If Louis XVI.

had employed this great means whilst the Revolution was but yet in its cradle, we should not now be here! This rigour, the vice of a despot, is the virtue of a nation.
Legislators, who shrink from such extreme means, are cowards--criminals: for when the public liberty is assailed, to pardon is to share the crime.

(Great applause.) "Such rigour might perchance cost an effusion of blood?
I know it! But if you do not make use of it, will not more blood flow?
Is not civil war a still greater misfortune?
Cut off the gangrened member to save the whole frame.[10] Indulgence is the snare into which you are tempted.

You will find yourselves abandoned by the nation for not having dared to sustain, nor known how to defend, it.

Your enemies will hate you no less.