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.
XVIII.
These two decrees struck terror to the heart of the king, and consternation to his council. The constitution gave him the right of suspending them by the royal veto; but to suspend the effects of the national indignation against the armed enemies of the Revolution, was to invoke it on his own head. The Girondists artfully fomented these elements of discord between the Assembly and the king. They impatiently awaited until the refusal to sanction the decrees should urge irritation to its height, and force the king to fly or place himself in their hands.
The most monarchical spirit of the Constituent Assembly still reigned in the Directory of the department of Paris. Desmeuniers, Baumetz, Talleyrand-Perigord, Larochefoucauld, were the principal members. They drew up an address to the king, entreating him to refuse his sanction to the decree against the nonjuring priests. This address, in which the Legislative Assembly was treated with much disdain, breathes the true spirit of government as regards religious matters. It is comprised in the axiom which is or ought to be the code of all consciences, "Since no religion is a law, let no religion be a crime!"
A young writer whose name, already celebrated, was to be hereafter consecrated by martyrdom, André Chénier, considering the question in the highest strain of philosophy, published on the same subject a letter worthy of posterity. It is the property of genius not to allow its views to be obscured by the prejudices of the moment. Its gaze is too lofty for vulgar errors to deprive it of the ever-during light of truth. It has by anticipation in its decisions the impartiality of the future.
"All those," says André Chénier, "who have preserved the liberty of their reason, and in whom patriotism is not a violent desire for rule, see with much pain that the dissensions of the priests have of necessity occupied the first sittings of the Assembly. It is true that the public mind is enlightened on this point, on which even the Constituent Assembly itself is deceived. It has pretended to form a civil code of religion, that is to say, it had the idea of creating one priesthood after having destroyed another. Of what consequence is it that one religion differs from another? Is it for the National Assembly to reunite the divided sects, and weigh all their differences? Are politicians theologians? We shall only be delivered from the influence of these men when the National Assembly shall have maintained for each the perfect liberty of following or inventing whatsoever religion may please it; when every one shall pay for the worship he prefers to adopt, and pays for no other; and when the impartiality of tribunals, in such cases, shall punish alike the persecutors or the seditious of all forms of worship: and the members of the National Assembly say also, that all the French people are not yet sufficiently ripe for this doctrine. We must reply to them,—this may be, but it is for you to ripen us by your words, your acts, your laws! Priests do not trouble states when states do not disturb them. Let us remember that eighteen centuries have seen all the Christian sects, torn and bleeding from theological absurdities and sacerdotal hatreds, always terminate by arming themselves with popular power."
This letter passed over the heads of the parties who disputed the conscience of the people; but the petition of the Directory of Paris, which demanded the veto of the king against the decrees of the Assembly, produced violent opposition petitions. For the first time, Legendre, a butcher of Paris, appeared at the bar of the Assembly, where he vociferated in oratorical strain the imprecations of the people against the enemies of the nation and crowned traitors. Legendre decked his trivial ideas in high-sounding language. From this junction of vulgar ideas with the ambitious expressions of the tribune sprung that strange language in which the fragments of thought are mingled with the tinsel of words, and thus the popular eloquence of the period resembles the ill-combined display at an extravagant parvenu. The populace was proud at robbing the aristocracy of its language, even to turn it against them; but whilst it filched, it soiled it. "Representatives," said Legendre, "bid the eagle of victory and fame to soar over your heads and ours; say to the ministers, We love the people,—let your punishment begin: the tyrants must die!"
XIX.
Camille Desmoulins, the Aristophanes of the Revolution, then borrowed the sonorous voice of the Abbé Fauchet, in order to make himself heard. Camille Desmoulins was the Voltaire of the streets; he struck on the chord of passion by his sarcasms. "Representatives," said he, "the applauses of the people are its civil list: the inviolability of the king is a thing most infinitely just, for he ought, by nature, to be always in opposition to the general will and our interest. One does not voluntarily fall from so great a height. Let us take example from God, whose commandments are never impossible; let us not require from the ci-devant sovereign an impossible love of the national sovereignty; is it not very natural that he should give his veto to the best decrees? But let the magistrates of the people—let the Directory of Paris—let the same men, who, four months since, in the Champ-de-Mars, fired upon the citizens who were signing a petition against one decree, inundate the empire with a petition, which is evidently but the first page of a vast register of counter-revolution, a subscription to civil war, sent by them for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all the slaves, all the robbers of the eighty-three departments, at the head of which are the exemplary names of the members of the Directory of Paris—fathers of their country! There is in this such a complication of ingratitude and fraud, prevarication and perverseness, philosophical hypocrisy and perfidious moderation, that on the instant we rally round the decrees and around yourselves. Continue faithful, mandatories, and if they obstinately persist in not permitting you to save the nation, well, then, we will save it ourselves! For at last the power of the royal veto will have a term, and the taking of the Bastille is not prevented by a veto.