Each of these improvised legislators has come satisfied with his own system, and to submit to a leader to whom he would entrust his political conscience, to make of him what three out of four of these deputies should be, a voting machine, would require an apprehension of danger, some painful experience, an enforced surrender which he is far from realizing.[2104] For this reason, save in the violent party, each acts as his own chief, according to the impulse of the moment, and the confusion may be imagined.

Strangers who witness it, lift their hands in pity and astonishment.

"They discuss nothing in their Assembly," writes Gouverneur Morris,[2105] "One large half of the time is spent in hallowing and bawling....

Each Man permitted to speak delivers the Result of his Lubrications," amidst this noise, taking his turn as inscribed, without replying to his predecessor, or being replied to by his successor, without ever meeting argument by argument; so that while the firing is interminable, "all their shots are fired in the air." Before this "frightful clatter" can be reported, the papers of the day are obliged to make all sorts of excisions, to prune away "nonsense," and reduce the "inflated and bombastic style." Chatter and clamor, that is the whole substance of most of these famous sittings.
"You would hear," says a journalist, "more yells than speeches; the sittings seemed more likely to end in fights than in decrees...

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