XXXVIII. men,* adhering to the constitution one day, and plotting CHAP. against it the next. The queen awoke from despair, merely to pursue chimerical hopes and projects. The eminent men of the assembly, its orators and statesmen, showed little save profound distrust of each other. There was a considerable number of the nobles and clergy who, if well instructed and guided, might have joined the constitutionalists in preventing the revolution from going further. Instead of doing so, they adopted a policy of spite, and sought to avenge themselves for the loss of rank and privileges by voting with the republicans every destructive and precipitate measure. The framers of an English constitution, Mounier, Malouet, and Necker, had but a small following. The latter altogether lost his prestige. His financial arrangements were no longer crowned with success, whilst in political affairs he was bewildered and could take no initiative. Mirabeau had, long before the events of October, offered his co-operation to the constitutionalists, that is his secret co-operation, for as there was none but the popular breeze blowing, he necessarily spread his sails to catch it. Necker and Mounier, like prudes, rejected Mirabeau's offer, and he with justice denounced them as incapable. After the events of October, Mounier withdrew from the assembly,† first to attempt vainly provincial resistance, and then to emigrate. Mirabeau was the pivot on which turned the revolutionary and conservative parties. And yet Barnave and the Lameths continued to side with the revolutionists out of mere personal antagonism to him. In reality they were of the same opinion as he, as they afterwards manifested. But they would accept "If you want to form an idea of Louis the Sixteenth's character," said his brother, the future Louis the Eighteenth, to the Count de La Marck, "take a number of ivory balls, oil them, and try to hold them together." † Clermont-Tonnerre, Lally Tol- CHAP. neither his lead nor his alliance; and if his oratory overXXXVIII. whelmed them in the assembly, they took their revenge at the Jacobin club. Beyond them sat the republicans, such as Robespierre, who were as dissatisfied with having a king to rule them as their antagonists were with a monarch in name, without power or prerogative. No one was really more horrified at the events of October than Mirabeau. He had always seen the necessity of a strong government, and with this view would have preferred any other prince of his family to Louis the Sixteenth. Seeing this impossible, he sought, however indirectly, to strengthen the king's hands and office. Mirabeau was for the absolute veto, and Barnave carried the suspensive veto against him. Soon after the removal of the court Mirabeau drew up a plan of conduct for it, the principal recommendations of which were, after due preparation, to transfer the seat of government and the assembly to Rouen, and appeal to the provinces of the west against the tyranny of the Parisian mob. Nothing could, however, be done without an able ministry. Mirabeau complained that all the king's ministers were nullities, Necker included, who knew nought but finance, and whose finance was no longer fitted for the troublesome atmosphere of the revolution. Long and intricate negotiations followed between Mirabeau and those who held place or wielded power. The great orator took especial pains to captivate Lafayette, and to persuade him of the necessity of dominating the king, and influencing the country by the appointment to office of the principal men of the national assembly. Lafayette was at first persuaded, and exerted himself to bring about the desired solution. But the selfish resistance of the actual ministry, the hesitation of the king,* and, above all, the repugnance "What the court wants to find," writes Mirabeau to La Marck, "is an amphibious being, who to the talents of a man might add the soul of a lacquey."-Correspondance. which Lafayette felt to eject or be unjust to Necker, CHAP. caused every effort to fail. The crown was thus isolated from the liberal conservatives in the assembly; and these, repudiated by the king, and fearing to be so by the people, wanted the opportunity or the courage to make any systematical opposition to the series of measures by which the assembly destroyed all the old institutions and administration of the kingdom without founding any new ones, capable of standing on any other basis than the popular will. Events more powerful than legislative acts had annihilated the royal power. The provinces no longer obeying either intendants, commandants, or tax collectors, authority necessarily merged in the municipalities; but as these were formed of the middle class, the men who lived on wages joined in refusing to obey. It was the same in Paris as everywhere else. The national assembly was called upon to restore order, and establish some fulcrum upon which authority could be based. Mirabeau himself proposed universal municipalities; but he could only found them upon election, and there was no certainty of the municipality consisting of other elements than the non-propertied. The assembly, in fixing the constitution, decreed that the payment of a sum in direct contribution equal to three days' labour was necessary for the primary franchise. Such alone were considered active citizens, and allowed to form portion of the national guard. In peaceful times such a restriction might have had its effect; but, with the sovereign people master, how was such a law to be enforced? Mirabeau soon saw the futility of what he himself had proposed, and then his continued cry was, “Make an executive; strengthen an executive. Till you have done this, you have done nothing; and your rights of man are a humbug." The assembly did not, and could not, create an executive. They had full XXXVIII. CHAP. XXXVIII. powers to demolish, none to rebuild; and the nation was so pleased and occupied by the work of devastation that it looked on in comparative quiet as long as it lasted. The first edifice to which they applied the axe, after the transfer of the assembly to Paris, was the church. The conviction that church property was available for public uses had long taken possession of the assembly, and was the chief, though secret cause, of their rejecting or spoiling each successive proposal of Necker. During the previous August the finance minister had presented to the assembly a lugubrious picture of his distress, and demanded an immediate loan of thirty millions. The Marquis de Lacoste and Alexander Lameth took the opportunity of observing that the property of the clergy was at the disposal of the nation. As the assembly would allow no more than 4 per cent., the loan was not taken. After the events of October, and his subsequent retirement, Necker proposed a contribution of the fourth part of every one's revenue. This, although voted by the assembly, did not answer the expectation of the minister. In the meantime the report of the committee upon church property was drawn up and read to the assembly by Talleyrand, then Bishop of Autun. That prelate established, to the satisfaction of the assembly, that "a beneficed ecclesiastic had merely a right to so much of church revenue as was necessary to his subsistence; of the surplus he was but an administrator for life."* But tithes having already been suppressed, along with all feudal dues, by the vote of August, Talleyrand had but the remaining two-thirds of church property, consisting of its immovable, to dispose of. He valued the whole at 150 millions of livres annually. He proposed leaving a hundred to support the clergy, Talleyrand's report. Lameth. Maury. XXXVIII. and selling the rest for the repeal of taxes and to meet CHAP. the exigencies of the state. The discussion was long and animated, the clergy finding its chief advocate in Maury, afterwards cardinal. The assembly, however, on November 2, declared all ecclesiastical property to be at the disposal of the state. As crown domains were equally so, a new financial system, based on selling or raising money upon both, became too obvious and too convenient not to be adopted. Necker intervened with a proposal for raising 170 millions by metamorphosing the caisse of discount into a bank; but the assembly scorned such petty means, and proposed to sell for 400 millions' worth of property of the clergy and the crown domains. Assignats were to be issued for that amount. The municipalities, and the class which composed them, caught at the scheme; that of Paris offered to purchase onehalf of the entire property offered for sale. Other municipalities followed the example; and the reign of assignats commenced. Having dispossessed the clergy of its property, the nobles of their privileges and distinctions, whether fiscal, judicial, or honorary, deprived the crown of all but a suspensive veto, whilst leaving in its hands that administrative power which events totally prevented it from exercising, the assembly proceeded to lay the basis of what was no other than a large republican system. The spirit that animated them-at which we need not wonder-was war to the past. To clear the foundation for a new edifice, they abolished all distinction between provinces, and divided the country into eightyfour departments. In vain did Mirabeau propose to keep up the spirit of the provinces by merely dividing them into departments and maintaining their ancient frontier. The assembly would not hear of it. The sentiment and pride of the provinces were to be crushed |