70 Mae Darling 



accepting the conferences; if the upper orders claimed that the 

 commons by doing this had constituted themselves a separate 

 order, such a report would not convince the public of the truth of 

 the statement. He admitted that, in all probability, the confer- 

 ences wrould be entirely useless as far as bringing about a recon- 

 ciliation of the orders was concerned, and he was of the opinion 

 that when they had failed, the commons would be ready to take 

 more radical steps. In the meantime, his policy was to go slowly 

 and to show by his acceptance of the conferences that the third 

 estate was doing all it could to bring about a peaceful settlement 

 of the difficulties.-^^ The Monitcur gives an account of a speech 

 by Viguier in which he affirmed that the best policy would be 

 first to hear what the commission had to propose, since peace was 

 too precious " not to be bought, if possible, by some days of 

 waiting."-^- Thouret and Barnave were also among those who 

 favored the commission.-^^ The Moniteur reports a speech by 

 Boissy d'Anglas in which he supported the moderate party. He 

 emphasized the fact that not only would the commons not think 

 of renouncing the principle of the vote by head, but this was also 

 the demand of twenty-five millions of people who had elected 

 these deputies. He assured his hearers that no one could have 

 any idea of giving the commissioners power to agree to any 

 method of verification except in the states general composed of 

 the three orders. He then made a plea against hasty action, argu- 

 ing that it was necessary to prove that any extreme action which 

 they might be forced to take later had been preceded by all the 

 " conciliatory means which the love of peace could inspire." The 

 Moniteur quotes the speaker thus : " Hasty resolutions are not 

 suitable to the representatives of twenty-five millions of people, 

 stronger in the justice of their claims than in their numbers; and 



sources (see discussion of the Monitcur by Christophelsmeier, in his thesis 

 on the Fourth of August, 1789), it has been used only when the authors 

 have evidently had access to sources not to be had by the writer. In the 

 case discussed above, the Moniteur seems to have used some other source 

 than the Journal des etats-gcneraux, since the two do not agree absolutely. 



^''■''■Journal des etats-generaux, I, 39, 40; Moniteur, I, 34. 



^'^^ Monitcur, I, 2,2)- 



'13 Duquesnoy, I, 22. 



272 



