52 Carl Christ ophelsmeier 



This part of the speech was a criticism of the motion of Sieves. 

 Mirabeau continued : "Are you sure that you have the support 

 of your constituents ?" The people did not care for metaphysical 

 discussions. They must be considered more than they had been 

 because they were of the greatest importance. "They are the de- 

 velopment and the consequence of the principle of national rep- 

 resentation, the basis of every constitution." The people did not 

 care for a system of rights and theory of liberty, but they wanted 

 relief from present oppressions. The people in time would de- 

 mand more, but it was necessary for the assembly to adapt itself 

 to circumstances. The assembly needed for its support the irre- 

 sistible power of public opinion, public confidence, the unlimited 

 devotion of the people. But public opinion was unstable, it was 

 very easy to persuade it to sell the constitution for bread. "We 

 are all here," he said, "under the form of convocation which the 

 king has given us. Without doubt you can and ought to change 

 it, when you become an active assembly ; but can you do it today ? 

 Can you do it before being constituted ? Can you do it in the act 

 of constituting yourselves ? By what right do you today pass the 

 limits of your instructions? Are you not called as estates? Has 

 the provisional legislator not supposed three orders, although he 

 has called them in one single assembly ? Your mandates, your 

 cahiers, do they authorize you to declare yourselves assemblee 

 des sculs represcntants connus et verifies! And you can not say 

 that the case in which you find yourselves has not been foreseen. 

 It has been only too clearly, for some of your mandates instructed 

 you to withdraw, if it should be impossible to arrive at a deliber- 

 ation in common, but there is not one which authorized you to 

 call yourselves les seitls represcntants connus et verifies. 



"And if you do run aground, if the king refuses you his sanc- 

 tion, if the two orders protest, if you are without his authority, 

 what then? Dissolution or prorogation. . . The evident con- 

 sequence of which will be the unbridling of all the vengeances, 

 the coalition of all the aristocracies, and hideous anarchy which 

 always leads to despotism. You will have pillages, you will have 

 massacres ; and you will not even have the execrable honor of a 

 civil war." Sieves' title was unintelligible and not dignified and 



52 



