“If,” said he, “it be really desired to check the tide of emigration, we must more particularly punish the more elevated offenders, who establish in foreign lands a centre of counter-revolution.  We should distinguish three classes of emigrants; the brothers of the king, unworthy of belonging to him,—­the public functionaries, deserting their posts and deluding citizens,—­and finally, the simple citizens, who follow example from imitation, weakness, or fear.  You owe hate and banishment to the first, pity and indulgence to the others.  How can the citizens fear you, when the impunity of their chiefs insures their own?  Have you then two scales of weights and measures?  What can the emigrants think, when they see a prince, after having squandered 40,000,000 (of francs) in ten years, still receive from the National Assembly more millions, in order to provide for his extravagance and pay his debts?

“Divide the interests of the rebellious by alarming the prime criminals.  Patriots are still amused by paltry palliatives against emigration; the partisans of the court have thus trifled with the credulity of the people, and you have seen even Mirabeau deriding those laws, and telling you they would never be put into execution, because a king would not himself become the accuser of his own family.  Three years without success, a wandering and unhappy life, their intrigues frustrated, their conspiracies overthrown, all these defeats have not cured the emigrants; their hearts were corrupted from the cradle.  Would you check this revolt? then strike the blow on the other side of the Rhine:  it is not in France.  It was by such decided steps that the English prevented James II. from impeding the establishment of their liberty.  They did not amuse themselves with framing petty laws against emigration, but demanded that foreign princes should drive the English princes from their dominions.  (Applause.) The necessity of this measure was seen here from the first.  Ministers will talk to you of considerations of state, family reasons; these considerations, these weaknesses cover a crime against liberty.  The king of a free people has no family.  Again, I counsel you attack the leaders only; let it no longer be said, ’These malcontents are then very strong; these 25,000,000 of men must then be very weak thus to consider them.’

“It is to foreign powers especially that you should address your demands and your menaces.  It is time to show to Europe what you are, and to demand of it an account of the outrages you have received from it.  I say it is necessary to compel those powers to reply to us, one of two things; either they will render homage to our constitution, or they will declare against it.  In the first place, you have not to balance, it is necessary that you should assail the powers that dare to threaten you.  In the last century when Portugal and Spain lent an asylum to James II., England attacked both.  Have no fears—­the image of liberty, like the head