Page:Lectures on the French Revolution of John Acton.djvu/161

Rh one-fourth of the capital which was to fall due at the dissolution; but the intention was not carried out. The entire sum that Mirabeau received, up to his death, from the king amounted to about 12,000. In return, between June I and February 16 he wrote fifty-one notes for the Court discussing the events of the day, and exposing by degrees vast schemes of policy. When they came to be known, half a century ago, they added immeasurably to his fame, and there are people who compare his precepts and prescriptions with the last ten years of Mazarin and the beginning of the Consulate, with the first six years of Metternich or the first eight of Bismarck, or, on a different plane, with the early administration of Chatham.

Mirabeau himself was proud of his new position, and relied on this correspondence to redeem his good name. He was paid to be of his own opinion. The king had gone over to him; he had changed nothing in his views to meet the wishes of the king. His purpose throughout had been the consolidation of representative monarchy on the ruins of absolutism. To the king in league with privilege he was implacably opposed. To the king divested of that complicity he was a convinced and ardent friend.

The opportunity of proving his faith was supplied by Captain Cook. In his last voyage the navigator visited the island since named after his lieutenant Vancouver, and sailed into Nootka Sound, to which, in his report, he drew the attention of the Government. Three or four years before, the Spaniards had been there, and had taken formal possession; and the Russians, spreading southward along the coast, acknowledged their right, and withdrew. But the place was far north of the regions they actually occupied; and English adventurers, with the sanction of the Government, settled there, and opened a trade in peltry with China. After a year or two, the Spaniards came in force, and carried them off, with their ships and their cargoes; and claiming the entire Pacific seaboard, from Cape Horn to Alaska, they called on the English