Gazette Of The United States

LONDON.

MIRABEAU.

M. de Mirabeau, whose name is frequently heard in the debates of the French Parliament, was first brought into public notice during the administration of M. de Calonne, who employed him in an inferior capacity as an agent to scrutinize into the conduct of the Prussian Cabinet, at the moment when the late Monarch was on the eve of dissolution, which threatened to produce a Revolution in the Germanic system.

His letters to the French Minister, during his residence at Berlin, betrayed strong marks of ability and talents for intrigue; and the best proof of their importance is, that having been since published, under the title of, "The secret History of the Court of Berlin," the King of Prussia had sufficient influence at the court of Versailles to get the book condemned by the laws of France, and it was afterwards burnt by the common hangman. To give it greater celebrity, the condemnation of it was preceded by a funeral oration from the King's Advocate General.

Notwithstanding M. de Mirabeau's acknowledged talents in the line in which he was employed, it is certain from his own letters that the court of France did not think proper to trust him with any of the secrets of the cabinet, for the want of which information he was always in the dark, and unable to proceed perhaps to the extent of his abilities. At the expiration of a year, M. de Mirabeau was recalled.

M. de Mirabeau has been compared by his own countrymen, to Cataline, and probably with great justice. His superior and uncommon talents are considered as a misfortune, rather than as a service to his country—and while they strike the mind with admiration, they are never heard without fear and distrust. Tho' of noble extraction, his abilities have neither been able to procure him a character nor fortune; for being a man of the most degenerate and base principles, he is shunned rather than courted by his fellow citizens; and hence it is that his fine arguments in the debates of the national assembly make little or no impression, and he is obliged to write a journal of the proceedings of that Assembly as a means of livelihood.