V.

Camille Desmoulins, the Voltaire of the clubs, lent to the petition of the citizens of Paris that insolent raillery, which made the success of his talent.

“Worthy representatives,” ran the petition[13], “applauses are the civil list of the people, therefore do not reject ours.  To collect the homages of good citizens, and the insults of the bad, is, to a National Assembly, to have combined all suffrages.  The king has put his veto to your decree against the emigrants, a decree equally worthy of the majesty of the Roman people and the clemency of the French people.  We do not complain of this act of the king, because we remember the maxim of the great politician Machiavel, which we beg of you to meditate upon profoundly—­It is against nature to fall voluntarily from such a height.  Penetrated with this truth, we do not then require from the king an impossible love for the constitution, nor do we find fault that he is opposed to your best decisions.  But let public functionaries foresee the royal veto, and declare their rebellion against your decree, against the priests; let them carry off public opinion; let these men be precisely the same who caused to be shot in the Champ-de-Mars the citizens who were signing a petition against a decree which was not yet decided upon; let them inundate the empire with copies of this petition, which is nothing more than the first leaf of a great counter-revolutionary register and a subscription for civil war sent for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all permanent slaves.  Fathers of the country! there is here such complicated ingratitude and abuse of confidence, of contradiction and chicanery, of prevarication and treason, that profoundly indignant at so much wickedness concealed beneath the cloak of philosophy and hypocritical civism, we say to you—­Your decree has saved the country, and if they are obstinate in refusing you permission to save the country, well, the nation will save itself, for, after all, the power of a veto has a termination—­a veto does not prevent the taking of the Bastille.

“You are told that the salary of the priests was a national debt.  But when you only request the priests to declare that they will not be seditious—­are not they who refuse this declaration already seditious in their hearts?  And these seditious priests, who have never lent anything to the state—­who are only creditors of the state in the name of benevolence—­have they not a thousand times forfeited the donation through their ingratitude?  Away, then, with these miserable sophisms, fathers of the country, and have no more doubt of the omnipotence of a free people.  If liberty slumbers, how can the arm act?  Do not raise this arm again, do not again lift the national club to crush insects.  Did Cato and Cicero proceed against Cethegus or Catiline?  It is the chiefs we should assail:  strike at the head.”