The entire Assembly rose by a spontaneous movement and passed the motion of Monsieur Gregoire by acclamation. I rise to a point of order. . . . It would be a frightful example for the people to see an Assembly commissioned with its dearest interests voting in a moment of enthusiasm. I move that the question be discussed. Surely it is quite unnecessary to discuss what everybody agrees on.
Kings are in the moral order what monsters are in the physical.
Courts are the workshops of crimes, the lair of tyrants. The history of kings is the martyrology of nations. I demand that my motion be put to vote, and that later it be supplied with a formal justification worthy of the solemnity of the decree. The form of your decree would be only the history of the crimes of Louis XVI, a history already but too well known to the French people. I demand that it be drawn up in the simplest terms.