Philosophy had in the first place enlightened the apex of the nation.

The thought of the age was especially in the higher classes; but those classes who sought a reform by no means desired a disorganisation.

When they had seen the moral agitation of ideas transform itself into an insurrection of the people, they had trembled.

The reins of government violently snatched from the king by Mirabeau and La Fayette, at the Tennis court; the attempts of the 5th and 6th of October; privileges suppressed without compensation, titles abolished, the aristocracy handed over to execration, to pillage, to fire, and even to murder, in the provinces; religion deposed, and compelled to nationalise itself by a constitutional oath; and; finally the king's flight, his imprisonment in his palace, the threats of death vomited forth by the patriotic press, or the tribunes of popular clubs, against all aristocracy, the triumphant riots in the provinces, the defection of the French guards in Paris, the revolt of the Swiss of Chateauvieux at Nancy, the excesses of the soldiery, mutinous and unpunished, at Caen, Brest, and everywhere, had changed into horror and hatred the favourable feeling of the noblesse for the progress of opinion.

It saw that the first act of the people was to degrade superior authority.