Manguin was, accordingly, cast into the
debtors' prison. The National Assembly bristled up when it heard of
the "attentat." It not only ordered his immediate release, but had him
forcibly taken out of Clichy the same evening by its own greffier. In
order, nevertheless, to shield its belief in the "sacredness of private
property," and also with the ulterior thought of opening, in case
of need, an asylum for troublesome Mountainers, it declared the
imprisonment of a Representative for debt to be permissible upon its
previous consent. It forgot to decree that the President also could
be locked up for debt. By its act, it wiped out the last semblance of
inviolability that surrounded the members of its own body.
It will be remembered that, upon the testimony of one Allais, Police
Commissioner Yon had charged a Section of Decembrists with a plan
to murder Dupin and Changarnier. With an eye upon that, the questors
proposed at the very first session, that the parliament organize a
police force of its own, paid for out of the private budget of the
National Assembly itself, and wholly independent of the Police Prefects.
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