power," said the haughty democrat to M. Frochot, "the king of France in his authority, and the people in its fury, and certainly I shall not give way before M. Mirabeau.' The king and queen were, in the mean time, delighted with the hopes held out to them by Mirabeau. The queen repeated, in the most positive manner, that the king had no wish to recover his authority to the extent formerly enjoyed, and all they asked was to know what would tend most to cement the alliance with Mirabeau. M. la Marck proposed an honest independence, which, by permitting him to neglect his personal interests, would better enable him to devote himself to state affairs. With this view his debts were first inquired into, and even his marriage attire was found to be not yet paid for! Altogether, his liabilities amounted, with the 400 louis advanced by M. la Marck, to 208,000 francs, which the king undertook to pay, besides granting him an allowance of 100 louis a month. This was effected through the medium of M. de Fontanges, Archbishop of Toulouse. M. la Marck was further intrusted, personally by the king, with four notes of 250,000 francs each, to be given to Mirabeau at the end of the session. These notes were restored to the king on the occasion of the orator's death. Mirabeau was in ecstasies, both with the pecuniary assistance tendered to him, and the confidence reposed in his powers. Unfortunately, instead of devoting himself in consequence, and, as had been anticipated, to public business, he took a large house, hired a coach and horses, engaged an establishment, and launched forth into a gay and expensive mode of life, calculated to excite suspicions as to the source whence his means were derived. Still he did not fail in his duty to the king. He felt that the king's authority could not be re-established except by armed force, and his speech upon the right of peace and war was one which reflected more credit upon him than perhaps any other. It also provoked some of the more ardent republicans, as Lameth, Duport, Barnave, and others, so far as to endanger his life. He transmitted notes daily to the court, containing a detailed report of what was going on, and also his own opinions upon passing events. His life was one of unnatural activity. In the Assembly, in his cabinet, in public and in private life, he was never still a moment. He saw that the political crisis had attained its zenith, and he spared neither trouble, labour, nor time, to combat it. What he mainly insisted upon was money, more money, and intelligent agents to disperse it to advantage. He had also a more complete plan developed, which is to be found, for the first time, in the present papers, under date of the 23rd December, 1790. In a note of the 15th of September, 1790, he had already declared his opinions. "The king has only one stay, and that is his wife. There is no safety for her except in the re-establishment of royal authority. I feel convinced that she would not care for life without the crown, and I feel assured that she will not be able to preserve her life if she cannot preserve her crown." "The moment will come," he also said, in another note, "when it will be necessary to see what a woman and a child can do on horseback." For some time the relations of Mirabeau with the court were confined to the above-mentioned reports and written advices, but after a time an interview at St. Cloud took place, which was publicly stigmatised in a paper called L'Orateur du Peuple. The visit was further questioned and evaded in the Assembly, but there were not wanting persons in the streets to cry out, "La grande trahison de M. de Mirabeau!" The king in the mean time, with his usual indecision, would neither change his ministry, nor even select a member of the cabinet to whom the newly established relations with Mirabeau could be confided. Everything at the Tuileries was carried on with the most extraordinary apathy and indifference; they seemed merely to live from day to day. On the 13th of August, 1790, the court, however, received a note from Mirabeau, which roused their fears to the utmost. In this memorandum he pointed out that civil war was inevitable, and suggested, as a means of defence, that the army should be duly disposed, more particularly the Swiss, on whom he placed (and, as events showed, not without reason) great reliance, and regard should be had to the choice of officers. He also recommended the king to withdraw to Fontainebleau. The little attention in this, as in other matters, that was paid to his advice, greatly discouraged Mirabeau. "Must I write more notes ?" he said. "What use are they? My advice is never followed." What added still more to his discouragement, was finding himself most thwarted at court by a M. Bergasse, more distinguished as a mesmerist than a politician. On the 27th of March, 1791, Mirabeau, who had never been able to bring his great plan for saving the monarchy into effect, fell ill. He had had an attack of jaundice at the opening of the Assembly, and this was followed by an affection of the eyes, which nothing could relieve. Strange to say, the very next day of his illness-the 28th of March-the populace assaulted and dispersed the club of constitutional Royalists, and from that day forward the supremacy of the Jacobins was established. On hearing this the sick man exclaimed, "I carry away with me the mourning of the monarchy; after my death the factions will dispute with one another the possession of the rags." Mirabeau was attended in his illness by the celebrated Cabanis; he became much worse on the 29th, and finally expired on the 2d of April, 1791. Sixteen days after his death-the 18th of April-all that he had foretold began to take place, and the king wishing to go with the queen and his children to Saint Cloud, the whole of the court were detained prisoners in the Tuileries. The memory of so extraordinary a person was much in need of the light that this voluminous and most comprehensive correspondence has thrown upon it. We are not bound to believe, that with so turbulent and restless a spirit, irritated as he was against all in authority, that his correspondence or his friendship, with so placid an aristocrat as M. la Marck, was altogether frank, confidential, and sincere. Their natures were too distinct to admit of such a supposition. But there can be no doubt that Mirabeau's tendencies were towards a constitutional monarchy, never to a republic, and it is, therefore, to be opined that he kept up his close relations with M. la Marck, in order to counteract the harm done to his conscience and his political principles by the part which his position and his passions forced upon him in the Assembly and in public life. He had also, it is evident, private ambition to gratify. As to his having been subsidised in the progress of the very peculiar and yet very comprehensible political game which he had to play, it signifies nothing, nor does it reflect discredit on the political character of the man, although it does, as does the whole history of his life, upon his prudence and morality. Mirabeau was no exception to a very common rule, and without taking into consideration the position in which he was placed after his connexion with the court, with respect to the Assembly and to ministers, apparently acting with both, and yet anxious for their overthrow, for the avowed purpose of establishing a constitutional monarchy, it is as impossible to understand the man as it has hitherto been impossible to write anything like an accurate biography of him. CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. To whom all Communications for the Editor are to be addressed. ** REJECTED ARTICLES CANNOT BE RETURNED. SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND. NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. BY CYRUS REDDING. An individual of no mean celebrity, once a distinguished contributor to the New Monthly, is gathered to his fathers. Richard Lalor Sheil belonged to more stirring times than the present generation knows anything about. He had won his honours bravely, and by his death has lessened the few, of whom a large proportion of the living must acquire the tale from the lip of individuals of advanced life or the page of the historian. Employed in destroying letters, the accumulation of a long period of time, I had some of Sheil's in my hand when the newspaper was brought which contained the account of his decease-one of those coincidences from which the superstitious strengthen their irrationalities. I put the letters aside; they had become relics consecrated by nearly thirty years' acquaintance, and their preservation was natural. His moral courage, his brilliant eloquence, his well-digested learning, and the sensations he sometimes caused in the public mind, all these became more strongly depictured on recollection from that moment. There is a religion in sanctifying and preserving the memory of rare qualities. Few, it may be truly said, were impelled by honester motives than Sheil. He saw and suffered from the vices of the prevalent system of his day in Irish rule. He abhorred the venality of its instruments, and he determined to assist in changing both the rulers and their measures. He had a pre dominant desire to see his countrymen rise in the social scale to the level of English privilege; and he lived to find his wishes fulfilled, in no small degree owing to his own exertions. That level once attained, it belonged to themselves to make the most beneficial use of it. The great stimulus of Sheil to exertion as a public character ceased when the Emancipation Act placed England and Ireland upon the same footing. The ardour of the patriot subsided into the negation of the statesman. Hence, while in office, comparatively little was heard of one of the most intrepid and eloquent advocates of salutary freedom of which his country had to boast. A speech now and then flashed forth in parliament to sustain the views of the party to which he belonged, and thus the country was made acquainted with his political existence; but the walls of the House of Commons of late years have deadened rather than quickened that fervid oratory with which they once echoed. They have become the dumb auditors of homely conversation, and sometimes of unseemly squabbling. They no longer witness animated scenes of senatorial eloquence. Not that such displays ever operated upon a division, July.-VOL. XCII. NO. CCCLXVII. |