32] ANNUAL REGISTER, 1800. 



have resumed it if, delivered from 

 the yoke of sanguinary demagogues, 

 you could, in this decisive sitting, 

 shrink from the task of securing 

 the public weal, and the salvation 

 of the country." 



Other members made some ob- 

 servations of the same tendency 

 with the speech of the president ; 

 and the president himself, anxious 

 to keep up the same tone, joined in 

 the conversation, for there was no 

 debate, till the report was brought 

 up from the committee : when the 

 chairman of the committee,Cabanis, 

 addressed the council in a speech, 

 the spirit of which will sufficiently 

 appear from its exordium and con- 

 clusion. "The time of management," 

 he said, "little expedients, and 

 half-measures were past. The com- 

 mittee would disclose to the council 

 the naked truth, without disguise. 

 It was commissioned for the pur- 

 pose of proposing effective measures. 

 It had trodden every timid senti- 

 ment under foot, and boldly de- 

 clared what alone, in theii- judge- 

 ment was fitted to secure liberty, 

 consolidate the republic, and to 

 make the people happy in the en- 

 joyment of those blessings that be- 

 longed to them." After a copious 

 development and illustration of 

 these ideas, he concluded with the 

 following recapitulation. " It is 

 impossible but the constitution of 

 the year 3 must involve the ruin of 

 liberty, and that very speedily ; or 

 that our actual situation should not 

 be quickly followed by the dissolu- 

 tion of the French nation. It is, 

 therefore, indispensably necessary 

 that this constitution should under- 

 go alterations. But these alterations 

 cannot be made, nor a r(;-organi;?a- 

 tion of the state effected, otherwise 

 than by means of a provisional go-« 



vernment : and that which your 

 committee proposes appears to me, 

 not only the best, but the only one 

 possible to be adopted in the pre- 

 sent circumstances." Cabanis was 

 followed by 



Boulay de la Meurthe, who did 

 not hesitate to declare, that, in or- 

 der to bring about the change re- 

 commended, the revolution which 

 had just taken place, had been for 

 some time concerted. It was in- 

 tended, however, to have been 

 effected only by moral and consti- 

 tutional means: the same means by 

 which it had, in fact, been accom- 

 plished in the council of elders. 

 But the fury and madness of a vio- 

 lent faction in the council of five 

 hundred, which had been their tor- 

 ment for a long time, had obstruct- 

 ed the progress of moral and con- 

 stitutional influence, in their assem- 

 bly. This faction had set its face 

 against all deliberations and free 

 discussion, and by its tyrannical 

 proceedings forced the well-inten- 

 tioned members, which formed a 

 majority, to quit the place of their 

 meeting. The council of the real 

 representatives of the people had, 

 by their violence, been dissolved 

 and converted into an unconstitu- 

 tional and seditious mob ; and the 

 French legislature and nation must 

 have fallen into all the horrors of 

 civil war, if it had not been for the 

 firmness and foresight of him whom 

 the law had vested with a power 

 of maintaining order in the present 

 great movement. Disembarrassed, 

 as they now were, from violence and 

 tryranny, they might reflect calmly 

 on the measures proper to be taken 

 for saving the sinking republic. 

 That peace should not have been 

 made before the establishment of a 

 constitutional government; was not 



