Beacon Lights of History, Volume 09 | Page 9

if he did not immediately quit Paris." And he did all he could to
induce him, through the voice of his friends, to identify himself with
the cause of reform, as the only means for the salvation of the throne.
He warned him against fleeing to the frontier to join the emigrants, as
the prelude of civil war. He advocated a new ministry, of more vigor
and breadth. He wanted a government both popular and strong. He
wished to retain the monarchy, but desired a constitutional monarchy
like that of England. His hostility to all feudal institutions was intense,
and he did not seek to have any of them restored. It was the abolition of
feudal privileges which was really the permanent bequest of the French

Revolution. They have never been revived. No succeeding government
has even attempted to revive them.
On the removal of the National Assembly to Paris, Mirabeau took a
large house and lived ostentatiously and at great expense until he died,
from which it is supposed that he received pensions from England,
Spain, and even the French Court. This is intimated by Dumont; and I
think it probable. It will in part account for the conservative course he
adopted to check the excesses of that revolution which he, more than
any other man, invoked. He was doubtless patriotic, and uttered his
warning protests with sincerity. Still it is easy to believe that so corrupt
and extravagant a man in his private life was accessible to bribery.
Such a man must have money, and he was willing to get it from any
quarter. It is certain that he was regarded by the royal family, towards
the close of his career, very differently from what they regarded him
when the States-General was assembled. But if he was paid by different
courts, it is true that he then gave his support to the cause of law and
constitutional liberty, and doubtless loathed the excesses which took
place in the name of liberty. He was the only man who could have
saved the monarchy, if it were possible to save it; but no human force
could probably have arrested the waves of revolutionary frenzy at this
time.
On the removal of the Assembly to Paris, the all-absorbing questions
related to finance. The State was bankrupt. It was difficult to raise
money for the most pressing exigencies. Money must be had, or there
would be universal anarchy and despair. How could it be raised? The
credit of the country was gone, and all means of taxation were
exhausted. No man in France had such a horror of bankruptcy as
Mirabeau, and his eloquence was never more convincing and
commanding than in his finance speeches. Nobody could reply to him.
The Assembly was completely subjugated by his commanding talents.
Nor was his influence ever greater than when he supported Necker's
proposal for a patriotic loan, a sort of income-tax, in a masterly speech
which excited universal admiration. "Ah, Monsieur le Comte," said a
great actor to him on that occasion, "what a speech: and with what an
accent did you deliver it! You have surely missed your vocation."

But the finances were in a hopeless state. With credit gone, taxation
exhausted, and a continually increasing floating debt, the situation was
truly appalling to any statesman. It was at this juncture that Talleyrand,
a priest of noble birth, as able as he was unscrupulous, brought forth his
famous measure for the spoliation of the Church, to which body he
belonged, and to which he was a disgrace. Talleyrand, as Bishop of
Autun, had been one of the original representatives of the clergy on the
first convocation of the States-General; he had advocated combining
with the Third Estate when they pronounced themselves the National
Assembly, had himself joined the Assembly, attracted notice by his
speeches, been appointed to draw up a constitution, taken active part in
the declaration of Rights, and made himself generally conspicuous and
efficient. At the present apparently hopeless financial crisis, Talleyrand
uncovered a new source of revenue, claimed that the property of the
Church belonged to the nation, and that as the nation was on the brink
of financial ruin, this confiscation was a supreme necessity. The
Church lands represented a value of two thousand millions of
francs,--an immense sum, which, if sold, would relieve, it was
supposed, the necessities of the State. Mirabeau, although he was no
friend of the clergy, shrank from such a monstrous injustice, and said
that such a wound as this would prove the most poisonous which the
country had received. But such was the urgent need of money, that the
Assembly on the 2d of November, 1789, decreed that the property of
the Church should be put at the disposal of the State. On the 19th