without having got the virtues of the free man.  The whole of France was but one vast sedition:  anarchy swayed the state, and in order that it might be, as it were, self-governed, it had created its government in as many clubs as there were large municipalities in the kingdom.  The dominant club was that of the Jacobins:  this club was the centralisation of anarchy.  So soon as a powerful and high passioned will moves a nation, their common impulse brings men together; individuality ceases, and the legal or illegal association organises the public prejudice.  Popular societies thus have birth.  At the first menaces of the court against the States General, certain Breton deputies had a meeting at Versailles, and formed a society to detect the plots of the court and assure the triumphs of liberty:  its founders were Sieyes, Chapelier, Barnave, and Lameth.  After the 5th and 6th of October, the Breton Club, transported to Paris in the train of the National Assembly, had there assumed the more forcible name of “Society of the Friends of the Constitution.”  It held its sittings in the old convent of the Jacobins Saint Honore, not far from the Manege, where the National Assembly sat.  The deputies, who had founded it at the beginning for themselves, now opened their doors to journalists, revolutionary writers, and finally to all citizens.  The presentation by two of its members, and an open scrutiny as to the moral character of the person proposed, were the sole conditions of admission:  the public was admitted to the sittings by inspectors, who examined the admission card.  A set of rules, an office, a president, a corresponding committee, secretaries, an order of the day, a tribune, and orators, gave to these meetings all the forms of deliberative assemblies:  they were assemblies of the people only without elections and responsibility; feeling alone gave them authority:  instead of framing laws they formed opinion.

The sittings took place in the evening, so that the people should not be prevented from attending in consequence of their daily labour:  the acts of the National Assembly, the events of the moment, the examination of social questions, frequently accusations against the king, ministers, the cote droit; were the texts of the debates.  Of all the passions of the people, there hatred was the most flattered; they made it suspicious in order to subject it.  Convinced that all was conspiring against it,—­king, queen, court, ministers, authorities, foreign powers,—­it threw itself headlong into the arms of its defenders.  The most eloquent in its eyes was he who inspired it with most dread—­it had a parching thirst for denunciations, and they were lavished on it with prodigal hand.  It was thus that Barnave, the Lameths, then Danton, Marat, Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, Petion, Robespierre, had acquired their authority over the people.  These names had increased in reputation as the anger of the people grew hotter; they cherished their wrath in order to retain their greatness.  The nightly sittings of the Jacobins and the Cordeliers frequently stifled the echo of the sittings of the National Assembly:  the minority, beaten at the Manege, came to protest, accuse, threaten at the Jacobins.