THE PRINCESSES WISH TO EMIGRATE.

557

machine for making aristocrats and multiplying the partisans of the counter-revolution. It is about to bestow on the latter all the weak. minded and the lukewarm (a vast multitude !), all the ignorant and compassionate good-hearted people, &c.

A great number of inoffensive men, who, without having any determined ideas, were inclined towards the old system by habit or position, found themselves, in consequence of the Jacobin delations, in an insufferable situation, bordering on despair. What could they do? Deny the opinions with which they were reproached? But nobody would have believed them; they would have gained nothing by it but disgrace. It was difficult to remain, and as difficult to depart. For the man who found himself under this sort of political excommunication, to remain was torture; the poor unfortunate aristocrat (thus baptised, whether justly or unjustly,) was watched, at every step, with terrible suspicion ; the crowd, and even little children, would follow the enemy of the people. He returned home; but his house was not very safe; his servants were enemies; till at length, his fear ever increasing, he found means one day to run away. Now this man, who would have remained neuter, weak, or indifferent, if he had been unmolested, was cast into the enemy's camp, and if he did not wound us with the sword, he certainly did with the tongue, with his complaints and accusations, or, at least, with the sight of his misery and the pity he inspired.

That terrible enemy, pity, was increasing against us, throughout Europe, the hatred conceived against France and the Revolution: a hatred, in reality, unjust. The Jacobin inquisition was by no means in the hands of the people. Those who were then organising it, were spurious Jacobins, sprung from the ancient system, nobles or burgesses, unprincipled politicians of an inconsistent and giddy Machiavelism. They urged on and turned the people to their own advantage: a thing easy enough in the state of distrustful and credulous irritability into which they were cast by extreme misery.

This situation displayed itself with excessive violence, when the princesses (Mesdames), the king's aunts, wanted to emigrate (at the end of February). The difficulty of continuing their religious worship and keeping priests of their own choice, and the imminent ordeal of Easter, alarmed those timid women. The king himself recommended them to depart for Rome: and there was no law to prevent it. The king, as first magistrate, was obliged by duty to remain or to abdicate; but certainly his aunts were by no means bound to do so. It was not much to be feared that these old women would considerably recruit and strengthen the troops of the emigrants. It would doubtless have been more noble for them to have determined to share their brother's fate, and the miseries and dangers of France. But, in short, they wanted to depart; it was necessary, therefore, to let them go, both them and all who, thinking only of real or imaginary dangers, preferred their safety and their lives to their native land, those who were able to abandon their quality of Frenchmen. It was necessary to throw open every gate, and, if they were not wide enough, to throw down the walls for them.

The people were very justly alarmed at the possibility of the king's flight, and confounded these two very different questions.

558

DEPARTURE OF THE PRINCESSES.

Mirabeau was informed of the approaching departure of the princesses, comprehended the rumour, and the danger that would follow. He entreated the king, but in vain, not to allow it. Paris became alarmed, and addressed the same prayer to the king and to the National Assembly. This was a new alarm for Monsieur, who, it was said, wished to depart, and gave his word not to abandon his brother; whereby he engaged himself but little, being in fact resolved to escape with Louis XVI.

This fermentation, far from stopping the princesses, hastened their departure. The expected explosion did not fail to take place. Marat, Desmoulins, and the whole of the press, raised an outcry that they were carrying away millions of francs and smuggling away the Dauphin, and that they started before the king in order to prepare his future household. It was not difficult to divine that they would have some trouble on the way. They were first stopped at Moret; but their escort forced its way in spite of opposition; next, they were arrested at Arnay-le-Duc; and there it was impossible to go forward. They write, and the king also writes, for the Assembly to authorise them to continue their journey.

This business, serious in itself, has been far more so, inasmuch as it was a solemn field of battle, where two principles and two spirits met and struggled together; one, the original and natural principle which had produced the Revolution, namely, justice and equitable humanity,—and the other, the principle of expedients and interest, which was called the public safety, and which ruined France: ruined her, inasmuch as casting her into a crescendo of assassination, which could not be stopped, it made France execrable throughout Europe, and inspired everlasting hatred against her; ruined her, inasmuch as the minds of men, being dejected, after the Reign of Terror, from disgust and remorse, rushed blindly to the yoke of military despotism; and ruined her, inasmuch as this glorious tyranny ended in placing her enemies in Paris, and her chief at Saint Helena.

Ten years of public safety, by the hand of the republicans; and fifteen years of public safety, by the sword of the emperor Open the book of the debt, you are still paying at the present day for the ransom of France. The territory was redeemed; but the souls of men still remain unredeemed. I see them still serfs, the slaves of cupidity and base passions, preserving of this sanguinary history only the adoration of strength and victory,-of strength that was weak, and of victory vanquished.

What has not been vanquished, is the principle of the Revolution, disinterested justice, equity in spite of everything, and to this we must return. One lesson is enough.

The advocates of public interest, and the safety of the people, ought at least to have asked them whether they wished to be saved. It is true that the individual wishes, before everything else, to live; but the mass is susceptible of much higher sentiments. What would those saviours have said, if the people had replied: "I wish to perish and remain just."

And the man who said this was the one who did not perish. Mirabeau was in this matter the very organ of the people, the voice of the Revolu

VIOLENCE OF THE RETROGRADE JACOBINS.

559

tion; and this is, among all his faults, his imperishable title: on this occasion, he defended equity.

It was the spurious Jacobins, Barnave, Duport, and Lameth, who laid down, against justice, the right of interest and safety,-a murderous weapon, a sword without a hilt, by which they perished themselves.

But why did they defend this right of interest? However sincere they may be supposed, we must nevertheless remark that they were interested in it. It was the time when the Lameths had just exposed themselves once more by a very serious mistake. Whilst the two elder, Alexandre and Charles Lameth, occupied at Paris the extreme point of the left side (of the Assembly) the van of the vanguard, their brother, Theodore, was organising, at Lons-le-Saulnier, a retrograde society. Through the credit of his brothers, he had acquired for it the affiliation of the Jacobins, and had caused it to be withdrawn from the primitive society of the same town, composed of energetic patriots. The latter inserted in Brissot's journal a fulminating address against the Lameths (February 2nd). Brissot supported this address, and notwithstanding all the efforts of the Lameths, the Jacobins being undeceived, deprived the retrograde society of the affiliation, and restored it to the other.

This was a terrible blow, one that might prove fatal to their popularity, and which explains why they showed themselves violent, hard-hearted, petulant, and impatient, in the discussion relating to the right of emigrating. It was necessary for them to make a display of zeal before the galleries. They behaved furiously on their benches, shouting and stamping; and they maintained with Barnave that the commune that had arrested the princesses was not guilty of illegality, because it believed it was acting for the public interest. Mirabeau having inquired what law forbade their journey, the Lameths made no answer; but one of their friends, more candid, replied: "The safety of the people."

The Assembly nevertheless permitted the princesses to continue their journey; and charged its constitutional committee to lay before it a plan of a law on emigration.

This project, much relished by Merlin, the future framer of the Law against suspected persons, was indeed already like a first article of the code of Terror; and it was copied from the other system of Terror, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The barbarous legislation of Louis XIV., the model of the present, begins in like manner by inflicting confiscation on the emigrant; next, from one penalty to another, ever more harsh and absurd, it goes so far as to pronounce the sentence of the galleys against pity and humanity, against the charitable man who has saved the proscribed.

Therefore, the question was to know whether they were to take the first step in the path of Louis XIV., the path of Terror; whether France, free but yesterday, was to be shut up like a dungeon. A discussion that interested freedom to such a degree, required one thing especially,that the Assembly should be calm and free. But, since the morning, there was every appearance of a riot, which was being excited by two different parties, the friends of Marat, and the aristocrats. Marat, in his newspaper of the day, called upon the people to run to the Assembly, and display their opinion loudly and violently, and to drive away the

560

PROPOSED LAW AGAINST EMIGRATION.

faithless deputies. On the other hand, the royalists, by cleverly agitating the Faubourg Saint Antoine (it is to them that Lafayette attributes this movement), had urged the people towards Vincennes by making them believe that a new Bastille was there being prepared. This was an infallible means of causing Lafayette and the National Guard to march out of Paris. Many nobles, summoned from the provinces several days previously, had entered the Tuileries stealthily, one by one, armed with daggers, swords, and pistols; and according to every probability, they reckoned on carrying off the king. The National Guard, returning from Vincennes, in the evening, and being in bad humour, found them in the Tuileries, disarmed, and ill-treated them.

That morning, the Assembly was deliberating, amid these commotions of which it could not well understand either the authors or the intention. It heard the drummers beating the générale throughout Paris, the sound of the drums approaching or retreating in the Rue Saint-Honoré, the noise of the people crowding the galleries to suffocation, and scarcely containing themselves, and the still more formidable roar of the tumultuous crowd thronging about the doors. It was a time of agitation, emotion, and universal fever,-a vast and general murmur within and without.

Evidently a great battle was about to take place between two parties, nay more, two systems, two kinds of morality; and it was curious to know who would be willing to compromise himself and enter the arena.

Robespierre at once retired as far as possible, uttered a sentence, and no more,-spoke in order not to speak again. Chapelier, the reporter, having himself declared that his projected law was unconstitutional and demanded that the Assembly should previously decide whether it wished to have a law, Robespierre said: "I am not more a partisan of the law on emigration than M. Chapelier; but it is by a solemn discussion that you ought to recognise the impossibility or the dangers of such a law." So saying, he remained a silent witness of this debate; for whether Mirabeau compromised himself by it, or Mirabeau's enemies (Duport and Lameth), Robespierre would in either case reap advantage.

All, both his friends and his enemies, desired that Mirabeau should speak for his glory or for his ruin. In six notes that he received, one after the other, in rapid succession, he was called upon to declare his principles, and at the same time he was reminded of the violent state of Paris. He perfectly understood the appeal made to his courage; and, to avoid all suspense, he read a powerful address which he had written eight years before to the King of Prussia on the liberty of emigrating. He demanded, moveover, that the Assembly should declare that it would not listen to the project, and pass on to the order of the day.

No answer was returned, neither by Duport, the Lameths, nor Barnave. They remained profoundly silent, leaving the question to inferior speakers, such as Rewbell, Prieur, and Muguet. Rewbell held that in time of war emigrating was deserting. Now, this was precisely the knotty point of the situation: Was it a time of war? The answer might be affirmative or negative. As long as a state of war is not declared, the laws of peace subsist, and all men have the liberty of entering or leaving the country.

MIRABEAU OPPOSES IT.

561

The projected law was read. It intrusted to three persons (to be appointed by the Assembly) the dictatorial right of authorising or forbidding departure, upon pain of confiscation, and of being degraded from the title of citizen. Almost the whole Assembly arose in indignation on hearing it read, and rejected the odious inquisition of state which the proposed law conferred on it. Mirabeau seized the opportunity, and spoke to the following effect: " The Assembly of Athens would not even hear the measure which Aristides had styled as useful but unjust. You, however, have heard it; but the indignation that has arisen has proved that you were as good judges in morality as Aristides: and the barbarity of the proposition proves that a law on emigration is impracticable (murmurs). I ask you to hear me. If there be circumstances when measures of police are indispensable, even against the written laws, it is the crime of necessity; but there is an immense difference between a measure of police and a law... I deny that the project can be submitted for our deliberation; and I declare that I should believe myself freed from every oath of fidelity towards those who should be infamous enough to name a dictatorial commission (applause) The popularity which I have desired to possess, and which I have had the honour (murmurs at the extreme left of the Assembly)—which I have had the honour to enjoy like any other, is not a fragile reed; it is into the earth that I would thrust its roots on the immutable basis of reason and liberty (applause). If you make a law against emigrants, I swear I will never obey it."

The project of the committee was unanimously rejected. Nevertheless, the Lameths had murmured, and one of them asked for permission to speak, but had conceded it to a deputy of his party, who, in a very obscure proposal, moved the adjournment.

Mirabeau persisted in the plain and simple order of the day, and wished to speak again. Then a man on the left exclaimed: "What then is this dictatorship assumed by M. de Mirabeau?" The latter, feeling very sure that this appeal to envy-the usual ruling passion of assemblies would not fail to have the intended effect, rushed to the tribune, and, although the president refused him permission to speak : "I entreat those who interrupt me," said he, "to remember that I have ever opposed despotism; and I always will. It is not enough to complicate two or three propositions (disapprobation repeated several times).— Silence, you thirty members!.. If the adjournment be adopted, you must also decree that from now till then there shall be no riot!”

And there was a riot; they could hear it but too plainly. The thirty, though they had all that multitude on their side, were nevertheless confounded, and spoke not a word. Mirabeau had brought upon their heads the whole responsibility, and they made no reply. The public and the restless crowd that thronged the galleries waited in vain. Never had a blow been more vigorously applied.

The meeting ended at half-past five, and Mirabeau went to the house of his sister, his intimate and dear confidante, and said to her: "I have pronounced my death-warrant. It is now all over with me; for they will kill me."

His sister and his family had long had the same thoughts, and believed his life to be in peril. Whenever he went out in the evening into the