Page:Voices of Revolt - Volume 1.djvu/48

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44
SPEECHES OF

and loveliness of peace will be exalted and even liberty will find favorable comment. A compromise will be proposed with the émigrés; they will promise an eternal peace, amnesty and fraternity, and at the same time the heads of the conspiracy will depict all over France, even in Paris itself, the terrible prospects of a civil war, and they will ask you all why you insist on fighting, why you insist on murdering each other, although we all have the same fraternal object. And Bender and the Prince of Condé will declare themselves to be patriots. What will you do then? You will do nothing. You have made no preparations; you have no army at the border and you will comply with the insinuations of your leaders, for at first you will not be asked to make any but insignificant sacrifices. …

Louis XVI has written to the Legislative Assembly to the effect that he is resorting to flight and the Assembly has resorted to cowardice, to a cowardly falsehood in order to misrepresent this situation; it has declared that the King has been abducted and in twenty decrees it regrets the monarch's fate. The Constituent Assembly might speak quite differently, if we had three million bayonets at our disposal. …

Do you wish further proofs that the Legislative Assembly has betrayed the interests of the nation? What are the measures it adopted this morning? Let us consider the principal ones:

The Minister of War has continued to remain in