lo Charles Kuhlmann 



your society some very ardent friends of liberty ; the more one 

 loves it [liberty], gentlemen, the more one hates every kind of 

 domination ; I call your ov^n proud souls to witness. . . . 

 Public opinion seems to-day to judge the men of whom I speak; 

 when it shall be more strongly expressed, when those who dis- 

 honor your society shall be more universally judged, you will see 

 all the friends of liberty reunite themselves to you, and the party 

 spirit which now divides us and causes the misfortune of France 

 will cede to the irresistible force of public spirit. ... I have 

 not in my whole life advanced a single principle, a single fact, 

 which I ought to disavow. I place before you the most formal 

 defiance for M. Lameth to cite a single one. I shall reply cate- 

 gorically to each one of them. I know my crime towards him: 

 I have disdained to incline my head before his pride ; I have 

 loved for itself a revolution which gives me m}^ rights and my 

 happiness ; I have refused to believe that it was the work of M. 

 Lameth, and I have dared to say so. I know at what price I 

 might have pleased him : I might have consented that the general 

 system of liberty should receive a few exceptions in his favor."^ 



When Mirabeau learned of this he was in despair. "What I 

 foresaw," he wrote to La Marck, "has happened ; the letter of 

 Duquesnoy received at the Jacobins, I absent, raised them to the 

 diapason of fury, and furnished M. Barnave the occasion for mak- 

 ing a long enumeration of the services the MM. Lameth have 

 rendered to the revolution, and to declare that they will perish 

 together. Hence an ecstatic choir of applause, hence an insolent 

 reply, hence especially the detestable consequence of uniting the 

 Jacobins to their leaders instead of separating the leaders from 

 the Jacobins as my measures were doing. I am indeed very dis- 

 courag-ed, very embarrassed, very disappointed to have put my- 

 self forward so entirely alone. "^ 



The reply of the Jacobins to the letter of Duquesnoy, to which 

 Mirabeau referred, was a resolution of confidence in the Lameths 

 and their friends in which they showed at the same time that 

 they were aware of the attempts made to disunite them. "The 



lAulard, II, 152-54. 



^Bacourt, III, letter of March 4. 



238. 



