Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/151



the felicity of mankind. It is impossible to believe, without wronging him and accusing him of being the enemy of the law, that he withholds his consent to the adoption of repressive measures against fanaticism, in order to drive citizens to excesses which despair inspires and the laws condemn; that he prefers to expose unsworn priests, even when they do not disturb the peace, to arbitrary vengeance, rather than to subject them to a law which, affecting only agitators, would cover the innocent with an inviolable egis. Finally it is not possible to believe, without wronging him and accusing him of being the enemy of the Empire, that he wishes to perpetuate sedition and to eternalize the disorders and all the revolutionary movements which are urging the empire toward civil war, and which, through civil war, would plunge it into dissolution.

It is in the name of the king that the French princes have tried to enlist all the courts of Europe against the nation; it is to avenge the dignity of the king that the treaty of Pilnitz was concluded and the monstrous alliance between the courts of Vienna and Berlin formed; it is to defend the king that we have seen the old companies of life-guards, under the colors of rebellion, hastening to Germany; it is in order to come to the king's aid that the emigrants are soliciting and obtaining places in the Austrian army and are prepared themselves to rend their country; it is to join those valiant knights of