History of the Girondists Part 15

Three causes of uneasiness agitated men's minds at the moment when the a.s.sembly opened its sittings--the clergy, emigration, and impending war.

The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had committed a gross error in stopping at a half measure in reforming the clergy in France. Mirabeau himself had been weak on this question. The Revolution was at the bottom only the legitimate rising of political liberty against despotism, and of religious liberty against the legal domination of Catholicism, because a political inst.i.tution. The const.i.tution had emanc.i.p.ated the citizens, and it was necessary to emanc.i.p.ate the faithful, and to claim consciences for the state, in order to restore them to themselves, to individual reason, and to G.o.d. This is what philosophy desired, which is only the rational expression of the mind's impulses.

The philosophers of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly receded before the difficulties of this labour. Instead of an emanc.i.p.ation, they made a compact with the power of the clergy, the dreaded influences of the court of Rome, and the inveterate habits of the people. They contented themselves with relaxing the chain which bound the state to the church.

Their duty was to have snapped it asunder. The throne was chained to the altar, they desired to chain the altar to the throne. It was only displacing tyranny,--oppressing conscience by law instead of oppressing the law by conscience.

The civil const.i.tution of the clergy was the expression of this reciprocal false position. The clergy was deprived of these endowments in landed estates, which decimated property and population in France.

They deprived it of its benefices, its abbeys, and its t.i.thes--the altar's feudality. It received in lieu an endowment in salaries levied on the taxes. As the condition of this arrangement, which gave to the working clergy an existence, influence, and a powerful body of ministers of wors.h.i.+p paid by the state, they required the clergy to take the oath of the const.i.tution. This const.i.tution comprised articles which affected the spiritual supremacy and administrative privileges of the court of Rome. Catholicism became alarmed and protested; consciences were disturbed. The Revolution, until then exclusively political, became schism in the eyes of a portion of the clergy and the faithful. Amongst the bishops and the priests, some took the civil oath, which was the guarantee of their existence; others refused, or, after having taken it, retracted. This gave rise to trouble in many minds, agitation in consciences, division in the temples. The great majority of parishes had two ministers,--the one a const.i.tutional priest, salaried and protected by the government, the other refractory, refusing the oath, deprived of his income, driven from the church, and raising altar opposing altar in some clandestine chapel, or in the open field. These two ministers of the same wors.h.i.+p excommunicated each other, the one in the name of the const.i.tution, and the other in the name of the Pope and of the church.

The population was also divided according to the greater or lesser degree of revolutionary spirit prevailing in the province. In cities and the more enlightened districts the const.i.tutional wors.h.i.+p was exercised almost without dispute. In the open country and the less civilised departments, the priest who had not taken the oath became a consecrated tribune, who at the foot of the altar, or in the elevation of the pulpit, agitated the people and inspired it, in all the horror of a const.i.tutional and schismatic priesthood, with hatred of the government which protected it. This was not actually persecution or civil war, but the sure prelude to both.

The king had signed with repugnance and even constraint the civil const.i.tution of the clergy: but he had done so only as king, and reserving to himself his liberty and the faith of his conscience. He was Christian and Catholic in all the simplicity of the Gospel, and in all the humility of obedience to the church. The reproaches he had received from Rome for having ratified by his weakness the schism in France, wounded his conscience and distracted his mind. He had never ceased to negotiate officially or secretly with the pope, in order to obtain from the head of the church either an indulgent concession to the necessities of religion in France, or prudent temporising. It was on these terms only that he could restore peace to his mind. Inexorable Rome had only granted him its pity. Fulminating bulls were in circulation by the hands of nonjuring priests, cast at the heads of the population, and only stopping at the foot of the throne. The king trembled, to see them burst one day on his own head.

On the other hand, he felt that the nation, of which he was the legitimate head, would never forgive him for sacrificing it to his religious scruples. Placed thus between the menaces of Heaven and the threats of his own people, he procrastinated with all his might the denunciations of Rome and the votes of the a.s.sembly. The Const.i.tutional a.s.sembly understood this anxiety of the king's feelings and the dangers of persecution. It had given time to the king, and displayed forbearance to men's consciences: it had not intermeddled with the faith of the simple believer, but left each at liberty to pray with the priest of his choice. The king had been the first to avail himself of this liberty, and had not thrown open the chapel of the Tuileries to the const.i.tutional wors.h.i.+p. The choice of his confessor sufficiently indicated the choice of his conscience. The man in him protested against the political necessities which oppressed the monarch. The Girondists wished to compel him to declare himself. If he yielded to them, he infringed upon his dignity; if he resisted, he lost the remaining shreds of his popularity. To compel him to decide was a great point for the Girondists.

The public feeling served their designs. Religious troubles began to a.s.sume a political character. In ancient Brittany the conforming priests became objects of the people's horror, and they fled from contact with them. The nonjuring priests all retained their flocks. On Sundays large bodies of many thousand souls were seen to follow their ancient pastors, and go to chapels situated two or three leagues from any dwelling, or in concealed hermitages, sanctuaries which had never been stained by the ceremonies of a const.i.tutional wors.h.i.+p. At Caen blood had even flowed in the very cathedral, where the nonjuring priest disputed the altar with the conforming pastor. The same disorders threatened to spread over all parts of the kingdom: every where were to be seen two pastors and a divided flock. Resentment, which already displayed itself in insult, of necessity soon arrived at bloodshed. The one half of the people, disturbed in its faith, reverted to the aristocracy out of love for its wors.h.i.+p. The a.s.sembly must thus alienate the popular element, which it had so recently caused to triumph over royalty. It was highly necessary to provide against this unexpected peril.

There were only two means of extinguis.h.i.+ng this flame at its source: either by freedom of conscience, stoutly maintained by the executive power, or persecution of the ministers of the ancient faith. The undecided a.s.sembly wavered between these two parties. On a report of Gallois and Gensonne, sent as commissioners into the departments of the west, to investigate the causes of the agitation and the feelings of the people, the discussion commenced. Fauchet, a conforming priest and celebrated preacher, subsequently const.i.tutional bishop of Calvados, opened the debate. He was one of those men who, beneath an ecclesiastical garb, conceal the heart of a philosopher. Reformers from feeling, priests by the state, sensible of the wide discrepancy between their opinions and their character, a national religion, a revolutionary Christianity, was the sole means remaining to them to reconcile their interest and their policy: their faith, wholly academic, was only a religious convenience. They desired to transform Catholicism insensibly into a moral code, of which the dogma was now but a symbol, which, in the people's eyes, comprised sacred truths; and which, gradually stripped of holy fictions, would allow the human understanding to glide insensibly into a symbolic deism, whose temple should be flesh, and whose Christ should be hardly more than Plato rendered a divinity.

Fauchet had the daring mind of a sectarian and the intrepidity of a man of resolution.

VII.

"We are accused of a desire to persecute. It is calumny. No persecution.

Fanaticism is greedy of it, real religion repulses it, philosophy holds it in horror. Let us beware of imprisoning the nonjurors; of exiling, even of displacing them. Let them think, say, write all they please against us. We will oppose our thoughts to their thoughts; our truths to their errors; our charity to their hatred. Time will do the rest. But in awaiting its infallible triumph we must find an efficacious and prompt mode of hindering them from prevailing over weak minds, and propagating ideas of a counter-revolution. A counter-revolution! This is not a religion, gentlemen! Fanaticism is not compatible with liberty. Look else at these ministers--they would have swum in the blood of patriots.

This is their own expression. Compared with these priests, atheists are angels. (Applause.) However, I repeat, let us tolerate them, but do not let us pay them. Let us not pay them to rend our country in pieces. It is to this measure only that we should confine ourselves. Let us suppress all salary from the national treasury to the nonjuring priests.

Nothing is due to them but in their clerical capacity. What service do they render? They invoke ruin on our laws; and they say they follow their consciences! Must we pay consciences which push them to the extremity of crime against their country? The nation supports them: is not that enough? They appeal to the article of the const.i.tution, which says, 'The salaries of the ministers of Catholic wors.h.i.+p form a portion of the national debt.' Are they ministers of the Catholic wors.h.i.+p? Does the state recognise any other Catholicity than its own? If they would attempt any other it is open to them and their sectarians! The nation allows all sorts of wors.h.i.+p, but only pays one. And what a saving for the nation to be freed from thirty millions (of francs), which she pays annually to her most implacable enemies! (Bravo.) Why have we these phalanx of priests, who have abjured their ministry? these legions of canons and monks; these cohorts of abbes, friars, and beneficed clergy of all sorts, who were not remarkable otherwise, except for their pretensions, inutility, intrigues and licentious life; and are only so to-day by their vindictive interference, their schemes, their unwearied hatred of the Revolution? Why should we pay this army of dependents from the funds of the nation? What do they do? They preach emigration, they send coin from the realm, they foment conspiracies against us from within and without. Go, say they to the n.o.bility, and combine your attacks with the foreigner; let blood flow in streams, provided that we recover our privileges! This is their church! If h.e.l.l had one on earth it is thus that it would speak. Who shall say we ought to endow it?"

Tourne, the const.i.tutional bishop of Bourges, replied to the Abbe Fauchet as Fenelon would have answered Bossuet. He proved that, in the mouth of his adversary, toleration was fanatical and cruel. "You have proposed to you violent remedies for the evils which anger can only envenom; it is a sentence of starvation which is demanded of you against our nonjuring brethren. Simple religious errors should be strangers to the legislator. The priests are not guilty--they are only led astray.

When the eye of the law falls on these errors of the conscience, it envenoms them. The best means of curing them is not to see them. To punish by the pangs of hunger simple and venial errors, would be an opprobrium to legislation--a horror in morals. The legislator leaves to G.o.d the care of avenging his own glory, if he believe it violated by an indecorous wors.h.i.+p. Would you, in the name of tolerance, again create an inquisition which would not have, like the other, the excuse of fanaticism? What, gentlemen, would you transform into arbitrary proscribers the founders of liberty? You will judge, you will exile, you will imprison, _en ma.s.se_, men amongst whom, if there are some guilty, there are still more innocent! Crimes are no longer individual, and guilt would be decreed by category; but were they all and all equally guilty, could you have the cruelty to strike, at the same time, this mult.i.tude of heads; when under similar circ.u.mstances the most cruel despots would be content with decimating them? What then have you to do?

One thing only: to be consistent, and found practical liberty and the peaceable co-existence of different wors.h.i.+ps on the bases of tolerance.

Why do not our brethren of the priesthood enjoy the power of wors.h.i.+ping beside us the same G.o.d--whilst in our cities, where we refuse them the right of celebrating our holy mysteries, we allow heathens to celebrate the mysteries of Iris and Osiris? Mahometans to invoke their prophet?

the rabbin to make his burnt-offerings? To what extent, I ask, shall such strange tolerance be permissible? to what extent, I ask also, will you push despotism and persecution? When the law shall have regulated the civil arts, births, marriage, burial, with religious ceremonies, by which Christians consecrate them; when the law will permit the same sacrifice on two altars, with what consistency can it forbid the virtue of the same sacraments? These temples, it will be repeated, are the council-chambers of the factious. True, if they be rendered clandestine, as the persecutors would make them; but if these temples be open and free, the eye of the law will penetrate there and every where else: it will be no longer religious wors.h.i.+p, it will be crime they will watch and detect--and what do you fear? Time is with you; this cla.s.s of the nonjurors will be extinct, and never renewed. A wors.h.i.+p supported by individuals, and not by the state, constantly tends to weaken itself; at least, the factious, who are in their commencement animated by the divinity of their faith, gradually become reconciled, and identify themselves with the general freedom. Look at Germany--look at Virginia--where opposite creeds mutually borrow the same sanctuaries, and where different sects fraternise in the same patriotism. This is what we should tend to; these are the principles which ought gradually to implant themselves widely amongst a people: light ought to be the great precursor of the law. Let us leave to despotism to prepare its slaves for its commands by ignorance."

VIII.

Ducos, a young and generous-hearted Girondist, with whom enthusiasm for the honest carried him beyond the policy of his party, moved for the printing of this speech. His voice was drowned amidst the applause and murmurs which followed--a testimony of the indecision and impartiality of men's minds. Fauchet replied at the next sitting, and pointed out the connection between civil troubles and religious quarrels. "The priests,"

he said, "are of unreasonable tyranny, which still maintains its hold on consciences by the ill-broken thread of its power. It is a faction 'scotched, not killed'--it is the most dangerous of factions."

Gensonne spake like a statesman, and counselled toleration towards conscientious priests, and the repulsion by force of law of the turbulent clergy. During this discussion, couriers daily arriving from the country, brought news of fresh disorders. Every where the const.i.tutional priests were insulted, driven away, ma.s.sacred at the foot of the altars. The country churches, closed by order of the National a.s.sembly, were burst open by axes, the nonjuring priests returned to them, urged by the fanaticism of the people. Three cities were besieged and on the point of being burnt down by the country people. The threatened civil war seemed the prelude to the counter-revolution.

"See," exclaimed Isnard, "whither the toleration and impunity you have preached, conduct you!"

Isnard, deputy of Provence, was the son of a perfumer of Gra.s.se. His father had educated him for a literary life, and not for business. He had studied politics in the antiquities of Greece and Rome. He had in his mind the idea of one of the Gracchi; he had his courage in his soul and his tone in his voice. Still very young, his eloquence was as fervent as his blood; his language was but the fire of his pa.s.sion, coloured by a southern imagination; his words poured forth like the rapid bursts of impatience. He was the revolutionary impetus personified. The a.s.sembly followed him breathless, and with him arrived at fury before it attained conviction. His discourses were magnificent odes, which elevated discussion to lyric poetry, and enthusiasm to convulsion; his action bespoke the tripod rather than the tribune. He was the Danton of the Gironde, as Vergniaud was to become its Mirabeau.

IX.

It was his maiden speech in the a.s.sembly. "Yes," he said, "look at the point to which impunity conducts us! It is always the source of great crimes, and is now the sole cause of the disorganised state into which society is plunged. The plans of toleration proposed to you are very well for tranquil times; but can we tolerate those who will neither tolerate the const.i.tution nor the laws? Will it be when French blood has at last stained the waves of the sea, that you will become sensible of the dangers of indulgence? It is time that every thing is submitted to the will of the nation; that tiaras, diadems, and censers should yield to the sceptre of the laws. The facts you have just heard are but the prelude of what is about to occur in the rest of the kingdom. Consider the circ.u.mstances of these troubles, and you will see that they have the effect of a disorganised system contemporary with the const.i.tution. This system was born there! (the orator pointed to the right) it is sanctioned at the court of Rome. It is but a real fanaticism we have to unmask--it is but hypocrisy! The priests are the privileged brawlers, who ought to be punished by penalties more severe than mere private individuals. Religion is an all-powerful weapon. 'The priest,' says Montesquieu, 'takes the man from the cradle, and accompanies him to the tomb;' is it then astonis.h.i.+ng that he should have so much control over the mind of the people, and that it is requisite to make laws, in order that under a pretence of religion it should not trouble the public peace? What should be the nature of such a law? I maintain that one only can be efficacious, and that is banishment from the realm. (The tribunes hailed this with loud applause.) Do you not see that it is necessary to separate the factious priest from the people whom he misleads, and send away these plague-spotted men to the lazarettos of Italy and Rome? I am told that the measure is too severe. What!--you are then blind and mute at all that occurs! Are you then ignorant that a priest can effect more mischief than all your enemies? I am answered, 'Ah! you should not persecute.' My answer is, that to punish is not to persecute. I answer thus to those who repeat what I heard retorted here on the Abbe Maury, that nothing is more dangerous than to make martyrs. This danger only exists when you have to strike fanatics in earnest, or men really pious, who believe the scaffold to be the nearest footstool to heaven. This is not the present case; for if there be priests who earnestly reject the const.i.tution, they will not give any trouble to public order. Those who really trouble it, are men who only weep over religion in order to recover their lost privileges; those who should be punished without pity; and be a.s.sured that you will not thereby augment the strength of the emigrants: for we know that the priest is cowardly--as cowardly as vindictive--that he knows no other weapon but superst.i.tion; and that, accustomed to combat in the mysterious arena of confession, he is a nullity in every other battle-field. The thunders of Rome will fall harmless on the bucklers of liberty. The foes to your regeneration will never grow weary; no, they will never grow weary of crimes, so long as you leave them the means! You must overcome them, or be overcome by them; and whosoever sees not this is blind. Open the page of history; you will see the English sustaining for fifty years a disastrous war, in order to maintain their revolution. You will see in Holland seas of blood flowing in the war against Philip of Spain. When, in our times, the Philadelphians would be free, have we not also seen war in the two hemispheres? You have been witnesses of the recent outbreaks in Brabant, and do you believe that your Revolution, which has s.n.a.t.c.hed the sceptre from despotism, and from aristocracy its privileges, from n.o.bility its pride, from the clergy its fanaticism--a Revolution which has dried up so many golden sources from the grasp of the priesthood, torn so many frocks, crushed so many theories--do you believe that such a Revolution will absolve you? No--no!--this Revolution will have a _denouement_, and I say--and with no intention of provocation--that we must advance boldly towards this _denouement_. The more you delay, the more difficult and blood-stained will be that triumph!" (Violent murmurs.)

"But do you not see," resumed Isnard; "that all counter-revolutionists are obstinate, and leave you no other part than that of vanquis.h.i.+ng them? It is better to have to contend against them, whilst the citizens are still up and stirring, and well remember the perils they have encountered, than to allow patriotism to grow cold! Is it not true that already we are no longer what we were in the first year of liberty; (some of the chamber applaud, whilst others disapprove). If fanaticism had then raised its head, the law would have been subjected! Your policy should be to compel victory to declare itself; drive your enemies to extremities, and you Will have them return to you from fear, or you will subdue them by the sword. Under important circ.u.mstances, prudence is a weakness. It is especially with respect to rebels that you should be decisive and severe; they should be hewn down as they rise. If time be permitted to them to have meetings and earnest partisans, then they spread over the empire like an irresistible torrent. It is thus that despotism acts, and it was thus that one individual kept beneath his yoke a whole nation. If Louis XVI. had employed this great means whilst the Revolution was but yet in its cradle, we should not now be here!

This rigour, the vice of a despot, is the virtue of a nation.

Legislators, who shrink from such extreme means, are cowards--criminals: for when the public liberty is a.s.sailed, to pardon is to share the crime. (Great applause.)

"Such rigour might perchance cost an effusion of blood? I know it! But if you do not make use of it, will not more blood flow? Is not civil war a still greater misfortune? Cut off the gangrened member to save the whole frame.[10] Indulgence is the snare into which you are tempted. You will find yourselves abandoned by the nation for not having dared to sustain, nor known how to defend, it. Your enemies will hate you no less. Your friends will lose confidence in you. The law is my G.o.d: I have no other--the public good, that is my wors.h.i.+p! You have already struck the emigrants--again a decree against the refractory priests, and you will have gained over ten millions of arms! My decree would be comprised in two words: compel every Frenchman, priest or not, to take the civil oath, and ordain that every man who will not sign shall be deprived of all salary or pension. Sound policy would decree that every one who does not sign the contract should leave the kingdom. What proofs against the priest do we require? If there be but a complaint lodged against the priest by the citizen with whom he lives, let him be at once expelled! As to those against whom the penal code shall p.r.o.nounce punishment more severe than exile, there is but one sentence left: _Death!_!"

X.

This oration, which pushed patriotism even to impiety, and made of the public safety an implacable deity, to which even the innocent were to be sacrificed, excited a frantic enthusiasm in the ranks of the Girondist party, a bitter indignation amongst the moderate party. "To propose the printing of such a speech," said Lecos, a const.i.tutional bishop, "is to propose the printing of a code of atheism. It is impossible that a society can exist, if it have not an immutable morality derived from the idea of a G.o.d." Derisive sneers and murmurings hailed this religious protest. The decree against the priests, presented by Francois de Neufchateau, and adopted by the legislative committee, was couched in these terms:--"Every ecclesiastic not taking the oaths is required to present himself before the expiration of the week at his munic.i.p.ality, and there take the civil oath.

"Those who shall refuse are not ent.i.tled in future to receive any allowance or pension from the public treasury.

"Every year there shall be an aggregate made of those pensions which the priests have forfeited, and this sum shall be divided amongst the eighty-three departments, to be employed in charitable works, and in giving succour to the indigent.

"These priests shall be, moreover, from their simple refusal of the oath, reputed as suspected of rebellion and specially _surveilles_.

"They may in consequence thereof be sent from their domicile, and another be a.s.signed to them.

"If they refuse to change their domicile when called upon to do so, they shall be imprisoned.

"The churches employed for the paid wors.h.i.+p of the state, cannot be devoted to any other service. Citizens may hire other churches or chapels, and exercise their wors.h.i.+p therein. But this permission is forbidden to nonjuring priests suspected of revolt."

XI.

This decree, which created more fanaticism than it repressed, and which accorded freedom of wors.h.i.+p not as a right but as a favour, saddened the heart of the faithful; and the revolt in La Vendee, and persecution every where, followed. Suspended as a fearful weapon over the conscience of the king, it was sent for his a.s.sent.

The Girondists were delighted at thus keeping the wretched monarch between their law and his own faith--schismatic if he recognised the decree, and a traitor to the nation if he refused it. Conquerors in this victory, they advanced towards another.

After having forced the king to strike at the religion of his conscience, they wished to force him to deal a blow at the n.o.bility and his own brothers. They renewed the question of the emigrants. The king and his ministers had antic.i.p.ated them. Immediately after the acceptance of the const.i.tution, Louis XVI. had formally renounced all conspiracy, interior or exterior, in order to recover his power. The omnipotence of opinion had convinced him of the vanity of all the plans submitted to him for crus.h.i.+ng it. The momentary tranquillity of spirits after so many shocks, the reception he had met with in the a.s.sembly, the Champ-de-Mars, in the theatre,--the freedom and honours restored to him in his palace, had persuaded him that, if the const.i.tution had some fanatics, royalty had no implacable enemies in his kingdom. He believed the const.i.tution easy of execution in many of its provisions, and impracticable in others. The government which they imposed on him seemed to him as a philosophical experiment which they desired to make with their king. He only forgot one thing, and that is, the experiments of a people are catastrophes. A king who accepts the terms of a government which are impossible, accepts his own overthrow by antic.i.p.ation. A well-considered and voluntary abdication is more regal than that daily abdication which is undergone in the degradation of power. A king saves, if not his life, at least his dignity. It is more suitable to majesty royal to descend by its own will, than to be cast down headlong. From the moment when the king is king no longer, the throne becomes the last place in the kingdom.

Be this as it may, the king frankly declared to his ministers his intention of legally executing the const.i.tution, and of a.s.sociating himself unreservedly and without guile to the will and destiny of the nation. The queen, by one of those sudden and inexplicable changes in the heart of woman, threw herself, with the trust of despair, into the party of the const.i.tution. "Courage," she said to M. Bertrand de Molleville, minister and confidant of the king: "Courage! I hope, with patience, firmness, and perseverance, that all is not lost."

The minister of marine, Bertrand de Molleville, wrote, by the king's orders, to the commandants of the ports a letter, signed by the king:--"I am informed," he said, in this circular, "that emigrations in the navy are fast increasing. How is it that the officers of a service always so dear to me, and which has invariably given me proofs of its attachment, are so mistaken at what is due to their country, to me, and to themselves! This extreme step would have seemed to me less surprising some time since, when anarchy was at its height, and when its termination was unseen; but now, when the nation desires to return to order and submission to the laws, is it possible that generous and faithful sailors can think of separating from their king? Tell them to remain where their country calls them. The precise execution of the const.i.tution is to-day the surest means of appreciating its advantages, and of ascertaining what is wanting to make it perfect. It is your king who desires you to remain at your posts as he remains at his. You would have considered it a crime to resist his orders, you will not refuse his prayers."

He wrote to general officers, and to commandants of the land forces:--"In accepting the const.i.tution, I have promised to maintain it within, and defend it against enemies without; this solemn act should banish all uncertainty. The law and the king are henceforth identified.

The enemy of the law becomes that of the king. I cannot consider those sincerely devoted to my person who abandon their country at the moment when it has the greatest need of their services. Those only are attached to me who follow my example and unite with me for the public weal, and remain inseparable from the destiny of the empire!"

Finally, he ordered M. de Lessart, the minister for foreign affairs, to publish the following proclamation, addressed to the French emigrants:--"The king," thus it ran, "informed that a great number of French emigrants are withdrawing to foreign lands, cannot see without much grief such an emigration. Although the law permits to all citizens a free power to quit the kingdom, the king is anxious to enlighten them as to their duties, and the distress they are preparing for themselves.

If they think, by such means, to give me a proof of their affection, let them be undeceived; my real friends are those who unite with me in order to put the laws in execution, and re-establish order and peace in the kingdom. When I accepted the const.i.tution, I was desirous of putting an end to civil discord--I believed that all Frenchmen would second my intentions. However, it is at this moment that emigration is increasing: some depart because of the disturbances which have threatened their lives and property. Ought we not to pardon the circ.u.mstances? Have not I too my sorrows? And when I forget mine, can any one remember his perils?

How can order be again established if those interested in it abandon it by abandoning themselves? Return, then, to the bosom of your country: come and give to the laws the support of good citizens. Think of the grief your obstinacy will give to the king's heart; they would be the most painful he could experience."

The a.s.sembly was not blinded by these manifestations; it saw beneath a secret design of escaping from the severest measures; it was desirous of compelling the king to carry them out, and, let us add, the nation and the public safety also required it.

XII.

Mirabeau had treated the question of the emigration of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly rather as a philosopher than a statesman. He had disputed with the legislator the right of making laws against emigration: he was mistaken. Whenever a theory is in contradiction to the welfare of society it is because that theory is false, for society is the supreme truth.