verily there was neither a Catiline nor a Rome, neither perils nor factions around you. But, to-day, bankruptcy, hideous bankruptcy, is there before you, and threatens to consume you, yourselves, your property, your honor,—and yet you deliberate !

IN REPLY TO THOSE WHO DENIED THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY THE LEGITIMATE POWERS OF A NATIONAL CONVENTION, APRIL 19, 1790.--Mirabeau.

It is with difficulty, gentlemen, that I can repress an emotion of indignation, when I hear hostile rhetoricians continually oppose the Nation to the National Assembly, and endeavor to excite a sort of rivalry between them. As if it were not through the National Assembly that the Nation had recognized, recovered, reconquered its rights! As if it were not through the National Assembly that the French had, in truth, become a Nation! As if, surrounded by the monuments of our labors, our dangers, our services, we could be come suspected by the People-formidable to the liberties of the People! As if the regards of two worlds upon you fixed, as if the spectacle of your glory, as if the gratitude of so many millions, as if the very pride of a generous conscience, which would have to blush too deeply to belie itself,―were not a sufficient guarantee of your fidelity, of your patriotism, of your virtue!

2. Commissioned to form a Constitution for France, I will not ask whether, with that authority, we did not receive also the power to do all that was necessary to

complete, establish, and confirm that Constitution. I will not ask, ought we to have lost in pusiilanimous consultations the time of action, while nascent Liberty would have received her death-blow? But if gentlemen insist on demanding when and how, from simple deputies of bailiwicks, we became all at once transformed into a National Convention, I reply, It was on that day, when, finding the hall where we were to assemble closed, and bristling and polluted with bayonets, we resorted to the first place where we could reunite, to swear to perish rather than submit to such an order of things! That day, if we were not a National Convention, we became one; became one for the destruction of arbitrary power, and for the defence of the rights of the Nation from all violence. The strivings of Despotism which we have quelled, the perils which we have averted, the violence which we have repressed, — these are our titles! Our successes have consecrated them; the adhesion, so often renewed, of all parts of the Empire, has legitimized and sanctified them. Summoned to its task by the irresistible tocsin of necessity, our National Convention is above all imitation, as it is above all authority. It is accountable only to itself, and can be judged only by posterity.

3. Gentlemen, you all remember the instance of that Roman, who, to save his country from a dangerous conspiracy, had been constrained to overstep the powers conferred on him by the laws. A captious Tribune exacted of him the oath that he had respected those laws; hoping, by this insidious demand, to drive the Consul to the alternative of perjury or of an embar

rassing avowal. "Swear," said the Tribune, "that you have observed the laws." "I swear," replied the great man,-"I swear that I have saved the Republic." Gentlemen, I swear that you have saved France!

ON BEING SUSPECTED OF RECEIVING OVERTURES FROM THEK

COURT, MAY 22, 1790.-Mirabeau.

It would be an important step towards the reconciliation of political opponents, if they would clearly signify on what points they agree, and. on what they differ. To this end, friendly discussions avail more, far more, than calumnious insinuations, furious invectives, the acerbities of partisan rivalry, the machinations of intrigue and malevolence. For eight days, now, it has been given out that those members of the National Assembly in favor of the provision requiring the concurrence of the royal will for the exercise of the right of peace and war are parricides of the public liberty. Rumors of perfidy, of corruption, have been bruited. Popular vengeance has been invoked to enforce the tyranny of opinion; and denunciations have been uttered, as if, on a subject involving one of the most delicate and difficult questions affecting the organiza. tion of society, persons could not dissent without a crime. What strange madness, what deplorable infatuation, is this, which thus incites against one another men whom-let debate run never so high-one common object, one indestructible sentiment of patriotism, ought always to bring together, always to reunite; but

who thus substitute, alas! the irascibility of self-love for devotion to the public good, and give one another over, without compunction, to the hatred and distrust of the People!

And me, too—me, but the other day, they would have borne in triumph;-and now they cry in the streets, THE GREAT TREASON OF THE COUNT OF MIRĂBEAU! I needed not this lesson to teach me, how short the distance from the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock! But the man who battles for reason, for country, does not. so easily admit that he is vanquished. He who has the consciousness that he deserves well of that country, and above all, that he is still able to serve her; who disdains a vain celebrity, and prizes veritable glory above the successes of the day; who would speak the truth, and labor for the public weal, independently of the fluctuations of popular opinion,-such a man carries in his own breast the recompense of his services, the solace of his pains, the reward of his dangers. The harvest he looks for-the destiny, the only destiny, to which he aspires-is that of his good name; and for that he is content to trust to time,-to time, that incorruptible judge, who dispenses justice to all!

Let those who, for these eight days past, have been ignorantly predicting my opinion,-who, at this moment, calumniate my discourse without comprehending it, let them charge me, if they will, with beginning to offer incense to the impotent idols I have overturned -with being the vile stipendiary of men whom I have never ceased to combat; let them denounce as an ene my of the Revolution him, who at least has contributed

so much to its cause, that his safety, if not his glory, lies in its support ;--let them deliver over to the rage of a deceived People him, who, for twenty years, has warred against oppression in all its forms;—who spoke to Frenchmen of Liberty, of a Constitution, of Resistance, at a time when his vile calumniators were sucking the milk of Courts, -living on those dominant abuses which he denounced-what matters it? These underhand attacks shall not stop me in my career. I will say to my traducers, Answer if you can, and then calumniate to your hearts' content! And now I reenter the lists, armed only with my principles and a steadfast conscience.

TO THE FRENCH PEOPLE, 1792.-Vergniaul.

Vergniaud, the most eloquent orator of the celebrated party known as the Girondists, during the French Revolution, was born at Limoges, in 1759. He was executed in 1793. As an orator, his renown is second only to that of Mirabeau, in France. His speeches were always carefully prepared beforehand.

Preparations for war are manifest on our frontiers; and we hear of renewed plots against liberty. Our armies reassemble; mighty movements agitate the Empire. Martial law having become necessary, it has seemed to us just. But we have succeeded only in brandishing for a moment the thunderbolt in the eyes of rebellion. The sanction of the King has been refused to our decrees. The princes of Germany make their territory a retreat for the conspirators against