"It is proposed to you to determine the epoch, and the conditions of the use of a new constituent power; it is proposed to you to undergo twenty-five years of disorder and anarchy before you have the right to amend. Remark, in the first place, under what circumstances it is proposed to you to impose silence on the appeals of the nation as to the new laws; it is when you have not as yet heard the opinion of those whose instincts and passions these new laws favour, when all contending passions are subdued by terror or by force; it is when France is no longer expounded but through the organ of her clubs. When it has been a question of suspending the exercise of the royal authority itself, what has been the language addressed to you from this tribune? You have been told '_we should have begun the Revolution from thence; but we were not aware of our strength_.' Thus it only remains for your successors to measure their strength in order to attempt fresh enterprises. Such, in effect, is the danger of making a violent revolution and a free constitution march side by side. The one is only produced in tumultuous periods, and by passions and weapons, the other is only established by amicable arrangements between old interests and new. (Laughter, murmurs, and 'that is the point.') We do not count voices, we do not discuss opinions, to make a revolution. A revolution is a storm during which we must furl our sails, or we sink. But after the tempest, those who have been beaten by it, as well as those who have not suffered, enjoy in common the serenity of the sky. All becomes calm, and the horizon is cleared. Thus after a revolution, the constitution, if it be good, rallies all its citizens. There should not be one man in the kingdom who incurs danger of his life in expressing his free views of the constitution. Without this security there is no free will, no expression of opinion, no liberty; there will be only a predominant power, a tyranny popular or otherwise, until you have separated the constitution from the workings of the revolution. Behold all these principles of justice, morality, and liberty which you have laid down, hailed with joy, and oaths renewed, but violated immediately with unprecedented audacity and rage. It is at a moment when the holiest or the freest of constitutions has been proclaimed that the most infamous attempts against liberty, against property,--nay, what do I say?--against humanity and conscience, are multiplied and perpetuated! Does not this contrast alarm you? I will tell you wherefore. Yourselves deceived as to the mechanism of political society, you have sought its regeneration without reflecting on its dissolution; you have considered as an obstacle to your plans the discontent of some, and as a means the enthusiasm of others. Only desirous to overcome obstacles you have overturned principles, and taught the people to brave every thing. You have taken the passions of the people for auxiliaries. It is to raise an edifice by sapping the foundations. I repeat to you then, there is no free and durable constitution out of despotism but that which terminates a revolution, and which is proposed, accepted, and executed, by forms, calm, free, and totally different from the forms of the Revolution. All we do, all we seek for with excitement before we reach this point of repose, whether we obey the people or are obeyed by them; whether we would flatter, deceive, or serve them, is but the work of folly,--madness. I demand, therefore, that the constitution be peaceably and freely accepted by the majority of the nation and by the king. (Violent murmurs.) I know we call the national will, all that we know of proposed addresses, of assent, of oaths, agitations, menaces, and violence. (Loud expressions of angry dissent.) Yes, we must close the Revolution by beginning to destroy every tendency to violate it. Your committees of inquiry, laws respecting emigrants, persecutions of priests, despotic imprisonments, criminal proceedings against persons accused without proofs, the fanaticism and domination of clubs; but this is not all, licence has gone to such unbounded extent,--the dregs of the nation ferment so tumultuously:--(Loud burst of indignation.) Do we then pretend to be the first nation which has no dregs? The fearful insubordination of troops, religious disturbances, the discontents of the colonies, which already sound so ominously in our ports,--if the Revolution does not stop here and give place to the constitution;--if order be not re-established at once, and on all points, the shattered state will be long agitated by the convulsions of anarchy.