126 Travels in France 



any appeal to the common feeling of the people more easy and 

 much more to their purpose than if the price was low. Three 

 days past, the chamber of the clergy contrived a cunning pro- 

 position; it was to send a deputation to the commons, proposing 

 to name a commission from the three orders to take into con- 

 sideration the misery of the people, and to deliberate on the 

 means of lowering the price of bread. This would have led to 

 the deliberation by order, and not by heads, consequently must 

 be rejected, but unpopularly so from the situation of the people: 

 the commons were equally dextrous; in their reply, they prayed 

 and conjured the clergy to join them in the common hall of the 

 states to deliberate, which was no sooner reported at Paris than 

 the clergy became doubly an object of hatred; and it became a 

 question with the politicians of the Caffe de Foy^ whether it v;as 

 not lawful for the commons to decree the application of their 

 esta.tes towards easing the distress of the people. 



i\th. I have been in much company all day and cannot but 

 remark that there seem to be no settled ideas of the best means 

 of forming a new constitution. Yesterday the Abbe Syeyes 

 made a motion in the house of commons, to declare boldly to the 

 privileged orders, that if they will not join the commons, the 

 latter will proceed in the national business without them; and 

 the house decreed it with a small amendment. This causes 

 much conversation on what vvill be the consequence of such a 

 proceeding; and on the contrary, on what may flow from the 

 nobility and clergy continuing steadily to refuse to join the 

 commons, and should they so proceed, to protest against all they 

 decree, and appeal to the king to dissolve the states, and recall 

 them in such a form as may be practicable for business. In these 

 most interesting discussions I find a general ignorance of the 

 principles of go\"emment; a strange and unaccountable appeal, 

 on one side, to ideal and visionar}' rights of nature; and, on the 

 other, no settled plan that shall give security to the people for 

 being in future in a much better situation than hitherto, a 

 security absolutely necessar}^ But the nobility, with the prin- 

 ciples of great lords that I converse with, are most disgustingly 

 tenacious of all old rights however hard they may bear on the 

 people; they will not hear of giving way in the least to the spirit 

 of liberty, beyond the point of paying equal land-taxes, which they 

 hold to be all that can with reason be demanded. The popular 

 party, on the other hand, seem to consider all liberty as depend- 

 ing on the privileged classes being lost, and outvoted in the order 

 > In the Palais Royal; it extended to 46 Rue Richelieu. 



