Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/173



them is to appear to fear them: the way to confound the criminal conspiracy of the despots of Europe is to respect their accomplice. Are you afraid of foreign peoples? Then you still believe in the inborn love of tyranny.

Why then do you aspire to the glory of emancipating the human race? By what contradiction do you suppose that the nations which have not been astonished by the proclamation of the rights of humanity will be terrified by the chastisement of one of its most cruel oppressors? Finally, you fear, it is said, the verdict of posterity. Yes, posterity will be astonished indeed at your inconsistency and your weakness; and our descendants will laugh both at the presumption and the prejudices of their ancestors. It has been said that genius is necessary to penetrate this question. I maintain that it requires only good faith: it is much less a matter of self-enlightenment than of not wilfully blinding one's self. Why does a thing which seems clear to us at one time seem obscure at another?

I have heard the defenders of inviolability advance a bold principle which I should have almost hesitated to express myself. They said that those who would have slain Louis XVI. on the tenth of August would have performed a virtuous action. But the sole basis of this opinion can be the crimes of Louis XVI. and the rights of the people. Has an interval of three months changed his crimes or the rights of the people? If then he was snatched away from