You complain of their silence!  You forget, then, that you have often established an insulting equality between them and men covered with crimes and made up of ignominy.

You forget, then, that you have twenty times left them covered with opprobrium by your galleries.

You forget, then, that you have not thought yourself sufficiently powerful to impose silence upon these galleries.

What ought a wise man to do in the midst of these circumstances?  He is silent.  He waits the moment when the passions give way; he waits till reason shall preside, and till the multitude shall listen to her voice.

What has been the tactic displayed during all these unions?  Cambon, incapable of political calculation, boasting his ignorance in the diplomatic, flattering the ignorant multitude, lending his name and popularity to the anarchists, seconded by their vociferations, denounced incessantly, as counter-revolutionists, those intelligent persons who were desirous at least of having things discussed.  To oppose the acts of union appeared to Cambon an overt act of treason.  The wish so much as to reflect and to deliberate was in his eyes a great crime.  He calumniated our intentions.  The voice of every deputy, especially my voice, would infallibly have been stifled.  There were spies on the very monosyllables that escaped our lips.

FOOTNOTES: 

[7] The most seditious libels upon all governments, in order to excite insurrection in Spain, Holland, and other countries,—­TRANSLATOR.

[8] It may not be amiss, once for all, to remark on the style of all the philosophical politicians of France.  Without any distinction in their several sects and parties, they agree in treating all nations who will not conform their government, laws, manners, and religion to the new French fashion, as an herd of slaves.  They consider the content with which men live under those governments as stupidity, and all attachment to religion as the effect of the grossest ignorance.

The people of the Netherlands, by their Constitution, are as much entitled to be called free as any nation upon earth.  The Austrian government (until some wild attempts the Emperor Joseph made on the French principle, but which have been since abandoned by the court of Vienna) has been remarkably mild.  No people were more at their ease than the Flemish subjects, particularly the lower classes.  It is curious to hear this great oculist talk of couching the cataract by which the Netherlands were blinded, and hindered from seeing in its proper colors the beautiful vision of the French republic, which he has himself painted with so masterly an hand.  That people must needs be dull, blind, and brutalized by fifteen hundred years of superstition, (the time elapsed since the introduction of Christianity amongst them,) who could prefer their former state to the present state of France!  The reader will remark, that the only difference between Brissot and his adversaries is in the mode of bringing other nations into the pale of the French republic. They would abolish the order and classes of society, and all religion, at a stroke:  Brissot would have just the same thing done, but with more address and management.—­TRANSLATOR.