8 Fred Morrow Fling 



the wife as a necessary encumbrance. It is gratifying to note 

 that he never secured the property and that his wife was the 

 cause of perpetual unhappiness to him. 



Shortly after the death of his father, the Marquis had left the 

 army and exchanging the sword for the pen devoted his life to 

 the examination and discussion of economic questions. He 

 was an indefatigable writer and once made the remark: "Had 

 my hand been of bronze, I should have worn it out long ago. " 

 His writings made him famous throughout Europe and one of 

 them, devoted to an attack upon the collectors of revenue,^ se- 

 cured him a short imprisonment in the same dungeon where 

 his son afterwards passed three years of his life. 



But it is not with the economic ideas of the Marquis that we 

 are at present concerned although we find them repeated in the' 

 writings of the son. The father also busied himself with ques- 

 tions of government and in his writings we meet the originals 

 of many of the ideas advanced by Mirabeau the statesman. 

 The participation of the people in the government, the appeal 

 to a constitution based upon natural laws, and the designation 

 of the monarch as the first official of the state are all ideas 

 common to father and son alike. 



But while the Marquis was meeting with a large degree of 

 success in his theoretical treatment of economic subjects he did 

 not fare as well when he applied himself to the practical side. 

 Undertaking after undertaking that promised most flattering 

 returns ended disastrously and as one failed he plunged into 

 another to recover what he had lost. He was constantly em- 

 barrassed for ready money and had it not been for the assist- 

 ance received from his brother, the Bailli, would often have 

 been in very straitened circumstances. 



Domestic unhappiness added itself to financial difficulties. 

 He began to suspect with the advancing years that he and his 

 wife were not kindred spirits and after forming the acquaintance 



1 De la TMorie de TimpOt, 1760. 



52 



