Mlvahean an Opjxnieut of Ahsolutisni 25 



interfere witl. the course of justice: he could pardon the con- 

 demned or commute his sentence.^ To this rule there was no 

 exception.-- For if exceptions were to be allowed who was to 

 judge of the ])ropriety of them:''^ Tlie moment they were al- 

 lowed, the moment a ruler was permitted to withdraw a citizen 

 from his natural judges, to deprive him of the right of public 

 trial, just at that moirient the door was swung wide to absolut- 

 ism.'' The laws might be defective and barbarous;^ they might 

 lack unity, but in the laws alone was security to be found, and 

 the rulers might mitigate their severity. Mirabeau recognized, 

 too, the necessity of basing the laws upon general principles,'' of 

 co-ordinating them, of bringing them into harmony with the 

 laws of nature. 



That he should consider it necessary to dwell at such length 

 upon these points, to confute with such lengthy arguments the 

 advocates of absolutism was not due to his youth and an over- 

 estimation of the importance of the questions at issue. The 

 reign of law was as yet a thing of the future and Mirabeau, the 

 ''apostle of civil liberty,'' was to do all that in him lay to hasten 

 its coming. Already the moderateness and justness of his de- 

 mands had stamped him as a reformer, not as a revolutionist. 

 .Neither now nor later did he ask for aught that could not justly 

 be granted, for he asked for little more than what the French 

 people had already enjoyed in times past." He praised the days 



' Des lettres de cachet, p. 352. 



' Decrue, Revue historique, XXII, p. 64. 



^ "'Est-il probable que quelques souverains troviveront jamais leur vo- 

 lonte contradictoire avec hi raisoi et la justice dont lis seuls juges?" Des 

 lettres de cachet, p. 111. 



■• " Ou le regne absolu dee loix, ou le regne absolu du despotisme."' Ibid, 

 p. 179. 



•' Ibid, p. 327. 



® ••Remontons done aux priucipes. atin de repoudre une fois a ceux^i 

 posent le fait k la place du droit ; prouvous que celui de toiite legislation 

 est fonde sur'la loi de nature, les lumiercs de la raison. le voeu et le con- 

 sentement general.'' Ibid, p. 2a. 



69 



