366 Chapter XV
He insisted that his views were shared by Jefferson, still in Paris as American Min-
ister; nor is there any reason to doubt it. Like everyone else, he selected his argu-
ments, not noting, for example, that there were no property qualification in the
new United States federal constitution, and that the qualifications he had in mind
were considerably higher than in most American states. In any case, it was the ex-
ecutive veto and the upper house that were in dispute.
The Assembly debated these proposals for ten days. Feeling ran very high, and
was confused by popular agitation from the militants of Paris, who were now en-
raged by the very words Veto and Aristocracy. Mounier and his friends were even
threatened with physical violence. There was no privacy in the chamber; the galler-
ies hooted and applauded as they chose. Nevertheless the debate took a fairly high
level, and in all the hubbub it represented a conflict of actual arguments.
As one analyzes these arguments, it becomes clear that what all agreed on was
the need of keeping government within lawful limits. All opposed royal absolut-
ism. All admitted that elected assemblies might “err.” All feared that a body of men
originally elected might become oligarchic and self- perpetuating. How was this to
be prevented? How were deputies to be kept responsive to those who deputized
them, and made to stay within the powers assigned to them by the nation? How
could the constitution be made to stick? All agreed that insurrection and revolu-
tionary defiance, though justifiable in rare circumstances, were not appropriate
constitutional methods to prevent the abuse of power.
Mounier and his friends talked much like John Adams. All men love power and
domination, said Lally- Tollendal, and a pouvoir unique, as in an unchecked single
assembly, “will end up by devouring all.”^18 There must be two houses, and a strong
independent executive. The King, said Mounier, Mirabeau, Malouet, and others,
represents the people as much as the deputies do. There is more to be feared from
aristocracy than from monarchy: “never has the throne lost authority except to give
place to the degrading yoke of aristocracy... to defend the independence of the
crown is to defend the liberty of the people.”^19 The King must have a veto. He may
represent the true will and interest of the country more than the deputies do; and
even the new President of the United States has an “absolute veto” unless two
thirds of both houses are against him.
Arguments in favor of the royal veto often took on a popular or democratic cast,
which the prejudices of the time and the clichés of historians have obscured, but
which is not really surprising in view of the long association of royalism and anti-
aristocratism in France. The Abbé Maury, for example, a leading conservative, fa-
vored an “absolute veto,” and cited the case of Holland, where, he observed, the
assemblies, unchecked by any veto, had turned into a noblesse and a monstrueuse
aristocratie. Others thought of the veto as a form of appel au peuple. There was a
good deal of opinion in favor of executive dissolution of the assembly—a doctrine,
as is well known, never favored in French parliamentary circles. If the King in-
sisted on vetoing an action of the assembly, said Mirabeau, he should immediately
18 Archives parlementaires, VIII, 515.
19 Ibid., 559. This speech of Mounier’s was separately printed as Motifs présentés au nom du Comité
de constitution sur divers articles du Plan du Corps législatif, et principalement sur la nécessité de la sanction
royale.