The Girondists, in the closing article of this faultless constitution, believe that they have discovered a way to muzzle the beast and allow the sovereign people to fully assert their rights.
As if, with some kind of constitution and especially with this one, one could muzzle the beast! As if it was in the mood to crane the neck allowing them to put the muzzle on! Robespierre, on behalf of the Jacobins, counters with a clause radically opposed to the one drafted by Condorcet[3351]: "To submit 'the right to resist oppression' to legal formalities is the ultimate refinement of tyranny...

When a government violates the people's rights, a general insurrection of the people, as well as portions of the people, is the most sacred of duties." Political orthodoxy, close reasoning, and oratorical talent are, however, no weapon against this ever-muttering insurrection.
"Our philosophers," says a good observer,[3352] "want to attain their ends by persuasion; which is equivalent to saying that battles may be won by eloquence, fine speeches, and plans of constitution.

Very soon, according to them,..

if will suffice to carry complete copies of Macchiavelli, Rousseau and Montesquieu into battle instead of cannon, it never occurring to them that these authors, like their works, never were, and never will be, anything but fools when put up against a cut-throat provided with a good sword." The parliamentary landscape has fallen away; things have returned to a state of nature, that is, to a state of war, and one is no longer concerned with debate but with brute force.

To be in the right, to convince the convention, to obtain majorities, to pass decrees, would be appropriate in ordinary times, under a government provided with an armed force and a regular administration, by which, from the summits of public authority, the decrees of a majority descend through submissive functionaries to a sympathetic and obedient population.