"RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE. "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. "_To the
People_.

"Citizens,--The people of Paris have shaken off the yoke endeavoured
to be imposed upon them."

What yoke, gentlemen--I beg pardon, citizens of the Committee? I assure
you, as part of the people, that I have never felt that any one has
tried to impose one upon me. I recollect, if my memory serves me, that a
few guns were spoken of, but nothing about yokes. Then the expression
"People of Paris," is a gross exaggeration. The inhabitants of
Montmartre and their neighbours of that industrious suburb are certainly
a part of the people, and not the less respectable or worthy of our
consideration because they live out of the centre (indeed, I have always
preferred a coal man of the Chaussée Clignancourt to a coxcomb of the
Rue Taitbout); but for all that, they are not the whole population.
Thus, your sentence does not imply anything, and moreover, with all its
superannuated metaphor, the rhetoric is out of date. I think it would
have been better to say simply--

"Citizens,--The inhabitants of Montmartre and of Belleville have
taken their guns and intend to keep them."

But then it would not have the air of a proclamation. Extraordinary
fact! you may overturn an entire country, but you must not touch the
official style; it is immutable. One may triumph over empires, but must
respect red tape. Let us read on:

"Tranquil, calm in our force, we have awaited without fear as
without provocation, the shameless madmen who menaced the Republic."