Had the three orders deliberated together in one hall, although against
precedent and legality, the course of revolution might have been
directed into a different channel; or if an able and resolute king had
been on the throne, he might have united with the people against the
nobles, and secured all the reforms that were imperative, without
invoking revolution; or he might have dispersed the deputies at the
point of the bayonet, and raised taxes by arbitrary imposition, as able
despots have ever done. We cannot penetrate the secrets of Providence.
It may have been ordered in divine justice and wisdom that the French
people should work out their own deliverance in their own way, in
mistakes, in suffering, and in violence, and point the eternal moral
that inexperience, vanity, and ignorance are fatal to sound legislation,
and sure to lead to errors which prove disastrous; that national
progress is incompatible with crime; that evils can only gradually be
removed; that wickedness ends in violence.

A majority of the deputies meant well. They were earnest, patriotic, and
enthusiastic. But they knew nothing of the science of government or of
constitution-making, which demand the highest maturity of experience and
wisdom. As I have said, nearly four hundred of them were country
lawyers, as conceited as they were inexperienced. Both Mirabeau and
Sieyès had a supreme contempt for them as a whole. They wanted what they
called rights, and were determined to get them any way they could,
disregarding obstacles, disregarding forms and precedents. And they were
backed up and urged forward by ignorant mobs, and wicked demagogues who
hated the throne, the clergy, and the nobles. Hence the deputies made
mistakes. They could see nothing better than unscrupulous destruction.
And they did not know how to reconstruct. They were bewildered and
embarrassed, and listened to the orators of the Palais Royal.