Its end was too comprehensive to be included in any of the successive views that the ambition of certain factions, or the theories of certain statesmen could propound.

Barnave, the Lameths, and La Fayette, like Mirabeau and Necker, endeavoured, in vain, to oppose to it the power and influence they had derived from it.
It was destined, before it was appeased or relaxed in its onward career, to frustrate many other systems, make many other breasts pant in vain, and outstrip a multitude of other aims.
Independent of the national assemblies it had given to itself as a government, and in which were, for the most part, concentrated the political instruments of its impulse, it had also given birth to two levers, still more potent and terrible to move and sweep away these political bodies when they attempted to check her when she chose to advance.

These two levers were the press and the clubs.

The clubs and the press were, to the legal assemblies, what free air is to confined air.

Whilst the air of these assemblies became vitiated, and exhausted itself in the circle of the established government, the air of journalism and popular societies was impregnated and incessantly stirred by an inexhaustible principle of vitality and movement.