Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/164



III

ON TAXING THE RICH

(1793)

have decreed an honorable mention of what the Department de l'Herault has believed to make for the public safety. In this decree you authorize the entire Republic to adopt the same measures, for your decree ratifies those which have just been brought to your knowledge. If everywhere the same measures be taken, the Republic is saved. No longer shall be treated as agitators and anarchists those ardent friends of liberty by whom the nation was set in motion, but we shall hear: "Honor to the agitators who turn the vigor of the people against its enemies!" When the temple of liberty shall have been established, the people may be trusted to decorate it. Rather let the soil of France perish than to return beneath a hard slavery; but let no one think we shall become barbarians after our liberty is founded. We shall embellish it; despots shall envy us; but while the ship of state is beaten by the tempest, what belongs to one belongs to all.

Agrarian laws are no longer spoken of; the people are wiser than their calumniators maintain, and the people as a whole have more sense