M. Dumont, of Geneva, a distinguished writer on jurisprudence, who died
about two years ago, has left behind him a most interesting work,
entitled ‘Recollections of Mirabeau, and of the two first Legislative
Assemblies.’ This work has been received throughout Europe as one of
great merit and importance, and deservedly so; for it contains, in a
brief space, the best account we have read of the most extraordinary
part of the life of one of the most extraordinary men of modern times;
and with it, the first impulses and movement of the French Revolution.
This most extraordinary man, whose character is still a problem to most
of those who knew him, was Honoré Gabriel Riquetti de Mirabeau, who
ruled the National Assembly, who directed the political opinions of
twenty-five millions of men for two years together, and who was, for
that period, what has been cleverly termed “the intellectual Dictator of
France.” This champion for the people was born a noble; his father was
the Marquis de Mirabeau, of whose ancestors we know nothing; but, on his
mother’s side, he could boast a descent of which even those who dislike
or care not for aristocracy, might be proud; for she was grand-daughter
of Riquet, constructor of the famous canal of Languedoc. Mirabeau was
ugly in face almost to hideousness; and he was perfectly conscious of
this; for, in writing to a lady who had never seen him, he told her to
fancy the face of a tiger that had been marked with the smallpox, and
then she would have an idea of his countenance; and at a later period,
when his voice and gesture and appearance struck the National Assembly
with awe, he was accustomed to say, if any of its members had shown
refractoriness during his absence, “I will go down to the House and show
them my wild boar’s head[1], and that will silence them!”
All the circumstances of the times were favourable to his ambition and
his wonderful talents and energy; but perhaps no man ever begun public
life with more disadvantages, as regarded his own character, against
him. He had been seventeen times in prison; he had deserted his own, and
run away with other men’s wives; he had had the most scandalous lawsuits
with his own family; had been condemned as a criminal; exiled; executed
in effigy; he had written and published one of the most depraved of
books; had led the most dissipated and obscene of lives; and was known
to be a dangerous enemy to those he hated, and an unsure friend to those
he pretended to love. The morals of the French capital had been reduced
in the days of despotism to a degraded standard; but, according to
Dumont, when the name of Mirabeau was first read in the National
Assembly among those elected to represent the French nation, it was
hissed and hooted by all present.
In spite, however, of all this, in a few weeks he was everything with
those men who had considered themselves disgraced by being associated
with him; and gathering influence and power by bounds, and not by slow
steps, he became almost the absolute master of the National Assembly,
the mass of whose members he moved and controlled with as much facility
as the Italian showman moves his wooden puppets. His talents and energy
were indeed, as we have characterized them--_wonderful_, and so was his
eloquence; but these qualities would not of themselves have given him
the supremacy he obtained. There were two other advantages in his
favour: the first of which we have never heard sufficient importance
given to--the second of which M. Dumont alone has clearly, and, it
appears to us, honestly, stated.
During his long imprisonments, Mirabeau had profoundly studied the
science of politics; and during his exile in foreign countries, and
particularly in England, he had attentively investigated the practical
part of government: he was the only man that entered the National
Assembly well acquainted with the necessary forms and true spirit of a
representative government; all the rest had to learn their rudiments.
There was talent--there was even genius in abundance--but all these new
legislators were theorists; Mirabeau was the only practical man.
In the second place, he had a wonderful art (which he had also acquired
during his misfortunes, when his poverty obliged him to write and
compile books and pamphlets for his living) of readily availing himself
of the assistance of other men, and of working up their materials so as
to make them appear his own. The whole matter of many of Mirabeau’s most
admired speeches was furnished by M. Dumont himself, or by another
citizen of Geneva, M. Duroverai; and, generally, he laid under
contribution the information and experience of all his associates. When
he was deficient on any point, or, what was more frequently the case,
pressed for time, he would assemble these gentlemen, and from their
conversation, their notes, or digested essays, get up all he wanted, and
proceed forthwith to astonish the Assembly with his wonderful fund of
knowledge and flashes of eloquence. But that eloquence, it must be said,
did really make the matter his own; his powers of adaptation were as
great as those of invention in other men.
Mirabeau’s hatred to the ancient despotism was implacable; but he seems
to have had no objection to a constitutional monarchy. Great obscurity
still hangs over these matters; but it is said that, seeing the
democratic principle was gaining too much strength, and the revolution
going too far, he had undertaken to stop its march, and that the
negotiations with the Court of the unfortunate Louis XVI., which were
notorious, had for their object the prevention of a republic, and the
establishment of a limited monarchy. His will had hitherto been law; he
had ruled and played with all parties and factions--but whether he could
now have succeeded to the utmost of his wish--whether he could now have
quieted the storm _he_ had mainly raised, and on which he had floated,
we cannot determine; for at the very crisis, at the time when he was
supposed to hold the destinies of his country in his hands, he died in
the forty-second year of his age, after a most agonizing illness of five
days, brought on by his detestable excesses.
His funeral was “rather an apotheosis than a human entombment.” Nearly
all Paris followed his body to the church of Sainte Geneviève,
thenceforward entitled the Pantheon; the melancholy music, the thousand
torches, and the intermittent cannon, producing an effect which has been
forcibly described by many eye-witnesses; and those who had feared and
hated him, those who had been literally enchanted by his eloquence and
genius, saw the grave closed over Mirabeau with awe and feelings that
never can be described.
The career of Mirabeau offers a few consolatory remarks to those who are
gifted with no extraordinary faculties, either for good or for evil.
Mirabeau swayed the destinies of millions,--but he was never
happy;--Mirabeau had almost reached the pinnacle of human power, and yet
he fell a victim to the same evil passions which degrade and ruin the
lowest of mankind. He could never be really great, because he was never
freed from the bondage of his own evil desires. The man who steadily
pursues a consistent course of duty, which has for its object to do good
to himself and to all around him, will be followed to the grave by a few
humble and sincere mourners, and no record will remain, except in the
hearts of those who loved him, to tell of his earthly career. But that
man may gladly leave to such as Mirabeau the music, the torches, and the
cannon, by which a nation proclaimed its loss; for assuredly he has felt
that inward consolation, and that sustaining hope throughout his life,
which only the good can feel;--he has fully enjoyed, in all its purity,
the holy influence of “the peace of God, which passeth all
understanding.”
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Footnote 1:
In French, la hure.
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