History of the Girondists, Volume I: Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution — John Shaqi
History of the Girondists, Volume I: Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French RevolutionLamartine, Alphonse de
History
History of the Girondists, Volume I: Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution
Lamartine, Alphonse de
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; Girondists
Cazales himself arose indignantly. "I could not listen tamely to such
calumniating language," he exclaimed. At these words violent murmurs
arose on the left, and cries (order! to the Abbaye! to the Abbaye!)
burst forth from the ranks of the revolution: "What," said the royalist
orator, "is it not enough to have restrained my indignation on hearing
two thousand citizens thus accused, who in all moments of peril have
presented an example of most heroic patience! I have listened to the
previous speaker, because I am, and I assert it, a partisan of the most
unlimited declaration of opinions; but it is beyond human endurance for
me to conceal the contempt I feel for such diatribes. If you adopt the
disbanding proposed you will no longer have an army, our frontiers will
be delivered up to foreign invasion, and the interior to excesses and
the pillage of an infuriated soldiery." These energetic words were the
funeral oration of the old army, the project of the committee was
adopted.
The discussion on the abolition of the punishment of death presented to
Adrien Duport an opportunity to pronounce in favour of the abolition one
of those orations which survive time, and which protest, in the name of
reason and philosophy, against the blindness and atrocity of criminal
legislation. He demonstrated with the most profound logic that society,
by reserving to itself the right of homicide, justifies it to a certain
extent in the murderer, and that the means most efficacious for
preventing murder and making it infamous was to evince its own horror of
the crime. Robespierre, who subsequently was fated to allow of unlimited
immolation, demanded that society should be disarmed of the power of
putting to death. If the prejudices of jurists had not prevailed over
the wholesome doctrines of moral philosophy, who can say how much blood
might not have been spared in France.
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