Those who have lost ought to perceive that it is impossible to make it retrograde.  Those who fashioned it must see that it is at its consummation.  Kings themselves—­if from, time to time profound truths can penetrate to the councils of kings—­if occasionally the prejudices which surround them will permit the sound views of a great and philosophical policy to reach them—­kings themselves must learn that there is for them a wide difference between the example of a great reform in the government and that of the abolition of royalty:  that if we pause here, where we are, they are still kings! but be their conduct what it may, let the fault come from them and not from us.  Regenerators of the empire! follow straightly your undeviating line; you have been courageous and potent—­be to-day wise and moderate.  In this will consist the glorious termination of your efforts.  Then, again returning to your domestic hearths, you will obtain from all, if not blessings, at least the silence of calumny.”  This address, the most eloquent ever delivered by Barnave, carried the report in the affirmative; and for several days checked all attempts at republic and forfeiture in the clubs of the Cordeliers and Jacobins.  The king’s inviolability was consecrated in fact as well as in principle.  M. de Bouille, his accomplices and adherents, were sent for trial to the high national court of Orleans.

VII.

Whilst these men, exclusively political, each measuring the advance of the Revolution, step by step, with their eyes, desired courageously to stop it, or checked their own views, the Revolution was continually progressing.  Its own thought was too vast for any head of public man, orator, or statesman to contain.  Its breath was too powerful for any one breast to respire it solely.  Its end was too comprehensive to be included in any of the successive views that the ambition of certain factions, or the theories of certain statesmen could propound.  Barnave, the Lameths, and La Fayette, like Mirabeau and Necker, endeavoured, in vain, to oppose to it the power and influence they had derived from it.  It was destined, before it was appeased or relaxed in its onward career, to frustrate many other systems, make many other breasts pant in vain, and outstrip a multitude of other aims.

Independent of the national assemblies it had given to itself as a government, and in which were, for the most part, concentrated the political instruments of its impulse, it had also given birth to two levers, still more potent and terrible to move and sweep away these political bodies when they attempted to check her when she chose to advance.  These two levers were the press and the clubs.  The clubs and the press were, to the legal assemblies, what free air is to confined air.  Whilst the air of these assemblies became vitiated, and exhausted itself in the circle of the established government, the air of journalism and popular societies was impregnated and incessantly stirred by an inexhaustible principle of vitality and movement.  The stagnation within was fully credited, but the current was without.