Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/136



the monarch can never hereafter assume the character of a despot, nor do anything that can be interpreted as arbitrary. And above all, he has taken good care not to speak of popular emotions, altho he himself could have given an example of the facility with which the friends of a foreign power can influence the opinion of a national assembly by collecting the people around it, and by procuring for their agents, in the public walks, a clapping of hands as a testimony of general favor. He has quoted Pericles as involving his country in a war in order to avoid passing his accounts. Should not one be led to imagine, on hearing M. Barnave, that Pericles was a man who, well knowing how to flatter the passions of the people and to procure seasonable applause when descending from the tribune, by his largesses or by those of his friends, plunged into the Peloponnesian War—whom?—the National Assembly of Athens.

I have said in my speech that hostilities often precede deliberation; I have said that those hostilities might be of such a nature as to amount to a commencement of the state of war. What answer have you made me? That war could not exist otherwise than by a declaration of war. But, are we disputing about things, or about words? You have said with seriousness, what M. de Bougainville said at the sea fight of the Grenadines in a moment of heroic gaiety. The bullets were flying about his ship; he cried out to his officers: "The pleasant thing is, gentlemen, that