was its legislature, the national guard its armed force, the mayoralty its
popular power. Mirabeau, Lafayette, Bailly, relied on this class; one was
its tribune, the other its general, and the third its magistrate. Duport,
Barnave, and Lameth's party were of the principles and sustained the
interests of that period of the revolution; but this party, composed of
young men of ardent patriotism, who entered on public affairs with
superior qualities, fine talents, and elevated positions, and who joined
to the love of liberty the ambition of playing a leading part, placed
itself from the first rather in advance of the revolution of July the
14th. Its fulcrum within the assembly was the members of the extreme left
without, in the clubs, in the nation, in the party of the people, who had
co-operated on the 14th of July, and who were unwilling that the
bourgeoisie alone should derive advantage from the victory. By putting
itself at the head of those who had no leaders, and who being a little out
of the government aspired to enter it, it did not cease to belong to this
first period of the revolution; only it formed a kind of democratic
opposition, even in the middle class itself, only differing from its
leaders on a few unimportant points, and voting with them on most
questions. It was, among these popular men, rather a patriotic emulation
than a party dissension.

Duport, who was strong-minded, and who had acquired premature experience
of the management of political passions, in the struggles which parliament
had sustained against the ministry, and which he had chiefly directed,
knew well that a people reposes the moment it has gained its rights, and
that it begins to grow weak as soon as it reposes. To keep in vigour those
who governed in the assembly, in the mayoralty, in the militia; to prevent
public activity from slackening, and not to disband the people, whose aid
he might one day require, he conceived and executed the famous
confederation of the clubs. This institution, like everything that gives a