Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/471

A.D.1789.] return. Easy and complying as was the temper of Louis, he felt deeply the degradation of the part that he had been made to play. For a time, all endeavour by the court to resist the popular tendencies appeared crushed by terror. The king consented to the recall of Necker; M. de Liancourt, a friend of the king, was appointed president of the assembly, in the place of Bailly; and the nobles, who had hitherto absented themselves from the sittings, now attended and voted. Thus was the assembly apparently amalgamated, and the revolution completed.



But it was in reality far from such completion. Nothing could be as yet more unsettled than the condition of Paris. Every class was asserting its own independence, and organising itself for dictating to every other class. As the national assembly had assumed a great authority, the assembly of electors did the same in the city; and almost every trade and description of people did the same in their own quarters. The shoemakers, tailors, bakers, domestic servants, &c., met at the Louvre, in the Place Louis XV., in the Champs Elysées, and deliberated on public affairs, though the assembly of electors repeatedly forbade them. These gave great embarrassment to the riders at the Hotel de Ville, but the meetings at the Palais Royal gave far more. At the same time, the electors found all kinds of authorities meeting at the Hotel de Ville, civil, judicial, military. The judges at first, doubting their own powers, referred accused persons to its tribunal; the national guard had its head-quarters there. And thus the electors, divided into several committees, were labouring incessantly in all sorts of duties. Bailly himself was greatly engrossed by the committee in distributing provisions, in purchasing corn, and sending it to the most distressed quarters. This was often intercepted by the starving people, and carried off before reaching its proposed destination. The committee sold corn at a loss, that the bakers might sell bread cheap; but the scarcity was not relieved in the city by this means, for the country people flocked in and bought it up. The condition of the people was as miserable as ever, for there was no confidence in the trading world, and all kinds of articles of subsistence were kept back.

The situation of La Fayette, at the head of the national guard, was as harassing and unsatisfactory as that of Bailly, at the head of the municipality. La Fayette, who had a real passion for liberty, but still more personal vanity, and no great courage, was always thrusting himself before the public eye, enjoying his popularity extremely, but finding it very hard to steer his way respectably betwixt king and people. He professed to desire earnestly to preserve the