MIRABEAU.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20450, 3 July 1928, Page 4

MIRABEAU.

GLUTTON OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. When Mirabeau appeared on the stage of this world in 1740 he was already furnished with two teeth. At three years of age he showed unusual strength, and fought and struggled with his nurse. An attack of small pox left his face ugly with seams and sears, and in a family renewed for good looks this disfigurement caused much irritation, and led to a considerable of unreasonable dislike. But the time the boy was five he was a great reader, a persistent questioner, pert, troublesome, ill-disciplined, and precocious fellow, always needing punishment, or at least always getting it. His father, the marquis, thought the boy “an amazing compound of badness and commonness.” He was educated on wrong lines, and the result was a constant alternation of liyprocrisy and rebellion. vStorm passions had been the mark of his family for three generations, but with these he also possessed a fascination which proved irresistible to men and women alike. There are many biographies of this highly-endowed leader, and, according to the Royalist or Republican leanings of the author, Mirabeau is represented on the one hand as the best friend of Louis XVI, or on the other as a clever and cunning and glorious humbug. The translations of Louis Barthou’s careful sketch, recently published in London, makes pleasant reading (says a reviewer in the Melbourne Age), and as Barthou was Prime Minister of France it may be assumed be had access to all essential documents. After all, how difficult is it to get at the truth, let one be as painstaking and honest as he may! At 17 he became lieutenant in a cavalry regiment, but his gambling and other peccadilloes led to his imperious father confining him on the island of Re, near La Rochelle. After some time a reconcilliation took place, and Mirabeau was restored to his family. But what a home! The marquis and his wife had been separated for eight years, and lawsuits had poisoned the atmosphere. The younge comte, as Mirabeau was called, sometimes on behalf of his father, at other times in the interests of his mother. The son exhausted a copious vocabulary in denouncing alike his father’s literary reputation and his other times in the interests of his domestic infidelity. Truly, Mirabeau came out of a bad nest. His appearance was arresting. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a huge head, a face swollen and pock-pitted, woolly hair, large nose and beautiful hands, he jested about his ugliness and was subject to wild fits of fury. To his mistresses and gaolers, of both of whom he had many, he could be irresistibly charming, but it must be admitted that he was a superlative liar, a consummate actor, and had a mind which upon occasion expressed itself in revolting obscenity. In his flights of oratory, when he shook his “ terrible boar’s head” and his eyes darted lightnings, no one dared to interrupt him. Not even Tallyrand could approach him in the gift of swaying a vast assembly. A flight to Amsterdam with the wife of another man, and eight months of hack work for booksellers, in that city, placed him in sore straits, and his position was aggravated when the Parliament of Besancon sentenced him to death for abduction and robbery. In May, 1777, he was imprisoned at Vincennes for three years and a half, but in 1782 he had his sentence annulled. For some years he made his living by his pen, moved restlessly between his own country and Holland, Prussia, and England, always entering into disgraceful liaisons with women, but benefiting politically by his observation of the moderation of English politics. There can be no doubt that whatever was sensible in the views and ideals of Mirabeau was due to his study of the English Constitution. In 1787 came his entrance into public life, and he was returned as representative for both Marseilles and Aix, and in a very short time made himself a power in the Assembly, He saw that a revolution was necessary and imminent, and in an anonymous pamphlet denounced parliaments, exposed their scandalous venality, their encroachments and hereditary offices. This was in such shrieking contradiction to his former utterances that one can only infer the influence of bribery and corruption “ which stains so many of the actions and the writings of Mirabeau.” At the very time when he was seeking financial help from the Government he was making violent attacks on Necker, the head of it. The truth is, he was at his wits’ end for money. The whole spirit of the Revolution now appeared in his language, and he was skilful enough to identify his personal grievances with the public interest. “In him a new social order raises its head, angry and threatening.” He became the darling of the mob, and the terror of the court. Privileges, he said, would come to an end, but the people is eternal. The nobility had excluded him from their ranks, and his appeal was to the nation. Nevertheless he was essentially a Royalist. What he aimed at was to exalt the royal supremacy, and end the despotism of ministers. But he' was careful to add that the royal authority must not be either absolute or despotic. The sovereignty rested with the people, and the sovereign was only the first magistrate of the people. The power of the people was not abdicated but delegated. Universal suffrage lay hidden in such declarations. Through negotiation and intrigue, plot and counter plot he was always suggesting moderate counsels while seeming to use emphatically revolutionary language, “We shall be content with nothing less than government more or less like that of England.” The surest way of making the revolution abortive was to ask too much from it. When the Assembly was ordered to disperse Mirabeau replied to the messenger, “ Go and tell them that sent you that we are here by the will of the people, and that bayonets alone shall drive us hence.” Attempts to bring Mirabeau into touch with the court were partly successful. The King promised him an ambassadorship, made him a liberal allowance, and Mirabeau promised to help the King in every way possible. Nevertheless, he reserved his independence of speech. His programme was “ to revive the executive power, to regenerate the royal authority, and reconcile it with national liberty.” The Queen distrusted Mirabeau, yet gave him an interview at Saint-Cloud, and he assured her as he bent to kiss her hand, “ Madame, the monarchy is saved.” His fervent hope was to place the King at the head of the revolution, and for this end to secure the advent of a -new and moderate Assembly. His aim, in short, was parliamentary government. On January 29, 1791, his popularity was at its zenith, and he was elected President of the Assembly. He died somewhat suddenly on April 2 at the early age of 42, and was buried in the French Pantheon, but on the discovery ot incriminating documents in the iron chest of the Tuileries the body was put in a wooden coffin, and transferred to the common burial ground. The exact spot has never yet been discovered. He has been called the most glorious political genius since Richelieu, because his plan made room for liberty and authority, royalty and revolution. On both sides he met opposition, and in his own phrase, he suffered from “ the yelping of envious mediocrity.” The scandals of his youth and the failings of his maturity made his destiny inferior to his genius.