Citizens, the tyrant is no more. For a long time the cries of the victims, whom war and domestic dissensions have spread over France and Europe, loudly protested his existence. He has paid his penalty, and only acclamations for the Republic and for liberty have been heard from the people.
         We have had to combat inveterate prejudices, and the superstition of centuries concerning monarchy. Involuntary uncertainties and inevitable disturbances always accompany great changes and revolutions as profound as ours. This political crisis has suddenly surrounded us with contradictions.

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         Now, above all, we need peace in the interior of the Republic and the most active surveillance of the domestic enemies of liberty. Never did circumstances more urgently require of all citizens the sacrifice of their passions and their personal opinions concerning the act of national justice which has just been effected. Today the French people can have no other passion than that for liberty.
          Let us, through our union, avert the shame that domestic discord would bring upon our newborn republic. Let us, through our patriotism, avert those horrible shocks, those anarchical and disorderly movements which would soon overwhelm France with disturbances and grief, if our outside enemies, who are fomenting them, could profit therefrom.
         There is no longer time to dispute; we must act. Prompt and effective measures are necessary. The despots of Europe can acquire strength only form our dissensions; they have learned in the Argonne and at Jemappes that one soldier of liberty is worth a hundred slaves.
         Finally, may this cloud off royalism, which too long has hung over our heads, disappear; today it would be more fatal to the utilization of our great national resources than even the scourge of a universal war. May peace and obedience to laws reign in our cities and in our rural districts; this firm and calm attitude on the part of free men will make the tyrants turn pale, will increase the nation’s forces a hundredfold, and will revive our confidence in the perilous duties which you have entrusted to us. May the agitators of the people see public order more strictly maintained, and laws more cherished when they are more attacked. At this time the City of Paris offers the other parts of the Republic a fine example; it is calm. Nevertheless, crime has not been entirely paralyzed in that immense city. An attack has just been made on the national sovereignty. One of your representatives has been assassinated for voting the tyrant’s death,  and his colleagues are still threatened by the vile henchmen of despotism. The lunatics! In their impious oaths they mistake the calm of the people for the slumber of liberty!
          Citizens, it is not one man who has been struck, it is toy; it is not Michel Lepelletier who has been shamefully assassinated, it is you too; it is not the life of a deputy that has been attacked, it is the life of the nation, it is public liberty, it is the sovereignty of the people.
          French people, sensitive and generous despite the calumnies of your enemies, it is in contemplation of grief and indignation that your representatives transmit to you the mournful accents which have just resounded in the temple of liberty. “I am satisfied,” said he, expiring,  “to have given my life for my country. I hope that it will serve to consolidate liberty and equality, and to cause their enemies to be discovered.”