[History of the Girondists, Volume I by Alphonse de Lamartine]@TWC D-Link bookHistory of the Girondists, Volume I BOOK VI 58/97
How can the citizens fear you, when the impunity of their chiefs insures their own? Have you then two scales of weights and measures? What can the emigrants think, when they see a prince, after having squandered 40,000,000 (of francs) in ten years, still receive from the National Assembly more millions, in order to provide for his extravagance and pay his debts? "Divide the interests of the rebellious by alarming the prime criminals. Patriots are still amused by paltry palliatives against emigration; the partisans of the court have thus trifled with the credulity of the people, and you have seen even Mirabeau deriding those laws, and telling you they would never be put into execution, because a king would not himself become the accuser of his own family.
Three years without success, a wandering and unhappy life, their intrigues frustrated, their conspiracies overthrown, all these defeats have not cured the emigrants; their hearts were corrupted from the cradle.
Would you check this revolt? then strike the blow on the other side of the Rhine: it is not in France.
It was by such decided steps that the English prevented James II.
from impeding the establishment of their liberty.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|