Another class will of course be included in the indemnity,--namely, all
those who by their activity in restoring lawful government shall
obliterate their offences. The offence previously known, the acceptance
of service is a pardon for crimes. I fear that this class of men will
not be very numerous.
So far as to indemnity. But where are the objects of justice, and of
example, and of future security to the public peace? They are naturally
pointed out, not by their having outraged political and civil laws, nor
their having rebelled against the state as a state, but by their having
rebelled against the law of Nature and outraged man as man. In this
list, all the regicides in general, all those who laid sacrilegious
hands on the king, who, without anything in their own rebellious mission
to the Convention to justify them, brought him to his trial and
unanimously voted him guilty,--all those who had a share in the cruel
murder of the queen, and the detestable proceedings with regard to the
young king and the unhappy princesses,--all those who committed
cold-blooded murder anywhere, and particularly in their revolutionary
tribunals, where every idea of natural justice and of their own declared
rights of man have been trod under foot with the most insolent
mockery,--all men concerned in the burning and demolition of houses or
churches, with audacious and marked acts of sacrilege and scorn offered
to religion,--in general, all the leaders of Jacobin clubs,--not one of
these should escape a punishment suitable to the nature, quality, and
degree of their offence, by a steady, but a measured justice.
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