204 MIRABEAU HIS CHARACTER AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



His abhorrence of the severity of our law, leads him to rejoice in the 

 acquittal of the offender. He says 



" The trial has terminated by the acquittal of Hardy ; and I am glad of it, 

 although the man has behaved with deep ingratitude towards me. It would have 

 pained me to the soul had he become a victim to the sanguinary laws of this 

 country ; for, had a verdict been found against him, he would, to make use of a 

 strange phrase for these nautical islanders are eternally reminding one that they 

 ' rule the waves' he would have been, as they say, ' launched into eternity.' 



We must not here pass over a note of the Editor, in connection with 

 this trial : we cordially concur in its truth. After t( a bit of suitable 

 advice" to witnesses, when examined by insolent, vulgar-minded, brow- 

 beating counsel such as we could name about a dozen of he says : 



" In cases of prosecution for libel, counsel are often heard exclaiming furi- 

 ously, with stentorian lungs, making the walls of the court resound with the 

 words " Hirelings of the Press." " What is a hireling ? Does it never occur 

 to those gentlemen that there are honest as well as dishonest hirelings ? The 

 labourer is worthy of his hire. And are not those gentlemen themselves hire- 

 lings hirelings, too, who receive their hire before they perform their labour ! 

 What, in particular, is a hireling of the press ? He may, or he may not be in 

 most instances, probably he is an honest man, honestly advocating what he 

 believes to be a just and honest cause ; and such, confessedly, is the indefinite 

 nature of the law of libel, that the most honest, the most virtuous, the most 

 loyal, the most patriotic writer in existance, may unintentionally unconsciously 

 fall into its meshes. And, what is a hireling of the bar ? It is one of the 

 fictions of the law and every person of common sense is aware that it is merely 

 a fiction that a counsel, when he goes into court, knows nothing of the cause 

 which he has been hired to undertake, beyond what is stated in his brief. Too 

 often, this fiction is a gross falsehood. Too often does a counsel go into court, 

 possessing a perfect knowledge that the cause which he is about to undertake is 

 a rotten one ; that his client is a scoundrel ; and that, should he, by quirk, 

 quibble, or impudence, succeed in gaining the day, he may be the ruin of a just, 

 honest, and honourable man. Which, then, is the viler the more demoralized 

 or demoralizing character of the two the hireling of the bar, or the hireling of 

 the press ?" 



Originating in a position of Plutarch's, that none but men of genius 

 are subject to melancholy, Mirabeau devotes three admirable letters to 

 a consideration of the constitutional melancholy of the English. His 

 hypothesis is constructed with great and sustained with equal ingenuity: 

 in substance it is this : that constitutional melancholy is the source of 

 suicide amongst the English ; that the revolutions of England are 

 traceable to the same source ; that military glory, and great exploits, are 

 the result of disease, of individual and of national melancholy ; that 

 Bayard's reputation was established during his seven years illness ; that 

 the battle of Fontenay was gained through the illness of Marshall Saxe ; 

 that ague was the great stimulant of Richard Coeur de Lion, in his 

 conquests ; that valour, suicide, and the contempt of death, are depend- 

 ent upon climate, &c. 



Some of Mirabeau's political strictures are excellent. " The liberty 

 of the country," he observes, " was fixed by the Commons ; it will never 

 be preserved by the nobles ; the House of Lords never ventures to show 

 that spirit of freedom which leads to liberty; oppositions of con- 

 sequence, and some of that rough violence which accompanies" a free 

 people, break out in the House of Commons ; ministers are there some- 

 times hard pushed; but scarcely ever in the House of Lords. It would 



