with foreign powers, nor their object, which could be nothing
but war.

It was impossible that such conduct steadily pursued by the king's own
brothers could be any thing but most pernicious to his cause. It could not
fail to excite suspicions of his own good faith. It supplied the Jacobins
with pretexts for putting fresh restraints on his authority; and it
frightened even the Constitutionalists, since it was plain that civil war
must ensue, with, very probably, the addition of foreign war also, if
these machinations of the emigrants were not suppressed.

Still, these sweeping proscriptions of entire classes were not yet to the
taste of the nation. Petitions from the country, and even one from the
department of the Seine, were presented to Louis, begging him to refuse
his assent to the decree against the priests; and the feeling which they
represented was so strong, and the reputation of some of the petitioners
stood so high for ability and influence, that the ministers believed that
he could safely refuse his sanction to both the votes. Even without their
advice he would have rejected the decree against the priests, as one
absolutely incompatible with his reverence for religion and its ministers;
and his conduct on this subject supplies one more striking parallel to the
history of the great English rebellion; since there can hardly be a more
precise resemblance between events occurring in different ages and
different countries than is afforded by the resistance made by Charles to
the last vote of the London Parliament against the bishops, and this
resistance of Louis to the will of the Assembly on behalf of the priests,
and by the fatal effect which, in each case, their conscientious and
courageous determination had upon the fortunes of the two sovereigns.

Louis therefore put his veto on both the decrees, with the exception of
that clause in the act against the emigrants which summoned his brothers
to return to the kingdom. But, that no one might pretend to fancy that he
either approved of the conduct of the emigrants or sympathized with their
principles or designs, he issued a circular letter to the governors of the
different sea-ports, in which he remonstrated most earnestly with the
sailors, numbers of whom, as it was reported in Paris, were preparing to
follow their example. He pointed out in it that those who thus deserted
their country mistook their duty to that country, to him as their king,
and to themselves