ENTHUSIASTIC TRANSPORT OF BROTHERHOOD.

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people's affection, should alone be forgotten in this universal brotherly embrace? On the contrary, he was its first object. In spite of his being accompanied by the ever melancholy, hard-hearted, and rancorous queen; and notwithstanding, the abject thraldom in which he was evidently held by his bigoted scruples, and the bondage also in which his affection for his wife enabled the latter to keep him, the people were obstinately bent on placing all their hopes in the king.

A fact ridiculous to state, is, that the dread inspired by the events of the 6th of October had created a multitude of royalists. That terrible surprise, that nocturnal phantasmagoria, had seriously startled the imagination; and people became more closely attached to the king. The Assembly, especially, had never felt so well disposed in his favour. They had been frightened; and even ten days later it was with great repugnance that they went to assemble in that moody Paris of October, amid that stormy multitude. One hundred and fifty deputies preferred to take passports; and Mounier and Lally absconded.

The two first men in France, Lafayette and Mirabeau, one the most popular, the other the most eloquent, were royalists on their return to Paris.

Lafayette had been mortified at being led to Versailles, though apparently the leader of the people. He was piqued about his involuntary triumph almost as much as the king himself. He effected two measures on his return: he emboldened the municipality to prosecute Marat's sanguinary newspaper at the Châtelet (tribunal); and he went in person to the Duke of Orleans, intimidated him, spoke to him in strong and resolute terms, both at his house and before the king, giving him to understand that after the 6th of October, his presence at Paris was troublesome, furnished pretexts, and excluded tranquillity. By these means he induced him to go to London; but when the duke wanted to return, Lafayette sent him word that, the day after his return, he would have to fight a duel with him.

Mirabeau, thus deprived of his duke, and plainly perceiving that he should never be able to derive any advantage from him, turned, with all the assurance of superior power, like an indispensable person whom it is impossible to reject, and went over to the side of Lafayette. (October 10th-20th).

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He frankly proposed to him to overthrow Necker, and to share the government between themselves.* This was certainly the only chance of safety that remained to the king. But Lafayette neither liked nor esteemed Mirabeau; and the Court detested them both.

At one time, for a brief space, the two remaining powers, popularity and genius, agreed together for the advantage of royalty. An accident that happened just at the door of the Assembly, two or three days after they arrived in Paris, alarmed them, and induced them to desire order, cost what it would. A cruel mistake caused a baker to lose his life (October 21). The murderer was immediately judged and hanged. This was an opportunity for the municipality to demand a law of severity and force. The Assembly decreed a martial law, which armed the municipalities with the right of calling out the troops and citizen guard for dispersing the mob. At the same time, they decreed that crimes of lèse-nation should be tried by an old royal tribunal, at the Chatêlet, petty tribunal for so great a mission. Buzot and Robespierre said it was necessary to create a high national court. Mirabeau ventured so far as to say that all these measures were powerless, but that it was necessary to restore strength to the executive power, and not allow it to take advantage of its own annihilation.

-a

This happened on the 21st of October. What progress since the 6th! In the course of a fortnight, the king had recovered so much ground, that the bold orator placed frankly the safety of France in the strength of the kingly power.

Lafayette wrote to the fugitive Mounier in Dauphiné, where he was lamenting the king's captivity, and inciting people to civil war that the king was by no means captive, that he would habitually inhabit the capital, and that he was about to recommence his hunting parties. This was not a falsehood.

* Consult the three principal witnesses-Mirabeau, Lafayette, and Alexandre de Lameth.

This crime, committed at the door of the Assembly, and which caused them to vote forthwith coercive laws, could not have benefited any but the royalists. I am, however, of opinion that it was the mere result of accident, and of the distrust and animosity engendered by misery.

say,

M. de Lally has himself assured us that his friend Mounier used to "I think we must fight for it."-See Bailly, iii., 223, note.

Lafayette in fact entreated the king to go forth and show himself, and not give credit to the report of his captivity by a voluntary seclusion.*

No doubt but Louis XVI. could, at that period, have easily withdrawn either to Rouen, as Mirabeau advised him, or to Metz, and the army commanded by Bouillé, which the queen desired.

CHAPTER II.

RESISTANCE. THE CLERGY (OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER, 1789.) Great Misery. Necessity of taking back the Estates of the Clergy.-They were not Proprietors.-Protestations of the Victims of the Clergy.-Serfs of the Jura, Monks and Nuns, Protestants, Jews, and Actors.

THE gloomy winter on which we are now entering was not horribly cold like that of 1789; God took compassion on France. Otherwise, there would have been no possibility either of enduring it or of living. The general misery had increased: there was no labour, no work. At that period, the nobles were emigrating, or at least quitting their castles and the country, then hardly safe, and settling in the towns, where they remained close and quiet, in the expectation of events; several of them were preparing for flight, and quietly packing up their trunks. If they acted on their estates, it was to demand money and not to give relief; they collected in haste whatever was owing, the arrears of feudal rights. Hence, a scarcity of money, a cessation of labour, and a frightful increase of beggars in every town, nearly two hundred thousand in Paris! Others would have come, by millions, if the municipalities were not obliged to keep their own paupers. Each of them, throughout the winter, drained itself in feeding its poor, till every resource was exhausted; and the rich, no longer receiving any pensions, descended almost to the level of paupers. Everybody complains and implores the National Assembly. If things remain in this state, its task will be no less than to feed the whole nation.

Lafayette, ii., 418, note.

But the people must not die. There is, after all, one resource, a patrimony in reserve, which they do not enjoy. It was on their account and to feed them that our charitable ancestors exhausted their fortunes in pious foundations, and endowed the ecclesiastics, the dispensers of charity, with the best part of their possessions. The clergy had so well kept and augmented the property of the poor, that at length it comprised one-fifth of the lands of the kingdom, and was estimated at four thousand millions of francs (160,000,0007.)

The people, these paupers really so rich, now go and knock at the door of the church, their own mansion, to ask for a part of a property the whole of which is their own-Panem! propter Deum!*.-It would be cruel to let this proprietor, this member of the family, this lawful heir, starve on the threshold.

Give, if you are Christians; the poor are the members of Christ. Give, if you are citizens; for the people are the living city. Pay back, if you are honest; for this property was only a deposit.

Restore, and the nation will give you more. The question is not to cast yourselves into an abyss in order to fill it up; you are not asked to sacrifice yourselves, as new martyrs, for the people. On the contrary, the question is to come to your own assistance and to save yourselves.

In order to understand this, it must be remembered that the body of the clergy, monstrously rich in comparison to the uation, was also, in itself, a monster of injustice and inequality. Though the head of that body was enormously swollen and bloated, its lower members were meagre and starving: whilst one priest possessed an income of a million, another had but two hundred francs a year.t

In the project of the Assembly, which did not appear till the spring, this was all altered. The country curates and vicars were to receive from the state about sixty millions, and the bishops only three. Hence their cry: religion is destroyed; Jesus is angry; the Virgin is weeping in the churches of the south, and in La Vendée; and hence all the phantasmagoria necessary to incite the peasants to rebellion and slaughter.

Bread! for the love of God!"

An English reader, unacquainted with French money, has only to bear in mind that 100 francs are equal to 4l. sterling.-C. C.

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The Assembly wished also to give pensions of thirty-three millions to the monks and nuns, and twelve millions to separate ecclesiastics, &c. They would have carried the general pay the clergy to the enormous sum of one hundred and thirtythree millions; which, by suppressions, would have been reduced to the half. This was acting most generously. The most insignificant curate was to have (exclusive of house, presbytery, and garden) at least twelve hundred francs a year. To tell the truth, the whole of the clergy (except a few hundred men) would have risen from misery to comfort; so that what was called the spoliation of the clergy, was really a donation.

The prelates made a grand, heroic resistance. It was necessary to return to the point three times and make three distinct attacks (October, December, and April), to get from them what was only justice and restitution. It is very easy to see upon what these men of God had set their life and heart: their property! They defended it, as the early Christians had defended the faith!

Their arguments failed them, but not so their rhetoric. Now, they indulged in threatening prophecies. If you touch a property holy and sacred beyond all others, they will all be in danger; the right of property expires in the mind of the people. To-morrow, the people will come to demand the agrarian law ! Another added meekly: Even though you ruin the clergy, you would not gain much; the clergy, alas! are so poor, and in debt moreover; their estates, if no longer administered by them, would never cover their debts.

The debate had begun on the 10th of October. Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, who had been employed for the clergy, and wanted now to do business at their expense, was the first who broke the ice and ventured upon this slippery ground, and limped along avoiding the dangerous point of the question, saying only: "That the clergy were not proprietors in the same sense as other proprietors.

To which Mirabeau added: "Property belongs to the nation."

The legists of the Assembly proved superabundantly: first, that the clergy were not proprietors (able to use and abuse); secondly, that they were not possessors (the canon law forbidding them to possess); thirdly, that they were not even tenants, but depositaries, administrators at most, and dispensers.