It was the policy of this party to insist upon the faults of the royal family, and enlarge on their prejudices against the men and measures of that period when France was successful in foreign war, against the statesman who directed, and the soldiers who achieved her gigantic enterprises. The King, they said, had suffered misfortune without having learned wisdom; he was incapable of stepping beyond the circle of his Gothic prejudices; France had received him from the hand of foreign conquerors, surrounded by an emaciated group of mendicant nobles, whose pretensions were as antiquated and absurd as their decorations and manners. His government went to divide, they alleged, the French into two classes, opposed to each other in merits as in interests;--the emigrants, who alone were regarded by Louis as faithful and willing subjects; and the rest of the nation, in whom the Bourbons saw, at best, but repentant rebels. They asserted, that, too timid as yet to strike an open blow, the King and his ministers sought every means to disqualify and displace all who had taken any active share in the events of the Revolution, and to evade the general promise of amnesty. Under pretext of national economy, they were disbanding the army, and removing the officers of government--depriving thus the military and civil servants of France of the provision which their long services had earned. Louis, they said, had insulted the glory of France, and humiliated her heroes, by renouncing the colours and symbols under which twenty-five years had seen her victorious; he had rudely refused a crown offered to him by the people, and snatched it as his own right by inheritance, as if the dominion of men could be transferred from father to son like the property of a flock of sheep. The right of Frenchmen to choose their own ruler was hereditary and imprescriptible; and the nation, they said, must assert it, or sink to be the contempt, instead of being the pride at once and dread of Europe.