An entire society is not decapitated with impunity.
Nations are like their soil: after having pared off the vegetable earth, we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive.

The Constituent Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed the form of a vengeance.

The royalist party had voted the non-re-eligibility, in order that the Revolution, thus eluding Barnave's grasp, should fall into the clutch of the demagogues.

The republican party had voted in order to annihilate the constitutionalists.

The constitutionalists voted in order to chastise the ingratitude of the people, and to make themselves regretted by the unworthy spectacle which they expected their successors would present.