a rigid oppressive spirit, to bring all dissenting minds and ten. der consciences under one uniformity of church discipline and government, it was utterly against my judgment. For I always esteemed it more agreeable to the word of God, that the ends and work declared in the covenant should be promoted in a spirit. of love and forbearance to differing judgments and consciences, that thereby we might be approving ourselves, "in doing that to others which we desire they would to us"; and so, though upon different principles, be found joint and faithful advancers of the reformation contained in the covenant, both public and personal.

This happy union and conjunction of all interests in the respective duties of all relations, agreed and consented to by the common suffrage of the three nations, as well in their public parliamentary capacity, as private stations, appeared to me a rule and measure approved of, and commanded by Parliament, for my action and deportment, though it met with great opposition, in a tedious, sad, and long war; and this under the name and pretext of royal authority. Yet, as this case appeared to me in my conscience, under all its circumstances of times, of persons, and of revolutions inevitably happening by the hand of God and the course of his wise providences, I held it safest and best to keep my station in Parliament to the last, under the guidance and protection of their authority, and in pursuance of the ends before declared in my just defense.

This general and public case of the kingdoms is so well known by the declarations and actions that have passed on both sides, that I need but name it; since this matter was not done in a corner, but frequently contended for in the high places of the field, and written even with characters of blood. And out of the bowels of these public differences and disputes doth my particular case arise, for which I am called into question. But admitting it come to my lot to stand single, in the witness I am to give to this glorious cause, and to be left alone (as in a sort I am), yet being upheld with the authority before asserted, and keeping myself in union and conjunction therewith, I am not afraid to bear my witness to it in this great presence, nor to seal it with my blood, if called thereunto. And I am so far satisfied in my conscience and understanding that it neither is nor can be treason, either against the law of nature, or the law of the land, either malum per se, or malum prohibitum; that on the contrary. it is the duty I owed to God the universal king, and

to his Majesty that now is, and to the Church and peopie of God in these nations, and to the innocent blood of all that have been slain in this quarrel. Nothing, it seems, will now serve, unless by the condemnation passed upon my person, they be rendered to posterity murderers and rebels, and that upon record in a court of justice in Westminster Hall. And this would inevitably have followed if I had voluntarily given up this cause, without asserting their and my innocency; by which I should have pulled that blood upon my own head, which now I am sure lies at the door of others, and in particular of those that knowingly and precipitately shall imbrue their hands in my innocent blood, under whatsoever form or pretext of justice.

My case is evidently new and unusual, that which never happened before; wherein there is not only much of God and of his glory, but all that is dear and of true value to all the good people in these three nations. And, as I have said, it cannot be treason against the law of nature since the duties of the subjects in relation to their sovereigns and superiors, from the highest to the lowest, are owned and conscientiously practiced and yielded by those that are the assertors of this cause.

Nor can it be treason within the statute of Edward III., since, besides, what hath been said of no king in possession, and of being under powers regnant, and kings de facto, as also of the fact in its own nature, and the evidence as to overt acts pretended, it is very plain it cannot possibly fall within the purview of that statute. For this case, thus circumstantiated, as before declared, is no act of any private person, of his own head, as that statute intends; nor in relation to the king there meant, that is presumed to be in the exercise of his royal authority, in conjunction with the law and the two houses of Parliament, if they be sitting, as the fundamental constitutions of the Government do require.

My lords, if I have been free and plain with you in this matter, I beg your pardon; for it concerns me to be so, and something more than ordinarily urgent, where both my estate and life are in such eminent peril; nay, more than my life, the concerns of thousands of lives are in it, not only of those that are in their graves already, but of all posterity in time to come. Had nothing been in it but the care to preserve my own life, I needed not have stayed in England, but might have taken my opportunity to withdraw myself into foreign parts, to provide for my

own safety. Nor needed I to have been put upon pleading, as now I am, for an arrest of judgment; but might have watched upon advantages that were visible enough to me, in the managing of my trial, if I had consulted only the preservation of my life or estate.

No, my lords, I have otherwise learned Christ, than to fear them that can but kill the body, and have no more that they can do. I have also taken notice, in the little reading that I have had of history, how glorious the very heathen have rendered their names to posterity in the contempt they have showed of death, when the laying down of their lives has appeared to be their duty,- from the love which they have owed to their country.

Two remarkable examples of this give me leave to mention to you upon this occasion. The one is of Socrates, the divine philosopher, who was brought into question before a judgment seat, as now I am, for maintaining that there was but one only true God, against the multiplicity of the superstitious heathen gods; and he was so little in love with his own life upon this account, wherein he knew the right was on his side, that he could not be persuaded by his friends to make any defense, but would choose rather to put it upon the conscience and determination of his judges, to decide that wherein he knew not how to make any choice of his own as to what would be best for him, whether to live or to die; he ingenuously professing that for aught he knew it might be much to his prejudice and loss to endeavor longer continuance in this bodily life.

The other example is that of a chief governor, Codrus, that, to my best remembrance, had the command of a city in Greece, which was besieged by a potent enemy, and brought into unimaginable straits. Hereupon the said governor made his address. to the Oracle to know the event of that danger. The answer was: "That the city should be safely preserved if the chief governor were slain by the enemy." He understanding this, immediately disguised himself and went into the enemy's camp, amongst whom he did so comport himself that they unwittingly put him to death; by which means, immediately, safety and deliverance arose to the city as the Oracle had declared. So little was his life in esteem with him when the good and safety of his country required the laying down of it.

PIERRE VICTURNIEN VERGNIAUD

(1753-1793)

DEALIST, poet, philosopher, and philanthropist, capable of all the virtues, Vergniaud, the greatest of the French Girondists, was forced by circumstances to become a revolutionary leader at a time when, on one side and the other, he was opposed by a ruthlessness of which he was incapable, manifesting itself through crimes which to him were unimaginable in advance of their commission. When the absolutism of royalty and that of the mob exerted each against the other all the enormous forces of the malevolence of centuries of injustice, he attempted to establish liberty and, through its uplifting power, to put France and the world on a higher plane of civilization. The attempt ended for him with the scaffold. But it did not end so for France, and he may rightly be classed as chief among the founders of the existing Girondist Republic.

Born at Limoges, May 31th, 1753, from a family in good circumstances, Vergniaud while still a youth wrote a poem which attracted the attention of Turgot who became his patron and promoted his education. After beginning the practice of law he was drawn into politics at the opening of the Revolution. Entering the Legislative Assembly in October 1791, he showed such power as an orator that leadership was thrust on him in spite of himself. He was at first in favor of constitutional monarchy, but the plots of the court with foreign enemies of the new order in France made him a republican. The Girondists followed him with courage and confidence, while the Jacobins eagerly took advantage of his attacks on their enemies to excuse meditated crimes which, when they became overt, he viewed with the deepest abhorrence. He was not willing, however, to trust wholly to moral and intellectual forces, and, although he voted for the death of the King with reluctance, he had done much to make it inevitable. From that vote, his own downfall dates, for the King's execution forced conditions under which the utmost Radicalism of the Girondists was attacked as "milk-and-water moderation." Opposing the atrocities of the Terrorists with a self-devoting courage which expected the inevitable end, Vergniaud and his friends were prepared for it when it came in the autumn of 1793. On the

wall of the Carmelite convent where they were imprisoned, he wrote in blood Potius mori quam fædari, and on October 31st, 1793, he went to the guillotine with his friends, all singing the Marseillaise and keeping up the chant until the last man was strapped under the ax.

«TO THE CAMP!»

(Delivered before the Committee of Public Safety, September 2d, 1792)

THE

HE details given to you by M. Constant are no doubt quite reassuring; it is impossible, however, to help some uneasiness, after coming from the camp below Paris. The works advance very slowly. There are many workmen, but few of them work: a great number are resting themselves. What is especially painful is to see that the shovels are only handled by salaried hands, and not by hands which the public interest directs. Whence comes the sort of torpor in which the citizens who have remained in Paris appear to be buried? Let us no longer conceal it: the time to tell the truth has come at last! The proscriptions of the past, the rumor of future proscriptions, and our internal discords have spread consternation and dismay. Upright men hide themselves when the conditions have been reached under which crime may be committed with impunity. There are men, on the contrary, who only show themselves during public calamities, like some noxious insects which the earth produces only during storms. These men constantly spread suspicions, distrust, jealousies, hates, revenges. They thirst for blood. In their seditious insinuations they accuse of "aristocracy" virtue itself, in order to acquire the right to trample it under foot. They make crime a part of their democracy that they may democratize crime, gorge themselves with its fruits without having to fear the sword of justice. Their whole effort now is to so dishonor the most sacred cause, that they may rouse to action against it the friends of the nation and of all humanity.

Oh! citizens of Paris I ask it of you with the most profound emotion, will you never unmask these perverse men, who to obtain your confidence have nothing to offer but the baseness of their means and the audacity of their pretensions? Citizens, when the enemy is advancing, and when a man, instead of asking you