Vergniaud, born at Limoges, and an advocate at the bar of Bordeaux, was now in his thirty-third year, for the revolutionary movement had seized on and borne him along with its currents when very young. His dignified, calm, and unaffected features announced the conviction of his power. Facility, that agreeable concomitant of genius, had rendered alike pliable his talents, his character, and even the position he assumed. A certain nonchalance announced that he easily laid aside these faculties from the conviction of his ability to recover all his forces at the moment when he should require them. His brow was contemplative, his look composed, his mouth serious and somewhat sad; the deep inspiration of antiquity was mingled in his physiognomy with the smiles and the carelessness of youth. At the foot of the tribune he was loved with familiarity; as he ascended it each man was surprised to find that he inspired him with admiration and respect; but at the first words that fell from the speaker's lips they felt the immense distance between the man and the orator. He was an instrument of enthusiasm, whose value and whose place was in his inspiration. This inspiration, heightened by the deep musical tones of his voice, and an extraordinary power of language, had drunk in deep draughts at the purest sources of antiquity; his sentences had all the images and harmony of poesy, and if he had not been the orator of a democracy he would have been its philosopher and its poet. His genius, devoted to the people, yet forbade him to descend to the language of the people, even to flatter them. All his passions were noble as his words, and he adored the Revolution as a sublime philosophy destined to ennoble the nation without immolating on its altars other victims than prejudices and tyranny. He had doctrines, and no hatreds; the thirst of glory, and not of ambition,—nay, power itself, was in his eyes, too real, too vulgar a thing for him to aim at, and he disdained it for himself, and alone sought it for his ideas. Glory and posthumous fame were his objects alone; he mounted the tribune to behold them, and he beheld them later from the scaffold; and he plunged into the future, young, handsome, immortal in the annals of France, with all his enthusiasm, and some few stains, already effaced in his generous blood. Such was the man whom nature had given to the Girondists as their chief. He disdained the office, although he possessed all the qualities and the views, of a statesman; too careless to be the leader of a party, too great to be second to any one. Such was Vergniaud,—more illustrious than useful to his friends; he would not lead, but immortalised, them.
We will describe this great man more in detail at the period when his talent places him in a more conspicuous situation. "Are there circumstances," said he "in which the natural rights of man can permit a nation to adopt any measure against emigrations?" Vergniaud spoke against those pretended natural rights, and recognised, above all individual rights, the right of society, which comprises and dominates over all, just as the whole predominates over a portion: he compared political liberty to the right of a citizen to do what he pleases, provided he do nothing injurious to his country; but there he stops. Man can, no doubt, materially use this right to abdicate the country in which he was born and to which he belongs, as the limb belongs to the body, but this abdication is treason; for it severs the union between the nation and himself, and the nation no longer owes him or his property any protection. After having on this principle destroyed the puerile distinction between the functionary and the mere emigrant, he proved that society falls into decay if she refuse herself the right of retaining those who forsake her in her hour of danger and difficulty. When she gave him all the universe for his country, she refused him that which gave him birth. But what will be the consequence if this emigrant, ceasing to play merely the part of a cowardly fugitive, becomes a foe, and, assembling with his fellow-traitors, surrounds the nation with a band of conspirators? What, shall attack be permitted to the emigrés, and good citizens forbidden to defend themselves?
XVI.
"But," continued he, "is France in this situation that she ought to fear from these men, who are about to excite all the ancient hatreds of the foreign courts against us? No; we shall soon see these proud mendicants, who are now receiving the roubles of Catherine and the millions of Holland, expiate in shame and misery the crimes their pride has entailed on them. Moreover these kings hesitate to attack us; they know that, to the spirit of philosophy that has infused into us the breath of liberty, there are no Pyrenees; they dread that the foot of their soldiers should touch a soil that blazes with this holy flame; they tremble, lest on the day of battle the patriots of every country should recognise each other, and two armies ready to combat be converted into a band of brethren, united against their tyrants. But should it be necessary to appeal to arms, we well remember that a thousand Greeks, combating for liberty, trampled on a million of Persians.
"We are told 'the emigrés have no evil designs against their country; it is only a temporary absence: where are the legal proofs of what you assert? when you produce them it be time enough to punish the guilty.' Oh you who use such language, why were you not in the Roman senate when Cicero denounced Catiline? You would have asked him for the legal proof. I can picture his astonishment to myself: whilst he sought for proofs Rome would have been sacked, and you and Catiline have reigned over a heap of ruins. Legal proofs! And have you calculated the blood they will cost you to obtain? Now let us forestall our enemies, by adopting rigorous measures; let us rid the nation of this swarm of insects, greedy of its blood,—by whom it is pursued and tormented. But what should these measures be? In the first place seize on the property of the absentees. This is but a petty measure you will say. What matter its importance or its insignificancy, so that it be just. As for the officers who have deserted, the Code pénal prescribes their fate—death and infamy. The French princes are even more culpable; and the summons to return to their country, which it is proposed to address to them, is neither sufficient for your honour nor your safety. Their attempts are openly made; either they must tremble before you, or you must tremble before them; you must choose. Men talk of the profound grief this will cause the king: Brutus immolated his guilty offspring at the shrine of his country, but the heart of Louis XVI. shall not be put to so severe a trial. If these princes, alike bad brothers and citizens, refuse to obey, let him turn to the hearts of the French nation, and they will amply repay his losses." (Loud applause.)
Pastoret, who spoke after Vergniaud, quoted the saying of Montesquieu, "There is a time when it is necessary to cast a veil over the statue of Liberty, as we conceal the statues of the Gods." To be ever on the watch, and to fear nothing, should be the maxim of every free people. He concluded by proposing repressive, but moderate and gradual measures, against the absentees.
XVII.
Isnard declared that the measures proposed until then were satisfactory to prudence, but not to justice, and the vengeance which an outraged nation owed to itself; and he thus continued:—
"If I am allowed to speak the truth, I shall say, that if we do not punish all these heads of the rebellion, it is not that we do not know, at the bottom of our hearts, that they are guilty, but because they are princes; and, although we have destroyed the nobility and distinctions of blood, these vain phantoms still affect our minds. Ah! it is time that this great level of equality, which has passed over France, should at length take its full effect. Then only will they believe in our equality. You should fear by this evidence of impunity that you may urge the 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."