truth, therefore, is, that to his neither withing nor willing the diffolution of the affembly, you owe your feats as legiflators; and that you are at this moment deliberating on his fate. Do you not know, that being authorised by law to order any part of the army to march where he pleafed, he had but to fpeak, and the affembly would have been immediately diflodged, from its hall, and its functions would have ceafed. But though the deputies had violated the oath imposed on them by their conftituents, he refused, from the mildnefs of his character, and the benevolence of his nature, to permit fuch a measure to be adopted, urged as it was by fome of his beft friends and moft experienced counfellors. Had he been the ftern, cruel, vindictive tyrant, which fo many have denominated him, his truth would have nipped democracy in the bud, and blafted every bloffom of freedom in its fpring. But being gentle, generous, and beneficent, he cherished the grow ing hopes of his fubjects, and encouraged every measure that promifed to remove their burdens, or to relieve their diftreffes. You. have reproached him with the troubles that took place in the month of July, in the fame year, but his only object, as was after wards proved on the trial of the commandant, with whofe defence I was charged, was to protect Paris from factious incendiaries; and you all recollect, that on the 4th of August the purity of his intentions was fully recoguifed, as, on that day, he was proclaimed with great folcinnity the reftorer of French liberty; and a medal was ordered to be ftruck in memory of VOL. XXXV.

the happy event. He is next accufed of ordering the regiment of Flanders to march to Verfailles ; but at that epoch he poffeffed the right as head of the army, though he did not exercise it, till exprefsly requested by the municipal officers; who declared, that without it they could not anfwer for the tranquillity of that city.

"Louis is alfo accufed of corrupting the public mind by paying for publications against liberty, and for libels against the patriots. But let me aik, against what liberty and what patriots? Not against the liberty eftablished by the conftitution, nor against the patriots, by whom it was fupported. Whatever publications were then patronifed by government were prepar→ ed for the fupport of the conftitution: for the plans now calumniated, but never executed, were addreffed to Mirabeau and Fayette, the most popular characters at that time in the nation. But after all, even if thefe papers were criminal, by what evidence are they brought. home to Louis? Is the handwriting and fignature proved? No! It is well known that the king's bureaus and defks were forced open and ranfacked; but where is the. proof that thefe papers were found in them? Why did you vote the previous queftion upon the motion. made for the appearance of Roland, and the locksmith to fubftantiate them? Have you no fufpicion of fraud? and has it not occurred to you that ambitious and unprincipled fpirits may have im pofed upon the convention by forgeries, by fabricating fome papers, and withholding others? Garbled as this evidence appears to be, who can truft it ?

The letter of approbation sent to Bouillé needs no defence, as his conduct was applauded by the affembly: nor could the journey to Varennes be, under all its circumftances, imputed as a crime. Its object was the fafety of Louis and his family, and the discovery of the nation's real fentiments. Can it be criminal in a man, imprifoned by a part of his fubjects, to attempt the recovery of his liberty, that he may know the opinion of the whole? Louis was then apprehenfive, and there was too much reafon for fuch apprehenfion, of being maffacred, together with his family. For the truth of this fact you have his and the queen's teftimony, in the moment of diftrefs and agony, when nature fpeaks undifguifed, and pours forth the genuine language of the heart. Would you deny him the right of felf-prefervation, the firft law of nature? Even that right he did not exercise in its full extent; for when he might have proceeded on his journey by force, he chofe rather to return at every hazard, than to fhed the blood of a fingle fubjet. And yet this is the man who has been reprefented to you as a fanguinary tyrant. Let us hear no more of the age of reafon: call it rather the age of barbarifm and of blood, or wherefore could he be charged with having caufed the tumult in the month of February, and with the murders in the field of Mars; when, on the former occafion, he ordered the multitude to lay down their arms; and at the time of the latter was imprifoned by the nation, never fuffered to move from the fight of his guards, and was excluded from all external communication?

"Thefe arguments (continued M. De Seze) will be confidered, I truft, as complete refutations of the refpective charges which have already been confidered. But were there no other, one circumstance alone is fufficient to answer and confound them all. Pofterior to the date of these transactions the nation demanded, and Louis granted, his fanction to the conftitution; and this mutual compact implied a general oblivion of the paft. On the 14th of September the king accepted the conftitution in form, took the oath in prefence of the affembly, and was crowned by the prefident with a conftitutional crown.

"Having difcuffed thofe charges, which relate to the period prior to the acceptance of the conftitution, I now proceed to thofe which were fubfequent to it; and I must first attend to thofe in which he must have acted by minifters generally forced upon him by the other branch of the legiflature. But even, if it was decreed by the conftitution, which however is not the fact, that he was equally refponfible with his minifters, till I thall prove that no crime can be imputed to him. He is accused of concealing from the affembly the convention of Pilnitz;-but it appears, that as foon as he knew it himself, he communicated it to the affembly: he might indeed have had his previous fufpicions of the emperor, and the king of Pruflia; but fufpicion cannot become the fubject of public communication without incurring the danger of giving offence, or of exciting war.

"Whatever the delay might be which attended the tranfmiflion of the decree for the re-union of Avignon

Avignon to France, it did not originate with the king, but with his minifters, as authentic documents incontrovertibly prove: and that Louis was not concerned in the commotions of the fouth is evident, from the trifling fums borrowed in his brother's name to excite them. What but the most rash and unreflecting fpirit of accufation could induce the framers of the arraignment to affert, that he prevented the army from being recruited in the miniftry of Narbonne, and diforganifed the navy in that of Bertrand; when the affembly declared, that the former, on his refignation, carried with him the regret and confidence of the nation; and the latter, after refifting every general accufation, retired unaffailed by any specific charge?

"On foundations equally weak and unfolid, he is charged with the disasters in the colonies, with the furrender of Longuy and Verdun, and with retaining the Swifs guards in his pay. The convulfions of the colonies arofe from the diffemination of thofe principles of liberty and equality to which you contend, and every one will believe that the king was adverfe. The daftardly and avaritious fpirit of the citizens compelled the troops to furrended Longuy; but did Louis infpire them with fear and with avarice? And let me atk if it was not the king who appointed the commandant of Verdun, whofe honour and bravery determined him to prefer death to the infamy of a furrender? Let me alfo demand the caufe, why the Swils guards received their fome time after the affembly had thought their departure neceffary? The fact was, that a final

pay

adjustment had not taken place between the Swifs cantons, and the minifters: but as foon as that bufinefs was fettled, the Swifs battalions quitted France."

M. de Seze now proceeded to examine thofe charges by whichthe king was perfonally affected: the first related to his refual to ratify the decrees against the priests." Without enforcing," continued he," the facred rights of confcience, without infifting on the conflitutional right Louis poffefied of refufing his fauction to the decrees of the affembly, it will be fufficient, I truft, for me to obferve, that the majority of the people were adverse to thofe decrees, and that their defolating confequences have juftified his oppofition to them.-- He certainly prevented a camp from being formed near Paris, but it was to fruftrate the ufe which the Jacobins intended to make of it against the affembly and himself. He, therefore, fubftituted a camp at Soiffons, which fed our armies on the frontiers with fubfidiary troops, and faved France in the hour of invafion.

"The charge arifing from the fuppofed letter to the bifhop_of Clermont requires no anfwer. For even allowing it to be real, it contains little more than the with of a devout perfon anxious for the advancement of religion. If I recover my power,' fays Louis, according to the language of the letter, I mean to restore the Chriftian religion.'- The abolition of Chriftianity made no part of the conftitution, and with what reafon can it be confidered as criminal in the king to wifh for the refloration of that public worship, towhich he had been habituated from

his cradle, and to which the greater part of his people looked forward with pious folicitude. The continuance of pay to his guards was an act of juftice and humanity. By a decree of the affembly the guards were to be re-organifed, and he only continued their fubfiftence till that event was completed.

"Of aid granted to the emigrants there is no proof.-Rochefort, the only example mentioned, neither was nor is an emigrant: while maintenance granted by Louis to his two nephews, of whom the elder was only fourteen, and the younger eleven years of age, fhould be confidered as a meritorious tranfaction: befides, there was then no law that afcertained the age, at which emigration became criminal, and the affembly has fince fettled it at a more advanced period of life than eleven and fourteen years. The two young princes were entirely without fupport; and it would have ill become Louis, because he was a king, to have forgotten the duties of a kinfman. And what just reafon can be affigned, why he fhould not relieve the wants of fuffering relatives, or aflign rewards to faithful fervants out of the civil lift, of which he had the fole difpofal? That Louis conftantly oppofed the efforts of the emigrants in general might be proved by a variety of facts; but I thall only mention one of them. Being informed by his refident at Francfort, that the emigrants, who attempted to procure arms and ammunition in that city, were prevented by the magiftrates; Louis directed the refident to return them thanks, and to requeft them to perfevere in their refufal. The money for which Bouillé had an order

never came from the king. The order was from his brother, to whom he never administered any pecuniary aid. He had indeed from motives of humanity, in 1789, become his fecurity for a fum that did not amount to twenty thousand pounds, and that was all.

"Of his fuppofed intrigues at foreign courts, two examples are all that can be produced, and his minifters are faid to have been Dumonftier and Gouffier; but it is now in proof, that Dumonftier was not the agent of Louis, but of his brother; and that Goutlier had received his letters of recall three days before he began his intrigues against his fucceffor, and the new order of things. Of the ftrange charge of carrying on an iniquitous traffic in corn, he is entirely cleared by the oath, and the letters of Septeuil, which were the only evidence brought to prove it. The project which is fuppofed to juftify the accufation of fuborning and corrupting feveral members of the legiflative affembly, relieved the national treasury to the amount of ten millions of lives, and charged the civil lift with the intereft.-But let me afk if corruption ever applied before to an act of felf-denial?-Muft Louis be expofed to thame and odium for replenishing your exchequer out of his own pocket? This is a fpecies of corruption, of which generous and difinterefted princes, like Louis, are alone capable.-That he paid his guards at Coblentz would, if true, be a grave and heavy charge, and his accufers feem to have been fenfible of its weight; for they fuppreffed the paper which would have rendered it a nullity, and prevented its appearance in the act of accufation.