You've heard much ado by this point about the sermon Select Valia Wain gave on the floor of the Constitutional Convention -- the precise words of which are of late difficult to find -- and exist in a state of doubt as to what she even said, and her intention in saying it, and you do not know which words were but later added, or which intentions were layered palimpsest over her own.

When she was today tried on incitement charges -- of which she was found innocent -- the Select found time to explain her original motivations, which are published here unaltered as I heard them.

I thought that there is an important virtue, in the speeches from the Galtan history books, and in Pezzack, and it is not an uncomplicated virtue. But what virtue is? Men should be brave, and bravery can be stupidity. They should be decisive, and that can be rashness. 

The virtue of the people of Pezzack, and of the people in the speeches from Galt, is that they know they are free. They know it even when the armies of the enemy are bearing down on them; they know it even when they are dragged through the city to the site of their execution. A person cannot be threatened, if they have decided already that the worst that can be done to them does not frighten them. They know that they obey their rulers because their rulers are just, and that if their rulers were not just they would obey them no longer. They think "I obey Iomedae because She sees farther than I, across the great battlefield," instead of "I obey Iomedae because She is a god and I am nothing besides a god." They laugh in the face of Asmodeus, because He has nothing to offer but threats. They hear the Queen's speech and they think if it is a sensible speech or not, because they might leave and go somewhere else if they don't think much of the sense of the Queen.

I believed last Toilday that the people of Cheliax need this virtue. I am less sure, now. I still think it is a very important virtue. But I cannot dispute that it has to come with wisdom or it will do far more harm than good.

I did not with my speech intend to bestir any mobs. 

I think that a people with this virtue will not in the end tolerate Evil rulers, and I think that this virtue spreads, the way all Good things spread, because it is witnessed and imitated, and I think that now that Cheliax is free this virtue will spread. I hope it also spreads with wisdom. I hope it also spreads with trust in Her Majesty's Good government. I do not want anyone to imagine that murder and madness are the exercises of this virtue.

 I wish I had never given the speech, of course.

But the thing I was trying to do was not to say that they should rebel.

It was to say that they were free, and to explain what that means.