Historical Characters

These notes or bonds, in short, thus became money; and they had this advantage over ordinary paper money, that they represented something which had a positive value; and as the first issue of four hundred millions of francs took place at a time when some substitute was really required for the coin which every one, from alarm and want of confidence, had then begun to hoard, its effects were rather beneficial than the reverse. The Assembly instantly thought it had an inexhaustible fund at its disposal; consequently a new issue of eight hundred million bonds followed shortly after the first issue of four hundred millions, as a matter of course; and it became evident that this mode of meeting the current wants of the State was to be adopted to a greater and greater extent, thereby increasing the currency in a manner not in any way called for by the increased wealth or business of the community, and altering the value of money in all the transactions of life. M. de Talleyrand at once foresaw the evils to which this system would naturally lead; and saying, “Je serais inconsolable si de la rigueur de nos décrets sur le clergé il ne résultait pas le salut de la chose publique,”16 demonstrated, with a singular clearness and sagacity, that the course on which the Assembly had entered must inevitably cause the total disappearance of bullion, an enormous rise in provisions, a daily depreciation of State paper and of land (such State paper representing land), a rapid variation of exchanges, an impossibility of all regular commerce.

But men in desperate times disregard ultimate results. The Assembly wanted funds at the moment: forced assignats created those funds; and when Mirabeau shrewdly observed that to multiply assignats was, at all events, to multiply the opponents to reaction, since no man who had an assignat could wish the property on which its value depended to be restored to its former possessors, this political argument settled the financial one.

III

The great characteristic of modern legislation is the principle of representation by election. It by no means follows, however, that because it has been an invaluable discovery to make a portion of government depend upon a particular principle, that every portion of a government should be deduced from that principle. On the contrary, the mobility given to a government by any system that introduces into it the popular passions and variations of opinion, requires some counteracting element of fixity and stability to give permanence to its duration, and steadiness to its action. But the National Assembly – like those invalids who, having found a remedy for their disease, fancy that if a little of such remedy does some good, a great deal must do much more – made the whole of their institutions, with one exception, depend upon the same basis; and as their chamber was elective, their municipalities elective – so their judges were to be elective, and their clergy and bishops elective also.

Here commenced the first serious schism in the nation, for that which had hitherto existed had been between the nation and the court. I have said that the clergy, and more especially the higher clergy, had not willingly abandoned the property which they had been accustomed to consider theirs. This loss, however, furnished them with but a worldly cause of feud; it neither affected their consciences, nor the consciences of their flocks. But the new regulations, whatever their intrinsic merits, entirely changed the existing condition of the Roman church, and struck at the root of its discipline. These regulations, consequently, were denounced by the Pope, and could not be solemnly accepted by the more zealous of the priesthood.

In such circumstances it would have been far wiser to have left the spiritual condition of the clergy untouched. To oblige all ecclesiastics either to give up their benefices, or to swear to uphold the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy” (such being the title given to the new system), was to provoke many who might otherwise have been silent to declare hostility to the Revolution; and at the same time gave to the Revolution itself that persecuting bias by which it was finally disgraced and ruined. Such a measure, besides, divided the clergy into two classes – one of which excited the veneration of the people by its sacrifices, and the indignation of the government by its complaints: the other satisfied the government by its obedience, but lost the respect of the people by its servility. A Catholic clergy disowned by the Pope was useless to those professing the Catholic religion; no clergy at all was wanted for those who professed no religion whatsoever. The course which M. de Talleyrand observed in this business was wary and cautious up to the moment at which it was bold and decided.

The Assembly had determined upon the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy,” prior to the 14th of July. The King, however, had requested a delay, with the intention of referring to Rome, and the law did not finally pass the Legislature till the 27th of November.

The struggle during this period was between the Sovereign and the Pope on the one side, and the philosophers and the church reformers – for both took a part in the matter – on the other.

It was disagreeable for a bishop, still looking to ecclesiastical preferment, to venture to quarrel with one party in the dispute, and equally disagreeable for a statesman aspiring to popular authority to separate himself from the other. The result of the contest, also, was for a while uncertain; and as there was no absolute necessity for the Bishop of Autun to express any opinion upon its merits, he was silent. But when the Assembly had pronounced its final decree, and that decree had received the formal though reluctant assent of the King, the case was different. A law had been regularly passed, and the question was, not whether it was a good law, but whether, being a law, it was to be obeyed. A battle had been fought, and the question was, not whether the victors were in the right, but whether it was better to join with those who had conquered, or with those who had been conquered.

In such a condition of things M. de Talleyrand rarely hesitated. He took his side with the law against the church, and with those who were daily becoming more powerful, against those who were daily becoming more feeble; and having once taken a step of this kind, it was never his custom to do so timidly.

He at once took the required oath, which all his episcopal brethren – with the notorious and not very creditable exceptions of the Bishops of Babylon and Lydia, whose titles were purely honorary – refused to take. He also justified this course in a letter to the clergy of his own department, and ultimately undertook to consecrate the new bishops who were elected to supply the place of those whom the Assembly had deprived of their dioceses.

We shall presently see the results of this conduct. But it may be as well at once to state, that although M. de Talleyrand accepted for himself those new regulations for his church which the State, in spite of the head of his church, had established, and took an oath to obey them without unwillingness, and although he even maintained that the State, considering the clergy as public functionaries enjoying a salary in return for the performance of public duties, might deprive any members of the clergy of such salary if they would not submit to the laws of the government which paid and employed them; he nevertheless contended, boldly and consistently and at all times, that all ecclesiastics thus dispossessed would have a right to the pension which, at the time of confiscating the church property, had been granted to any ecclesiastic whom the suppression of religious establishments or of useless benefices left without income or employment; a principle at first accepted as just, but soon condemned as inexpedient; for there is no compromise between parties when one is conscientiously disposed to resist what it deems an act of injustice, and the other resolutely determined to crush what it deems a selfish opposition.

IV

Amidst the various vacancies which were occasioned by the refusal of the high dignitaries of the church to take the oath which the Constitution now exacted from them, was that of the archbishopric of Paris; and as it was known that M. de Talleyrand could be elected for this post if he so desired it, the public imagined that he intended to take advantage of his popularity and obtain what, up to that period, had been so honourable and important a position. In consequence of this belief a portion of the press extolled his virtues; whilst another painted and, as usual in such cases, exaggerated his vices.

M. de Talleyrand was, up to the last hour of his life, almost indifferent to praise, but singularly enough (considering his long and varied career), exquisitely sensitive to censure; and his susceptibility on this occasion so far got the better of his caution, as to induce him to write and publish a letter in the Moniteur, of Paris, February 8th, 1791.

Letter of M. de Talleyrand to the editors of the “Chronicle,” respecting his candidature for the diocese of Paris

“Gentlemen,

“I have just read in your paper that you have been good enough to name me as a candidate for the archbishopric of Paris. I cannot but feel myself highly flattered by this nomination: some of the electors have in fact given me to understand that they would be happy to see me occupy the post to which you have alluded, and I, therefore, consider that I ought to publish my reply. No, gentlemen, I shall not accept the honour of which my fellow-citizens are so obliging as to think me worthy.

“Since the existence of the National Assembly, I may have appeared indifferent to the innumerable calumnies in which different parties have indulged themselves at my expense. Never have I made, nor ever shall I make, to my calumniators the sacrifice of one single opinion or one single action which seems to me beneficial to the commonwealth: but I can and will make the sacrifice of my personal advantage, and on this occasion alone my enemies will have influenced my conduct. I will not give them the power to say that a secret motive caused me to take the oath I have recently sworn. I will not allow them the opportunity of weakening the good which I have endeavoured to effect.

“That publicity which I give to the determination I now announce, I gave to my wishes when I stated how much I should be flattered at becoming one of the administrators of the department of Paris. In a free state, the people of which have repossessed themselves of the right of election —i. e. the true exercise of their sovereignty – I deem that to declare openly the post to which we aspire, is to invite our fellow-citizens to examine our claims before deciding upon them, and to deprive our pretensions of all possibility of benefiting by intrigue. We present ourselves in this way to the observations of the impartial, and give even the prejudiced and the hostile the opportunity to do their worst.

“I beg then to assure those who, dreading what they term my ambition, never cease their slanders against my reputation, that I will never disguise the object to which I have the ambition to pretend.

“Owing, I presume, to the false alarm caused by my supposed pretensions to the see of Paris, stories have been circulated of my having lately won in gambling houses the sum of sixty or seventy thousand francs. Now that all fear of seeing me elevated to the dignity in question is at an end, I shall doubtless be believed in what I am about to say. The truth is, that, in the course of two months, I gained the sum of about thirty thousand francs, not at gambling houses, but in private society, or at the chess-club, which has always been regarded, from the nature of its institution, as a private house.

“I here state the facts without attempting to justify them. The passion for play has spread to a troublesome extent. I never had a taste for it, and reproach myself the more for not having resisted its allurements. I blame myself as a private individual, and still more as a legislator who believes that the virtues of liberty are as severe as her principles: that a regenerated people ought to regain all the austerity of morality, and that the National Assembly ought to be directed towards this vice as one prejudicial to society, inasmuch as it contributes towards that inequality of fortune which the laws should endeavour to prevent by every means which do not interfere with the eternal basis of social justice, viz., the respect for property.

“You see I condemn myself. I feel a pleasure in confessing it; for since the reign of truth has arrived, in renouncing the impossible honour of being faultless, the most noble manner we can adopt of repairing our errors is to have the courage to acknowledge them.

“Talleyrand A. E. d’Autun.”

From this document we learn that the Bishop of Autun, notwithstanding his labours in the Assembly, was still a gay frequenter of the world: to be found pretty frequently at the chess-club, as well as in private society; and, though he lamented over the fact, a winner at such places of thirty thousand francs within two months. We also learn that he abandoned at this moment the idea of professional advancement, in order to maintain unimpeached the motives of his political conduct; and we may divine that he looked for the future rather to civil than to ecclesiastical preferment.

The most striking portion of this document, however, is the tone and style – I may almost say the cant – which prevails towards its conclusion. But every epoch has its pretensions: and that of the period which intervened between May, 1789, and August, 1792, was to decorate the easy life of a dissolute man of fashion with the pure language of a saint, or the stern precepts of a philosopher. “Le dire,” says old Montaigne, “est autre chose que le faire: il faut considérer le prêche à part, et le prêcheur à part.”17

V

And now, or but a little after this time, might have been seen an agitated crowd, weeping, questioning, and rushing towards a house in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. It was in the first days of April, and in that house – receiving through the open windows the balmy air which for a moment refreshed his burning forehead, and welcoming yet more gratefully the anxious voice of the inquiring multitude – lay the dying Mirabeau, about to carry into the tomb all the remaining wisdom and moderation of the people; and, as he himself sadly and proudly added, all the remaining fragments of that monarchy which he had shown the power to pull down and had flattered himself he might have the power to reconstruct. By his death-bed stood the Bishop of Autun. It was a curious combination of circumstances which thus brought together these two personages, whose characters were essentially different, but whose position was in some respects the same. The one was eloquent, passionate, overbearing, imprudent; the other cool, urbane, logical, and cautious. But both were of illustrious families, endowed with great abilities, ejected from their legitimate place in society. Both also were liberal in their politics, and this from vengeance and ambition, as well as from principle and opinion. Aristocrats allied with a democratic faction; monarchists in desperate conflict with those by whom monarchy was most held in reverence; they had engaged in a battle for moderation with extreme auxiliaries and extreme opponents. Mirabeau, the fifth child, but who became, by a brother’s death, the eldest son of the Marquis de Mirabeau (a rich proprietor of a noble house in Provence), had been, when very young, married to a wealthy heiress, and intended for the profession of arms. Nevertheless, quitting his profession, separated from his wife, constantly involved in scrapes – now for money, now for love – he had led a bachelor’s life of intrigue, indigence, and adventure, up to the age of forty, alternately the victim of his own wild nature and of the unwise and absurd severity of his father, whose two pursuits in life were persecuting his family and publishing pamphlets for the benefit of mankind. Thus, frequently in confinement – always in difficulties (the first and last means of correction with the old marquis being to procure a “lettre de cachet,” and to stop his son’s allowance), the Comte de Mirabeau had supported himself almost entirely by his talents, which could apply themselves to letters, though action was their proper sphere.

During a short interval in his various calamities – an interval which he had passed at Paris in a desperate effort to better his condition – he had become acquainted with M. de Talleyrand, who, struck by his abilities and affected by his misfortunes, recommended him to M. de Calonne, at whose suggestion he was sent by M. de Vergennes, then minister of foreign affairs, on a sort of secret mission into Germany, just prior to the Great Frederick’s death. From this mission he returned when France was being agitated by the convocation of the “notables,” speedily succeeded by that of the States-General. He saw at a glance that an era was now approaching, suited to his eminent talents, and in which his haughty but flexible character was likely to force or insinuate its way: his whole soul, therefore, was bent upon being one of that assembly, which he from the first predicted would soon command the destinies of his country.

Certain expenses were necessary to obtain this object, and, as usual, Mirabeau had not a farthing. The means which he adopted for procuring the money he required were the least creditable he could have devised. He published a work called “The Secret History of the Court of Berlin,” a work full of scandal, public and private, and betraying the mission with which he had recently been intrusted.18

The government was naturally indignant; a prosecution was instituted against him before the Parliament of Paris; M. de Montmorin, and others, by whom he had previously been patronised, told him plainly they wished to drop his acquaintance.

Through all these disgraceful difficulties Mirabeau scrambled. He denied that the work was published by his authority.

Rejected from their sittings by the nobility of Provence, who decreed that, having no fiefs of his own, and being merely invested with his father’s voice, he had no right to sit among the nobles, he became the successful candidate of the tiers-état for Aix; and at the meeting of the States-General stood before the ministry which had accused, and the aristocracy which had repudiated him, a daring and formidable enemy.

But, though made a desperate man by circumstances, he was not so either by inclination or by ideas.

His views for France were limited to the procuring it a representative government; and his views for himself were those which frequently lead ambitious men under such a government to adopt opposition as a road to power. “Tribun par calcul,” as was justly said of him by a contemporary,19 “aristocrat par goût.” He aimed at obtaining for his country a constitution, and being minister of the crown under that constitution.

M. de Talleyrand had the same wish, and probably the same ambition. These two statesmen, therefore, would naturally, at the meeting of the States-General, have acted together as two private friends who thought the same on public matters. But the publication of “The Secret History of the Court of Berlin,” offensive to the minister who had employed Mirabeau, could not be otherwise than painful and disagreeable to M. de Talleyrand, at whose intercession Mirabeau had been employed, and to whom, indeed, Mirabeau’s correspondence had been principally addressed. This circumstance had, therefore, produced a cessation of all private intimacy between these two personages who were about to exercise so great an influence over approaching events. It is difficult, however, for two men to act a prominent part on the same side for any length of time in a popular assembly, and this at a great national crisis, without relapsing into an old acquaintance, or forming a new one. To what extent the old relations between Mirabeau and M. de Talleyrand were thus renewed, it is difficult to say, but that on the 21st of October, 1789, they already talked together with some degree of intimacy is evident from a letter of Mirabeau to the Comte de la Marck, in which letter Mirabeau states that he had been told the history of a secret political intrigue by the Bishop of Autun.20

About this time, too, it is now known that Mirabeau projected a ministry to which I have already alluded, and in which he and M. de Talleyrand were to be united. Had this ministry been formed, it is very possible that the history of France during the next sixty years would have been different.

But the most fatal measure adopted by the Assembly was that (November 9, 1789) which prevented any of its members from being minister during its continuance, and from entering the service of the crown for two years after its dissolution. The consequences of this resolution, aimed at those who, like Mirabeau and Talleyrand, were hoping to erect a constitutional government, and to have the direction of it, were incalculable. The persons at that time who had most influence in the Assembly were men with moderate opinions, great talents, and great ambition. Had such men been placed as the head of affairs they might have controlled them and established a government at once popular and safe. But this new regulation prevented those who were powerful as representatives of the people from using their influence in supporting the executive power of the crown. It drove them, moreover, if their passions were violent and their positions desperate, to seek for power by means hostile to the constitution which annihilated their hopes.

It had this effect upon Mirabeau; and his sentiments becoming known to the court, a sort of alliance established itself between them in the spring of 1790; – an alliance entered into too late (since most of the great questions on which Mirabeau’s influence might have been useful were already decided) and most absurdly carried on; for whilst the King opened to Mirabeau his purse, he shut from him his confidence, and at first, and for a long time, exacted that the compact he had entered into with the great orator for the defence of his throne should be kept altogether secret, even from his own ministers.21

Mirabeau was to advise the King in secret, to help him indirectly in public; but he was not to have the King’s countenance, and he was to be thwarted and opposed by the King’s friends.

The error which both parties to this arrangement committed was the result of the feeble and irresolute character of the one, who never did anything wholly and sincerely, and of the over-bold and over-confident character of the other, who never doubted that whatever he attempted must succeed, and who now easily persuaded himself that having vanquished the difficulty of opening a communication with the court, he should promptly vanquish that of governing it. Indeed, the desire of Mirabeau to serve the crown being sincere, and his ability to do so evident, he (not unnaturally perhaps) felt convinced that his sincerity would be trusted, and his talents given fair play.

But it is clear that the King thought of buying off a dangerous enemy, and not of gaining a determined ally. Thus he went on supplying Mirabeau’s wants, receiving Mirabeau’s reports, attending little to Mirabeau’s counsels, until matters got so bad that even the irresolution of Louis XVI. was vanquished (this was about the end of 1790), and then, for the first time, was seriously entertained a plan which the daring orator had long ago advised, but which the King had never, up to that period, rejected nor yet sanctioned.

This plan consisted in withdrawing the King from Paris; surrounding him with troops still faithful, and by the aid of a new assembly, for which public opinion was to be prepared, reforming the constitution – now on the point of being completed – a constitution which, while it pretended to be monarchical, not only prevented the monarch from practically exercising any power without the express permission of a popular assembly, but established, as its fundamental theory, that the King was merely the executor of that assembly’s sovereign authority: an addition which, at first sight, may seem of small importance, but which, as it was calculated daily to influence the spirit of men’s actions, could not but have an immense effect on the daily working of their institutions. Nor was this all. Nations, like individuals, have, so to speak, two wills: that of the moment – the result of passion, caprice, and impulse; and that of leisure and deliberation – the result of foresight, prudence, and reason. All free governments possessing any solidity (whatever their appellation) have, for this reason, contained a power of some kind calculated to represent the maturer judgment of the people and to check the spontaneous, violent, and changeful ebullitions of popular excitement. Even this barrier, however, was not here interposed between a chamber which was to have all the influence in the State, and a chief magistrate who was to have none.