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.