THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS
have not hoped to find accomplices in you; you, against whom they let loose with so much fury only because you form a truly popular assembly, and because in you they wished to dishonor the people; you who have been so cowardly accused of tarnishing the glory of the constitutional throne, because several times your avenging hand struck those who wished to make it the throne of a despot; you to whom has been infamously and absurdly attributed intentions contrary to your oaths, as if your well-being was not attached to the Constitution — as if, invested with another power than that of the law, you had a civil list to hire counter-revolutionary satellites; you whom, by the perfidious use of calumny and the language of a hypocritical moderation, they wished to chill toward the interests of the people, because they know that you hold your mission from the people, that the people is your support, and that if by a guilty desertion of its cause you deserved to be abandoned by it, in turn it would be easy to dissolve you; you whom they wanted and, it must be said with sorrow, whom they have succeeded in weakening by fatal divisions, but who doubtless in the present crisis, when the nation is fixing her anxious gaze on you, will feel the need of gathering together all your forces; who will postpone until after the war our noisy quarrels and our wretched dissensions; who will lay down at the foot of the altar of liberty our pride, our jealousies, and our passions; who will not find this mutual hatred
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