power would in itself secure to the people the advantages of equality and liberty—the main object of their aspirations.
should be in reality but a sound invented the more effectually to ensure public submission and obedience to the laws—laws of which they (the Girondists) should have the sole enactment and execution. Accordingly, we see them in the Legislative Assembly alternately combat or favour the particular interests of Louis XVI., just according as that monarch pretended to follow the plan of his ancient courtesans, or submit himself to the councils of this faction. The personal views of its chiefs in the secret negociations which they entered upon with the king— in the official councils they gave him to the effect of strengthening his power, were fully proved by living witnesses and documentary evidence. Indeed, some of the Girondists, most notable in their party, had not been ashamed to publish in their memoirs, their confession of attachment to the Monarchy, and their aspirations for its re-establishment after it had ceased to exist.
PROOFS OF THEIR HATRED OF REPUBLICANISM.
It is a gross error to suppose the Girondists were real friends of liberty, or frank Republicans. Had they been so, would they have so bitterly calumniated and persecuted the Parisian municipality of the 10th of August (the dethronement of the king), to whom was mainly due the triumph of that day? Would they have exerted themselves as they did, during the combat, to throw damp (under pretence of re-establishing order) upon the people's enthusiasm, which it was so important at the moment to cherish and increase? Would they have declaimed so much against those terrible but inevitable executions of the 2d and 3d of September, which were notoriously resolved upon as the only means of securing the Revolution, and which were but deplorable consequences of the avowed and concealed hostilities of the enemies of liberty, and of the grave and imminent dangers which just then threatened the French nation? Would they have converted the sanctuary of the laws into an arena of gladiators, by their virulent and calumnious accusations against the men who had contributed most to sustain the courage of the people? Would they have sought to terrify the rich, to sow division among the people, and speak of federalising France, at a time when the most perfect unity was necessary to repel the armed coalition of Europe's despots? Would they even, after their expulsion from the Convention, have erected altar against altar, kindled a civil war, and laboured to arm the departments against the heroic Commune of Paris, whose destruction the foreign tyrants most panted for? Could, they, in short, have been ignorant that the only means to consolidate the Revolution, and eternalize liberty, peace, and happiness, was to second the people's cause, to satisfy the secret wishes, and give effect to the aspirations of so many millions of oppressed men, and thus uniformly diffuse throughout society, for each and every one of its members, the benefit of the social state.
Unhappy Girondists! Neither was it without reason that you were inculpated of the design to re-establish the throne. Were there not some Royalists amongst those Girondists that fought at Lyons against the Republic under the orders of a king's officer, and received into their ranks the emigrants whom they had released
