"What is a formal act of opposition? If one hundred thousand Austrians were marching toward Flanders, and one hundred thousand Prussians toward Alsace, and the king were to oppose to them ten or twenty thousand men, would he have done a formal act of opposition? If the king, whose duty it is to notify us of imminent hostilities, apprised of the movements of the Prussian army, were not to communicate any information upon the subject to the National Assembly; if a camp of reserve necessary for stopping the progress of the enemy into the interior were proposed, and the king were to substitute in its stead an uncertain plan which it would take a long time to execute; if the king were to leave the command of an army to an intriguing general (La Fayette) of whom the nation was suspicious. If another general (Luckner) familiar with victory were to demand a re-enforcement, and the king were by a refusal to say to him, _I forbid thee to conquer_, could it be asserted that the king had performed a formal act of opposition. "If while France were swimming in blood the king were to say to you, 'It is true that the enemies pretend to be acting for me, for my dignity, for my rights, but I have proved that I am not the accomplice. I have sent armies into the field; these armies were too weak, but the Constitution does not fix the degree of their force. I have assembled them too late; but the Constitution does not fix the time for collecting them. I have stopped a general who was on the point of conquering, but the Constitution does not order victories. I have had ministers who deceived the Assembly and disorganized the government, but their appointment belonged to me. The Assembly has passed useful decrees which I have not sanctioned, but I had a right to act so. I have done all that the Constitution enjoined me. It is therefore impossible to doubt my fidelity to it.' "If the king were to hold this language would you not have a right to reply, 'O king, who, like Lysander, the tyrant, have believed that truth was not worth more than falsehood, who have feigned a love for the laws, merely to preserve the power which enabled you to defy them--was it defending us to oppose to the foreign soldiers forces whose inferiority left not even uncertainty as to their defeat? Was it defending us to thwart plans tending to fortify the interior? Was it defending us not to check a general who violated the Constitution, but to enchain the courage of those who were serving it? No! no! man, in whom the generosity of the French has excited no corresponding feeling, insensible to every thing but the love of despotism, you are henceforth nothing to that Constitution which you have so unworthily violated, nothing to that people which you have so basely betrayed.'"