Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/166

 ROBESPIERRE

I

AGAINST GRANTING THE KING A TRIAL

(1792)

Assembly has unwittingly been drawn far from the actual question. There is no question of a trial. Louis is not an accused; you are not judges; you are only, you can be only, statesmen, and the representatives of the nation. You have no sentence to render for or against a man; but a measure of public safety to take, an act of national providence to perform. A de-throned king, in a Republic, is good only for two purposes — either to trouble the tranquillity of the State and to unsettle liberty, or to establish