“What is the conduct prescribed by sound policy to cement the republic? It is to engrave deeply, into all hearts, contempt for royalty and to strike terror into the partisans of the king. To place his crime before the world as a problem… to place an immeasurable space between the memory of what he was and the title of ‘Citizen’, is the very way to make him most dangerous to liberty.

Louis is dethroned by his crimes. He conspired against the Republic: either he is condemned or the Republic is not acquitted. To propose the trial of Louis XVI is to question the revolution. If he may be tried, he may be acquitted; if he may be acquitted, he may be innocent. But if he is innocent, what becomes of the revolution? If he is innocent, what are we but his calumniators [false accusers]?

The coalition is just, his imprisonment is a crime, all the patriots are guilty; and the great cause, which for so many centuries has been debated between crime and virtue between liberty and tyranny, is finally decided in favour of crime and despotism!…

There is another difficulty – to what punishment shall we condemn him? The punishment of death is too cruel, says one. No, says another life is crueller still and we must condemn him to live. Advocates, is it from pity or from cruelty you wish to annul the punishment of crimes? For myself, I abhor the penalty of death; I neither love nor hate Louis, I hate nothing but his crimes.