362 THE TENNIS COURT. 



liament was opened at Versailles ; lawyers and mer- 

 chants dressed in black walked in the same procession, 

 and sat beneath the same roof with the haughty nobles, 

 rustling with feathers, shining with gold, and wearing 

 swords upon their thighs. But the commoners soon 

 perceived that they had only been summoned to vote 

 away the money of the nation ; they were not to 

 interfere with the laws. Their debates becoming 

 offensive to the king, the Hall in which they met was 

 closed against them. They then gathered in a Tennis 

 Court, called themselves the National Assembly, and 

 took an oath that they would not dissolve until they 

 had regenerated France. Troops were marched into 

 Versailles ; a coup d'etat was evidently in the wind. 

 And then the Parisians arose ; the army refused to fight 

 against them ; the Bastille was destroyed ; the National 

 Assembly took the place of the (Eil de Bceuf : demo- 

 cracy became the Mayor of the Palace. A constitu- 

 tion was drawn up, and was accepted by the king. 

 The nobility ,were deprived of their feudal rights ; 

 church property was resumed by the nation ; taxes 

 were imposed on the rich as well as on the poor ; the 

 peasantry went out shooting every Sunday ; the coun- 

 try gentlemen fled from their chateaux to foreign 

 courts, where wars began to brew. Such was the state 

 of affairs in France when Wilberforce suggested that 

 Clarkson should be sent over to Paris to negotiate with 

 the leading members of the National Assembly. There 

 was in Paris a Society called the Friends of the Blacks ; 

 Condorcet and Brissot were among its conductors. 

 Clarkson, therefore, was sanguine of success ; but it was 

 long before he could obtain a hearing. At last he was 

 invited to dinner at the house of the Bishop of Chartres, 

 that he might there meet Mirabeau and Sieyes, the 



