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594

COUNT DE MIRABEAU

that dust sprang Marius;-Marius, less illustrious for having exterminated the Cimbri than for having beaten down the despotism of the nobility in Rome.

But you, Commons, listen to one who, unseduced by your applause, yet cherishes them in his heart. Man is strong only by union; happy only by peace. Be firm, not obstinate; courageous, not turbulent; free, not undisciplined; prompt, not precipitate. Stop not except at difficulties of moment; and be then wholly inflexible. But disdain the contentions of self-love, and never thrust into the balance the individual against the country. . .

For myself, who, in my public career, have had no other fear than that of wrong-doing; who, girt with my conscience, and armed with my principles, would brave the universe; whether it shall be my fortune to serve you with my voice and my exertions in the National Assembly, or whether I shall be enabled to aid you there with my prayers only, be sure that the vain clamors, the wrathful menaces, the injurious protestations-all the convulsions, in a word, of expiring prejudices-shall not on me impose! What! shall he now pause in his civic course, who, first among all the men of France, emphatically proclaimed his opinions on national affairs, at a time when circumstances were much less urgent than now, and the task one of much greater peril? Never! No measure of outrages shall bear down my patience. I have been, I am, I shall be, even to the tomb, the man of the Public Liberty, the man of the Constitution. If to be such be to become the man of the people rather than of the nobles, then woe to the privileged orders! For privileges shall have an end, but the people is eternal !

PIERRE VERGNIAUD (1759-1793)

THE ORATOR OF THE GIRONDISTS

T

HE great orator of the Girondist section of the Revolutionary Assembly of France, Vergniaud, was too indolent and too indifferent to put himself at the head of the party, which he might have done had he chosen. He was quite content to fill the post of its orator. He was the most moderate of the Girondists, but suffered the fate of his fellows. In January, 1793, as President of the Convention, he pronounced the sentence of the king's death. In October he suffered the same fate himself. No man of his time met death more boldly.

"In parliamentary eloquence," says Macaulay, "no Frenchman of his time can be considered equal to Vergniaud. In a foreign country, and after the lapse of half a century, some parts of his speeches are still read with mournful admiration." Lamartine says, "His language had the images and harmony of the most beautiful verses.”

AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE

[We append two brief examples of Vergniaud's oratory, the first calling on the the people to defend themselves against their foes, internal and external, the second denouncing the terrorism of the club of the Jacobins.]

Preparations for war are manifest on our frontiers, and we hear of renewed plots against liberty. Our armies reassemble; mighty movements agitate the empire. Martial law having become necessary, it has seemed to us just. But we have succeeded only in brandishing for a moment the thunderbolt in the eyes of rebellion. The sanction of the king has been refused to our decrees. The princes of Germany make their territory a retreat for the conspirators against you. They favor the plots of the emigrants. They furnish them an asylum; they furnish them gold,

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arms, horses and munitions. Is not the patience suicidal which tolerates all this? Doubtless you have renounced all projects of conquest; but you have not promised to endure such insolent provocations. You have shaken off the yoke of your tyrants; but it was not to bend the knee to foreign despots.

But, beware!

You are environed by snares. They seek to drive you, by disgust or lassitude, to a state of languor fatal to your courage; or fatal to its right direction. They seek to separate you from us; they pursue a system of calumny against the National Assembly; they incriminate your Revolution in your eyes. O! beware of these attempts at panic! Repel, indignantly, these impostors, who, while they affect a hypocritical zeal for the Constitution, cease not to urge upon you the monarchy! The monarchy! With them it is the counter-revolution! The monarchy? It is the nobility! The counter-revolution-what is it but taxation, feudality, the Bastille, chains and executioners, to punish the sublime aspirations of liberty? What is it but foreign satellites in the midst of the State? What, but bankruptcy, engulfing, with your assignats, your private fortunes and the national wealth; what, but the furies of fanaticism and of vengeance; assassinations, pillage, and incendiarism; in short, despotism and death, disputing, over rivers of blood and heaps of carcasses, the dominion of your wretched country? The nobility! That is to say, two classes of men; the one for grandeur, the other for debasement !—the one for tyranny, the other for servitude! The nobility! Ah! the very word is an insult to the human race!

And yet, it is in order to secure the success of these conspiracies that Europe is now put in motion against you. Be it so! By a solemn declaration must these guilty hopes be crushed. Yes, the free representatives of France, unshaken in their attachment to the Constitution, will be buried beneath its ruins, before they consent to a capitulation at once unworthy of them and of you. Rally! Be reassured! They would raise the nations against you; they will raise only princes. The heart of every people is with you. It is their cause which you embrace, in defending your own. Ever abhorred be war! It is the greatest of the crimes of men; it is the most terrible scourge of humanity! But, since you are irresistibly forced to it, yield to the course of your destinies. Who can foresee where will end the punishment of the tyrants who will have driven you to take up arms?

THE DESPOTISM OF THE JACOBINS

The blinded Parisians presume to call themselves free. Alas! it is true they are no longer the slaves of crowned tyrants; but they are the slaves

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TWO FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY ORATORS

Robespierre the elegant orator is dressed suitably to his time. Danton the fiery orator is addressing the people from the tribune. Both lived in the most exciting times of French History. Their orations are interesting as portraying the underlying principles of the great French Revolution.

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ASSASSINATION OF A FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY ORATOR

Jean Paul Marat whose portrait is shown, was a popular leader in the French Revolution. This picture
shows his assassination by Charlotte Corday, who in turn suffered death by the guillotine. His career
was marked by blood-shed and violence. His oratory was of a type suited to such troublesome times.

EXXE

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