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    The Flemish Regiment and the National Guard of Versailles were ranged on the outside of the great and of the little court . There was some commotion going on that we could not exactly understand . Mirabeau was not long with us . I think £ remember that he did not dine with Servan . Though the crowd was great , and we could not tell what might happen , we walked about

    everywhere ; we saw the king ' s carriages in the back streets , and we thought that the royal family were about to be sent off . When I was tired of wandering about , I went to the Assembly ; it was then eight o ' clock , and the scene was extraordinary ; it had been invaded by the mob with whom its walls were filled * the galleries were occupied by men and women armed with halberts , sticks , and pikes . When we had penetrated into the Assembly where

    the President . was exerting himself in vain to procure order , Mirabeau raised his commanding voice and called upon the President to require that the Assembly should be respected , and that the strangers who had crowded into it should be compelled to withdraw ^ It required all his popularity to accomplish the object , but gradually the mob withdrew , and the deputies proceeded to deliberate quietly upon some branch of the penal code . I was in

    the gallery where there was a poissarde who spoke with authority , and directed the operations of about a hundred other women , and of some lads , who obeyed her orders when to shout or be silent . She called the deputies by their names with the greatest familiarity , and shouted out " Who is that speaking ?" " Stop that chattering fellow ! " te That is not the question , what we want is bread . Let us have our good little Mirabeau—we want to hear him . " p . 125 .

    With all respect to the deputies who composed the Assembly , this poissarde knew better than they did what they ought to discuss . Famine was then decimating the people as it has again in our time , and then , as now , the representatives of the agonised and exasperated people were discussing the Penal Code , or the navigation of the Rhine , whale-fishery , or what not . It did not occur to the most sagacious of the Deputies at that time , ( nor does

    it now , ) that after the abolition of privileges , the essential thing was an union of popular ameliorations with the interests of proprietors , a problem , the solution of which , by reviving commerce , agriculture , manufactures , and every description of industry , would , at the same time , have augmented the value of property , and procured employment and remuneration for the labourer .

    Such was the depth of meaning of the good poissarde ' s exclamation—* That ia not the question—what we want , is bread . " * In the same spirit is the device of the manufacturers of Lyons : Live by labour , or die in battle . ' The same causes produce , and will always produce , the same effects . Our parliamentary assemblies are too much akin to the Roman senate , when it deliberated , under

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    Mirabeau * - 631

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 531, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/27/