All of these, except a very small group of revolutionaries, had learned something by experience, and, in the last days of their session, two serious events, the king's flight and the riot in the Champ de Mars, had made them acquainted with the defects of their machinery.

With this executive instrument in their hands for three months, they see that it is racked, that things are tottering, and that they themselves are being run over by fanatics and the crowd.
They accordingly attempt to put on a drag, and several even think of retracing their steps.[2110] They cut loose from the Jacobins; of the three or four hundred deputies on the club list in the Rue St.
Honore[2111] but seven remain; the rest form at the Feuillants a distinct opposition club, and at their head are the first founders, Duport, the two Lameths, Barnave, the authors of the constitution, all the fathers of the new regime.[2112] In the last decree of the Constituent Assembly they loudly condemn the usurpations of popular associations, and not only interdict to these all meddling in administrative or political matters, but likewise any collective petition or deputation.[2113]--Here may the friends of order find candidates whose chances are good, for, during two years and more, each in his own district is the most conspicuous, the best accredited, and the most influential man there; he stands well with his electors on account of the popularity of the constitution he has made, and it is very probable that his name would rally to it a majority of votes.-The Jacobins, however, have foreseen this danger: Four months earlier,[2114] with the aid of the Court, which never missed an opportunity to ruin itself and everything else,[2115] they made the most of the grudges of the conservatives and the weariness of the Assembly.

Tired and disgusted, in a fit of mistaken selflessness, the Assembly, through enthusiasm and taken by surprise, passes an act declaring all its members ineligible for election to the next Assembly dismissing in advance the leaders of the gentlemen's party.
III .-- The friends of order deprived of the right of free assemblage.
Violent treatment of their clubs in Paris and the provinces .-- Legal prevention of conservative associations.
If the latter (the honest men of the Right), in spite of so many drawbacks, attempt a struggle, they are arrested at the very first step.
For, to enter upon an electoral campaign, requires preliminary meetings for conference and to understand each other, while the faculty of forming an association, which the law grants them as a right, is actually withheld from them by their adversaries.

As a beginning, the Jacobins hooted at and "stone" the members of the "Right"[2116] holding their meetings in the Salon francais of the Rue Royale, and, according to the prevailing rule, the police tribunal, "considering that this assemblage is a cause of disturbance, that it produces gatherings in the street, that only violent means can be employed to protect it," orders its dissolution.[2117]--Towards the month of August, 1790, a second club is organized, and, this time, composed of the wisest and most liberal men.

Malouet and Count Clermont-Tonnerre are at the head of it.