Barnave reproached his colleagues in the tribune, and devoted them to public execration with the same voice which had raised and rallied the _Friends of the Constitution_.

Liberty was as yet but a partial arm, which was unblushingly broken in the hands of an opponent.
What remained to the king thus pressed between an assembly, which had usurped all the executive functions, and those factious clubs, which usurped to themselves all the rights of representation?
Placed without adequate strength between two rival powers, he was only there to receive the blows of each in the struggle, and to be cast as a daily sacrifice to popularity by the National Assembly; one power alone still maintained the shadow of the throne and exterior order, the national guard of Paris.

But the national guard, which as a neutral force, whose only law was in public opinion, and was wavering itself between factions and the monarchy, might very well maintain safety in a public place, was unable to serve as a strong and independent support to political power.

It was itself of the people; every serious intervention against the will of the people, appeared to it as sacrilege.

It was a body of municipal police; it could never again be the army of the throne or the constitution; it was born of itself on the day after the 14th of July on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, and it received no orders but from the municipality.