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Untitled Article
without method and without the power of distinctly expressing their grievances ^ their hostility , and their condemnation . JBy substituting the interest of the many for the interest of the few , by developing the intelligence and raising the dignity of man , the French Revolution became the expression of a truth announced by Plato in his treatise on laws . € We do not bestow the name of an organised government / says that great man , * we do not call those laws just but revolutionary , where government is
established and laws ordained not for the common good , but for the advantage of a few ; ' and the French Revolution rendered to civilization the most important service which could have been demanded of it , by adding to the strength and worth of individual and collective man . The crisis was tremendous , it is true , but , considering the ex- " asperation of the parties , it was inevitable . War was declared
between those who were marching courageously to the conquest of useful truths , in the paths of political and social improvement , proposing to themselves to build a new structure upon newly-discovered principles , and men who were still grovelling with love and idolatry around the forms which education and habit and private interest had consecrated in their eyes . Was it possible that such a war should not be accompanied with deplorable excesses on both sides ?
At the head of these generous innovators was Mirabeau , who disclosed his inmost soul to the enemies of liberty in those thundering words of unrivalled eloquence : ' When the last of the Gracchi perished , ' said Mirabeau , ' he took a handful of dust and threw it towards Heaven , and from this dust sprang Marius—Marius , who was less illustrious for having exterminated the Cimbri , than for having overthrown the aristocracy of Rome . ' Popular like Marius , terrible like him in his hatred of the nobility who had insulted him ; bold enough to risk any measure and not to shrink from any of its consequences , a leader of a party and a politician , one who was capable of originating the vast conception of
confining the popular torrent to its limits , and re-establishing the royal authority on the very fragments whicli that torrent had scattered around it , Mirabeau was a prodigy which excited universal attention . The cabinets of other kingdoms watched with fear the progress of a giant whose every step shook nations , and France proclaimed him the head of the revolution which she had accomplished . At Mirabeau ' s death a void was left which was never after filled up , and the Assembly , deprived of this extraordinary man , never found his successor . Men such as Mirabeau are rare , and only appear at long intervals .
Party hatred raged for a long time after the death of this extraordinary man , and held up to view the prisoner of Vincennes , the son cursed by his father , and the profligate , to tarnish the memory of the tribune , the daring orator , the thundering mouth-
Untitled Article
Mirabeau . 529
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 529, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/25/
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