Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/441

 The French Revolution 403 arrive every moment from the provinces of riots and dis- turbances, and calling in the military to preserve the peace of the markets. . . . June 75. This has been a rich day, and such an one as Arthur ten years ago none could believe would ever arrive in France; Youn g de " a very important debate being expected on what, in our important House of Commons, would be termed the state of the nation, session of My friend, Monsieur Lazowski, and myself were at Versailles ^ une I5 " at eight in the morning. We went immediately to the hall of the states to secure good seats in the gallery ; we found some deputies already there, and a pretty numerous audience collected. The room is too large ; none but stentorian lungs or the finest, clearest voices can be heard. However, the very size of the apartment, which admits two thousand peo- ple, gave a dignity to the scene. It was indeed an interest- ing one. The spectacle of the representatives of twenty-five millions of people, just emerging from the evils of two hun- dred years of arbitrary power, and rising to the blessings of a freer constitution, assembled with open doors under the eye of the public, was framed to call into animated feelings every latent spark, every emotion of a liberal bosom ; to banish whatever ideas might intrude of their being a peo- ple too often hostile to my own country, and to dwell with pleasure on the glorious idea of happiness to a great nation. Monsieur TAbbe Sieyes opened the debate. He is one Abbe Sieyes of the most zealous sticklers for the popular cause ; car- ries his ideas not to a regulation of the present government, which he thinks too bad to be regulated at all, but wishes to see it absolutely overturned, — being in fact a violent republican : this is the character he commonly bears, and in his pamphlets he seems pretty much to justify such an idea. He speaks ungracefully and uneloquently, but logically, — or rather reads so, for he read his speech, which was pre- pared. His motion, or rather string of motions, was to de- clare themselves the representatives known and verified of the French nation, admitting the right of all absent deputies [the nobility and clergy] to be received among them on the verification of their powers.