had deserved well from his people; who well can dare to censure so magnanimous a condescension?
Before the king's departure for Varennes, the absolute right of the nation was but an abstract fiction, the _summum jus_ of the Assembly.

The royalty of Louis XVI.

was respectable and respected, once again it was established.
XV.
But a moment arrived, and this moment was when the king fled his kingdom, protesting against the will of the nation, and sought the assistance of the army, and the intervention of foreign powers, when the Assembly legitimately possessed the rigorous right of disposing of the power, thus abandoned or betrayed.

Three courses were open: to declare the downfall of the monarchy, and proclaim a republican revolution; the temporary suspension of the royalty, and govern in its name during its moral eclipse; and, lastly, to restore the monarchy.
The Assembly chose the worst alternative of the three.

It feared to be harsh, and was cruel; for by retaining the supreme rank for the king, it condemned him to the torture of the hatred and contempt of the people; it crowned him with suspicions and outrages; and nailed him to the throne, in order that the throne might prove the instrument of his torture and his death.
Of the two other courses, the first was the most logical, to proclaim the downfall of the monarchy and the formation of a republic.
The republic, had it been properly established by the Assembly, would have been far different from the republic traitorously and atrociously extorted nine months after by the insurrection of the 10th of August.