Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/153



National Assembly; informed, or at least able to presume, that this army would attack us in a month, was slow in making preparations for repulsion; if there was a just anxiety about the progress the enemy might make into the interior of France, and if a reserve camp were evidently necessary to check or stop this progress; if there was a resolution making the formation of this camp an immediate certainty; if the king rejected this resolution and substituted for it a plan whose success was uncertain and which demanded so much time for its execution that the enemy would have time to make it impossible; if the legislative body passed resolutions of general safety; if the imminence of the peril allowed no delay; if nevertheless the royal assent was refused or deferred for two months; if the king should trust the command of an army to an intriguing general, suspected by the nation because of the most serious faults, and the most pronounced attempts upon the Constitution; if another general, bred far from the corruption of courts, and familiar with victory, should ask, for the glory of our arms, a reinforcement which it would be easy to grant him; if, by refusing, the king should clearly say to him: "I forbid you to conquer"; if, profiting by this baleful temporizing, by so much incoherence in our political course, or rather such constant