August representatives of the nation,

All peoples have received from you a great example, and France the most precious of benefits. Twenty-five million men, for so long strangers to one another in the midst of their Fatherland, divided by prejudices of vanity, superstition and ignorance have suddenly become friends and brothers. You have achieved this political wonder in proclaiming the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. The book of nature [and] that of religion are the sources from which you have drawn your precepts: all of your decrees emanate from these unadulterated and divine sources.

A universal cry of admiration, of love and of gratitude suddenly raises itself in the kingdom: it resounds energetically to the most distant ends. This free homage given to the sublimity of your works merely precedes the happiness that they will prepare for the French people.

The most noble means for us of strongly expressing our respect, our submission and our enthusiasm, is to walk with zeal and courage in the route that you have traced for us. It is in understanding the extent and the limits of the powers that you have confided to us; it is in unreservedly sacrificing oneself to the performance of our duties; it is in striving to follow the most enlightened, the most economical, the most just principles of administration that we will render to the constitution, of which you are the fathers, the most deserving homage, of it and of you.