IV. 1789. still subjected; the fundholders, who had so often suffered CHAP. from breaches of the public faith, regarded it as a secure rampart against a national bankruptcy-an event which the magnitude of the deficit had led them seriously to apprehend. Every class was unanimous in favour of a change, from which all were equally destined to suffer. So strong and universal was this feeling, that, out of the sixty electoral districts into which Paris was divided, only three elected the president who had the support of the King. Without tumult, noise, or even a division, fiftyseven of the electoral districts displaced the chairman appointed by the crown, and chose one of their own.* All who were conscious of talents which were unworthily depressed, who sought after distinction which the existing order of society prevented them from obtaining, or who had acquired wealth without obtaining consideration, joined themselves to the disaffected. To those were added the unsettled spirits which the prospect of approaching disturbances always brings forth the insolvent, the reckless, the ardent, the desperate; men who were suffering under the existing state of society, and hoped that any change would ameliorate their condition. A proportion of the nobles, as is ever the case in civil convulsions, also adhered to these principles; at the head of whom was the Duke of Orleans, who brought a princely fortune, a selfish heart, and depraved habits, to forward the work of corruption, but wanted steadiness to rule the faction which his digality had organised; and the Marquis Lafayette, who had nursed a republican spirit amidst American dangers, and revived for the strife of freedom in the Old World the ardent desires which had been awakened by its triumph in the New. The Counts Clermont Tonnerre and Lally Tollendal were also attached to the same principles; the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and the Duc de Liancourt, the Marquis de Crillon, and the Viscount Montmorency-names long celebrated in the annals of * MICHELET'S Histoire de la Revolution, i. 10. pro IV. 1789. CHAP. French glory, and some of which were destined to acquire a fatal celebrity from the misfortunes of those who bore them. A portentous union of rank, talent, and energy! of much which the aristocracy could produce that was generous, with all that the commons could furnish that Dumont, was eminent; of philosophic enthusiasm with plebeian audacity; of the vigour of rising ability with the weight of far-descended splendour.1 1 Lac. vii. 13, 15. 38. Th. i. 41. 20. philosophers men. Two circumstances, however, were remarkable in the composition of the Constituent Assembly, and contributed in a great degree to influence its future proceedings. The first was the almost total exclusion of literary and Absence of philosophical talent, and the extraordinary preponderance and literary of the legal profession. With the exception of Bailly, and one or two other illustrious individuals, no name of literary celebrity was to be found among its members. On the other hand, no less than two hundred and seventynine of the Tiers Etat were advocates, chiefly from the provincial courts of France. This class did not correspond to the barristers of England, who, although not in general men of property, are at least usually possessed of talent and information, but were provincial advocates, stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters of petty war and village vexation. "From the moment," says Mr Burke, "that I read a list of their names, and saw this, I foresaw distinctly, and very nearly as it happened, all that was to follow!" This fact is not surprising, when it is considered, on the one hand, how few of the electors were capable of appreciating the merits of scientific characters, in a country where not one in fifty could read; and, on the other, how closely the necessities of men brought them every where in conWorks, vi. tact with that enterprising and restless body which lived upon their divisions. The absence of the philosophers is not much to be regretted, as, with a few splendid exceptions, they seldom make good practical statesmen ;2 but 2 Lac. vii. 15, v. 93. Burke's 117. Young's Travels, i. 384. IV. 1789. the multitude of lawyers turned out an evil of the first CHAP. magnitude, possessing, as they did, talent without property, and the desire of distinction without the principles which should regulate it. The worst characters in the Revolution-Robespierre, Danton, and almost all their associates belonged to this class. proprietors. The second circumstance was the great proportion of 21. the Tiers Etat who were men of no property or conside- Few great ration in the country-mere needy adventurers, who pushed themselves into the Estates in order to make their fortunes amidst the public convulsions which were anticipated. The leading persons of the banking and commercial interests were indeed members of this body, and took a pride in being considered its heads; but their numbers were inconsiderable compared with those of their destitute brethren, and their talents were not sufficient to enable them to maintain an ascendency. When the contest began, they were speedily supplanted by the clamorous and reckless adventurers, who aimed at nothing but public confusion. France, on this occasion, paid the penalty of her unjust and invidious feudal distinctions. The class was wanting, so well known in England, which, nominally belonging to the Commons, is bound to the Peers by similarity of situation and community of interest; which forms the link between the aristocracy and the people, and at once moderates the pride of the former by their firmness, 20. and the turbulence of the latter by their authority.1* * The Constituent Assembly was composed of 1128 persons, of whom about twothirds were non-proprietors. They were arranged in the following manner :TIERS ETAT. CLERGY. 1 Lac. vii. CHAP. IV. 1789. 22. Birth and Mirabeau. No member of the States-general had yet attained a commanding reputation except Mirabeau. Honore Gabriel Riquetti, Count de MIRABEAU, was born at Bignon, near Nemours, on the 9th March 1749; so that, when the early life of Revolution broke out, he was in the flower of his intellectual strength-aged forty years. He was son of the Marquis de Mirabeau, a distinguished member of the sect of the Economists, and the author of one of the most popular of their works-L'Ami des Hommes. Endowed by nature with a herculean constitution, an ardent temperament, and burning passions, he possessed at once the intellectual vigour, energy of will, and physical strength, which, for good or for evil, were fitted to raise him to the highest distinction among men. Like Voltaire and Rousseau, his character is better portrayed in his life than it could be in the most laboured diatribe or panegyric. His education was discursive rather than complete; varied rather than profound. He acquired a slight knowledge of the classics, studied mathematics under the great La Grange, and at the age of seventeen entered the army. His spirit, however, was too ardent to be satisfied with the After the Assembly was united, and the parties were divided, they stood thus: Thus the Côté Gauche, which ultimately obtained the complete command of the Assembly and France, was at first less than a third of its number. * Nevertheless, the capacity of this distinguished Economist may be measured by the following anecdote:-When the King of Sweden, in 1772, visited Paris, he called on the Marquis de Mirabeau, and having spoken of Montesquieu as a great man, the Marquis replied, "Montesquieu ! les rêveries surannées de cet homme ne sont plus estimées que dans quelques cours du nord."-Biog. Univ. xxix. 89. IV. 1789. amusements of the theatre or the billiard-room, which CHAP. generally at that period filled up the long leisure of a young officer's life, and too aspiring to bend to the general prejudice against a nobleman's reading. He accordingly studied his profession in all its celebrated masters, and published an éloge on the great Condé. Shortly after, he got involved in a love intrigue, and was, at the request of his father, immured in the state prison of the Isle de Rhé, as the best method of cooling his ardent temperament. In 1769, after a short confinement, he served with some distinction in the reduction of Corsica, and soon after 'Biog. Univ. gave proof of the natural bent of his mind, by the publi- (Mirabeau.) cation of an essay on the political oppression which the Genoese had exercised in that island.1 xxix. 91. 23. in life. Wearied with the monotony of a pacific military life, he retired in 1770, at his father's request, to the Limousin, His first where he engaged in country pursuits; but after a short adventures trial, finding these still more foreign to his disposition, in 1771 he returned to Paris, where he soon evinced such a repugnance to the despotic system of the Abbé Terray that he became estranged from his father, and, retiring to Provence, married Mademoiselle de Marignane, a beautiful and richly endowed heiress, but whose fortune, chiefly consisting in inheritances which had not yet devolved to her, was soon grievously embarrassed by her husband's extravagance. And as his father refused to make any arrangement with his creditors, he was constrained to remain in a sort of forced exile on his estates, where, smarting under the consequences of his imprudence, and real or supposed injuries, he wrote, after studying Tacitus and Rousseau, his "Essay on Despotism," in which rays of genius are to be discerned in the midst of the ravings of a disordered fancy. Having soon after broken his ban, or the space allotted to him during his exile, in the prosecution of a private quarrel, he was imprisoned in the chateau of If, from whence he was transferred to that of Joux in the Jura, in 1776. The magic of his conversa |