Mirabeau an Opponeyit of Absolutism 17 



Yincennes closed upon him, Mirabeau was but ill prepared to 

 play the important rule in which we afterwards find him. He 

 was disgusted with politics' and longed for a military life.' 

 Had he been left to himself, free to indulge all his passions, his 

 career would have been short and stormy and he would have 

 done nothing to rescue his name from oblivion. "But," says 

 Rousse, "in tearing him from this life of adventure, in con- 

 demning him to think in solitude for more than three years, to 

 measure his forces, to slowly develop his genius — despotism 

 forged by its own hands -the bolts that were to strike it one 

 day. It armed for the approaching struggle the most redoubt- 

 able of its enemies."^ 



What w^as this government that aroused such a tempest of 

 indignation in the mind of the solitary thinker of Vincennes? 

 How did it appear to Mirabeau himself previous to 1780? 



It was the most absolute regime under which Europe had 

 lived up to that time ; hardly less despotic than the rule of the 

 czars of Russia in our own day and that too at a time when 

 despotism was little tempered by public opinion.^ For public 

 opinion can hardly be said to have existed, or if it did exist, 

 dared not assert itself."* We needs must understand this to 

 appreciate the hardihood of the man who from the depths of a 

 dungeon, raised his voice against despotism. 



In France the word of the monarch was more powerful than 

 the law, for in his presence the law was silent.^ He claimed 

 the right to rule absolutely, and courtiers strengthened him in 



^ "La politique, dont je faisais mon etude, me degoute." Rousse, p. 87. 



* Rousse, p. 87. 



^ "Quelle ressource nous reste-t-il, si Topimon publique iuvoque I'arbi- 

 traire?" Des lettres de cachet, p. VII. 



* "Peu de citoyens ont le courage d'elever la voix ev: faveur de la verite; 

 nous trahissons presque tous la cause de la patrie, ou plutot celle de 

 riiomme, par vine crainte servile, ou par une pusillauime complaisance^" 

 Essai sur le despotisme, p. 112. 



5 "Get odieux edit met la volont^ d" un seul a la place de toutes les loix." 

 Des lettres de cachet, p. 2J:. 



"Le roi est le maitre." Ibid, p. 322. 



61 



