These are my motives for demanding that Louis XVI. be judged; and it is in this sole point of view that his trial appears to me of sufficient importance to receive the attention of the Republic.
As to "inviolability," I would not have such a word mentioned. If, seeing in Louis XVI. only a weak and narrow-minded man, badly reared, like all his kind, given, as it is said, to frequent excesses of drunkenness—a man whom the National Assembly imprudently raised again on a throne for which he was not made—he is shown hereafter some compassion, it shall be the result of the national magnanimity, and not the burlesque notion of a pretended "inviolability."
Thomas Paine.
XIV. REASONS FOR PRESERVING THE LIFE OF LOUIS CAPET,
As Delivered to the National Convention, January 15, 1703.(1)
Citizen President,
My hatred and abhorrence of monarchy are sufficiently known: they originate in principles of reason and conviction, nor, except with life, can they ever be extirpated; but my compassion for the unfortunate, whether friend or enemy, is equally lively and sincere.
I voted that Louis should be tried, because it was necessary to afford proofs to the world of the perfidy, corruption, and abomination of the monarchical system. The infinity of evidence that has been produced exposes them in the most glaring and hideous colours; thence it results that monarchy, whatever form it may assume, arbitrary or otherwise, becomes necessarily a centre round which are united every species of corruption, and the kingly trade is no less destructive of all morality in the human breast, than the trade of an executioner is destructive of its sensibility. I remember, during my residence in another country, that I was exceedingly struck with a sentence of M. Autheine, at the Jacobins [Club], which corresponds exactly with my own idea,—"Make me a king to-day," said he, "and I shall be a robber to-morrow."
1 Printed in Paris (Hartley, Adlard & Son) and published in
London with the addition of D. I. Eaton's name, in 1796.
While Paine was in prison, he was accused in England and
America of having helped to bring Louis XVI. to the
scaffold. The English pamphlet has a brief preface in which
it is presented "as a burnt offering to Truth, in behalf of
the most zealous friend and advocate of the Rights of Man;
to protect him against the barbarous shafts of scandal and
delusion, and as a reply to all the horrors which despots of
every description have, with such unrelenting malice,
attempted to fix on his conduct. But truth in the end must
triumph: cease then such calumnies: all your efforts are
in vain —you bite a file."—Editor.