the kingdom, abandoned himself--we borrow the expression of the
reporter of the committee--to all the acrimony of his passions, and
all the profligacy of his principles. His fury could only be equalled
by his folly. He did not scruple to maintain, in the midst of the
representatives of the nation, that the emigrants had the greatest
right to claim the justice and favour of the royal government, because
they alone had not wandered from the righteous path. And starting with
this position, he represented the forfeiture and sale of their
property, not as the justifiable acts of a legislative body, but as
revolutionary outrages and robberies which the nation ought to hasten
to make good.

The Chamber of Deputies passed their censure upon the inflammatory
doctrines and language of the royalist orator, and expunged the word
"restitution" from the law. It had not been inserted without design,
for "restitution" supposes a previous robbery, and the emigrants had
not been robbed of the property: it had been confiscated by virtue of
a law sanctioned by the King; and which law was only a new application
of the system of confiscation created and followed up by the King's
predecessors.

Without travelling into more remote periods, we may ask if it was not
with the spoils of the victims who had been sacrificed to the
murderous policy of Richelieu, and the religious intolerance of Louis
XIV., that the first families had been enriched? And who can tell
whether the lands which the emigrants reclaimed with so much pride and
bitterness, were not the same which their ancestors had received
without a blush from the bloody hands of Richelieu and Louis?

It must be confessed that the unalterable fidelity of a certain number
amongst the emigrants bound the royal government to reward their
fidelity and to alleviate their misfortunes. But all had not an equal
right to the affection and gratitude of the King. If some had
generously sacrificed their fortunes and their country in the cause of
royalty, yet others only fled from France because they wished to
escape their creditors[11], and thought that in strange countries they
might find dupes to feed upon, and thus exist upon swindling resources
to which they could no longer resort with impunity at home.

[Footnote 11: Before the revolution it was
customary for "_les grands seigneurs_" to obtain
what were called "_lettres de surseance_," by