afraid of his agreeing to the proposal. You took that method before. Aye, but you say the people were anxious for peace in 1797. I say they are friends to peace now; and I am confident that you will one day acknowledge it. Believe me, they are friends to peace; although by the laws which you have made, restraining the expression of the sense of the people, public opinion cannot now be heard as loudly and unequivocally as heretofore. But I will not go into the internal state of this country. It is too afflicting to the heart to see the strides which have been made, by means of and under the miserable pretext of this war, against liberty of every kind, both of power of speech and of writing; and to observe in another kingdom the rapid approaches to that military despotism which we affect to make an argument against peace. I know, sir, that public opinion, if it could be collected, would be for peace as much now as in 1797; and that it is only by public opinion, and not by a sense of their duty or by the inclination of their minds, that ministers will be brought, if ever, to give us peace. I conclude, sir, with repeating what I said before: I ask for no gentleman's vote who would have reprobated the compliance of ministers with the proposition of the French government. I ask for no gentleman's support to-night who would have voted against ministers if they had come down and proposed to enter into a negotiation with the French. But I have a right to ask, and in honor, in consistency, in conscience I have a right to expect, the vote of every honorable gentleman who would have voted with ministers in an address to his Majesty diametrically opposite to the motion of this night. THE MIRABEAU HE COMTE DE MIRABEAU, born in 1749, is the most eloquent orator of the French Tribune. His life was one long, continuous storm. For a boyish escapade, his father had him incarcerated in a prison. This punishment caused him to rebel against paternal authority, and even more against arbitrary power, but did not have the effect of correcting him. Grave misdeeds brought down on his head new punishments; open and public enmity existed between father and son. Mirabeau spent several years of his life in prison. It was there that he gave himself up to that passion for study which proved to be at least as strong as his love of pleasure. Several works in favor of liberty and the rights of mankind were the result of his enforced leisure; these works swept away at least a part of the contempt which his vices had drawn down on his head. His successive sojourns in Prussia and in England served to ripen his ideas; and, when the French Revolution broke out, he took up arms, prepared to defend in the tribune the liberty in favor of which he had written so much. Deputy from Provence at the National Assembly, he there exercised, by the force of his eloquence, an extraordinary ascendency. Well informed by his arduous studies, he saw better than others the point at which reforms ought to stop. But, at the moment in which he was engaged in retarding a movement which he himself had contributed so much to accelerate, he died in 1791, leaving the Revolution without a counterpoise. His death was regarded as one of the misfortunes of that epoch. SPEECH ON THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE AM ABOUT to plead the cause of a race which, endowed with a fatal pre-eminence among the wretched of the world, running in but few years the gamut of human sorrow, lives, suffers, and dies slaves of the most detestable tyranny whose crimes have ever been recounted by history. You are ere this aware that I speak of the slaves of America. I will dishonor neither this honorable body nor myself by seeking to prove that the negro has the right to his liberty; that question you have already decided, since you have declared that all men are born and remain free and equal before the law, and it is not on this side of the Atlantic that corrupt royalists would have the audacity to argue that negroes are not human beings. If, in consonance with these principles solemnly proclaimed throughout the length and breadth of Europe, the negroes dwelling in our islands, men like ourselves, have an incontestable right to their liberty, how happens it that this Assembly has not as yet broken down the relation of master and slave throughout the French Empire? It is important that France abolish slavery, not only that her acts may be in conformity with the principles of liberty which she has proclaimed and the constitutional conse quences of which she is engaged in organizing, but also, if interests of the gravest moment are to be subserved, that the great duties which ordinary foresight would coun sel may be performed. As a matter of fact, would it be possible to conceal from the nations of the earth this revolution which is your glory? Will not the proclamation of the rights of man reverberate over all parts of the globe? Will not the news be gradually spread that in France all men are gov. erned by equal laws? And, when the wisdom of your constitution shall be patent to the whole world, will there be a power on earth mighty enough to prevent liberty from becoming the aim and ambition of every nation. Guided by our example will they not, soon or late, shake off and shatter the fetters with which their limbs are bruised? resigned victims, of. Would they not desire If these results of the French Revolution are soon or late inevitable, will a multitude of enslaved men be the sole and motionless witnesses, the the exclusive privilege of liberty? to either conquer it or that it be surrendered to them? Can the spectacle be veiled from their sight? can they henceforward be deprived of reason and of reflection as they are now deprived of their liberty? Will the whites always be able, by their own unaided efforts, to maintain the régime that you have broken down? How far can they go before they will have reached the bounds of the shameless parody they are now making of it? Will they transform the customs and the duties of free men into the mysteries of religious rites? Are they going to set aside certain localities and certain days when liberty might be exercised? No, you will think for those who have not the ability to think for themselves; you will rise superior to the interests of which prejudice and ignorance have but a faint conception, and you will perceive that, in order to avert horrible carnage and safeguard your colonies, it will from this time forth be necessary to prepare the blacks for the enjoyment of a blessing for which no man is indebted to his fellow, but which is the universal heritage of humanity. But let us suppose that the tyrants, without themselves running the slightest risk in the colonies, have sufficiently potent agencies to keep the negroes in their present status of beasts of burden. Let us suppose that they can exercise over their slaves the most frightful despotism, and, at the same time, cherish a Constitution which breathes nothing but liberty. . . . I need hardly tell you that this odious contrast is revolting to the reason. I will not en deavor to demonstrate to you how frightful it is that men should regard their own liberty as the first of blessings and at the same time burden an unfortunate race with the yoke of servitude. But I will maintain that, in exercising such a domination, the whites of the colonies will contract or rather perpetuate manners, habits and principles which they will eventually bring back to the bosom of the mother country, to which they ever have a tendency to return, to which, in fact, they are continually returning. The influ ence of these manners and habits, sentiments and principles upon our very liberties, it is to our interest to examine with the utmost prudence. [Mirabeau then enters into a discussion of the motives which inspired the defenders of the slave trade and of slavery to offer strenuous opposition to the opinions which had for their aim the immediate suppression of the former and the gradual abolition of the latter.] These objections are of two kinds: Some have relation to the blacks themselves, others are founded on various political and financial interests of France. Let us begin with the question-in-chief, that is to say with the arguments which apply only to the blacks. We do not assert, say their executioners or the defenders of their executioners, that the slave trade is just; but-1st. It rescues them from the much worse condition which war or captivity would cause them to undergo in their own country. 2d. The trade is not carried on in an inhuman manner. 3d. The negroes are not unhappy in the colonies, and certainly not more so than laborers in our climate, nor, for example, than the major portion of our peasantry. 4th. It is necessary, moreover, to choose between the main |