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not fully instructed in the object of the introduction, or did not feel disposed, on closer acquaintance, to contribute to Mirabeau's elevation. He made no overture, and Mirabeau retired, indignantly muttering, "The minister shall hear of me." But the court now employed a more adroit agent. This was a foreign prince, connected with men of all parties. Mirabeau made it clearly known that he would make no sacrifice of principles; that, in fact, it would be ruinous to himself to do so, and useless to the king; but that, if the government would adhere to the constitution-which was

Mirabeau endeavoured to procure the alteration of the law excluding ministers from the assembly. The popular party immediately took the alarm; the motion of Mirabeau was rejected, and Lanjuinis seized the opportunity to push the restriction further, and to make it illegal for any existing deputy to become minister. Mirabeau saw that the measure was aimed directly at him, and proposed, as an amendment, that the restriction should apply to no deputy but himself. This extraordinary mode of showing the assembly that he understood the drift of the proposal, did not prevent the

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every way the best thing for both court and people Mirabeau would stanchly support these objects, and through them the security and best interests of the crown. He made it, at the same time, plain that, for him to be able to do this effectively, he must be placed at his ease; his debts must be paid, and he must receive a handsome salary. It was therefore arranged that his conditions should be accepted, and that his pension should be twenty thousand francs, or eight hundred pounds a-month; but these terms were not finally settled till a few months later, that is, at the com- The assembly now settled at Paris, and strengthened in mencement of the year 1790. its popular unity by the flight or retirement of so many Meantime, while still appearing to oppose the court, aristocrats, prosecuted the formation of the constitution

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entertain a very different opinion of him. Mignet says, "Sieyes was one of those men who, in ages of enthusiasm, found a sect, and in ages of intelligence, exercise the ascendency of a powerful understanding. Solitude and philosophic speculation had ripened it for a happy moment. His ideas were new, vigorous, various, but little systematic. Society had in particular been the object of his observation; he had followed its progress, and decomposed its machinery. The nature of government appeared to him less a question of right than a question of epoch. Although cool and deliberate, Sieyes had the ardour which inspires the investigation of truth, and the fearlessness to insist on its promulgation. Thus he was absolute in his notions, despis ing the ideas of others, because he found them incomplete, and, in his eyes, embodying only half the truth, which was error. Contradiction irritated him; he was little communicative, he would have wished to make himself thoroughly under stood, but he could not succeed with all the world. His disciples transmitted his system to others—a circumstance which gave him a certain air of mysteriouness, and rendered him the object of a sort of adoration. He had the authority which complete political science bestows, and the constitution could have sprung from his head all armed, like the Minerva of Jupiter, or the legislation of the ancients, if, in our times, every one had not wished to assist in it, or to judge of it. Nevertheless, with some modifications, his plans were generally adopted, and he had in the committees far more disciples than fellow-labourers."

with increased rapidity. All the financial schemes of Necker as a formal dreamer and fanatic; but the historians of France had failed. The state was destitute of funds; but it could not be considered bankrupt, for it had large assets not only in the right of taxation, but in crown and church lands. The assembly had abolished the feudal system; it determined now to sell the church property, and give salaries instead to the clergy. It is remarkable that the proposition came from a churchman and a bishop-from Talleyrand, bishop of Autun-but what a bishop! Talleyrand was of an old and illustrious house, and had already displayed the shrewdness and sagacity which afterwards led him to the highest place in the diplomacy of the age, and terminated in his receiving rank as a prince, after having been alternately bishop, representative in the assembly, and merchant in America. Mirabeau had already discovered his profound talents, and his instinctive insight into character, and had foretold his diplomatic eminence. Talleyrand was the only bishop ever appointed by the choice and at the request of the clergy of France. Notwithstanding his high birth, Louis XVI. hesitated to make him a bishop; but the general assembly of the clergy made a direct request to the king, and the then abbé of Perigord became the bishop of Autun. Little did the clergy foresee what he would do. The outcry of the clergy at Talleyrand's proposition was wild and fierce. The abbé Maury denounced what he termed this sacrilegious robbery with all his eloquence, and warned the aristocracy that it was but the prelude to their destruction. Talleyrand, on the other hand, proved the justice and propriety of the measure, and showed the great advantages that would result from it to the state. clergy made a vigorous resistance, but in vain; Talleyrand, Thouret, and Mirabeau demolished all their arguments, and the assembly, on the 2nd of December, decreed the appropriation and sale of all ecclesiastical property. From that moment the hatred of the clergy, hitherto partly concealed, in the hope of preserving its wealth, broke forth in full display against the new régime. Salaries were appointed to the curés, which were not to be less than twelve hundred francs, with a parsonage and garden. All conventual vows were declared null, the property of all monastic establishments confiscated, and the inmates were to be pensioned. Political pensions were also reduced to a low standard, and many abolished.

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Another churchman, the abbé Sieyes, then proposed a very important topographical alteration. This was to abolish the ancient names and boundaries of provinces which were associated with old feudal principles, and with laws, privileges, and customs contrary to each other, and to the new ideas and constitution. This was to annihilate all the ancient demarcations of the provinces, and re-divide the kingdom into departments, which should all have the same laws, the departments being subdivided into districts, and the districts into municipalities. Each of these divisions was to be governed by their councils, which were to be elective, and subordinate one to the other. The department was to make the assessment of taxes upon the districts, the districts on the municipalities or communes, and the communes on individuals. This was carried, and was one of the many benefits conferred by Sieyes on his country through the revolution. Some of our historians have represented Sieyes

The assembly determined next the franchise, and all political rights of the citizen. These were included in the simple payment of one silver mark on arriving at the ag of twenty-five. This payment made, a man of full age was qualified to vote for a member of any body, from the commune to the national assembly, and he was equally eligible as a candidate. Such was the basis laid for all political action; and the nobles and clergy now exercised their liberty in obstructing the business of the assembly. They supported the military commandants against the people, the slave-traders against the negro slaves; they opposed the admission of protestants and Jews to the enjoyment of equal rights. We cannot give a more lively picture of the state of parties in the national assembly, and of the conduct of the clergy, at the close of the year 1789. than that drawn by M. Ferrieres: "In the national assembly there were not more than about three hundred really upright men exempt from party spirit, not belonging to any club, wishing what was right, wishing it for its own sake, independently of the interest of orders or of bodies, always ready to embrace the most just and the most bene ficial proposal, no matter from what quarter it came, or by whom it was supported. These were the men worthy of the honourable function to which they had been called, who made the few good laws that proceeded from the constituent assembly; it was they who prevented all the mischief whia was not done by it. As for the nobles and clergy, they aimed only to dissolve the assembly, to throw discredit on its operations; instead of opposing mischievous measures, they manifested an indifference on this point which is inconceivable. When the president stated the question they

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quitted the hall, inviting the deputies of their party to follow them; or, if they stayed, they called out to them to take no part in the deliberation. The clubbists, forming through this dereliction of duty a majority of the assembly, carried every resolution that they pleased. The bishops and nobles, firmly believing that the new order of things would not last, hastened, with a sort of impatience as if determined to accelerate both the ruin of the monarchy and their own. With this senseless conduct they combined an insulting disdain, both of the assembly and the people who attended the sittings. Instead of listening, they laughed and talked aloud, thus confirming the people in the unfavourable opinion which it had conceived of them; and, instead of striving to recover its confidence and esteem, they strove only to gain its hatred and contempt. All these follies arose solely from the mistaken notions of the bishops and nobles, who could not persuade themselves that the revolution had long been effected in the opinion and in the heart of every Frenchman. By this impolitic obstinacy they forced the revolutionists beyond the goal which they had set up for themselves. The nobles and bishops then exclaimed against tyranny and injustice. They talked of the antiquity and legitimacy of their rights to men who had sapped the foundation of all rights.”

Nor were their exertions confined to the assembly out of doors, but throughout the whole of the kingdom they maintained the inveterate opposition. The Breton Club, which, at the time that the king and the assembly had removed to Paris, had taken possession of the great hall of the convent of the Jacobins, in the Rue St. Honoré, and there assumed the name of the "Jacobin Club," was in renewed activity, and took every advantage of the schism betwixt the popular deputies and the clergy and noblesse in the assembly. By this division, and their own daring, they soon subjected the assembly to the club, to the Palais Royal, and to the mob. The mob found that having the king in their keeping did not produce any increase of bread, and they continued as turbulent as ever. The discontented nobles and clergy fomented the discontent of the people. The officers of the army, who belonged to the aristocracy, were easily influenced, and violent quarrels took place betwixt them and the soldiers who belonged to the people; and the soldiers frequently gave up the officers to the mob, who murdered them. In the provinces the leaven of priestly and aristocratic influence produced demonstrations in the parliaments against the national assembly. Such was the case at Rouen, Nantes, Rennes, Metz, and other places. They deplored the ruin of the ancient monarchy, the restraint put upon the king, and the violation of the ancient laws. The king appeared to favour this policy. The queen complained that the king was not free, and that the life-guards were sent away from their proper duty, and that that was done by the national guards. La Fayette promised that the life-guards should be restored, and procured an order from the municipality for this purpose; but the king would not have the life-guards tack, lest, as he said, they should be murdered; but, undoubtedly, from the true reason, that he wished to appear a captive.

The national assembly having laid their hands on the enormous church property, thought they should easily

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dispose of it; but this was not the case. Probably, in the unsettled state of everything, capitalists thought there might yet be some reverse turn of the wheel, and that the church might again reclaim its own. At all events, there were few purchasers; but the greater part of those who farmed the church lands were both indisposed to purchase it, or to pay rent for it. Probably, like the capitalists at large, they feared that if they paid the rent to the assembly, the church might ere long be in a position to demand it a second time. Under these circumstances, the municipality of Paris ventured to bid for large quantities of these church lands. They had themselves but small funds, but they issued paper money in payment, to be redeemed when they should sell the lands. Provincial municipalities took the hint, and purchased in like manner, paying by local notes, which government circulated in payment of demands upon it-these demands for the coming year amounting to four hundred millions of livres. The government, also taking this hint, issued national notes, called assignats. They struck off assignats to the required sum for the year 1790, some four hundred millions of livres, and made the church property security for the repayment. Thus the seizure of the church property introduced the famous assignats. The abbé Maury, the determined and eloquent champion of the church, made a violent resistance to this measure, but in vain. The only effect was to make him so obnoxious to the populace, that he was obliged to carry loaded pistols whenever he appeared abroad for self-defence, and, indeed, many of the anti-popular members of the assembly did the same.

Under such circumstances closed the year 1789. The intense excitement which the rapid course of these French events had produced in England had nearly superseded all other topics of interest. At first, there was an almost universal jubilation over this wonderful revolution. The dreadful state of misery and oppression to which France had been reduced; the fearful exactions; the system of popular ignorance maintained by priestcraft; the abominable feudal insolence; the abuse of lettres de cachet; and the internal obstructions of customs and barriers betwixt one province and another, made every friend of freedom desirous of seeing all these swept away. The early progress of their destruction was hailed with enthusiasm in England. Even the retired and timid poet, Cowper, sang a triumphal note on the fall of the Bastille; but soon the bloody fury of the populace, and the domineering character of the assembly, which did not deign to stop at the proper constitutional limits, began to create distrust and alarm. Amongst the first to perceive and to denounce this work of anarchy rather than of reform, was Burke. In common with Fox, and Pitt, and many other statesmen, he had rejoiced in the fall of the corrupt government of France; but he soon began to perceive that the people were displaying the same ferocious character as in all their former outbreaks. "If," he wrote to M. Menonville, a moderate member of the assembly, "any of these horrid deeds were the acts of the rulers, what are we to think of the armed people under such rulers? But if there be no rulers in reality, and the chiefs are driven before the people rather than lead them; and if the armed corps are composed of men who have no fixed principle of obedience, and are moved only by the prevalence of some general inclin

ation, who can repute himself safe amongst a people so furious and so senseless?" As he continued to gaze, he was compelled to confess that he saw no great and wise principles of legislation displayed by the assembly; but that it went on destroying without knowing how to rebuild in a manner likely to last, or to work any one any good. The whole of the constitution-making, which annihilated the royal power, which erected no second chamber, but absorbed all authority into the assembly, a mixed and heterogeneous body, he declared to be a bungling and monstrous performance. On the other hand, Dr. Price, Dr. Priestley, and numbers of equally enthusiastic men, saw nothing but what was animating in the progress of the French revolution. "The Revolution Society," including many of the highest names of the whig aristocracy, which was accustomed to meet on the 4th of November, to celebrate the anniversary of the landing of William III., and the English revolution of 1688, this year presented a glowing address of congratulation to the French national assembly, which was carried over by lord Stanhope and Dr. Price. Of course, they and the address were received with great acclamation by the assembly. The admiration of the French revolution spread over this country. Clubs were established, both in London and in the country, in sympathy with it, and the press became very Gallican and republican in its tone, and there was much corresponding with admirers of the revolution in France, especially with Thomas Paine, who had now transferred himself from America to this new scene of the proclaimed "Rights of Man," with a political fanatic destined to acquire considerable attention, calling himself Anacharsis Clootz, the orator of mankind, a Mr. Christie, and others.

We must open the year 1790 by reverting to the affairs of England, and of other countries having an influence on English interests. The parliament met on the 21st of January; and, in the course of the debate on the address in the commons, Fox took the opportunity to laud the French revolution, and especially the soldiers for destroying the government which had raised them, and which they had sworn to obey. Burke, in reply, whilst paying the highest compliments to the genius of Fox, and expressing the value which he placed on his friendship, endeavoured to guard the house and country against the pernicious consequences of such an admiration as had been expressed by Fox. He declared the conduct of the troops disgraceful; for, instead of betraying the government, they ought to have defended it so far as to allow of its yielding the necessary reforms. But the socalled reforms in France, he said, were a disgrace to the nation. They had, instead of limiting each branch of the government for the general good, and for rational liberty, destroyed all the balances and counterpoises which gave the state steadiness and security. They had pulled down all things into an incongruous and ill-digested mass; they had concocted a digest of anarchy called the Rights of Man, which would disgrace a schoolboy; and had laid the axe to the root of all property by confiscating that of the church. To compare that revolution with our glorious one of 1688, he said was next to blasphemy. They were diametrically opposed. Ours preserved the constitution and got rid of an arbitrary monarch; theirs destroyed the constitution, and kept a monarch who was willing to concede reforms, but who

was left helpless. Fox replied that he had been mistaken by his most venerated and estimable friend; that he was no friend to anarchy, and lamented the cruelties that had been practised in France, but he considered them the natural result of the long and terrible despotism which had produced the convulsion, and that he had the firmest hopes that the French would yet complete their constitution with wisdom and moderation. Here the matter might have ended, but Sheridan rose and uttered a grand but illconsidered euloguim on the French revolution, and charged Burke with being an advocate of despotism. Burke highly resented this; he made a severe reply to Sheridan; and, instead of the benefits which he prognosticated, Burke, with a deeper sagacity, declared that the issue of that revolution would be not only civil war, but many other wars.

The whig party were in the greatest consternation at this sudden disruption of the union of the heads of their party. A meeting was held on the night of the 11th, at Burlington House, which did not separate till three o'clock in the morning. The result did not appear to have been very satisfactory, and the fears of the whigs were greatly augmented by finding Pitt, who had hitherto praised the revolution, now express the great obligations of the country to Mr. Burke, for the able warning which he had given against revolutionary principles. The king made no secret of his abhorrence of those principles. He considered the French revolution as the direct result of the American one; and, having come to the conclusion that he had himself erred by too much concession, he now censured the concessions of Louis XVI, as fraught with certain calamity. All this boded a decided resistance to the spirit of reform at home. There was a new schism amongst the organs of the press. Many of the newspapers still fostered in their columns the wildest hopes of universal advantage to the cause of liberty from the French revolution; but others adopted the opinions and views of Burke-and no few of the whig and Foxite papers were of this class. The effect of the alarm at the wild conduct of the French was speedily seen in the refusal to consider the repeal of the test and corporation act, which was brought forward by Fox, on behalf of the dissenters, and a motion for parliamentary reform, introduced by Mr. Flood. Both were strongly opposed, on the ground that this was not the time to make any changes whilst so riotous a spirit of change was near us, and was so warmly admired by many of our own people. Both motions were rejected by large majorities.

On the 10th of March, by a majority of one hundred and fifty-four against twenty-eight, the salary of the speaker of the house of commons was raised from about three thousan! pounds, which it had hitherto been, through allowance am! fees, to six thousand pounds-a very handsome income for sitting on a chair, and crying "order! order!" occasionally. especially as, besides this, the speaker, was, as a matter of custom, presented, on the commencement of a new parlia ment, with one thousand pounds for equipment-money, two thousand ounces of plate, and also annually one hundred pounds for stationery, and two hogsheads of claret. Addington, the son of Chatham's physician, who was now speaker, expressed himself as particularly gratified, as well he might. On the 31st of March Dundas introduced the Indian

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