Part 3
All the circumstances of the times were favourable to his ambition and his wonderful talents and energy; but perhaps no man ever begun public life with more disadvantages, as regarded his own character, against him. He had been seventeen times in prison; he had deserted his own, and run away with other men’s wives; he had had the most scandalous lawsuits with his own family; had been condemned as a criminal; exiled; executed in effigy; he had written and published one of the most depraved of books; had led the most dissipated and obscene of lives; and was known to be a dangerous enemy to those he hated, and an unsure friend to those he pretended to love. The morals of the French capital had been reduced in the days of despotism to a degraded standard; but, according to Dumont, when the name of Mirabeau was first read in the National Assembly among those elected to represent the French nation, it was hissed and hooted by all present.
In spite, however, of all this, in a few weeks he was everything with those men who had considered themselves disgraced by being associated with him; and gathering influence and power by bounds, and not by slow steps, he became almost the absolute master of the National Assembly, the mass of whose members he moved and controlled with as much facility as the Italian showman moves his wooden puppets. His talents and energy were indeed, as we have characterized them--_wonderful_, and so was his eloquence; but these qualities would not of themselves have given him the supremacy he obtained. There were two other advantages in his favour: the first of which we have never heard sufficient importance given to--the second of which M. Dumont alone has clearly, and, it appears to us, honestly, stated.
During his long imprisonments, Mirabeau had profoundly studied the science of politics; and during his exile in foreign countries, and particularly in England, he had attentively investigated the practical part of government: he was the only man that entered the National Assembly well acquainted with the necessary forms and true spirit of a representative government; all the rest had to learn their rudiments. There was talent--there was even genius in abundance--but all these new legislators were theorists; Mirabeau was the only practical man.
In the second place, he had a wonderful art (which he had also acquired during his misfortunes, when his poverty obliged him to write and compile books and pamphlets for his living) of readily availing himself of the assistance of other men, and of working up their materials so as to make them appear his own. The whole matter of many of Mirabeau’s most admired speeches was furnished by M. Dumont himself, or by another citizen of Geneva, M. Duroverai; and, generally, he laid under contribution the information and experience of all his associates. When he was deficient on any point, or, what was more frequently the case, pressed for time, he would assemble these gentlemen, and from their conversation, their notes, or digested essays, get up all he wanted, and proceed forthwith to astonish the Assembly with his wonderful fund of knowledge and flashes of eloquence. But that eloquence, it must be said, did really make the matter his own; his powers of adaptation were as great as those of invention in other men.
Mirabeau’s hatred to the ancient despotism was implacable; but he seems to have had no objection to a constitutional monarchy. Great obscurity still hangs over these matters; but it is said that, seeing the democratic principle was gaining too much strength, and the revolution going too far, he had undertaken to stop its march, and that the negotiations with the Court of the unfortunate Louis XVI., which were notorious, had for their object the prevention of a republic, and the establishment of a limited monarchy. His will had hitherto been law; he had ruled and played with all parties and factions--but whether he could now have succeeded to the utmost of his wish--whether he could now have quieted the storm _he_ had mainly raised, and on which he had floated, we cannot determine; for at the very crisis, at the time when he was supposed to hold the destinies of his country in his hands, he died in the forty-second year of his age, after a most agonizing illness of five days, brought on by his detestable excesses.
His funeral was “rather an apotheosis than a human entombment.” Nearly all Paris followed his body to the church of Sainte Geneviève, thenceforward entitled the Pantheon; the melancholy music, the thousand torches, and the intermittent cannon, producing an effect which has been forcibly described by many eye-witnesses; and those who had feared and hated him, those who had been literally enchanted by his eloquence and genius, saw the grave closed over Mirabeau with awe and feelings that never can be described.
The career of Mirabeau offers a few consolatory remarks to those who are gifted with no extraordinary faculties, either for good or for evil. Mirabeau swayed the destinies of millions,--but he was never happy;--Mirabeau had almost reached the pinnacle of human power, and yet he fell a victim to the same evil passions which degrade and ruin the lowest of mankind. He could never be really great, because he was never freed from the bondage of his own evil desires. The man who steadily pursues a consistent course of duty, which has for its object to do good to himself and to all around him, will be followed to the grave by a few humble and sincere mourners, and no record will remain, except in the hearts of those who loved him, to tell of his earthly career. But that man may gladly leave to such as Mirabeau the music, the torches, and the cannon, by which a nation proclaimed its loss; for assuredly he has felt that inward consolation, and that sustaining hope throughout his life, which only the good can feel;--he has fully enjoyed, in all its purity, the holy influence of “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”
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Footnote 1:
In French, la hure.
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THE MAY-FLY.
“The angler’s May-fly, the most short-lived in its perfect state of any of the insect race, emerges from the water, where it passes its _aurelia_ state, about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night.”--_White’s Selborne._
The sun of the eve was warm and bright When the May-fly burst his shell, And he wanton’d awhile in that fair light O’er the river’s gentle swell; And the deepening tints of the crimson sky Still gleam’d on the wing of the glad May-fly.
The colours of sunset pass’d away, The crimson and yellow green, And the evening-star’s first twinkling ray In the waveless stream was seen; Till the deep repose of the stillest night Was hushing about his giddy flight.
The noon of the night is nearly come-- There’s a crescent in the sky;-- The silence still hears the myriad hum Of the insect revelry. The hum has ceas’d--the quiet wave Is now the sportive May-fly’s grave.
Oh! thine was a blessed lot--to spring In thy lustihood to air, And sail about, on untiring wing, Through a world most rich and fair, To drop at once in thy watery bed, Like a leaf that the willow branch has shed.
And who shall say that his thread of years Is a life more blest than thine! Has his feverish dream of doubts and fears Such joys as those which shine In the constant pleasures of thy way, Most happy child of the happy May?
For thou wert born when the earth was clad With her robe of buds and flowers, And didst float about with a soul as glad As a bird in the sunny showers; And the hour of thy death had a sweet repose, Like a melody, sweetest at its close.
Nor too brief the date of thy cheerful race-- ’Tis its use that measures time-- And the mighty Spirit that fills all space With His life and His will sublime, May see that the May-fly and the Man Each flutter out the same small span.
And the fly that is born with the sinking sun, To die ere the midnight hour, May have deeper joy, ere his course be run, Than man in his pride and power; And the insect’s minutes be spared the fears And the anxious doubts of our three-score years.
The years and the minutes are as one-- The fly drops in his twilight mirth, And the man, when his long day’s work is done, Crawls to the self-same earth. Great Father of each! may our mortal day Be the prelude to an endless May!
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HIGH DUTIES AND LOW DUTIES.
It is a well-known principle, that in taxation two and two do not make four--that is, if a government receive one sum from a low or a moderate duty upon an article of common use, that receipt will not be doubled by doubling the duty. In some cases it will be even lessened. This result is produced by the diminished consumption, arising out of the higher price to the consumer; which higher price includes the additional profit which the manufacturer and the retailer must charge for the additional capital employed upon the article in consequence of the tax. Suppose a tax of a penny were put upon the ‘Penny Magazine.’ Let us see, in that case, how the tax would affect the consumption, and what the government would gain by the tax. In the first place the tax would raise the price of the Magazine to _three_-pence; for, as the retailer receives one-third of the present price, he would also require to receive one-third of the additional price:--the stamp of a penny would therefore immediately become three half-pence to the consumer, by the profit of the retailer alone. The remaining half-penny would be necessary to compensate the publisher for this additional advance of capital, and for the diminished return upon the original outlay for authors, artists, and that branch of the printing process which is called composition. There are certain expenses which are the same whether a work sells one hundred copies, or one hundred thousand. The price being therefore raised to three-pence, we may fairly conclude that the consumption would be diminished nine-tenths--that ten thousand copies would be sold instead of a hundred thousand. Let us see how the revenue would be affected by these altered circumstances:--
The paper for 100,000 copies of the Penny Magazine weighs 3,400 lbs., upon which a duty is paid of 3d. £. s. d. per lb., amounting to 42 10 0
The imposition of a stamp of 1d. per copy would have the effect of raising the retail price of the Penny Magazine to 3d. At that rate it is presumed that the sale of the _Three_-penny Magazine, instead of being 100,000 copies, would be reduced to 10,000 at the utmost.
Upon 10,000 copies, with 1d. stamp, the revenue would receive as under: £. s. d. £. s. d. £. s. d. Duty of 3d. in the lb. upon paper. 4 5 0 Stamp of 1d. upon 10,000 41 13 0 Deduct discount of twenty per cent. allowed upon news stamps 8 6 6 ________ 33 6 6 ________ 37 11 6 ________ _Weekly_ loss to the revenue from the high duty 4 18 6 ________
Or, _Annual_ duty upon sixty-four impressions of 100,000 copies of the Penny Magazine, using 217,600 lbs. of paper, taxed at 3d. per lb 2,720 0 0 _Annual_ produce of a penny stamp, and paper duty upon 10,000 copies 2,404 16 0 ___________ _Annual_ loss to the revenue from the high duty 315 4 0
By this operation, therefore, the government would sustain that loss which invariably results from the diminished consumption of an article of general use upon which a high duty is imposed; and ninety thousand persons would be excluded from the purchase of a little work from which they derive instruction and amusement. By this diminished consumption of nine-tenths of the Penny Magazine, nearly nine-tenths of the paper-makers, printers, type-founders, ink-makers, bookbinders, carriers, and retailers, to whom the sale of a hundred thousand copies weekly affords profitable employment, would, as far as the Penny Magazine goes, be deprived of that employment; and that diminution of profitable employment would in a degree diminish their power of continuing consumers of other articles contributing to the revenue, and thus still more affect the amount of taxation dependent upon the Penny Magazine.
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_Perseverance_.--“I recollect,” says Sir Jonah Barrington, “in Queen’s County, to have seen a Mr. Clerk, who had been a working carpenter, and when making a bench for the session justices at the Court-house, was laughed at for taking peculiar pains in planing and smoothing the seat of it. He smilingly observed, that he did so _to make it easy for himself_, as he was resolved he would never die till he had a right to sit thereupon, and he kept his word. He was an industrious man--honest, respectable, and kind-hearted. He succeeded in all his efforts to accumulate an independence; he did accumulate it, and uprightly. His character kept pace with the increase of his property, and he lived to sit as a magistrate on that very bench that he sawed and planed.”
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LONDON:--CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST.
_Shopkeepers and Hawkers may be supplied Wholesale by the following Booksellers:_--
_London_, GROOMBRIDGE, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row. _Birmingham_, DRAKE. _Bristol_, WESTLEY and Co. _Hull_, STEPHENSON. _Leeds_, BAINES and Co. _Liverpool_, WILLMER and SMITH. _Manchester_, ROBINSON, and WEBB and SIMMS. _Newcastle-upon-Tyne_, CHARNLEY. _Nottingham_, WRIGHT. _Dublin_, WAKEMAN. _Edinburgh_, OLIVER and BOYD. _Glasgow_, ATKINSON and Co.
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Stamford Street.
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Transcriber’s Notes
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. Itemized changes from the original text:
• p. 61: Added “a” to phrase “the value of a somewhat higher article.” • p. 62: Changed “here” to “there” in phrase “And we believe there is hardly a condition, however low, from which.”