XI.

The whole difficulty of the situation was in the question whether or not, that constitution once completed, the nation would recognise in the constitution the right to revise and alter itself.  It was on this occasion that Malouet, although abandoned by his party and hopeless, endeavoured, single-handed, the restoration of the royal authority.  His discourse, worthy of the genius of Mirabeau, was a bill of terrible accusation against the excesses of the people, and the inconsistencies of the Assembly.  Its moderation heightened its effect—­the man of integrity was seen beneath the orator, and the statesman in the legislator.  Something of the serene and stoical soul of Cato breathed in his words; but political eloquence is rather in the people who listen, than in the man who speaks.  The voice is nothing without the reverberation that multiplies its echo.  Malouet, deserted by his party, left by Barnave who listened with dismay, only spoke from his conscience; he fought no longer for victory, he only struggled for principle.  Thus did he speak.—­

“It is proposed to you to determine the epoch, and the conditions of the use of a new constituent power; it is proposed to you to undergo twenty-five years of disorder and anarchy before you have the right to amend.  Remark, in the first place, under what circumstances it is proposed to you to impose silence on the appeals of the nation as to the new laws; it is when you have not as yet heard the opinion of those whose instincts and passions these new laws favour, when all contending passions are subdued by terror or by force; it is when France is no longer expounded but through the organ of her clubs.  When it has been a question of suspending the exercise of the royal authority itself, what has been the language addressed to you from this tribune?  You have been told ’we should have begun the Revolution from thence; but we were not aware of our strength.’  Thus it only remains for your successors to measure their strength in order to attempt fresh enterprises.  Such, in effect, is the danger of making a violent revolution and a free constitution march side by side.  The one is only produced in tumultuous periods, and by passions and weapons, the other is only established by amicable arrangements between old interests and new. (Laughter, murmurs, and ‘that is the point.’) We do not count voices, we do not discuss opinions, to make a revolution.  A revolution is a storm during which we must furl our sails, or we sink.  But after the tempest, those who have been beaten by it, as well as those who have not suffered, enjoy in common the serenity of the sky.  All becomes calm, and the horizon is cleared.  Thus after a revolution, the constitution, if it be good, rallies all its citizens.  There should not be one man in the kingdom who incurs danger of his life in expressing his free views of the constitution.  Without this