On the Conftict of Parties in the Jacobin Club 3 



still to be expressed in the work of the National Assembly.^ 

 This by no means implied that all its members vver-e necessarily 

 satisfied with the solution of every question so far treated by the 

 assembly, but that as a matter of polic}- they acquiesced. Dif- 

 ference of opinion was often as violentlx expressed in the club 

 as in the assembly. It is equally misleading to use the terms 

 "Jacobin" and "revolutionary" as synonymous, as Ferrieres so 

 irequently does,- for the society never contained all the deputies 

 in sympathy with the revolution and it certainly was not respon- 

 sible for the whole revolution. It was by such loose terminology 

 that the enemies of the club attempted to render it responsible 

 for every radical measure or popular disturbance.^ 



At the close of November, 1789, when the society w^as organ- 

 ized, the grouping into parties in the assembly had hardly passed 

 beyond a loose division into left and right. As the work pro- 

 ceeded, the men of various temperaments were attracted about 

 their respective centers of affinity, a process which very soon 

 made itself apparent among the Jacobins. That discontent ex- 

 isted in the right wing of the club as early as Januar}', 1790, is 

 to be inferred from the negotiations of Malouet w'ith Liancourt- 

 Larochfoucauld, Lafayette, and others for the formation of a 

 more moderate society, the "Impartials."^ Malouet did not suc- 

 ceed, but some of the men he sought to detach from the Jacobins 

 soon discovered their tendency in entering the "Club of '89." 

 Throughout the whole duration of the assembly there was a con- 

 stant loss of members from the right of the club and a corre- 

 sponding gain on the left, a tendency which largely explains its 

 passage from a moderate to a radical organization. 



This process was, from its positive side, largely the result of 

 necessity. Calumniated by its enemies, the society was forced to 

 take the public to some extent into its confidence. As it was the 



^See the constitution of the club, Aulard, I, xxviii-xxxiii. 



2 3Iemoires, passim . 



2 This was the usual practice of the pamphleteers. See pamphlets pub- 

 lished by Aulard in volumes one and two. 



'' For these negotiations see Revolutions de France et de Brabant, No. 8, 

 Yl^'^, Journal des impartiaux, No. 1, and Mhnoires of Malouet, I, 374-81. 



231 



