At a time when France had both famine and bankruptcy to dread, the deputies used to make speeches in which they asserted that "every man has from nature a right and a wish to enjoy happiness; that society began by the father and the son," with other philosophic truths much fitter for discussion in books than in the midst of an assembly. but if the people stood in need of bread, the speakers stood in need of applause, and a scarcity in that respect would have seemed to them very hard to bear.

—Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution