The style of the speech is plain, except in the peroration, but it is solid and convincing. We can well believe that the speaker was interrupted over and over again with loud applause. Here was a financial expert, and a bishop, putting in impressive form the vague dream of so many of them. From the Right, naturally, came a flood of rhetoric. The Abbé Maury bitterly assailed Talleyrand, while Mirabeau vigorously defended the proposal.[17] But Talleyrand took no further share in the debate. He wished to speak again on November 2nd, the day the law was passed, but the closure had to be voted, and he was content to publish his speech (which was written, as was customary in the Assembly). The second speech adds little to the first, which had now, by order of the Assembly, been printed and distributed throughout the country. That he strengthened his position with the Radicals need not be stated. The _Moniteur_ spoke of him as “the youngest, most intrepid, and most enlightened prelate in the ecclesiastical college.” The pamphleteers of the Right denounced him as “the limping devil,” “Judas,” “the disgrace and scandal of the Clergy, the shame of the nobility, the basest and vilest of gamblers.” The last phrase was suggested by the Abbé Maury’s declaration that Talleyrand was acting in concert with Jewish speculators. We may remember that, as Castellane points out, Talleyrand’s proposal would have the effect of reducing his own income to the most slender proportions. We must admit, too, that the appropriation of Church property was only a matter of time; and we must allow the probability of M. de Lacombe’s suggestion that Talleyrand feared the confiscation would be carried with the rough injustice and ignorance now so often exhibited in the Assembly, and he resolved to secure a just and rational settlement by his action. When we have admitted all this, there is little reason for us to seek further and dishonourable motives. We shall find him later boldly reminding the Assembly of their engagement to stoop to no injustice in the matter.