STATE PAPERS. 
preserve, as I obtained it, by an 
inflexible love of liberty. 
Your circumstances are difficult ; 
France is menaced from without, 
and agitated within. While foreign 
courts announce the intolerable 
project of attacking our national 
sovereignty, and thus declare them- 
selves the enemies of France, in- 
ternal foes, intoxicated with fanati- 
cism and pride, entertain chimerical 
hopes, and distress us still more 
with their insolent malignity. 
You ought, gentlemen, to sup- 
press them; and you cannot have 
the power to do so, without being 
yourselves constitutional and just. 
You desire to be so without 
doubt ; but cast your eyes on what 
passes in your own body, and all 
around you. 
Are you ignorant that the Jacobin 
faction has occasioned al! the dis- 
orders? It is that faction to which 
I loudly impute them. Organized 
like a separate empire in its metro- 
polis, and its affiliations blindly di- 
rected by certain ambitious chiefs, 
this sect forms a distinct corporation 
in the midst of the French people, 
whose power it usurps by subju- 
gating their representatives and 
their mandatories. 
It is there that, in public sittings, 
love of the laws is denominated 
aristocracy, and their infraction pa- 
triotism. There the assassins of De- 
filles receive triumphs, the crimes 
of Jourdan find panegyrists: there 
also the recitals of the assassination 
that stained the city of Metz, ex- 
cite infernal acclamations of joy. 
Can it be believed that they will 
escape reproaches by sheltering 
themselves under an Austrian ma- 
nifesto, in which these sectaries are 
named! Are they become sacred, 
because Leopold has pronounced 
207 
their name ? and because we have 
to fight with foreigners, who pre- 
sume to interfere in our quarrels, 
are we absolved from the duty of 
~ delivering our country from domes- 
tic tyranny? 
Of what moment to this duty are 
either the projects of foreigners, 
their connivance at the counter- 
revolutionists, er their influence on 
the lukewarm friends of liberty? 
It is I who denounce this sect; I 
who, without speaking of my past 
life, can answer to those who feign 
suspicions of me—‘ Approach in 
this critical moment, in which every 
man’s character will soon be known, 
and let us see which of us, most in- 
flexible in his principles, the firm- 
est in his resistance, will best brave 
the dangers which traitors wish to 
hide from their country, and which 
true citizens know how to calculate 
and encounter for her sake.’ 
And how should I longer delay 
to fulfil this duty, when every day 
weakens the constituted authorities, 
and substitutes the spirit of a party 
for the will of the people; when 
the audacity of agitators imposes 
silence on peaceable citizens, and 
supplants useful men; when at- 
tachment to a sect is made the sub- 
stitute of all public and private 
virtues, which in a free country 
ought to be the severe and only 
means of arriving at the first func- 
tions of government ? 
It is after having opposed to all 
obstacles and all snares the coura- 
geous and persevering patriotism of 
an army, sacrificed perhaps to com- 
binations against its leader, that I 
can now oppose to this faction the 
correspondenee of a ministry the 
worthy production of its club; a 
correspondence, of which all the 
calculations are false, the promises 
vain, 
