The immense significance of the oath was rendered still more impressive by the circumstance that it was the only oath taken throughout the whole territory of the Republic.
February had, and rightly, abolished the political oath, and the Constitution had, as rightly, retained only the oath of the President.
This oath possessed the double character of necessity and of grandeur.
It was an oath taken by the executive, the subordinate power, to the legislative, the superior power; it was even more than this--in contrast to the monarchical fiction by which the people take the oath to the man invested with power, it was the man invested with power who took the oath to the people.

The President, functionary and servant, swore fidelity to the sovereign people.

Bending before the national majesty, manifest in the omnipotent Assembly, he received from the Assembly the Constitution, and swore obedience to it.

The representatives were inviolable, and he was not.

We repeat it: a citizen responsible to all the citizens, he was, of the whole nation, the only man so bound.