sylum,
arms, horses, and provisions. Can patience endure this without becoming
guilty of suicide? Doubtless you have renounced the desire of conquest;
but you have not promised to suffer insolent provocation. You have
shaken off the yoke of tyrants; surely, then, you will not bow the knee
to foreign despots? Beware! you are surrounded by snares; traitors seek
to reduce you through disgust or fatigue to a state of languor that
enervates your courage; and soon perhaps they will strive to lead it
astray. They seek to separate you from us; they pursue a system of
calumny against the National Assembly to criminate the Revolution in
your eyes. Oh, beware of these excessive terrors! Repulse indignantly
these impostors, who, whilst they affect an hypocritical zeal for the
constitution, yet unceasingly speak of the _monarchy_. The _monarchy_ is
to them the counter-revolution. The _monarchy_ is the _nobility_; the
counter-revolution--that is taxation, the feudal system, the Bastille,
chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty.
Foreign satellites in the interior of the state--bankruptcy, engulphing
with your _assignats_ your private fortunes and the national wealth--the
fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration,
despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the
heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country. Nobility; that
is, two classes of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one
for tyranny, the other for slavery. Nobility; ah! the very word is an
insult to the human race.

"And yet it is to ensure the success of this conspiracy against you that
all Europe is in arms.--You must annihilate these guilty hopes by a
solemn declaration. Yes, the representatives of France, free, and deeply
attached to the constitution, will be buried beneath her ruins, rather
than suffer a capitulation unworthy of them to be wrung from them. Rally
yourselves, take courage! In vain do they strive to excite the nations
against you, they will only excite the princes, for the hearts of the
people are with you, and you embrace their cause by defending your own.
Hate war: it is the greatest crime of mankind, and the most fearful
scourge of humanity; but since it is forced on you, follow the course of
your destiny. Who can foresee how far will extend the punishment of
those tyrants who have forced you to take arms?" Thus, these three
statesmen joined their voices to impel the