constitutional liberty, and doubtless loathed the excesses which took
place in the name of liberty. He was the only man who could have saved
the monarchy, if it were possible to save it; but no human force could
probably have arrested the waves of revolutionary frenzy at this time.

On the removal of the Assembly to Paris, the all-absorbing questions
related to finance. The State was bankrupt. It was difficult to raise
money for the most pressing exigencies. Money must be had, or there
would be universal anarchy and despair. How could it be raised? The
credit of the country was gone, and all means of taxation were
exhausted. No man in France had such a horror of bankruptcy as Mirabeau,
and his eloquence was never more convincing and commanding than in his
finance speeches. Nobody could reply to him. The Assembly was completely
subjugated by his commanding talents. Nor was his influence ever greater
than when he supported Necker's proposal for a patriotic loan, a sort of
income-tax, in a masterly speech which excited universal admiration.
"Ah, Monsieur le Comte," said a great actor to him on that occasion,
"what a speech: and with what an accent did you deliver it! You have
surely missed your vocation."

But the finances were in a hopeless state. With credit gone, taxation
exhausted, and a continually increasing floating debt, the situation was
truly appalling to any statesman. It was at this juncture that
Talleyrand, a priest of noble birth, as able as he was unscrupulous,
brought forth his famous measure for the spoliation of the Church, to
which body he belonged, and to which he was a disgrace. Talleyrand, as
Bishop of Autun, had been one of the original representatives of the
clergy on the first convocation of the States-General; he had advocated
combining with the Third Estate when they pronounced themselves the
National Assembly, had himself joined the Assembly, attracted notice by