In spite of Pitt's gold, in spite of the maneuvers and intrigues of the protectors of the tyrant, in spite of Le Pelletier's assassination, the people have surrounded the tyrant's scaffold with an impressive calm. But the hords of strangers, emigres and scoundrels wished to make one last effort. Pitt himself had announced that disturbances would break out in Paris within a week. A deputy whom I shall not name told us that Louis Capet's death would bring greate calamities in it train. There is a momentary shortage of bread at the bakers', due as much to panic buying as to the intrigues of those who have caused it; "Fayettists' and aristocrats, masquerading as patriots, were spread about in the societies and groups. A petition was present at the Convention whose style betrayed the authors of this perfidious conspiracy. Groups of women began to assemble on the pretext of protesting against the hight price of soap. Our alarm grew when citizens in the public gallers, misled by the sinster perversity of our enemies, called us speculators and hoarders. Thanks to our own zeal and vigilance, these slanders were silenced and calm was restored; but that the recent events are closely linked with sinister designs is proved by the fact that the Jacobins of Paris were said to be the instigators of the distrubance. We shall not dismean ourselves by justifying our conduct; but , in order to indicate the true cause of the insurrection, we shall place certain important facts before you.

Among the women demonstrators were the servants of known aristocrats; there were even aristocracts in person disguised as sans-culottes: several were arrested and handed over to the courts. A certain Descombrief was arrested near the meeting hall of the Jacobin Club, which he had had the temerity to enter. Some miscreants were ever heard to raise the wanton and sacrilegious cry of Long Live Louis XVI. I must tell you, too, that the warehouses of the large hoarders were left untouched, that the shops of patriots received a particulat and unmerited attention, and that the 'Fayettist' and aristocratic shop keepers displayed a quite unnatural joy and self-composure. In the Faubourg St. Marcel, not a single shopkeeper or merchant was distrubed. The efforts of the agitators who went into the Faubourg St. Antoine were fruitless: they failed completely to rouse the population of that quarter. That is the true people of Paris. They cast down tyrants; they do not invade grocers' shops (Applause.) The people of Paris have overthrown despotism, but they have not laid siege to the counting houses of the Rue des Lombards.How vile are these petty impostors who slander the people because they fear them!

But, my friends and brothers, when they tell you that the Jacobins are the authors of teh recent events, answer that they can only be attributed to those who have sought to oppress the defenders of liberty, to those who have given protection to the emigres; to those who set themselves up as the champions of tyranny, who voted for the appealagaint Louis' sentence of death, who insulted the memory of Michel Le Pelletier; and to those who fomented the insurrection that broke out in the city of Lyons, the house and birthplace of the virtuous Roland, where aristocrats have defiled the emblems of liberty and murdered patriots. (cries of indignation) Several have been thrown into the river; news of this has reached me today...Tell them that liberty, in spite of every sort of perfidy, will triumph over all the arts of intrigue and aristocracy. But our task is to advance liberty by half a century throughtout the world. To achieve this aim, let us combine our efforts in order to protect feeble minds against the poisoned tracts of the partisans of despotism; for never shall the Jacobins be found guilty of injuring the cause of freedom, which they have sworn to defend with their
dying breath. If you doubt this fact, come to see the Jacobins, come to be instructed in their midst; and the men of ill will shall tremble as they trembled before the federal battalions whom they had themselves sumoned to the capital. (Applause)