d before completion. It had no belief in the
duration of that which it proclaimed imperishable. The lofty voices
which had shaken France so long were now no more, or were silent from
indifference. Maury, Cazales, Clermont Tonnerre seemed careless of
continuing a conflict in which honour was saved, and in which victory
was henceforth impossible. From time to time, indeed, some burst of
passion between parties interrupted the usual monotony of these
theoretical discussions. Such was the struggle of the 10th of June
between Cazales and Robespierre with respect to the disbanding the
officers of the army. "What is it," exclaimed Robespierre, "that the
committees propose to us? to trust to the oaths, to the honour of
officers, to defend a constitution which they detest! of what honour do
they talk to us? What is that honour more than virtue and love of
country? I take credit to myself for not believing in such honour."

Cazales himself arose indignantly. "I could not listen tamely to such
calumniating language," he exclaimed. At these words violent murmurs
arose on the left, and cries (order! to the Abbaye! to the Abbaye!)
burst forth from the ranks of the revolution: "What," said the royalist
orator, "is it not enough to have restrained my indignation on hearing
two thousand citizens thus accused, who in all moments of peril have
presented an example of most heroic patience! I have listened to the
previous speaker, because I am, and I assert it, a partisan of the most
unlimited declaration of opinions; but it is beyond human endurance for
me to conceal the contempt I feel for such diatribes. If you adopt the
disbanding proposed you will no longer have an army, our frontiers will
be delivered up to foreign invasion, and the interior to excesses and
the pillage of an infuriated soldiery." These energetic words were the
funeral oration of the old army, the project of the committee was
adopted.

The discussion on the abolition of the punishment of death presented to
Adrien Duport an opportunity to pronounce in favour of the abolition one
of those orations which survive time, and which protest, in the name of
reason and philosophy, against the blindness and atrocity of criminal
legislation. He demonstrated with the most profound logic that society,
by reserving to itself the right of homicide, justifies it to a certain
extent in the murderer, and that the means most efficacious for
preventing murder and making it infamous was to