The proposer demanded, which was granted, that the measure should be referred to a committee in which its opponents hoped to see it buried.

Then the Paris Jacobins took hold of it.

A circular was issued, after which an article on the measure was printed in their journal and discussed in three or four hundred clubs that were leagued together.

Three weeks after this the Assembly was flooded with petitions from every quarter, demanding a decree of which the first proposal had been rejected, and which is now passed by a great majority because a discussion of it had ripened public opinion." In other words, the Assembly must go ahead or it will be driven along, in which process the worst expedients are the best.

Those who conduct the club, whether fanatics or intriguers, are fully agreed on this point.
At the head of the former class is Duport, once a counselor in the parliament, who, after 1788, knew how to turn riots to account.