But where all other politicians failed, one man, Mirabeau, displayed in the general confusion the high capacities of a statesman. Mirabeau brought to the States-General at Versailles the reputation of great abilities and even greater vices, and the fame of a man who, in the vagaries of an astonishing career, had almost exhausted the resources of politics, of literature and of dissipation. He found himself thoroughly distrusted by the Court, by the Government, by the nobility, by the vast majority of respectable people. He was received with murmurs in the Assembly itself. But before a month had gone by, he had won the ear of the Assembly, and after his great speech of the 23rd June, 1789, he became, whenever he chose to speak, its leader. To Mirabeau's mind the first thing to be done in France was to destroy the despotism which paralysed alike freedom, ambition, thought, trade, industry and labour, to sweep away the foundations of privilege and oppression upon which it rested, and to build up in its place a system which should offer liberty to all. For that end he was prepared to encounter any hazard and, if need were, to face all the risks of revolution. But, could that object be effectually attained, he had no wish to destroy more than was necessary to gain it, and he was anxious to carry through the change with as little loss and ruin as might be.
Almost alone in his generation, Mirabeau had noticed what his contemporaries had missed. He had caught, as they had, the spirit of the time. He had welcomed, as they had, the idea of reform. He had learned, as they had, the doctrines of the day. He had conceived, as they had, a passionate hatred of tyranny and misrule and a hot desire for liberty and justice. But, instead of skimming the surface of democracy, and of filling his brain with theories which could not fit with facts, Mirabeau had tried to understand the new science, and had realised that it was the task of a statesman not to advertise theories, but to apply them. Politics were not to him merely a stage for strayed enthusiasms, but rather the business of conducting government, so as to redress the wrongs from which the men around him suffered, and to give them the opportunity of living in future with satisfaction and self-respect. Almost alone among his contemporaries he brought to the task of reform no fixed preconceptions or systems, but only a desire to appreciate the circumstances round him, to foresee and meet the difficulties which were certain to arise, to use such instruments as might be necessary to his purpose, whether he liked them personally or not, and to draw out of the confusion, at whatever sacrifice of his own predilections, a constitution which, by guaranteeing freedom, should meet the wishes of reasonable men. Mirabeau steadily refused to waste time in talking about abstract equality, or to contemplate millenniums which he could not advance. He had no wish to pull down the throne which Frenchmen had loved for ages, to level the old order, to sweep away the ancient traditions of the land. He did not covet change for its own sake. Unjust privilege, caste distinction, Court extravagance, bigoted intolerance, partial justice, personal insecurity, burdensome taxation, false economic laws,—these things he was determined to abolish, and he looked to the experience of other nations to help him in establishing a working system in their place. Almost alone among his contemporaries, he set himself loyally to discover what France needed, and what at the least cost of suffering she could gain.
One consequence of this attitude was that from the first Mirabeau took the lead in assailing the abuses of the old system. Another consequence was that, as soon as he saw that the Revolution had unquestionably won—and his penetration enabled him to see this before most people found it out, and when other minds were still engrossed with apprehensions of an impossible reaction—he devoted his energies to giving a practical shape to the policy of the Reformers. As a practical statesman, he looked with contempt on the 'orgy' of the 4th August, on Lafayette's voluminous Declaration of the Rights of Man, and on the agitation in favour of the suspensive veto. As a practical statesman, in October, 1789, when his adversaries were trying to make him responsible for the march of the Parisian mob to Versailles, Mirabeau was endeavouring, through his connection with La Marck, a brilliant young Flemish nobleman, who was both a member of the States-General and a devoted friend of the Queen, to induce the Government to face the crisis and to adopt a definite policy for the future. His acquaintance with La Marck had opened to Mirabeau a channel by which his advice could penetrate to the Comte de Provence, and so to the King. Even at this time he is found urging the King to withdraw from Paris to Rouen or to some other town in the interior, where his freedom would not be threatened, to put himself at the head of the reforming party, and to surround himself with a strong Ministry of well-known and popular leaders. This aim, the establishment of a Government powerful enough to act with vigour, and popular enough to secure support, Mirabeau never ceased to pursue. The coldness of Lafayette, the jealous egotism of Necker, and the distrust which he personally inspired at Court, defeated his project, and the fatal decree of the 7th November destroyed that prospect for a time. Still Mirabeau did not despair of reconciling the King with the Revolution, and of securing for the support of constitutional monarchy the services of the chief revolutionary leaders. He made repeated efforts to break down Lafayette's stubborn aloofness, and to induce him to co-operate in his plans. 'Lafayette,' he writes to him, 'we must unite, I cannot act without you.' In vain he warns him against the 'little men,' who were endeavouring to keep them apart. 'You have many followers and agents,' he writes again, 'but only a few real friends and servants among them, and none of ability. You and I need one another. Why refuse to act with me?' But to all these overtures Lafayette returned steadily the same chilling refusal, and after June, 1790, Mirabeau gave up trying to win him, and contented himself with watching the General, and with defeating his manœuvres, whenever he could.
Meanwhile, in the Assembly, Mirabeau's ascendency increased every day. On all questions, in all difficulties, his wide knowledge and practical ability contrasted conspicuously with the vagaries of his colleagues, and made him inevitably, except when intrigues or theories carried the day against him, the leader of the House. His speeches on financial questions showed him to be by far the ablest financier there, and more than once decided the Assembly's policy in that department. In foreign affairs he undertook the entire management of the policy of France, and with the assistance of Montmorin in the Ministry, and of his own surpassing knowledge and eloquence in the House, steered the King's tottering administration safely through diplomatic troubles till his death. On the question of giving to the Executive or to the Assembly the initiative in matters of peace and war, Mirabeau fearlessly risked his popularity in order to secure that essentially executive function to the Crown. On the questions of enforcing order, of forbidding emigration, of re-organising the army and navy, of strengthening the administration, Mirabeau alone showed in a high degree the instinct of a sound and practical statesman; and if eloquence, enthusiasm, courage and understanding could have made his views prevail, the labours of the Assembly might have taken a happier direction and might have had happier results. On one point only, the question of the Church, did Mirabeau fail to display his wonted wisdom. The violence of his language and advice upon this point is in marked contrast with his usual sagacity, and is, it may be, largely responsible for the errors into which the Church policy of the Assembly fell. It is possible that his action in urging the House to take extreme measures against the non-juring clergy, was part of the Machiavellian scheme which he had formed for discrediting the Assembly by driving it into reckless courses. But even that explanation, if it be true, is very far from relieving him from censure, and it seems more probable that his language on Church questions was the genuine expression of his feelings. Apart from that, and apart from other faults of judgment and of temper which he sometimes showed, but which, considering his ceaseless activity and the innumerable subjects with which he had to deal, were singularly few and rare, Mirabeau's conduct in the Constituent Assembly reveals him as one of the most extraordinary statesmen whom a great crisis ever produced.
From March, 1790, when La Marck, after some months of absence, returned to Paris, Mirabeau's relations with the Court assumed a more definite character, and in the following summer his notes for the Court regularly began. In his first letter to Louis, Mirabeau denounced all schemes of counter-revolution as 'dangerous, criminal and chimerical,' and made it plain that to his mind the only hope of saving the Monarchy lay in frankly accepting the Revolution, and in placing the King in cordial co-operation with the large and loyal party of reform. In the memoranda which he forwarded to the Court in rapid succession all through the summer and autumn, he laid stress upon the dangers to be feared,—the increasing disorder, the untrustworthiness of Lafayette, the mistakes of the Assembly, the intrigues in Paris, in the provinces, in the army, the terrible risks of bankruptcy and of winter. He urged unceasingly the necessity of facing these dangers, and pointed out the steps to be taken and the means to be employed in order to escape them. On the 14th October, 1790, in a note of great thoroughness and insight, he recapitulated the whole political position, and laid down what must be accepted as the bases of the constitution for the future. He again exhorted the Court to recognise the new departure and to abandon for ever all reactionary ideas. He again urged the desirability of securing the repeal of the decree of the 7th November. With singular breadth of view he suggested the formation of a Ministry, in which the Jacobin leaders were to be included, in order to teach them moderation and the responsibilities of power. And he sketched out the plan, which he afterwards matured, of sending out recognised agents into the provinces, to instruct the people upon politics, to begin an agitation against the action of the Assembly, and to prepare the way for recovering the influence of the Crown.
As time went on, Mirabeau became more and more impatient with the behaviour of the Assembly, and less confident of the feeling of the departments. He foresaw, and was prepared to face, the possibility of civil war. He found that the Queen was listening to other advisers, and would not put herself unreservedly into his hands. 'They are more anxious,' he bitterly confessed, 'to hear my advice than to take it.' Still he persisted in his labours. When one scheme had to be abandoned, he soon had another ready to take its place, and the increase of his difficulties only rendered his plans and precautions more elaborate. At the end of December, 1790, he presented to the Court the most complete and weighty of all his memoranda. In it he pointed out the dangers arising from the King's indecision, from the Queen's unpopularity, and from the 'frenzied demagogism of Paris.' He urged the necessity of taking measures to re-organise the National Guard, and to diminish Lafayette's influence over them. He advised the Government to take advantage of the mistakes of the Assembly, to encourage it in its most foolish and least popular measures, and by forming a party in it and winning over its important members, to induce it to consent to its own dissolution. He urged the Government to bring all its forces to bear upon organising public opinion in the provinces in favour of the restoration of order and of the modification of the constitution. Then he hoped that, if a dissolution were secured, the Government would be able to assert itself in the interval, while the elections were going on, and that the departments, tired of disorder, recognising the King's honest intentions, and learning experience from the errors of the past, would return a body of representatives friendly to freedom but friendly to the Monarchy as well, who would revise the constitution in a reasonable spirit and on moderate lines. In order to further these objects, Mirabeau drew up an elaborate plan, the supervision of which was to be entrusted to Montmorin, who was to be in daily communication with Mirabeau himself. One part of the plan consisted in persuading able and popular deputies to support in the Assembly the views of the Government. Mirabeau hoped to secure in this manner the co-operation not only of members of the Right, but of some of the wire-pullers of the Left also, who were discontented with Lafayette, and even of politicians like Barnave and Thouret, who were beginning to think that on some points the Assembly had gone too far. Another part of the plan, the most important, was the scheme for organising support in the provinces. For this end Mirabeau proposed that a number of agents, in correspondence with Montmorin alone, should be sent out, to influence local opinion against the Assembly and in favour of the King, to prepare the way for a dissolution, to mix intimately with all classes, and to report minutely upon the inhabitants and the opinions of the districts through which they passed. Besides that a smaller body of agents was to be appointed, under the direction of Clermont-Tonnerre, principally to furnish and circulate political literature in the interests of Mirabeau's ideas. A third part of the plan consisted in the establishment of a secret police organisation in Paris, under the direction of Talon and Sémonville, two former agents of Lafayette, who possessed considerable ability for intrigue, to watch carefully the movements of the capital, and to do what they could to win supporters among the journalists, the National Guard, the clergy, the administrative bodies, the cafés, and the clubs. In this plan no stress was laid on the necessity of the King's leaving Paris; but that idea Mirabeau continued steadily to entertain.
It is idle to enquire whether this or any of Mirabeau's busy schemes could have succeeded, and whether even his ability could have driven into one groove of public advantage the Revolution and the Court. It is equally idle to pretend, that, because he laboured to save the Monarchy, he must have been a traitor to freedom, or to rail, as some have railed, against the democrat bought over by the King. Mirabeau never labelled himself with names of uncertain meaning, and he was never bought. He exerted himself to make the Revolution triumphant, because he believed in freedom. When the battle of freedom was won, he exerted himself to save the Monarchy, because he believed in that as well. Other men may differ from his views, but it is not necessary on that account to assail his motives. It is perfectly true that the Court paid 200,000 francs to free him from his debts, and while he wrote memoranda for them, a salary of 2,000 francs a month. But the money was not paid to win his services, for the Monarchy had those already. It was not paid to change his opinions, but because the Court wished to be kept informed of what his opinions were. The constitution did not permit him, while he was a deputy, to take office openly, and obvious reasons made it desirable to keep his connection with the Government secret; but Mirabeau always regarded himself as an unrecognised Minister in the service of the Crown. Of course a relation of that kind is rightly open to censure and suspicion. Mirabeau's standard was not always a high one. He bears no pure and no unsullied name. The record of his early life never ceased to injure and embarrass him. He could be impetuous and capricious. He could stoop to acts of intrigue and to tactical devices which a serener statesmanship would scorn. To a certain extent, although not corruptible, he was corrupt. But when that is admitted, the worst is said. The greatness of his character, the range and variety of his powers, the breadth of his keen and vigorous wisdom, his absolute freedom from littleness and meanness, his unsparing labour for the public cause, his splendid gifts of eloquence and genius, and the infinite charm which made men work for him and love him with an enthusiasm which even friendship rarely shows, overwhelmingly decide our judgment in his favour, and make his career one of the most absorbing pages in the absorbing history of the time. Mirabeau did not live to see his hopes accomplished. On the 2nd April, 1791, worn out by work and illness, the great statesman died, and with him died any hope that still existed of reconciling the Revolution with the Crown.