Barnave took part in the conference on the claims of the three orders, drew up the first address to king Louis XVI, and supported the proposal of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès that the Assembly should declare itself "National".

Subject to the more radical forces, Barnave took part in the attacks on the monarchy, on the clergy, on Roman Catholic Church property, and on the provincial Parlements.

On the occasion of the death of Mirabeau, which occurred on 2 April 1791, Barnave paid a high tribute to his worth and public services, designating him the "William Shakespeare of oratory".

Passing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy would lawfully impose Church adherence to the King and the nation of France by having the state pay them salaries for their service and holding popular elections for the priests and bishops.

[8] He believed that laborers working this land would strengthen the role of France in the manufacturing sector and revitalize the quality and quantity of agricultural goods.

[9] In 1789, Barnave was one of the key figures to advise King Louis XVI to work in unison with the National Assembly in order to prevent riots that seek an anarchic form of government.

Barnave was strongly in favor of making France into a country that allowed people unrestricted economic or entrepreneurial practices, enabling all citizens to take part in the offerings of commercial markets.

He opposed discrimination against any race but also understood how the African slaves contributed to the only source of wealth France had at a moment of deep financial crisis.

[13] After the Storming of the Bastille, Barnave argued that violence led the citizens of France to their desired goals – the start of the Revolution and constitutional change.

Though their initial interactions were marked by Barnave's shy attempts to avoid eye contact, the queen was soon able to charm the twenty-nine-year-old politician and earn his favor.

Purportedly, the subject of these conversations included Barnave and the rest of the Feuillants' fervent belief that a constitutional monarchy was the most viable solution for ending the revolution with a minimum of further bloodshed.

Much evidence indicates that, because her closest friends, including Count von Fersen, who had organized the flight from Paris, were absent, Marie Antoinette was attempting to influence Barnave and his fellow Feuillants as a way to ensure her family's safety.

He believed that her support would improve the public opinion on the royal family by preventing her brother, the Emperor of Austria, from invading France and imposing upon it an absolutist monarchical state of government that conflicted with the ideals of the French Revolution.

As the Jacobin Club grew more radically in favor of a republic, Barnave and the other two members of the triumvirate broke away from it and formed the Feuillant political group on 18 July 1791.

The Feuillants began to lose political power by early autumn, when disagreements arose with the growing influence of Jacques Pierre Brissot and his supporters, known as the Girondists.

His sympathy for and relations with the royal family, to whom he had submitted a plan for a counter-revolution, and his desire to check the violence of the Revolution, brought on him suspicion of treason.

He was condemned for treason on the evidence of papers detailing his extensive clandestine correspondence with Marie Antoinette discovered in Louis XVI's armoire de fer at the Tuileries Palace.

[3] Barnave's (posthumously published) Introduction à la rèvolution française anticipates in its sociology the work of Auguste Comte;[17] and the Marxist concept of the mode of production.