FALL OF THE OLD ORDER 373

rial genius it was hoped would save the State, resigned in
1781 without having been able to remedy the evils which he
recognized. When his successors, Calonne and Lomenie de
Brienne, resorted to desperate measures to raise money, they
were met by the obstruction of the Parlement, which reach-
ed the zenith of its popularity when, in 1788, it refused to
register royal decrees imposing new stamp duties on the
ground that the right to agree to taxation belonged to the
States-General alone."1

That body, which corresponded to the British Parliament,
had not been summoned by the Grand Monarchy for one
hundred and seventy-five years. But now it was realised
that the general state of the country could not be improved
without the States-General or the Estates-General. So it
was re-called to Versailles in 1789 with fateful consequences.
Under the leadership of Mirabeau it declared itself to be
the National Assembly, and drew up the Constitution of
1791. It sought to establish a unicameral legislature with
wide powers over every branch of administration. Much
under the influence of the English example, since the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, it wanted to retain the hereditary
monarchy, but make it constitutional. The bourgeois consti-
tutionalists of France, like the English Whigs of a century
earlier, distrusted the masses, and limited the franchise to
those who paid a tax which should be equal to at least three
days* wages. This excluded almost half of the citizens,—
some of them peasants but most of them artisans.

The National Assembly also drew up a " Declaration of
the Rights of Man " like the English Bill of Rights and the
first ten amendments of the American constitution. It was a

1. The French Revolution, p. 7.