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the future. I have been appointed to help to maintain the Constitution and to execute the laws to which the nation has sworn. Well, I will keep my oath. I will fulfil my duty. I will to the utmost of my ability maintain the Constitution and only the Constitution, since so I shall at the same time defend equally liberty and the people. My predecessor said that in conferring office upon him the King gave a new proof of his attachment to the Constitution. With at least equal ardour the people in choosing me wills that Constitution. Therefore it has seconded the King's intentions. Are they not two eternal truths which we have uttered, he and I? All history proves that never has a people under its own laws, under a constitutional monarchy, been the first to break the covenant. Nations never change or modify their government unless driven to do so by outrageous oppression. Constitutional Monarchy may last for centuries longer than Despotic Monarchy has lasted. They are philosophers only in name who frame only systems for the destruction of empires. Vile flatterers of kings who tyrannise over and starve the people are surer causes of desire for another government than all the philanthropists who publish schemes of absolute liberty. The French nation with greater selfrespect has not lost its greater generosity. Breaking its fetters it has preserved the Monarchy without fearing it, and without hating it has purged it of its taints. Royalty should respect a people in whom long oppression has not obliterated the inclination to be trustful, often too trustful. Let it hand over of its own. accord to the law's vengeance all conspirators without exception, and all those lackeys of conspiracy who get kings to give them instalments of sham reactions to which they then want to rally, so to speak, a party on

trust.

Let royalty at length show itself the loyal friend of liberty, its sovereign; then it may be sure of lasting as long as the nation itself; then it will be seen that the citizens who are only accused of exceeding the

F

Constitution by the very men who clearly will not carry it into effect, that these citizens, whatever arbitrary theories they may have about liberty, do not seek to break the social pact; that they do not wish, for the sake of something ideally better, to overthrow an order of things based on equality, justice, and liberty. Yes, gentlemen, I must repeat it: whatever my own ideal was, when the Constitution was being revised, as to things and persons, now the oath has been taken I would cry aloud for the death of him who should raise a sacrilegious hand against it, were he my brother, my friend, or my own

son.

Such are my sentiments. The general will of the French people, as shown in its solemn adhesion to the Constitution, shall always be my supreme law. I have consecrated my whole life to the people, which will never again be attacked, be betrayed, with impunity, and will soon sweep all tyrants off the earth if they do not abandon the league they have formed against it. I will die, if necessary, in defence of its cause. last prayers shall be in its behalf. It and it only deserves them. Its intelligence, its courage, have raised it from the depths of nothingness. The same intelligence and courage shall make it immortal.

My

To an English ear some of the periods of this speech have a too turgid and egotistic ring. It was evidently carefully prepared, and Danton excelled in impromptu oratory rather than in a set speech. But it was the fashion at the time to perorate, the fashion to be somewhat prodigal of, often very sincere, protestations of readiness to die for France, &c. To do Danton real justice all his speeches should be read, and it will be found that such egotism as occasionally crops up in them is infinitesimal in quantity, as it is inoffensive in quality, in comparison with the egotism of men like Robespierre. We must also take into consideration hist

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nationality, the habits of his audience, and the moment at which he spoke. He had been hunted by the law. Stories were being spread broadcast to his discredit. He was entering a body where such stories would find credence. with not a few. That accounts for the profusely personal and apologetic element in the speech, which, however it may violate canons of oratorical good taste, is certainly interesting. How many times, for instance, when through the medium of foaming phrases we find him. subsequently contriving to make an audience swallow some wholesome sedative, do we recall if to avoid seeming weak I have allowed myself to appear extravagant.' But it is as a profession of faith, as a key to the whole of his political career, that it is really important. It It stamps him as an opportunist in the best sense of the word, as the practical statesman never averse to half a loaf if the alternative is no bread. He had desired a republic; he was content, sooner than enter on civil strife, with a constitutional king. He will do his utmost for the Constitution because it is the people's will. But all depends on that, and over and over again as he protests his devotion to the Constitution he reiterates the condition that it must not override the will of the people, with whom and for whom it is his sole ambition and immutable resolve to live and die. Let the King be faithful to the Constitution and all will be well. Let him betray it-worst of all, let him call in the foreigner to overthrow it—and the people and their spokesman are ipso facto absolved from their oath.

CHAPTER IX

1792

THE ALLIES-SANGUINARY THREATS OF THE ÉMIGRÉS -ALARMS IN PARIS KING'S FOLLY-DANTON WISHES TO BANISH THE QUEEN-HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS WAR-ENGLISH INFLUENCES-DEFENDS ROBESPIERRE-VIEWS AS ΤΟ THE RICH, THE QUEEN, LAFAYETTE-SORRY STATE OF FRANCE-LAFAYETTE COMES TO PARIS-SERIES OF EVENTS LEADING ΤΟ AUGUST 10-DANTON ORGANISER IN CHIEF

EVENTS moved so swiftly in the Revolution that its months seem in measure more than ordinary years. The compromise which appeared a possibility in the winter of 1791 was, as both sides saw, no longer a possibility in the spring of 1792. The intervening months had been employed in mustering forces for war instead of consolidating peace, and the pitched battle at the Tuileries only ended what the skirmish in the Champ de Mars began. The glory and gloom of a year never to be effaced from French annals have alike been ascribed to Danton. But even if he had been the author of its shame as well as its splendour France would have forgotten the September massacres and remembered only by whom that year she was saved from Brunswick.' It opened ominously. Throughout France famine reigned and panic, and the passions which panic and famine always rouse. Foes without were combining with foes within. Russia, really anxious for a war between the Empire and France, that she might be free to work her will on Poland, was profuse in expressions

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of sympathy with the emigrants, while inciting Austria and Prussia to help them with the sword. Austria and Prussia, really hating each other with a hatred destined to paralyse the invasion, had apparently at last come to terms. The threats uttered at Pilnitz had excited French fears and offended French pride. The Constituent Assembly had been pacifically disposed. It had proclaimed its aversion to offensive war. It had limited the army to 150,000 men. But the Legislative Assembly, though at first it avowed the same sentiments, responded to menace by calling out 97,000 volunteers, by severer penalties against nonjuring priests, by pronouncing sentence of death on emigrants continuing in arms, and by threatening the Emperor with war if he gave them aid. Then came the league between Prussia and Austria, the death of Marie Antoinette's wisest councillor, Leopold (March 1), followed in April by France's declaration of war.

How the war would be waged if the emigrants should guide it there was no doubt. History, which never fails to shudder at Marat's hyperboles, passes, as a rule, very lightly over the equally atrocious language of men whose programme was every whit as horrible as that of those who organised the September massacres, and subsequently established government by guillotine. 'Terror' was their avowed policy before it was the policy of Robespierre, just as the filth of the Actes des Apôtres preceded, while escaping the odium of, the filth of Père Duchesne, and as noyades of inconvenient negroes in pre-Revolutionary times failed to entail on Nantese Royalists the infamy of Carrier, who merely copied their methods and used their means. The very term 'terror' may be said to come from the mint of the emigrants and their friends. Je crois nécessaire