Oil the Coiiilict of Parties in the Jacobin Club 17 



it such an odious reputation. Although no deputies at this time 

 formally severed their connection with the society, few continued 

 to attend its meetings. This was the moment of the real seces- 

 sion of the deputies, although the formal declaration of separa- 

 tion was not made until the 17th of July following.^ There was 

 no change of constitution, but the society from now on no longer 

 remained true to its original aims, namely, to sustain and pop- 

 ularize the work of the National Assembly. 



Of the character of the debates and the composition of the 

 society about this time several witnesses have left us contem- 

 porary or almost contemporary accounts. The deputies of Maine 

 et Loire, writing to the Friends of the Constitution of Angers, 

 July 20, 1 79 1, give such a vivid picture of conditions in the so- 

 ciety that I quote them at length. "The undersigned, deputies 

 of Maine et Loire," they wrote, "all founders or members of the 

 Club of the Friends of the Constitution at the Jacobins of Paris, 

 believed that it was their duty to separate themselves from it 

 last Saturday with almost all their colleagues ; [of the National 

 Assembly] only four or five remained. They thought that it 

 was no longer appropriate for them to remain in an association 

 of which they were believed to have the direction and the ma- 

 jority, when that same association, formerly so useful for the 

 destruction of tyranny and the reedification of a regular govern- 

 ment based upon reason, has come to be guided by a crowd of 

 foreigners who have obtained admittance, who have nothing to 

 lose, and of whom the major portion is paid by these same for- 

 eigners who desire absolutely to cause our revolution to fail like 

 that of Brabant. From that time, this assembly presented only 

 the image of an assembly of furies who believed they could be 

 useful to the country only in preaching disorder and anarchy 

 and in degrading all authority by causing the people to destroy 

 them and who not only for six weeks or two months suffered the 

 expression of but one opinion, reasonable or not unless it were 

 incendiary, but even drove out with violence members who ex- 

 pressed an opinion contrary to the one our most cruel enemies 

 could most desire because it evidently led us to civil war. Never- 



^Aulard, III, 30. 



245 



