if he did not immediately quit Paris.”  And he did all he could to induce him, through the voice of his friends, to identify himself with the cause of reform, as the only means for the salvation of the throne.  He warned him against fleeing to the frontier to join the emigrants, as the prelude of civil war.  He advocated a new ministry, of more vigor and breadth.  He wanted a government both popular and strong.  He wished to retain the monarchy, but desired a constitutional monarchy like that of England.  His hostility to all feudal institutions was intense, and he did not seek to have any of them restored.  It was the abolition of feudal privileges which was really the permanent bequest of the French Revolution.  They have never been revived.  No succeeding government has even attempted to revive them.

On the removal of the National Assembly to Paris, Mirabeau took a large house and lived ostentatiously and at great expense until he died, from which it is supposed that he received pensions from England, Spain, and even the French Court.  This is intimated by Dumont; and I think it probable.  It will in part account for the conservative course he adopted to check the excesses of that revolution which he, more than any other man, invoked.  He was doubtless patriotic, and uttered his warning protests with sincerity.  Still it is easy to believe that so corrupt and extravagant a man in his private life was accessible to bribery.  Such a man must have money, and he was willing to get it from any quarter.  It is certain that he was regarded by the royal family, towards the close of his career, very differently from what they regarded him when the States-General was assembled.  But if he was paid by different courts, it is true that he then gave his support to the cause of law and constitutional liberty, and doubtless loathed the excesses which took place in the name of liberty.  He was the only man who could have saved the monarchy, if it were possible to save it; but no human force could probably have arrested the waves of revolutionary frenzy at this time.

On the removal of the Assembly to Paris, the all-absorbing questions related to finance.  The State was bankrupt.  It was difficult to raise money for the most pressing exigencies.  Money must be had, or there would be universal anarchy and despair.  How could it be raised?  The credit of the country was gone, and all means of taxation were exhausted.  No man in France had such a horror of bankruptcy as Mirabeau, and his eloquence was never more convincing and commanding than in his finance speeches.  Nobody could reply to him.  The Assembly was completely subjugated by his commanding talents.  Nor was his influence ever greater than when he supported Necker’s proposal for a patriotic loan, a sort of income-tax, in a masterly speech which excited universal admiration.  “Ah, Monsieur le Comte,” said a great actor to him on that occasion, “what a speech:  and with what an accent did you deliver it!  You have surely missed your vocation.”