Chapter IX: Front Matter (9)

Condorcet was the friend of Turgot, a minister whose virtues and genius attached to him all the more enlightened men of the day. His ministry, however, was stormy, since he was among the first who endeavoured to bring a remedy to the ruined finances of France, without being permitted to strike at the root of the evil--unequal taxation and extravagant expenditure. His edict touching the sale of corn excited popular commotions, and was attacked by Necker. Condorcet undertook to answer Necker's book, but was on the unpopular side, and therefore not read. He wrote a series of laudatory biographical essays on various academicians, and men of science and celebrity, Euler, Franklin, D'Alembert, and others. In these he, at the same time, developed his scientific knowledge and his theory of the perfectibility of the human species. Every useful and liberal cause found him its partisan. He was one among the opponents of negro slavery; and, feeling that diatribes against the cruelty and wickedness of the slave trade would not avail with those who regarded it as advantageous to the country, he argued to prove its political and commercial inexpediency. He was a laborious and prolific writer, urged on by a strong sense of duty; for, firmly believing that the wisdom of philosophers was of vast influence in improving the moral condition of mankind, he believed it to be the primal duty of thinking men to propagate their opinions. In his life of Turgot he details his theories of the perfectibility of his species, which the minister had also entertained. He undertook an edition of the works of Voltaire, and wrote the life of that great wit, one of the best and most elegant of his works. To escape persecution, or to give greater force to his writings, he published several of his writings under fictitious names. In this manner, he brought out his "Reflections on Negro Slavery" under the name of Swartz, a pastor of Bienne. A biographer observes on this work, that "the simplicity, elegance, and precision of the style; the forcible arguments, respect for misfortune, and indignation at crime; the tone which inviolable probity inspires, and which art cannot imitate, obtained signal success for this work. Those who were fortunate enough to be intimate with Condorcet easily raised the veil under which he concealed himself." In the same way, he adopted the name of a citizen of Newhaven, when he wrote to refute a book by De Lolme, in praise of the English constitution, insisting, in particular, on the benefits arising from two legislative chambers. Condorcet argued that all just government ought to be founded on giving preponderance to the majority; and he brought all his logic to prove that to confide the task of legislation to two chambers, one of which should propose and the other sanction laws, was to give to the minority a power superior to that enjoyed by the majority; since that which had been proposed unanimously in one chamber might be rejected by a slight majority in the other. He went on to establish maxims and legal fictions by which it would be possible to ascertain the desires of the majority in a state,--a question that occupied his serious consideration in other works. Condorcet, in these writings, showed his attachment to all that should ameliorate the social condition, and enlarge the sphere of intellect among his fellow-creatures. He did not, in his reasonings, give sufficient force to the influence of passion, especially when exerted over masses, nor the vast power which the many have when they assert themselves, nor the facility with which the interested few can lead assembled numbers into error and crime. D'Alembert called Condorcet a volcano covered by snow. There are men of great personal susceptibility, uncontrollable passions, and excitable imaginations, who have the same power over their fellow-creatures that fire has over materials cast upon it--they impart their energy, even though it be for self-destruction, to all around. There are others, and among such was Condorcet, of great but regulated enthusiasm of soul;--which enthusiasm, derived from abstract principles and founded on severe reason, is more steady, more disinterested, and more enduring than that springing from passion; but it exercises little immediate influence over others, and is acknowledged and appreciated only in hours of calm. Amidst the tempest of political struggles it is passed by as timid, cold, and impotent.

A philosopher of this sort was destined to have great influence at the commencement of the French Revolution, while men acted from a sense of right and a virtuous desire to found the changes they brought about on reason, justice, and the good of mankind. His integrity caused him to be respected, and his powers of mind to receive attention.

He anticipated change, and had contributed to it by spreading abroad his opinions for the enfranchisement of the French people from the laws and customs that ground them to the earth. When the ferment began he assisted in directing it by his writings, and assembled at his house the most distinguished men of the liberal party. He was now no longer a young man. Habit had confirmed all his opinions, while mature years imparted that calm which caused him to see clearly and act firmly, but without precipitation or violence. On the convocation of the states general, he wrote a declaration of the rights of man, to serve as a guide and model to the future legislators of his country. He caused it to be translated into English by Dr. Gems, and brought it out as the work of an American. [Sidenote: 1788. Ætat. 44.] When the states general met, he became more and more absorbed by the political state of his country. He did not make one of the assembly; but the influence from without was of vast importance, not only to inspire the members with energy and constancy, but to daunt the court and the nobles, who scarcely understood and longed to spurn the claimants of a power of which they had long held possession, while they misused it to the ruin first of their country and then of themselves. Condorcet wrote a refutation of an address presented in favour of the court and the privileged orders, and demanded a partial confiscation of church property to pay the national debt. He published a pamphlet, entitled "On what has been done, and what remains to do," full of clear and useful views for the future. He thus became a portion of the revolution, and allied himself with its more illustrious chiefs, who afterwards formed the girondist party,--a sect which was republican in heart, but which would have been satisfied with a limited monarchy, could they have depended on the fidelity of the king to the constitution. The chief object of Condorcet's attacks was the church. He was an infidel, and believed philosophy to be a better guide than religion both for states and individuals; besides this, he looked on the French clergy as a peculiarly obnoxious priesthood. The quarrels of the molinists and jansenists,--the extermination of the huguenots,--the war they carried on against all knowledge and freedom,--made him ardently desire to limit their power within strict bounds, and he was eager to lessen their wealth, as the first sure step towards decreasing their influence.

On every occasion he came forward to enlighten and guide the decisions of the assembly by his published arguments. He discussed the injury to arise from a division of the legislative power into two chambers, and showed great sagacity when he demonstrated the evils attendant on the system of assignats.

The weakness of the unfortunate king, who yielded to the new state of things only on compulsion, and turned his eyes towards the emigrants and foreign potentates as deliverers, still hoping for a restoration to absolute power, caused the moderate party of girondists to abandon the cause of royalty altogether, and to believe that there was no possibility of confirming the blessings which they believed that their country reaped from the revolution, nor of protecting the nation from invasion, and the re-establishment of absolutism armed with foreign soldiers for the execution of vengeance, except in the dethronement of the king and erection of a republic. The flight of Louis to Varennes put the seal of conviction on these opinions. It was believed that he fled only to return with the Austrians and the emigrants, armed to exterminate the friends of liberty. Condorcet pronounced on this occasion a violent speech against monarchy, and followed up his attack by a series of bitter articles in a paper called "The Republican." His popularity increased greatly through this course. He was designated by the jacobins as governor of the dauphin, but Louis refused to ratify the nomination. [Sidenote: 1791. Ætat. 47.] He was also appointed commissioner of the treasury; which, at his desire, changed its name to the national instead of the royal treasury; and he was elected member of the new representative assembly by the electors of the city of Paris itself. He drew up the article of "The National Assembly" in the "Chronicle," on this occasion, to enlighten his colleagues on the state of the nation, and the measures proper to be taken for its security.

In all his speeches and projected decrees he mingled the most determined opposition to such acts and establishments as he believed to be hostile to the liberty of his country, with mildness and justice towards individuals. Thus, on the 25th of October, he made a speech on the subject of emigration, which at the time that it was delivered excited the warmest applause, and the printing of it was voted. In this discourse, he drew a line between the emigrants who left their country for the sake merely of withdrawing from the political disturbances, and those who entertained the nefarious project of exciting foreign powers to invade France, and meditated carrying arms themselves against their countrymen. He denounced the connivance of the court with the intrigues at Coblentz. He showed the necessity of firm measures, and asserted that an unasked pardon held out to the emigrants gave birth to contempt merely among the haughty nobles who expected a speedy triumph over a class of men whom they despised. A few days after, the mountain party attacked his purposed decree as insufficient and feeble, and it was abandoned.

This alliance with foreign governments and the complicity of the court with the emigrants, roused a spirit in France, at first noble and heroic, till, led away by base and sanguinary men, grandeur of purpose merged into ferocity, and heroism became a thirst of blood such as mankind had never displayed before towards men of the same colour and language as themselves, and can be compared only to the conduct of the Spaniards in the newly discovered world.

But the first burst of generous indignation against the traitors who carried arms against their country, and the crowned foes who denounced the actual government of France as rebellious, to be punished by the devastation and subjection of the nation, found an echo in every patriotic heart not misled by enthusiasm for royalty. On the 27th of December Vergniaud proposed an address to the French people, which was greatly applauded though not adopted. Two days after Condorcet presented his declaration, which was received with triumphant and unanimous acclamations. This declaration is dignified and firm, and shows the just as well as generous spirit which animated the greater portion of the assembly, till the panic engendered by the advance of the armies threw the power into the hands of the ferocious minority. "At the moment when, for the first time since the acquirement of liberty,"--thus ran his manifesto,--"the French people may find themselves reduced to exercise the terrible right of war, her representatives owe to Europe and to all humanity a declaration of the motives that have guided the resolutions of France, and an exposition of the principles that will rule their conduct. The French nation renounces the entering on any war with a view of making conquests, and will never employ her force against the liberty of any country. Such is the sacred vow by which we have allied our welfare to the welfare of every other nation, and to which we will be faithful. France will take up arms with regret but with ardour, to insure her own safety, her internal tranquillity; and will lay them down with joy when she no longer fears for that liberty and equality which are become the only elements in which Frenchmen can live." When, soon after, the country seemed menaced by civil war, the departments regarding with fear and jealousy the proceedings in Paris, Condorcet again ascended the tribune to propose an exposition of their conduct, as due, not to the calumniators of the revolution, but to those timid and mistaken men, who, at a great distance, were led away by false and fabricated accounts. He then read an address which contained the history of the labours of the assembly and an exposition of its principles. The address was voted by acclamation, and ordered to be printed and distributed in the departments.

The integrity of Condorcet raised him high in the esteem of his countrymen; as springing from the class of nobles, his disinterestedness could not be doubted. He loved his country, he loved reason and knowledge, and virtuous conduct and benevolent sentiments. He was, with all this, a determined republican. His favourite theory being the perfectibility of mankind, he rejected that view of human nature which inculcates the necessity of ruling the many by the few, and sinking the majority of his fellow-creatures in ignorance and hard labour; he wished all to be enlightened as to their duties, and all to tend equally to the improvement of their intellectual and moral nature. These theories, if they be mistaken, emanate from benevolent and just feelings. They made him a democrat, because the very corner-stone of royalty and aristocracy is the setting apart a class of men to possess the better gifts of fortune and education, and the reduction of the rest to a state of intellectual dependence and physical necessity.

[Sidenote: 1792. Ætat. 48.]

When the king exercised his veto, and put a stop to the measures considered necessary by the assembly for the safety of France, Condorcet, even as early as the month of March, represented the monarchical power as at open war with the nation, and proposed that the king should be considered as having abdicated. His view met with few co-operators at that crisis, and was set aside. He busied himself, at the same time, in forming a plan of national education, and brought forward a system on a more philosophical and comprehensive scale than had hitherto been meditated. It was his design to secure to the human race, to use his own expressions, the means of satisfying their necessities, and securing their welfare; of knowing and exercising their rights, and of understanding and fulfilling their duties; giving scope to all to carry their industry to a state of perfection, and to render themselves capable of the social functions which they were called upon to exert; to develope to their extent the talents given them by nature; and thus to establish in the nation a real equality, so to meet the political equality established by law.

The system of instruction which was to realise so blessed a state of society he considered as properly placed in the hands of government. He looked forward, indeed, to the time when public establishments for education would become superfluous and even detrimental; but this would only be when right reason prevailed, and it was no longer necessary for the wiser few to labour to destroy the prejudices and mistakes of the ignorant many; when superstition should be no more; and when each man should find in his own knowledge, and in the rectitude of his mind, arms sufficient to combat every species of imposition.

Condorcet looked on virtue as capable of exact demonstration, as conducive to public and individual happiness, and on man as a sufficiently reasonable being to follow its dictates, if sufficiently enlightened, without the aid of religion or the coercion of punishment. He regarded the passions as capable of being controlled by the understanding. He, benevolent and conscientious, practising no vice, carefully extirpating from his mind all that he believed to be error, was to himself a mirror in which the whole human race was reflected. Also, like all the French politicians of that day, he wished to treat mankind like puppets, and fancied that it was only necessary to pull particular strings to draw them within the circle of order and reason. We none of us know the laws of our nature; and there can be little doubt that, if philosophers like Condorcet did educate their fellows into some approximation to their rule of right, the ardent feelings and burning imaginations of man would create something now un thought of, but not less different from the results he expected, than the series of sin and sorrow which now desolates the world. It is not for this that we would throw a slur over the upright endeavours of the pious and the good to improve their fellows; but we do over any endeavour of government to bind the intellect in chains. It was, therefore, in some degree, for the best, that his views were not followed out. When his plan for national education and a national society of arts and sciences, charged with the duty of overlooking and directing public instruction,--for the purpose not only of enlightening the present generation, but of preparing the human species for an indefinite advance in wisdom and virtue,--when this plan was presented by the chief Girondists to the court, a friend of Condorcet, struck with dismay at the degree of power that would accrue to the rulers, said, "If they adopt your plan, our freedom is destroyed." "Fear nothing," replied Condorcet, "ignorance and vanity will make them reject it." Unfortunately, the treaty carried on by the Girondists with the court on this occasion injured their popularity. The French were at a crisis that demanded that their rulers should think only of measures and acts adapted to it. The mountain party felt this, and acted for the day, and thus succeeded in overthrowing their rivals, who philosophically and calmly legislated for future generations, while their single object ought to have been to save the living one from the foreign foe and their own evil passions.

The manifesto of the duke of Brunswick was the first cause of the madness which was soon to make France an example of the crimes that may be committed by a people in the name of liberty. When first this manifesto spread indignation and fear through France, Condorcet made himself conspicuous by a speech proposing an address to the king to express the discontent of the assembly at his lukewarm disapprobation of the actions of the emigrants, and his want of energy in repulsing the offers of foreign potentates to deliver him from the hands of his subjects and the shackles of the constitution which he had accepted. The subsequent dethronement of the king and establishment of a republic were events after his own heart. [Sidenote: 1792.] A commission had been named, during the first days of August, to examine the question of the abolition of monarchy, and Condorcet was named reporter. He considered it, in the first place, necessary to explain to the people the grounds on which he went, and drew up a paper which he called "Instruction préparatoire sur l'Exercise du Droit de Souveraineté;" in which he expounded, that as foreign potentates had denounced every Frenchman who defended the liberties of his country as rebels to be punished by death, and as the monarch treacherously weakened their powers of defence against the foe, so was it right and necessary that the nation should take the sovereignty into their own hands. When the events of the 10th of August had sealed the fate of the unhappy Louis, Condorcet proposed a declaration of the motives that led to his being set aside, which, while it strongly accused the monarch and his court of betraying the cause of the people, was animated by a spirit of fairness, moderation, and dignity, that did honour to the cause which he espoused.

Condorcet's popularity was now at its height and he was courted even by the jacobins and the mountain party. He was invited by several departments to represent them in the new convention. Madame Roland accuses him of pusillanimity: perhaps her accusation is partly founded on the fact that at this moment of fierce rivalship and strife between the Girondists and Mountain, he rather strove to conciliate the latter than to drive the struggle to extremities. He had a high esteem for the talents of Danton, and often remarked, with regard to the jacobins, that it were better to moderate than to quarrel with them. He was named at this time one of the committee to draw up a constitution, and his labours were chiefly employed on this object.

Looking upon the king as the treacherous enemy of the new state of things in France, and therefore, according to his reasoning, of France itself, he did not hesitate to name Louis a traitor during the debate that followed the monarch's trial; but he did not vote for his death. "All different degrees of punishment for the same offence," he argued, "was an offence against equality. The punishment of conspirators is death; but this punishment is contrary to my principles, and I will never vote it. I cannot vote for imprisonment, for no law gives me the power; I vote for the heaviest punishment established in the penal code that is not death." He afterwards voted for the reprieve for the king until the peace; but the struggle of the Girondists to save the monarch's life was, as is known, useless.

In drawing up a constitution the philosopher thought more of future generations than the present: he considered France as ground cleared of all encumbrance, on which to raise an edifice of government designed in strict accordance to justice and the permanent welfare of mankind: to continue the metaphor, he gave no heed to the more than inequalities of soil,--the gulfs and chasms produced by the earthquake-revolution. His report of the labours of the committee, together with the speech he made on presenting it, was, however, received at first with acclamation, and ordered to be printed. The jacobins disapproved tacitly in the commencement, but by degrees they raised accusations against Condorcet on account of the limited power which he committed to the people. Underhand disapprobation was spread abroad, but did not become so current, but that the committee of public safety applied to him to draw up a manifesto, which the convention wished to address to every nation and government, with regard to the violation of the law of nations in the persons of four deputies delivered up by Dumouriez to the Austrians: they admired him as a writer, and believed that their cause would be eloquently and well defended by his pen. He wrote with great fervour both against Lafayette and Dumouriez, as having betrayed the cause of their country, and appealed against the conduct of Austria to the interests and sense of justice of every free country.

[Sidenote: 1793. Ætat. 49.]

Even on the approach of the 31st of May, notwithstanding his intimacy with Roland and other Girondists on whom the Mountain party were about to seize, Condorcet continued to be consulted and employed by the committee of public safety. Those of the girondists who, foreseeing the anarchy that must ensue from the triumph of the jacobins, considered their overthrow of more immediate importance than the repulsing the foe from the soil of France, disapproved of Condorcet's working for their enemies: he kept apart from both, while he laboured for the cause of the republic, and remarked that his friends were offended because he did not break with the committee of public safety; and the committee, on the other hand, desired that he should refrain from all intercourse with his friends. "I endeavour," he added, "that each party shall think less of itself and a great deal more of the commonwealth." He began to perceive, however, that it was impossible any longer to use measures of conciliation with Robespierre, but he hoped to restrain him by fear: the latter, however, triumphed. The 31st of May brought with it the decree of arrest of twenty-two Girondists: Condorcet was not among them. He might by silence and prudence have continued for some time longer to sit in the convention; but he saw with indignation the empty benches on which his friends used to appear, and the growing power of a ferocious oligarchy. He denounced the weakness of the convention, and the tyranny exercised over it by a few ambitious and resolute men, in a letter to his constituents, which was denounced and sent for examination to the committee of public safety. From this moment the jacobins marked him out also for a victim; and the ex-capuchin Chabot denounced him for having written against the new constitution of 1793; which superseded the one he had drawn up: he was summoned to the bar, and a decree of arrest passed against him.

The sanguinary characters and tenets of the leading jacobins had already made him say that no one was sure of six months of life, and he considered the decree of arrest synonymous to a sentence of death. He escaped pursuit, and concealed himself. A generous woman, before unknown to him, and who has never revealed her name to the world, gave him refuge in her house. Denounced on the 3d of October, as Brissot's accomplice, there was no doubt that had he been taken he had shared the fate of the deputies who were guillotined in the month of November; but his place of concealment was not suspected, and he remained in safety till the August of the following year. [Sidenote: 1794. Ætat. 50.] During this long seclusion, he projected occupation in writing. At first, he meditated detailing the history of his political career; but he reflected that his many labours for his country were irrefragable documents; and, more attached to opinions which he considered pregnant with the welfare of mankind, than to facts which were but the evanescent forms of change, he applied himself to developing his theories in an "Historical Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind." This is his most celebrated work. It is full of error and even of intolerance; still the clearness of the views, the enthusiasm with which he developes them, the order, precision, and the originality of his theories, render it remarkable. He glances over the past, and argues that each succeeding epoch in the history of mankind has brought moral improvement and increase of knowledge. There are two views to be taken of human nature. Condorcet insists that the moderns have more knowledge and wisdom and moral power than the ancients. He founds this opinion on the great progress made in scientific truths, and does not hesitate also to oppose French literature to the Greek, as demonstrating the advance of the human intellect in every branch. He compares also the states, wars, and crimes of antiquity with modern society and institutions, and deduces that we are more virtuous, more humane, and more reasonable than preceding generations.

No greater poet has appeared since Homer composed the Iliad,--no more acute philosopher than Aristotle,--no more virtuous character than Socrates, nor sublimer hero than Regulus. By standing on ground reached by the ancients, the mass may climb higher than the masses that went before; but, in making progress, we do not develope more genius and sagacity, but rather less, than those who prepared our way. It is to be doubted, therefore, whether mankind can progress so as to produce specimens superior to Homer, Aristotle, Socrates, Regulus, and many others who adorned antiquity.

But it cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that progress has been made in the general diffusion of knowledge and in the amelioration of the state of society. Philosophers ought, therefore, not to dream of removing the bounds of human perfection, such as we find it among the best, but in bringing the many up to the standard of the few, and causing nations to understand and aim at wisdom and justice with the same ardour as individuals among them have been found to do.

Condorcet developed his views of human perfection while the principle of evil was making giant inroads in France, and blood and terror were the order of the day. Separated from all dear to him, his wife and child, and not daring himself to see the light of heaven, he did not lose the cheerfulness of his temper, nor mourn vainly over his disasters. In this situation, he wrote an epistle to his wife in the character of a Pole exiled to Siberia in 1768. In this are to be found a couplet since often quoted relative to political victims,--

"Ils m'ont dit, 'Choisis d'être oppresseur ou victime:' J'embrassai le malheur, et leur laissai le crime."

A couplet peculiarly applicable to him who would have been gladly received by the violent party, and had the way open to him to rule, instead of being sacrificed as a victim. He declares in this poem that the anticipation of a violent death did not alter the serenity of his soul, and speaks of the occupations that banished ennui from his solitary place of refuge.

He was soon to lose this shelter: a newspaper fell into his hands in which he read the decree that outlawed him, and denounced the pain of death against any one who should harbour one of the proscribed. He instantly resolved no longer to endanger his generous hostess,--she endeavoured to dissuade him from this fatal step, but in vain: he disguised himself as a countryman, and passed the barriers without a passport. He directed his steps to Sceaux, where he hoped to find refuge in the house of a friend; but he was absent in Paris, nor expected back for three days, and Condorcet was obliged to hide in the neighbouring quarries. After several days spent miserably in this spot, hunger forced him to enter the little inn of Chamont. The avidity with, which he ate the food placed before him, and his squalid appearance, drew the attention of a member of the committee of public safety of Sceaux, who happened to be present. He was asked for his passport, and, not having one, was arrested and interrogated. No ready he hung on the lips of the worshipper of truth, and his unsatisfactory answers, and a Horace found in his pocket with marginal notes in pencil, contributed to reveal his name. He was taken to Bourg-la-Reine. Such was his state of exhaustion that he fainted at Châtillon, and it was found necessary to mount him on a vine-dresser's horse. On his arrival at Bourg, he was thrown into a dungeon, and forgotten by the jailor for the space of twenty-four hours, when he was found dead; some suppose from the effects of poison; but the probabilities are that he died of exhaustion, hunger, and cold.

The accusation against Condorcet, found in madame Roland's memoirs, where she speaks of his cowardice, cannot be passed over, though we do not give it absolute credence. Her asperity is not measured, though she speaks highly of his intellect. "It may be said," she remarks, "of his understanding and his person that it is a fine essence absorbed in cotton. The timidity that forms the basis of his character, and which he displays even in society, in his countenance and attitudes, does not result from his frame alone, but seems inherent in his soul, and his talents have furnished him with no means of subduing it." There must be both misapprehension and exaggeration in this picture. We find no pusillanimity in his last acts or writings. When he might have saved himself among the Mountain party, he chose to share the fate of the proscribed Girondists. This conduct could spring only from conscientious and noble motives, and a courageous spirit. His numerous political labours give no sign of lukewarmness or tergiversation. They are clear, fervent, and bold with regard to those principles which he held dear. If not profound, nor endowed with the highest order of genius, yet his erudition, ready talent for argument, and admirable memory, give him a high place among men of talent. As a politician, his unflinching war against royalty and aristocracy place him among those politicians who look on mankind as a species, and legislate for them as an equal whole, instead of dividing them into ranks and tribes. His benevolence made him the enemy of oppression, and he expressed this when he exclaimed, "Peace with cottages, war on castles!" which, had it comprised the history of revolution, the history of France were not stained with its darkest pages. The _sans-culottes_ did not spare cottages: they made war on all who were not as ferocious as themselves: Condorcet was among the victims. Benevolence, justice, and attachment to the cause of freedom, remained warm in his heart to the end. Not long before his death, anticipating the speedy close of his existence, he put on paper his last wishes with regard to his daughter. He desired that she should be educated in republican simplicity, and taught to crush every feeling of vengeance towards his destroyers. "Let her know," he wrote, "that none ever entered my heart."

His wife was a woman of great beauty, merit, and talent, and was the author of some philosophical works. She was thrown into prison by Robespierre, but escaped the guillotine, and did not die till 1822, having lived many years in Paris, surrounded by the remnants of the French republicans and philosophers of 1793. His daughter was distinguished for her unpretending virtues and accomplished mind. She became the wife of the celebrated Arthur O'Connor.

MIRABEAU

1749-1791.

It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast of character than that between the subject of the preceding memoir and the present. Condorcet was a man of warm affections, well regulated mind, and clear precise understanding; his enthusiasm was lighted up by benevolence, and the love of that which he considered truth. He was timid, yet firm; mild, yet resolute. Mirabeau resembled his Italian ancestors, rather than the usual French character. His violent passions governed him, and caused him to govern others through his earnestness and vehemence. His intellect showed itself rather in eloquent bursts than in works of reason, and yet he could apply himself more sedulously than almost any other man when he had an object in view. Profligate, extravagant, and proud, ardent and ambitious, with a warm kind heart, and a mind which erred only under the influence of passion, he passed a life of adversity and oppression, to die at the moment he reached a degree of power which is allotted to few men not born to its inheritance.

The family and progenitors of Mirabeau were all remarkable. He left, in manuscript, a sketch of the family history, and a more detailed life of his grandfather, in which we find singularly displayed the energy, iron will, and pride of the race. The name they originally bore was Arrighetti; the family was Florentine, and driven from that city in 1268, during one of the revolutions occasioned by the quarrels of the Guelphs and Ghibelines. A sentence of perpetual exile was pronounced against Azzo Arrighetti and his descendants, and Azzo took refuge, as many other ghibelines had done, in Provence; and the name of Riquetti is found on various occasions in the history of Marseilles. Those who bore it played at all times a foremost and bold part: they were eagle-eyed men, fierce and headstrong, yet discerning. During the war of the fronde the family was royalist, and was rewarded by a patent of Louis XIV., which erected their estate of Mirabeau into a marquisate. Jean Antoine, grandfather of the subject of this memoir, was one of five sons, who all ran an eccentric, bold, and active career. He passed his younger days in the army, and went through many hairbreadth perils and incredible adventures. The last campaign in which he served was that of the duke de Vendôme, in Italy. He performed prodigies of valour in the battle of Cassano, and was left for dead on the field. Found by the enemy with some slight signs of life, prince Eugene, who knew and esteemed him, sent him, without ransom, to the French camp, that the operation necessary for his preservation might not be delayed. His life was saved, but he survived frightfully mutilated, and a martyr to severe physical suffering to the end of his life. He returned home to find his fortune dilapidated, but never to lose that intrepidity and pride that formed the foundation of the family character. He married, and found in the admirable character of his wife the reward and solace of his sufferings: she had been struck by the heroism of his character; and it is related of her, that some expressions of pity for her being the wife of a cripple, and of a man of a haughty, imperious character, having met her ear, she exclaimed, "Ah! if you knew how happy one is to be able to respect one's husband." He was an admirable landlord and a careful father; and his family flourished under his superintendence, till implicated, through the imprudence of his wife's brother, in the system of Law, he was ruined on the breaking of the bubble. From that time he lived in retirement, bending all his efforts to the paying his debts and repairing his fortune. He died in 1737, at the age of seventy-one, feared yet beloved by all in connexion with him.

He left three sons: Victor, the eldest, succeeded to the honours and possessions of the house. This man was a strange mixture of good intention and evil doing;--a general philanthropist, and yet the persecutor and enemy of his own family; against various members of which he obtained, at different times, fifty-seven lettres de cachet, nearly a score of which were levelled against his eldest son. He had more vanity than pride, and his haughtiness was unaccompanied by a spirit of justice, yet joined to a perfect conviction that he was always in the right. Implacable towards others, indulgent with regard to himself: hence spring the contradictions observable in his character; we find displayed a mixture of sternness and softness, rancour and good humour. Had he been as severe with himself as others, his whole character had been rigid, but he would have been more just and virtuous: as it was, we find him plastic to the influence of his own passions or vanity, and become gentle and even playful under their influence: whatever jarred with these found him despotic and unforgiving. Thus he grew into a domestic tyrant, and while he ran after popularity in his own person, he disdained and crushed the talents of his son. His literary reputation did not begin till he had passed mid-life; it was founded on "L'Ami des Hommes," a work in five volumes, which, in the midst of great diffuseness and confusion, is yet remarkable for the knowledge it displays in agriculture and statistics, and for many clear and liberal views. His "Théorie de l'Impôt," published in 1760, caused him, through his attack on the financiers of the day, to be imprisoned in the fortress of Vincennes. He wrote many other works on the same species of subjects. It is a curious circumstance that, while he adopted in his publications a bad, inflated, and obscure style, his private letters are witty, gay, and flowing. He had, of course, served in his youth; but disappointment with regard to promotion, combined with his desire to acquire a literary reputation, caused him to quit the army. He married a young widow of good birth and fortune, Marie Geneviève de Vassam, who had been previously married to the marquis de Saulvebeuf. His desire of shining in literature made him approach Paris, and he bought the estate of Bignon, not far from Nemours, and gave himself up to what he considered his vocation. For many years the disturbances of his domestic life were confined under his own roof. He had a family of eleven children: he was passionately attached to his mother, whom he regarded with a filial veneration that belonged to the old school of manners and piety. Fifteen years changed the scene; quarrels and litigations arose between him and his wife. She was violent and indiscreet; he was tyrannical and unjust; and conjugal infidelity rendered their separation final. Madame de Pailly, a young woman of great beauty, to whom he was attached, installed herself at Bignon, and exercised a most powerful and sinister influence over his conduct towards his family. His wife was indignant: he replied to her resentful representations by the most odious acts of despotism, and conceived a violent hatred against the mother of his children. A scandalous lawsuit was the result; the fortunes of both parties were irreparably injured; and the unfortunate offspring were in a worse situation than orphans;--hated by their father,--not daring to see their mother, who was shut up in a convent,--treated with the utmost severity on one hand, and without resource in maternal affection on the other. Added to his matrimonial dissensions were the attacks made on him in his quality of author. "L'Ami des Hommes," as the marquis de Mirabeau was commonly called from his book, carried all the impetuosity, self-sufficiency, and haughtiness of his race into his literary career; and it may be supposed that became as stormy as his father's had been on the field of battle. His confidence in his own talents and powers was unbounded: he never attributed the misfortunes that pursued him to any error or rashness of his own; he looked on them as the dispensation of Providence, or as arising from the folly and injustice of his fellow-creatures. No hesitation, no doubt with regard to himself, ever entered his mind; every thing was sacrificed to his opinions, his convictions, his mistaken sense of his duties. He was blinded, as a French biographer observes, by the most deceptive of all fanaticisms--that of his own infallibility. The passions that in another he would have regarded as crimes, he looked on as virtues in himself: he could never perceive the shadow of right or justice in any cause or views at variance with his own. Such was the father who became the bitter enemy and persecutor of a son, endowed with all the genius, passions, and faults of his race.

Gabriel Honoré was the fifth child of the marquis: through the previous death of a brother in the cradle, he was, at the time of his birth, the only son. He was born at Bignon. He came into the world with teeth, and was an enormously large infant. It was remarked of him, that, destined to become the most turbulent and active of men, he was born with a twisted foot; and, gifted with extraordinary eloquence, he was tongue-tied. At three years of age he had the small-pox, and his mother, who dabbled in medicine, making some experiments on the pustules, the result was that he remained frightfully seared and marked. His father was evidently deeply mortified, and wrote to his brother, "Your nephew is as ugly as if he were Satan's." His other children being remarkably handsome, this circumstance became more disastrous to the sufferer. The boy, however, early showed talent, which was nurtured by an excellent tutor, and less judiciously overlooked by his father, who resolved to give him an education of unequalled excellence--that is, one of perpetual restraint, reprimand, and chastisement. We have interesting details of his infancy and youth, in extracts from a series of letters which passed between the marquis and his brother.[10] The bailli de Mirabeau was entered by his father into the order of knights of Malta in his infancy. He served in the French navy for the space of thirty-one years, when he retired without recompence, except such as he derived from a high reputation. He was a proud, austere, and resolute man, possessing at the same time extreme piety, great goodness, and unblemished integrity of character, together with a foundation of good sense that contrasts with his brother's intemperate sallies. Uncompromising even to roughness, he was ill suited to a court, while his bravery and sound understanding fitted him for public service. Proud of the antiquity of his race; openly disdainful of the new-created noblesse; frank, upright, but somewhat discontented, as he well might be, at the small reward his services received; yet at the same time too haughty to wait obsequiously on the great, or even to take the measures necessary to refresh their memory, he passed the latter part of his life in retirement. He devoted his fortune to his brother's service, whom he respected as the head of the family, and regarded with warm fraternal affection. A correspondence subsisted between the one, living either at Paris or Bignon, and the other, who was serving his country at a distance, or established at Mirabeau, which discloses the secrets of the family, and unveils the motives and passions that swayed the conduct of the marquis. The bailli was deeply interested in the child who was to transmit the family name, and, being at the time of the boy's birth governor of Guadaloupe, wrote earnestly home for information with regard to him. The child early developed quickness of intellect and turbulence of temper, joined to kindness of heart. Poisson, his tutor, was a careful but severe guide, and if ever he was softened, the marquis stepped in to chastise. Soon, too soon, the paternal scoldings and punishments became angry reprimands and constant disapprobation, which verged into hatred. These feelings were increased by the imprudences and vivacity of the boy, the misjudged quarrels of the mother, the artful manœuvres of madame de Pailly, and the bitter hatred conceived by an old servant named Gervin, who, from some unknown cause, exercised extraordinary influence over the marquis. The chief fault particularised by the father was the boy's habitual untruths. A love of or indifference to truth is one of the characteristics with which human beings are born. The former may be cultivated, the latter checked, but the propensities do not the less remain; and it is the most painful discovery that a parent can make, to find that his child is not by natural instinct incapable of falsehood. This innate and unfortunate vice, joined to the boy's wildness and heedlessness, caused the father to write of him in severe terms, scarcely suited to his' childish years. "He seems to me," he writes, "in addition to all the baseness of his natural character, a mere fool, an unconquerable maniac. He attends a number of excellent masters; and as every one, from his confessor to his playmate, are so many watchers, who tell me every thing, I discern the nature of the heart, and do not believe that he can come to any good." The first master, Poisson, set over him, however, took a liking to the boy, and praised his prodigious memory and good heart. The father, instead of being pleased, grew angry. He declared that he would now be utterly spoilt, and took him out of his hands to place him in those of an abbé Choquart, a severe disciplinarian, who was bid not to spare punishment. The severity of the marquis may be judged by this one circumstance, that taking his son from a tutor whom he loved, and placing him in a school to which he was sent as to a prison, he insisted that he should go by another name. "I did not choose," he writes, "that an illustrious name should be disgraced on the benches of a school of correction, and I caused him to be entered as Pierre Buffière. [Sidenote: 1764. Ætat. 15.] My gentleman struggled, wept, argued in vain. I bid him win my name, which I would only restore when he deserved it." Had the father been just the youth would soon have regained his affections and name. The abbé Choquart, at first severe with his pupil, soon became attached to and proud of him. His progress was astonishing, his memory prodigious. The dead and living languages, mathematics, drawing, and music, and various manly exercises, occupied him by turns, and he distinguished himself in all. In the midst of the marquis's vituperations we find no absolute facts. He calls his son lying by nature, base, and so vicious that the worst consequences are to be apprehended: this is carried so far that, when he mentions that his masters applaud and his comrades love him, he adds that the boy ought to be smothered, if it were only for his powers of cajolery and fascination.

This severity frightened but did not conquer the youth. He worked hard to obtain his father's approbation; but indiscretions came between to widen the breach. Perpetually in expectation of some degrading or excessive punishment, he lived in a state of excitement, and even terror, ill fitted to inspire the gentleness and repose of spirit which is the best ingredient of honour and virtue. As he grew older his turbulence became more dangerous; and his father, considering it necessary to tame him by increased hardships, placed him in the army. "I am going to send him," he writes, "as volunteer, to the strictest and most laborious military school. A man, a chip of the old times, the marquis de Lambert, has founded one in his regiment. He pretends that the exclusive atmosphere of honour, and a hard and cold moral regimen, can restore beings the most vitiated even by nature. I have requested him to name as Mentor an officer who, not from reason and deduction, but from instinct, should have a disgust and natural scorn for all baseness. I have named Gervin as his other Mentor, and the only servant-master of this young man. Severity will cost me nothing, for with him it is my right and my duty." The perpetual recurrence to the accusation of baseness affords some excuse for the father's inveteracy; yet it was certainly ill judged to set a servant over a proud aspiring youth as master, and this servant, who hated him, was one of the chief engines of perpetuating the marquis's bad opinion. [Sidenote: 1767. Ætat. 18.] However, by placing him beyond the paternal control, under the impartial jurisdiction of a regiment, the young man had a chance of being fairly treated, and the consequence was that his good conduct was acknowledged and a brevet rank promised him. He was not allowed to reap any advantage: his father kept him so wholly without money that he incurred a few debts; he lost, also, four louis in play, a vice to which he showed no predilection in after life, and we may therefore judge that this trifling loss was accidental. His father's wrath flamed out. "He is cast," he wrote to his brother, "in the mould of his maternal race, and would devour twenty inheritances and twelve kingdoms if he could lay his hands on them. But I can endure as little as I like of that species of evil, and a close and cool prison will soon moderate his appetite and thin him down."

Added to this error was the unfortunate circumstance of an amour, the first outbreak of his passionate nature on emerging from boyhood, in which he was the successful rival of his superior officer, who thus became his enemy, and joined with the father to crush the young man's spirit. Mirabeau, in after years, always spoke with great bitterness of M. de Lambert's discipline. He escaped from it on this occasion, and took refuge in Paris with his father's intimate friend, the duke de Nivernois. His brother-in-law, husband of his sister, the marquis du Saillant, mediated between him and his father: he defended himself against accumulated accusations. His father speaks of his defence as a mass of falsehood and ingratitude: he meditated, or, rather, was instigated, to send him to the Dutch colonies in India, but milder thoughts prevailed;--he would not kill, but only tame, as with blows, the fiery-spirited boy; so he caused him to be imprisoned in the fortress of the Isle de Rhé; and the youth felt that all the world was his enemy, and the chief his harsh implacable parent. In his eloquent letter to the marquis, written some years after, in the prison of Vincennes, he alludes with bitterness to this period of his existence.