Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/152



the royal prerogative that other worthies full of honor and delicacy abandon their post in the face of the enemy, violate their oaths, steal the military chests, strive to corrupt their soldiers and thus plunge their glory in dastardliness, perjury, subordination, theft, and assassination; it is against the nation, or the National Assembly alone, and in order to maintain the splendor of the throne, that the king of Bohemia and Hungary makes war upon us, and the king of Prussia marches upon our frontiers; it is in the name of the king that liberty is attacked, and if they succeeded in its overthrow it would be in his name that they indemnify the allied powers for their expenses; because we understand the generosity of kings; we know with what disinterestedness they dispatch their armies to desolate a foreign land, and up to what point they would exhaust their treasuries to maintain a war which could not be profitable to them. Finally, of all the evils which they are striving to heap upon our heads, and of all those which we have to fear, the name alone of the king is the pretext or the cause.

If the king, charged with watching over the external safety of the State, with notifying the legislative body of imminent hostilities, informed of the movements of the Prussian army and not making it known in any way to the