ment of his remains illustrates the nature of that revolution, in the progress of which, he would certainly have been carried to the guillotine, if he had not fortunately fallen into the grave when he did. In 1793, Chénier, who had published verses to Mirabeau's glory, proposed to the Convention to disinter his carcass and cast it out of the Pantheon in September, 1794, it was, with formal indignity, dragged from the double coffin of wood and lead, and buried in the cemetery of Clamart. The corpse substituted for it, in the Pantheon, was that of the fiend Marat, who alone, at the period of his death, congratulated the nation on the event, adding that Mirabeau had been poisoned by his accomplices, the traitorous stipendiaries of the court. At a later era, the friends of Mirabeau resolved to "rehabilitate his memory;" a celebrated engraver tendered to the Council of Five Hundred, a full length portrait of the orator; Cabanis, who was a member of the Council, moved that it should be accepted with honourable mention, and deposited in the national library; he improved the opportunity to eulogize Mirabeau; other members paid a lofty tribute to his splendid renown, and the motion was adopted. Afterwards, the Consular government had a statue of him executed in marble and placed in the palace of the Senate. At the restoration of the Bourbons, the statue was expelled. We know not whether it has been reinstated; but this vicissitude is very probable. It may be again in danger, if the exiled Bourbons should be reinthroned. Mirabeau more than once ejaculated in the Assembly, that "in revolutions, the distance was small between the Capitol and the Tarpeian Rock." Barnave, his eloquent rival, whom he menaced with this reference, as a prediction, experienced its truth, like most of his fellow-enthusiasts.

A man so dissolute and desperate as Mirabeau, could never have truly loved Liberty; he could not have seen her in her genuine beauty, nor understood her pure essence. When he confessed in the Assembly that his youth had been licentious,that few persons had furnished more food for scandal in their private life, that he had committed many misdemeanors,-he boasted at the same time of the constant independence of his spirit, the steadiness of his zeal for freedom, and the inflexibility of his principles. He appealed to the tone and vein of his thirty published volumes. But we may account for his animosity to despotic power, by the deep workings of his spirit, and the uniform current of his ideas, during the long years that he suffered as its victim or object. The greater part of his early manhood was a personal struggle with power; his liberal theories and revolutionary efforts may be ascribed to the operation of the seventeen lettres de cachet, which were issued against him, and the arrogance with which he was treated by the nobles, who believed that he had disgraced and sought to destroy their order.

Personal resentments and ruined fortunes were the causes of his warfare upon tyranny. He who could serve the ministry of the old régime as a spy at Berlin, and finally sell himself to the king, at the height of his elevation as a friend of the people and a chief of the revolution,-could have cared but little for the cause of Liberty-for right or wrong in governments and institutions. His superlative acumen, his comprehensive studies, and his vindictive feelings, enabled him to master the theories, -to retain the common-places;-and to distinguish, in most cases, the just limits of doctrine and action. He could speculate and expatiate on one side or the other, according to the selfish interests, the predominant purposes, of the juncture-according to the excitement or the spleen of the moment. He flattered the mob on various occasions; chimed with the clubs; he prompted Danton in his harangues at the meetings of the Jacobins, and Camille-Desmoulins in his appeals to the groups in the streets; he served the court;-and when he found that the popularity which he had so long ambitiously affected, could not be preserved in consequence of the detection of his double-dealing, he reproached the leaders of the Coté Gauche with their adulation of the people and their disloyalty to the crown. It was, indeed, retributive justice, that the hateful system of lettres de cachet should occasion the despite, knowledge, and energy which made him so potent a demagogue. Men of his stamp and conduct become efficient agents of Providence, in great national convulsions, of which we may suppose the ultimate results to be beneficial, whatever may be the concomitant evils and enormities. Our own revolution is distinguished, we might say individuated, by the purity of the lives and characters of its leaders and chief instruments, both civil and military.

It was observed, when Mirabeau died, that the monarchy descended into the grave with him; and Boissy d'Anglas made the rather impious remark, that in losing him, the Revolution. lost its providence. He was not merely conscious, but loquaciously vain of his talents; he used to say, "Lafayette has an army; but, believe me, my head is also a power." This overweening conceit may have excited the belief, or imagination, that he could save the monarchy, and set due bounds to the Revolution. We are inclined, however, to regard the delusion as too gross even for him, when he looked without and then concentrated his reflections. As we have intimated, he would have been whirled and whelmed in the tremendous vortex which he assuredly contributed, in a very considerable degree, to open and widen. There was no individual who could be more than a leaf on the boiling whirlpool. Few only have survived, of the many whose names are prominent in the record of his funeral honours; we may cite Pastoret, Barrère, Lafayette, and Tal

leyrand. Of the two latter, the present situation is curious. Lafayette is the maker and prop, and Talleyrand the representative and negotiator, of the Duke of Orleans as "King of the French"-the son of that Philippe Egalité, with whom Mirabeau was accused of designing to supplant Louis XVI. What paroxysms, what changes, what contests, what havoc, what guilt, in the interval between his death and the present national disenthralment! The scenes and events of that interval form a melancholy contrast with the splendid visions of universal order, and universal political prosperity, which our rhetorician conjured up whenever the political tempest seemed to be lulled, and "the vessel of state" to have escaped submersion. At every adoption of a new theoretical reform, he magnificently predicted the perfect regeneration not only of France, but of all the European states. He was then sure of the establishment of the constitutional monarchy, and the indefinite extension of the empire of truth and reason. The occasion of the departmental division of France, affords us a specimen of his common strain of exultation and promise :

"Il est maintenant complet ce systême général d'administration, qui, sur toute la surface de l'empire, donne des interpretes aux pétitions du peuple, des organes aux loix, des mandataires à chaque département, et à chaque cité, des intermédiaires à la collection des citoyens. Pendant quelques instans, au milieu de l'appareil d'une grande création, et quand toutes les institutions anciennes renversées n'offroient plus que les ruines de 20 siecles, la France ne pouvoit que présenter l'image d'un véritable cahos; il disparoît; un ordre durable lui succede, les postes sont fixés, les places remplies, les droits déterminés. Nous avons échappé à cette mort qui atteint les empires comme les individus. Vous n'avez pas seulement réculé la durée de notre société politique, vous avez recréé son existence; c'est au sein même de la tempête qu'il alloit l'engloutir, que vous avez refait à neuf le vaisseau de l'état. Il peut maintenant sans péril se frayer une nouvelle route à de grandes destinées."

We must not be thought to cast any general reflection or disparagement on the men who signalized themselves as reformers or innovators in the outset of the revolution. We would separate what was just and good in their fundamental principles and original attempts, from the doctrinal extravagancies, popular excesses, and ambitious outrages by which its progress and suppression were unfortunately stained. There was much in their theory and action, to be deemed sound and beneficial-there was manifold provocation-there were vast and inveterate abuses. Mirabeau scarcely exaggerated in his recital of leading traits"L'égoisme dans le sacerdoce; l'orgueil dans le patriciat; la bassesse dans le peuple; la division entre tous les intérêts; la corruption dans toutes les classes dont se compose la grande famille; la cupidité dans toutes les ames; l'insignifiance de la nation; la tutelle du prince; le despotisme des ministres."Such a condition of things might provoke, might agitate, might quicken into a sort of desperation of theory and effort, even the

most sluggish and lukewarm among those observers who were capable of feeling the least love of country; and it accounts for the multitude of the virtuous and able men who took the lead, with the most sanguine hopes, in the first stages of the revolution, and who, when evil spirits usurped all sway, recoiled and fled with horror. But we cannot yield to Mirabeau the credit of exalted and disinterested sentiment-for the reasons which we have already in part assigned; and we deem it material for the cause of public virtue, and in reference to the important object of the right distribution of gratitude and glory, -that mankind should not confound all the prime agents of just revolutions-that they should discriminate between the Hampdens, the Henrys, the Washingtons, the Lafayettes, the Neckers, and the Cromwells, the Arnolds, the Mirabeaus. It may be admitted that Mirabeau was, at the dawn, the "Hercules of Liberty," the "Demosthenes of France," the "founder of the French rostrum," fondateur de la tribune Française: one of his eulogists graphically describes him as thundering and prophesying at the gates, and sapping the foundations, of the barbarous and gothic edifice of ecclesiastical and feudal aristocracy. "Il tonne ; il prophétise; et la hache à la main, il sappe dans les fondemens, l'édifice barbare et gothique de l'aristocratie sacerdotale et féodale." These are merits of fact, of deed-very different from those of refined spirit and generous resolution. We respect and applaud much less the impetus of revenge, the irritability of self-love, the restless impatience of impoverished and depraved rank, the persevering audacity of reckless despite, the cupidity of money, to feed inordinate appetites, and of power, to enjoy personal consequence-we respect and applaud these traits, however instrumental they may have been in the overthrow of gothic despotism, and the diffusion of political light-much less than we do the nobler motives, aspirations, and energies,-the deliberate judgment, the erect and straight march, the serene fortitude or the lofty enthusiasm— of excited and unmingled patriotism. We lay stress and dilate upon this topic, because the admiration and the fame due to sound and unfeigned public virtue alone, are too often lavished upon mere instrumentality in great national objects. The interests of society, the claims of justice and truth, require a studious discrimination and preference. We would not have placed the remains of Mirabeau in the Pantheon, or his statue in the senate-house, except with reference to his superior abilities. There is not one of the Signers of the Declaration of our Independence, whom we do not deem more entitled to the distinction and reverence demandable for efficient patriotism ;-there is not one of whose personal character or private life their country need be ashamed-not even the most vehement in spirit, the

poorest in fortune, or the humblest in calling, engaged or rejoiced in the ferment and strife of revolution, from other than public considerations. The last thoughts and sentences of Mirabeau were those of personal vanity; he was occupied with the idea, not of the national weal, but of the contest which he would have waged with Pitt as a rival statesman: Napoleon died with' the dream of battle on his lips-old John Adams, exclaiming, Independence for ever!

1.-Report of the Committee of Finance of the Senate of the United States, to which was referred a resolution of the 30th of December, 1829, directing the Committee to inquire into the expediency of establishing an uniform National Currency for the United States; made by MR. SMITH, of Maryland, on the 29th of March, 1830. 8vo.

2.-Report of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representatives of the United States, to which was referred so much of the President's Message as relates to the Bank of the United States; made by MR. M'DUFFIE, of South Carolina, on the 13th of April, 1830. pp. 31. 8vo. 3.-Report from the Secretary of the Treasury, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate, of the 29th of December, 1829, respecting the relative value of gold and silver, &c.; dated May 4th, 1830. pp. 118. 8vo.

THE framers of the Constitution of the United States were deeply impressed with the still fresh recollection of the baneful effects of a paper money currency, on the property and moral feeling of the community. It was accordingly provided by our National Charter, that no state should coin money, emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, or pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts; and the power to coin money and to regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, was, by the same instrument, vested exclusively in Congress. As this body has no authority to make any thing whatever a tender in payment of private debts, it necessarily follows, that nothing but gold and silver coin can be made a legal tender for that purpose, and that Congress cannot authorize the payment, in any species of paper currency, of any other debts but those due to the United States, or such debts of the United States as may, by special contract, be made payable in such paper. All the engagements previously contracted