Madame Roland herself delights, with evident complacency, in it, something which can be seen in the two famous letters in which, with a supercilious tone, she first instructs the King and next the Pope.[2351] Brissot, at bottom, regards himself as a Louis XIV, and expressly invites the Jacobins to imitate the haughty ways of the Great Monarch.[2352]--To the tactlessness of the intruder, and the touchiness of the parvenu, we can add the rigidity of the sectarian.

The Jacobins, in the name of abstract rights, deny historic rights; they impose from above, and by force, that truth of which they are the apostles, and allow themselves every provocation which they prohibit to others.
"Let us tell Europe," cries Isnard,[2353] "that ten millions of Frenchmen, armed with the sword, with the pen, with reason, with eloquence, might, if provoked, change the face of the world and make tyrants tremble on their thrones of clay." "Wherever a throne exists," says Herault de Sechelles, "there is an enemy."[2354] "An honest peace between tyranny and liberty," says Brissot, "is impossible.

Our Constitution is an eternal anathema to absolute monarchs...

It places them on trial, it pronounces judgment on them; it seems to say to each: to-morrow thou have ceased to be or shalt be king only through the people...

War is now a national benefit, and not to have war is the only calamity to be dreaded." [2355] "Tell the king," says Gensonne, "that the war is a must, that public opinion demands it, that the safety of the empire makes it a law."[2356] "The state we are in," concludes Vergniaud, "is a veritable state of destruction that may lead us to disgrace and death.