were irresolute. Had the King been a Cromwell, or a Napoleon, he would
have dissolved the assemblies; but he was timid and hesitating. Necker,
the prime minister, was for compromise; he would accept reforms, but
only in a constitutional way.

The knot was at last cut by the Abbé Sieyès, a political priest, and one
of the deputies for Paris,--the finest intellect in the body, next to
Mirabeau, and at first more influential than he, since the Count was
generally distrusted on account of his vices. Nor had he as yet
exhibited his great powers. Sieyès said, for the Deputies alone, "We
represent ninety-six per cent of the whole nation. The people is
sovereign; we, therefore, as its representatives, constitute ourselves a
national assembly." His motion was passed by acclamation, on June 17,
and the Third Estate assumed the right to act for France.

In a legal and constitutional point of view, this was a usurpation, if
ever there was one. "It was," says Von Sybel, the able German historian
of the French Revolution, "a declaration of open war between arbitrary
principles and existing rights." It was as if the House of
Representatives in the United States, or the House of Commons in
England, should declare themselves the representatives of the nation,
ignoring the Senate or the House of Lords. Its logical sequence was
revolution.

The prodigious importance of this step cannot be overrated. It
transferred the powers of the monarchy to the Third Estate. It would
logically lead to other usurpations, the subversion of the throne, and
the utter destruction of feudalism,--for this last was the aim of the
reformers. Mirabeau himself at first shrank from this violent measure,
but finally adopted it. He detested feudalism and the privileges of the