The Explosion of 1789 367
dissolve it and call for new elections. He should have, in the public interest, this
power to confront the deputies with their constituents. Mounier, La Rochefou-
cauld, Lameth, and Rabaut Saint- Etienne also favored this “absolute veto” with
immediate dissolution and immediate new elections. Others, preferring only a
“suspensive veto,” thought of it as an “appeal to the people” at the ensuing periodic
election, where voters would choose between the policies of the King and those of
the deputies. Very few seem to have thought that a king should simply block an
assembly without more ado.
On the other side, against the veto and the upper house, there were obscure
deputies who got up and said that nothing could rightly interfere with the rights
of man and the sovereignty of the nation. Someone said there should be no veto
because there was none in the constitution of Virginia. Most arguments were more
concrete. Deputies of all shades of opinion, and both nobles and non- nobles, ob-
jected that an upper house would lead back to the “orders” and to monstrous aris-
tocracy. Condorcet now repeated what he had said in criticism of the American
constitutions: that the way to control government was to have a single assembly
subject to frequent election and to clear declarations of popular rights. John Ste-
vens’ rebuttal of John Adams, in the French version mentioned in Chapter IX,
with its notes by Condorcet, Dupont, Mazzei, and others, was praised and rejected
by various speakers. At least two deputies, the Marquis de Sillery and Dr. Salle
from Lorraine, pointed to a fundamental problem, and one that sharply distin-
guished the French and American revolutions. In France, they said, there was so
much that required change that years must pass in basic reconstruction; there was
no means of clearly separating ordinary from fundamental laws, or of mapping out
a constitutional from a merely legislative sphere; it would long be uncertain
whether a piece of legislation was constitutional or not; and meanwhile there must
be no royal veto or upper house. They offered as an example the decrees of August
4, which the King had not yet accepted.
Sieyès delivered a great speech against Mounier’s proposals. As always, he set up
high principles and strict deductions.^20 There must be equality of voting power, he
said; one man, one vote, counting men as individuals; anything else would be a
throwback to the “distinction of orders.” Hence there could be only one house of
legislation; if a senate of fifty men could stop an assembly of five hundred, what
was this but that inequality of orders repudiated in the preceding June? The King
was one man. He was also hereditary and irremovable. His advice would always be
sought, and his influence respected. But his will, or vote, could count only as one.
Hence he could have no veto over the majority in the Assembly. The authority of
the National Assembly must be unquestioned. Its will must be accepted as the will
of the nation. Hence, not only must it be free from interference from a second
chamber, or from a royal veto; it must be free from that appeal to the people with
which the veto was associated. No possibility must exist for the King or anyone
else to appeal over the Assembly’s head. There would be thousands of subordinate
assemblies in the new France (and everyone had in mind the actual electoral as-
semblies of the preceding spring); if there were ever any doubt as to which of these
20 Archives parlementaires, VIII, 592–601.