The weakness of the unfortunate king, who yielded to the new state of things only on compulsion, and turned his eyes towards the emigrants and foreign potentates as deliverers, still hoping for a restoration to absolute power, caused the moderate party of girondists to abandon the cause of royalty altogether, and to believe that there was no possibility of confirming the blessings which they believed that their country reaped from the revolution, nor of protecting the nation from invasion, and the re-establishment of absolutism armed with foreign soldiers for the execution of vengeance, except in the dethronement of the king and erection of a republic. The flight of Louis to Varennes put the seal of conviction on these opinions. It was believed that he fled only to return with the Austrians and the emigrants, armed to exterminate the friends of liberty. Condorcet pronounced on this occasion a violent speech against monarchy, and followed up his attack by a series of bitter articles in a paper called "The Republican." His popularity increased greatly through this course. He was designated by the jacobins as governor of the dauphin, but Louis refused to ratify the nomination. [Sidenote: 1791. Ætat. 47.] He was also appointed commissioner of the treasury; which, at his desire, changed its name to the national instead of the royal treasury; and he was elected member of the new representative assembly by the electors of the city of Paris itself. He drew up the article of "The National Assembly" in the "Chronicle," on this occasion, to enlighten his colleagues on the state of the nation, and the measures proper to be taken for its security. In all his speeches and projected decrees he mingled the most determined opposition to such acts and establishments as he believed to be hostile to the liberty of his country, with mildness and justice towards individuals. Thus, on the 25th of October, he made a speech on the subject of emigration, which at the time that it was delivered excited the warmest applause, and the printing of it was voted. In this discourse, he drew a line between the emigrants who left their country for the sake merely of withdrawing from the political disturbances, and those who entertained the nefarious project of exciting foreign powers to invade France, and meditated carrying arms themselves against their countrymen. He denounced the connivance of the court with the intrigues at Coblentz. He showed the necessity of firm measures, and asserted that an unasked pardon held out to the emigrants gave birth to contempt merely among the haughty nobles who expected a speedy triumph over a class of men whom they despised. A few days after, the mountain party attacked his purposed decree as insufficient and feeble, and it was abandoned.