people to excesses.  The anger of the people is but too often the sequel to the silence of the laws.  The law should enter the palaces of the great, as well as in the hovel of the poor, and as inexorable as death, when it falls upon the guilty, should make no distinction between ranks and titles.  They try to lull you to sleep.  I tell you that the nation should watch incessantly.  Despotism and aristocracy do not sleep; and if nations doze but for a moment, they awake in fetters.  If the fire of heaven was in the power of men, it should be darted at those who attempt the liberties of the people:  thus, the people never pardon conspirators against their liberties.  When the Gauls scaled the walls of the capital, Manlius awoke, hastened to the breach, and saved the republic.  That same Manlius, subsequently accused of conspiring against public liberty, was cited before the tribunes.  He presented bracelets, javelins, twelve civic crowns, thirty spoils torn from conquered enemies, and his breast scarred with cicatrices; he reminded them that he had saved Rome, and yet the sole reply was to cast him headlong from the same rock whence he had precipitated the Gauls.  These, sirs, were a free people.

“And we, since the day we acquired our liberty, have not ceased to pardon our patricians their conspiracies, have not ceased to recompense their crimes by sending them chariots of gold:  as for me, if I voted such gifts, I should die of remorse.  The people contemplate and judge us, and on their sentence depends the destiny of our labours.  Cowards, we lose the public confidence; firm, our enemies would be disconcerted.  Do not then sully the sanctity of the oath, by making it pause in deference before mouths thirsting for our blood.  Our enemies will swear with one hand, whilst with the other they will sharpen their swords against us.”

Each violent sentence in this harangue excited in the Assembly and the tribunes those displays of public feeling which found expression in loud applause.  It was felt that, for the future, the only line of policy would be in the anger of the nation; that the time for philosophy in the tribune was passed, and that the Assembly would not be slow in throwing aside principles in order to take up arms.

The Girondists, who did not wish that Isnard should have gone so far, felt that it was necessary to follow him whithersoever popularity should lead him.  In vain did Condorcet defend his proposition for a delay of the decree.  The Assembly, in a report brought up by Ducastel, adopted the decree of its legislative committee.  The principal clauses were, that the French, assembled on the other side of the frontiers, should be, from that moment, declared actuated by conspiracy towards France; that they should be declared actual conspirators, if they did not return before the 1st of January, 1792, and as such punished with death; that the French princes, brothers of the king, should be punishable with death, like other emigrants, if they did not obey the summons thus sent to them; that, for the present, their revenues should be sequestrated; and, finally, that those military and naval officers who abandoned their posts without leave, or their resignation being accepted, should be considered as deserters, and punished with death.