all me tyrant! Were I such they
would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should
grant them immunity for their crimes, and they would be
grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from
denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support;
there would be a covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have
tools. But the enemies of tyranny,--whither does their path
tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my
protector? To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What
faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and
annihilated so many detected traitors? You, the people,--our
principles--are that faction--a faction to which I am devoted,
and against which all the scoundrelism of the day is banded!

The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know
that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis
of morality. Against me, and against those who hold kindred
principles, the league is formed. My life? Oh! my life I abandon
without a regret! I have seen the past; and I foresee the
future. What friend of this country would wish to survive the
moment when he could no longer serve it,--when he could no
longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I
continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally
triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the
most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred
interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices
which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid
communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have
sometimes feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of
posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who
had thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends
of humanity; and I rejoice that these conspirators against my
country have now, by their reckless rage, traced deep the line
of demarcation between themselves and all true men.

Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in
all times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers
died also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth;
but in very different conditions. O Frenchmen! O my countrymen!
Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade
your souls,