hocked his accomplices,
whose nature had not much of tenderness. As a member of the first
assembly, as a Minister under the convention, and as a deputy of the
Council of Five Hundred, he always opposed the liberty of the Press. "The
laws, you say" (exclaimed he, in the Council), "punish libellers; so they
do thieves and housebreakers; but would you, therefore, leave your doors
unbolted? Is not the character, the honour, and the tranquillity of a
citizen preferable to his treasures? and, by the liberty of the Press,
you leave them at the mercy of every scribbler who can write or think.
The wound inflicted may heal, but the scar will always remain. Were you,
therefore, determined to decree the motion for this dangerous and
impolitic liberty, I make this amendment, that conviction of having
written a libel carries with it capital punishment, and that a label be
fastened on the breast of the libeller, when carried to execution, with
this inscription: 'A social murderer,' or 'A murderer of characters!'"

Roederer has belonged to all religious or antireligious sects, and to all
political or anti-social factions, these last twenty years; but, after
approving, applauding, and serving them, he has deserted them, sold them,
or betrayed them. Before the Revolution, a Counseller of Parliament at
Metz, he was a spy of the Court on his colleagues; and, since the
Revolution, he served the Jacobins as a spy on the Court. Immoral and
unprincipled to the highest degree, his profligacy and duplicity are only
equalled by his perversity and cruelty. It was he who, on the 10th of
August, 1792, betrayed the King and the Royal Family into the hands of
their assassins, and who himself made a merit of this infamous act. After
he had been repulsed by all, even by the most sanguinary of our parties
and partisans, by a Brissot, a Marat, a Robespierre, a Tallien, and a
Barras, Bonaparte adopted him first as a Counsellor of State, and
afterwards as a Senator. His own and only daughter died in a
miscarriage, the consequence of an incestuous commerce with her unnatural
parent; and his only, son is disinherited by him for resenting his
father's baseness in debauching a young girl whom the son had engaged to
marry.

With the usual consistency of my revolutionary countrymen, he has, at one
period, asserted that the liberty of the Press was necessary for the
preservation both of men and things, for the protection of governors as
well as of the governed, a