Several attempts have been made to support this
chimerical _Democratie Royale_: the first was by La Fayette, the last by
Dumouriez: they tended only to show that this absurd project had no
party to support it. The Girondists under Wimpfen, and at Bordeaux, have
made some struggle. The Constitutionalists never could make any, and
for a very plain reason: they were _leaders in rebellion_. All their
principles and their whole scheme of government being republican, they
could never excite the smallest degree of enthusiasm in favor of the
unhappy monarch, whom they had rendered contemptible, to make him the
executive officer in their new commonwealth. They only appeared as
traitors to their own Jacobin cause, not as faithful adherents to the
king.
In an address to France, in an attempt to treat with it, or in
considering any scheme at all relative to it, it is impossible we should
mean the geographical, we must always mean the moral and political
country. I believe we shall be in a great error, if we act upon an idea
that there exists in that country any organized body of men who might be
willing to treat on equitable terms for the restoration of their
monarchy, but who are nice in balancing those terms, and who would
accept such as to them appeared reasonable, but who would quietly submit
to the predominant power, if they were not gratified in the fashion of
some constitution which suited with their fancies.
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