[History of the Girondists, Volume I by Alphonse de Lamartine]@TWC D-Link bookHistory of the Girondists, Volume I BOOK IV 39/60
I repeat to you then, there is no free and durable constitution out of despotism but that which terminates a revolution, and which is proposed, accepted, and executed, by forms, calm, free, and totally different from the forms of the Revolution.
All we do, all we seek for with excitement before we reach this point of repose, whether we obey the people or are obeyed by them; whether we would flatter, deceive, or serve them, is but the work of folly,--madness.
I demand, therefore, that the constitution be peaceably and freely accepted by the majority of the nation and by the king. (Violent murmurs.) I know we call the national will, all that we know of proposed addresses, of assent, of oaths, agitations, menaces, and violence.
(Loud expressions of angry dissent.) Yes, we must close the Revolution by beginning to destroy every tendency to violate it.
Your committees of inquiry, laws respecting emigrants, persecutions of priests, despotic imprisonments, criminal proceedings against persons accused without proofs, the fanaticism and domination of clubs; but this is not all, licence has gone to such unbounded extent,--the dregs of the nation ferment so tumultuously:--( Loud burst of indignation.) Do we then pretend to be the first nation which has no dregs? The fearful insubordination of troops, religious disturbances, the discontents of the colonies, which already sound so ominously in our ports,--if the Revolution does not stop here and give place to the constitution;--if order be not re-established at once, and on all points, the shattered state will be long agitated by the convulsions of anarchy.
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