This course would have saved all the respect due to royalty; the life of the king--the life of the royal family--the rights of the people--the purity of the Revolution--it was at once firm and calm, efficacious and legitimate.

It was such a dictatorship as the people had instinctively figured in the critical times of their existence.

But instead of a short, fugitive, disturbed, and ambitious dictatorship of one man, it was the dictatorship of the nation, governing itself through its National Assembly.

The nation might have respectfully laid by royalty during ten years, in order itself to carry out a work above the power of the king.

This accomplished, resentment extinguished, habits formed, the laws in operation, the frontiers protected, the clergy secularised, the aristocracy humbled, the dictatorship could terminate.