Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/154



severance in treachery, the league of tyrants should strike fatal blows at liberty — could it be said that the king had made the constitutional resistance, that he had taken, for the defense of the State, the steps contemplated by the Constitution which he had made along the line of the formal act which it prescribes?

Coming to present circumstances, I do not think that if our armies are not yet at their full complement, it is through the malevolence of the king. I hope that he will soon increase our means of resistance by a useful employment of battalions so uselessly scattered in the interior of the kingdom; finally I hope that the march of the Prussians through our national guards will not be as triumphal as they have the proud madness to imagine. I am not tormented by the fear of seeing realized the horrible suppositions that I have made; however, as the dangers with which we are invested impose upon us the obligation to foresee everything; as the facts that I have supposed are not devoid of striking conformity with several of the king's speeches; as it is certain that the false friends surrounding him have sold themselves to the conspirators of Coblentz ; as they are burning to ruin him in order that some one of their chiefs may reap the fruit of the conspiracy; as it is important for his personal safety, as well as for the tranquillity of