the Feuillants, imagined, he said, that “he breathed a new atmosphere,” and regarded “as a phenomenon that he should have become something in the body-politic, merely from his being a citizen.”

The elections were to be made in two gradations.  Bailly was named first elector of his district.  A few days after, at the general meeting, the Assembly called him to the Board in quality of secretary.  Thus it was our fellow-academician who, in the beginning, drew up the celebrated proces-verbal of the meetings of the electors of Paris, so often quoted by the historians of the revolution.

Bailly also took an active part in drawing up the records of his district, and the records of the body of electors.  The part he acted in these two capacities could not be doubtful, if we judge of it by the three following short quotations extracted from his memoirs:  “The nation must remember that she is sovereign and mistress to order every thing....  It is not when reason awakes, that we should allege ancient privileges and absurd prejudices....  I shall praise the electors of Paris who were the first to conceive the idea of prefacing the French Constitution with a declaration of the Rights of Man.”

Bailly had always been so extremely reserved in his conduct and in his writings, that it was difficult to surmise under what point of view he would consider the national agitation of ’89.  Hence, at the very beginning, the Abbe Maury, of the French Academy, proposed to unite himself to Bailly, and that they should reside at Versailles, and have an apartment in common between them.  It is difficult to avoid a smile when one compares the conduct of the eloquent and impetuous Abbe with the categorical declarations, so distinct and so progressive, of the learned astronomer.

On Tuesday, the 12th of May, the general assembly of the electors proceeded to ballot for the nomination of the first deputy of Paris.  Bailly was chosen.