king must show himself ready to recognize that great changes have taken place, that feudalism and absolutism have for ever disappeared, and that a new relation between king and people has arisen, which must be loyally observed on both sides for the future. “Il est certain, d’lailleurs, qu’il faut une grande révolution pour sauver le royaume, que la nation a des droits, qu’elle est en chemin de les recouvrer tous, et qu’il faut non seulement les rétablir, mais les consolider.” To establish this new constitutional position between king and people would not be difficult, because “l’indivisibilité du monarque et du peuple est dans le cœur de tous les Français; il faut qu’elle existe dans l’action et le pouvoir.”
Such was Mirabeau’s programme, from which he never diverged, but which was far too statesmanlike to be understood by the poor king, and far too positive regarding the altered condition of the monarchy to be palatable to the queen. Mirabeau followed up his Mémoire by a scheme of a great ministry to contain all men of mark—Necker as prime minister, “to render him as powerless as he is incapable, and yet preserve his popularity for the king,” the duc de Liancourt, the duc de la Rochefoucauld, La Marck, Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, at the finances, Mirabeau without portfolio, G. J. B. Target, mayor of Paris, Lafayette generalissimo to reform the army, Louis Philippe, comte de Ségur (foreign affairs), Mounier and I. R. G. le Chapelier. This scheme got noised abroad, and was ruined by a decree of the Assembly of the 7th of November 1789, that no member of the Assembly could become a minister; this decree destroyed any chance of that necessary harmony between the ministry and the majority of the representatives of the nation which existed in England, and so at once overthrew Mirabeau’s hopes. The queen utterly refused to take Mirabeau’s counsel, and La Marck left Paris. However, in April 1790 he was suddenly recalled by the comte de Mercy-Argenteau, the Austrian ambassador at Paris, and the queen’s most trusted political adviser, and from this time to Mirabeau’s death he became the medium of almost daily communications between the latter and the queen. Mirabeau at first attempted again to make an alliance with Lafayette, but it was useless, for Lafayette was not a strong man himself and did not appreciate “la force” in others. From the month of May 1790 to his death in April 1791 Mirabeau remained in close and suspected, but not actually proved, connexion with the court, and drew up many admirable state papers for it. In return the court paid his debts; but it ought never to be said that he was bribed, for the gold of the court never made him swerve from his political principles—never, for instance, made him a royalist. He regarded himself as a minister, though an unavowed one, and believed himself worthy of his hire.
Before Mirabeau’s influence on foreign policy is discussed, his behaviour on several important points must be noticed. On the great question of the veto he took a practical view, and seeing that the royal power was already sufficiently weakened, declared for the king’s absolute veto and against the compromise of the suspensive veto. He knew from his English experiences that such a veto would be hardly ever used unless the king felt the people were on his side, and that if it were used unjustifiably the power of the purse possessed by the representatives of the people would, as in England in 1688, bring about a bloodless revolution. He saw also that much of the inefficiency of the Assembly arose from the inexperience of the members and their incurable verbosity; so, to establish some system of rules, he got his friend Romilly to draw up a detailed account of the rules and customs of the English House of Commons, which he translated into French, but which the Assembly, puffed up by a belief in its own merits, refused to use. On the great subject of peace and war he supported the king’s authority, and with some success. Again Mirabeau almost alone of the Assembly held that the soldier ceased to be a citizen when he became a soldier; he must submit to be deprived of his liberty to think and act, and must recognize that a soldier’s first duty is obedience. With such sentiments, it is no wonder that he approved of the vigorous conduct of François Claude Amour, marquis de Bouillé, at Nancy, which was the more to his credit as Bouillé was the one hope of the court influences opposed to him. Lastly, in matters of finance he showed his wisdom: he attacked Necker’s “caisse d’escompte,” which was to have the whole control of the taxes, as absorbing the Assembly’s power of the purse; and he heartily approved of the system of assignats, but with the reservation that they should not be issued to the extent of more than one-half the value of the lands to be sold.
Of Mirabeau’s attitude with regard to foreign affairs it is necessary to speak in more detail. He held it to be just that the French people should conduct their Revolution as they would, and that no foreign nation had any right to interfere with them while they kept themselves strictly to their own affairs. But he knew also that neighbouring nations looked with unquiet eyes on the progress of affairs in France, that they feared the influence of the Revolution on their own peoples, and that foreign monarchs were being prayed by the French emigrés to interfere on behalf of the French monarchy. To prevent this interference, or rather to give no pretext for it, was his guiding thought as to foreign policy. He had been elected a member of the comité diplomatique of the Assembly in July 1790, and became its reporter at once, and in this capacity he was able to prevent the Assembly from doing much harm in regard to foreign affairs. He had long known Armand Marc, comte de Montmorin, the foreign secretary, and, as matters became more strained from the complications with the princes and counts of the empire, he entered into daily communication with the minister, advised him on every point, and, while dictating his policy, defended it in the Assembly. Mirabeau’s exertions in this respect are not his smallest title to the name of statesman; and how great a work he did is best proved by the confusion which ensued in this department after his death. For indeed in the beginning of 1791 his death was very near; and he knew it to be so. The wild excesses of his youth and their terrible punishment had weakened his strong constitution, and his parliamentary labours completed the work. So surely did he feel its approach that some time before the end he sent all his papers over to Sir Gilbert Elliot, who kept them under seal until claimed by Mirabeau’s executors. In March his illness was evidently gaining on him, to his great grief, because he knew that he alone could yet save France from the distrust of her monarch and the present reforms, and from the foreign interference, which would assuredly bring about catastrophes unparalleled in the history of the world. Every care that science could afford was given by his friend and physician, Cabanis, to whose brochure on his last illness and death the reader may refer. The people kept the street in which he lay quiet; but medical care, the loving solicitude of friends, and the respect of all the people could not save his life. When he could speak no more he wrote with a feeble hand the one word “dormir,” and on the 2nd of April 1791 he died.
No man ever so thoroughly used other men’s work, and yet made it all seem his own. “Je prends mon bien où je le trouve” is as true of him as of Molière. His first literary work, except the bombastic but eloquent Essai sur le despotisme (Neufchatel, 1775), was a translation of Robert Watson’s Philip II., done in Holland with the help of Durival; his Considérations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus (London, 1788) was based on a pamphlet by Aedanus Burke (1743–1802), of South Carolina, who opposed the aristocratic tendencies of the Society of the Cincinnati, and the notes to it were by Target; his financial writings were suggested by the Genevese exile, Clavière. During the Revolution he received yet more help; men were proud to labour for him, and did not murmur because he absorbed all the credit and fame. Etienne Dumont, Clavière, Antoine Adrien Lamourette and Etienne Salomon Reybaz were but a few of the most distinguished of his collaborators. Dumont was a Genevese exile, and an old friend of Romilly’s, who willingly prepared for him those famous addresses which Mirabeau used to make the Assembly pass by sudden bursts of eloquent declamation; Clavière helped him in finance, and not only worked out his figures, but even wrote his financial discourses; Lamourette wrote the speeches on the civil constitution of the clergy; Reybaz not only wrote for him his famous speeches on the assignats, the organization of the national guard, and others, which Mirabeau read word for word at the tribune, but even the posthumous speech on succession to the estates of intestates, which Talleyrand read in the Assembly as the last work of his dead friend. Yet neither the gold of the court nor another man’s conviction would make Mirabeau say what he did not himself believe, or do what he did not himself think right. He took
