You complain of the silence of honest men! You quite forget, then, honest men are the objects of your suspicion. Suspicion, if it does not stain the soul of a courageous man, at least arrests his thoughts in their passage to his lips. The suspicions of a good citizen freeze those men whom the calumny of the wicked could not stop in their progress. You complain of their silence! You forget, then, that you have often established an insulting equality between them and men covered with crimes and made up of ignominy. You forget, then, that you have twenty times left them covered with opprobrium by your galleries. You forget, then, that you have not thought yourself sufficiently powerful to impose silence upon these galleries. What ought a wise man to do in the midst of these circumstances? He is silent. He waits the moment when the passions give way; he waits till reason shall preside, and till the multitude shall listen to her voice. What has been the tactic displayed during all these unions? Cambon, incapable of political calculation, boasting his ignorance in the diplomatic, flattering the ignorant multitude, lending his name and popularity to the anarchists, seconded by their vociferations, denounced incessantly, as counter-revolutionists, those intelligent persons who were desirous at least of having things discussed. To oppose the acts of union appeared to Cambon an overt act of treason. The wish so much as to reflect and to deliberate was in his eyes a great crime. He calumniated our intentions. The voice of every deputy, especially my voice, would infallibly have been stifled. There were spies on the very monosyllables that escaped our lips. FOOTNOTES: [7] The most seditious libels upon all governments, in order to excite insurrection in Spain, Holland, and other countries,--TRANSLATOR. [8] It may not be amiss, once for all, to remark on the style of all the philosophical politicians of France. Without any distinction in their several sects and parties, they agree in treating all nations who will not conform their government, laws, manners, and religion to the new French fashion, as _an herd of slaves_. They consider the content with which men live under those governments as stupidity, and all attachment to religion as the effect of the grossest ignorance.