‘Since your deputies have buried all their rivalry, all their contending interests, in a just and necessary union, the national assembly has laboured to establish equal laws for the common safety. It has repaired great errours, and broken the links of countless thraldoms, which degraded human nature: it has kindled the flame of joy and hope in the bosoms of the people, the creditors of earth and nature, whose dignity has been so long tarnished, whose hearts have been so long discouraged: it has restored the long-obscured equality of frenchmen, estabblished their common right to serve the state, to enjoy it’s protection, to merit it’s rewards: in short, conformably to your instructions, it is gradually erecting, on the immutable basis of the imprescriptible rights of man, a constitution mild as nature, lasting as justice, and the imperfections of which, the consequence of the inexperience of it’s authors, will easily be repaired. We have had to contend with the inveterate prejudices of ages, whilst harassed by the thousand uncertainties which accompany great changes. Our successors will have the beaten track of experience before them; we have had only the compass of theory to guide us through the pathless desert. They may labour peaceably; though we have had to bear up against storms. They will know their rights, and the limits of their power: we have had to recover the one, and to fix the other. They will consolidate our work—they will surpass us—What a recompense! Who shall dare, mean while, to assign limits to the grandeur of France? Who is not elevated by hope? Who does not felicitate himself on being a citizen of it’s empire? ‘Such, however, is the crisis of the finances, that the state is threatened with dissolution before this grand order of things can find it’s centre. The cessation of the revenue has banished specie. A thousand circumstances hasten it’s exportation. The sources of credit are exhausted; and the wheels of government are almost at a stand. If patriotism then step not forward to the succour of government, our armies, our fleets, our subsistence, our arts, our trade, our agriculture, our national debt, our country itself, will be hurried towards that catastrophe, when she will receive laws only from disorder and anarchy—Liberty would have glanced on our sight, only to disappear for ever, only to leave behind the bitter consciousness, that we did not merit the possession. And to our shame, in the eyes of the universe, the evil could be attributed solely to ourselves. With a soil so fertile, industry so productive, a commerce so flourishing, and such means of prosperity—what is this embarrassment of our finances? Our wants amount not to the expence of a summer’s campaign—and our liberty, is it not worth more than those senseless struggles, when even victory has proved ruinous?