appointed others to exercise a useful superintendence without. A committee
of supply occupied itself with provisions, an important object in a year
of scarcity; a committee of inquiry corresponded with the corporations and
provinces; a committee of researches received informations against the
conspirators of the 14th of July. But finance and the constitution, which
the past crises had adjourned, were the special subjects of attention.

After having momentarily provided for the necessities of the treasury, the
assembly, although now become sovereign, consulted, by examining the
_cahiers_, the wishes of its constituents. It then proceeded to form its
institutions with a method, a liberal and extensive spirit of discussion,
which was to procure for France a constitution conformable with justice
and suited to its necessities. The United States of America, at the time
of its independence, had set forth in a declaration the rights of man, and
those of the citizen. This will ever be the first step. A people rising
from slavery feels the necessity of proclaiming its rights, even before it
forms its government. Those Frenchmen who had assisted at the American
revolution, and who co-operated in ours, proposed a similar declaration as
a preamble to our laws. This was agreeable to an assembly of legislators
and philosophers, restricted by no limits, since no institutions existed,
and directed by primitive and fundamental ideas of society, since it was
the pupil of the eighteenth century. Though this declaration only
contained general principles, and confined itself to setting forth in
maxims what the constitution was to put into laws, it was calculated to
elevate the mind, and impart to the citizens a consciousness of their
dignity and importance. At Lafayette's suggestion, the assembly had before
commenced this discussion; but the events at Paris, and the decrees of the
4th of August, had interrupted its labours; they were now resumed, and
concluded, by determining the principles which were to form the table of
the new law, and which were the assumption of right in the name of