t dangers and principal causes of the excesses of the Revolution.
The question now was no longer to be treated with reason, but by
vindictive feelings. The imprudence of the Constituent Assembly had left
this dangerous weapon in the hands of parties who were about to turn it
against the king.

XIII.

Brissot, the inspirer of the Gironde, the dogmatic statesman of a party
which needed ideas and a leader, ascended the tribune in the midst of
anticipated plaudits, which betokened his importance in the new
Assembly. His voice was for war, as the most efficacious of laws.

"If," said he, "it be really desired to check the tide of emigration, we
must more particularly punish the more elevated offenders, who establish
in foreign lands a centre of counter-revolution. We should distinguish
three classes of emigrants; the brothers of the king, unworthy of
belonging to him,--the public functionaries, deserting their posts and
deluding citizens,--and finally, the simple citizens, who follow example
from imitation, weakness, or fear. You owe hate and banishment to the
first, pity and indulgence to the others. How can the citizens fear you,
when the impunity of their chiefs insures their own? Have you then two
scales of weights and measures? What can the emigrants think, when they
see a prince, after having squandered 40,000,000 (of francs) in ten
years, still receive from the National Assembly more millions, in order
to provide for his extravagance and pay his debts?

"Divide the interests of the rebellious by alarming the prime criminals.
Patriots are still amused by paltry palliatives against emigration; the
partisans of the court have thus trifled with the credulity of the
people, and you have seen even Mirabeau deriding those laws, and telling
you they would never be put into execution, because a king would not
himself become the accuser of his own family. Three years without
success, a wandering and unhappy life, their intrigues frustrated, their
conspiracies overthrown, all these defeats have not cured the emigrants;
their hearts were corrupted from the cradle. Would you check this
revolt? then strike the blow on the other side of the Rhine: it is not
in France. It was by such decided steps that the English prevented James
II. from impeding the establishment of their liberty. They did not amuse
themselves with framing petty laws against emigration, but demanded that
foreign princes should drive the English princes from th