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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

108.: DEATH OF THE ABBE GREGOIRE EXAMINER, 5 JUNE, 1831, P. 360 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I [1822]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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108.

DEATH OF THE ABBE GREGOIRE

EXAMINER, 5 JUNE, 1831, P. 360

In this, Mill’s first obituary notice, he memorializes Henri, abbé Grégoire (1750-1831), a leading radical and former politician. The Archbishop of Paris, Quélen, having refused him the last rites unless he agreed to renounce his oath to the civil constitution, they were performed without the renunciation by abbé Marie Nicolas Sylvestre Guillon (1760-1847), a priest, writer, and practitioner of medicine during the Revolution. At first no church was permitted to receive his body, but eventually he was buried, to the accompaniment of fiery speeches, in the cemetery of Montparnasse. These unheaded paragraphs are described in Mill’s bibliography as “An obituary notice of the abbé Grégoire in the Examiner of 5th June 1831, included in the summary of French news” (MacMinn, p. 16); in the Somerville College set they are similarly listed (without the “An”) and enclosed in square brackets.

the celebrated abbé grégoire has recently died, after an illness of some length, and in extreme old age. The Archbishop of Paris refused to authorize the sacraments to be administered to him, or the funeral service to be performed, considering him as a schismatic, who had not made his peace with the Church. Clergymen, however, were found to perform these offices, in spite of the Archbishop. His schism consisted in having conformed to the ecclesiastical establishment of the Constituent Assembly, and having accepted the office of a Constitutional Bishop. M. Grégoire never renounced the Roman Catholic faith, but adhered to it openly throughout the reign of Terror, either from conviction, or because he scorned submission to an odious tyranny. Few characters have been the subject of greater calumny; none ever were more highly respected by all to whom they were really known. In 1819, the estimation in which his country held him was evinced in his being returned to the Chamber of Deputies, without any solicitation on his part, by the department of the Isère. This provoked a furious debate on the meeting of the Chamber; and his election was finally pronounced void, on a point of form.

M. Grégoire was a Member of the Convention when Louis XVI was tried.1 Being absent on deputation, he forwarded his vote in writing; it was for a verdict of guilty, but against capital punishment: and he persuaded three colleagues, who were joined with him in the same mission, to do the like.2 He was, and remained to the last, a firm Republican; and was one of the first persons in France (along with Brissot,3 and others) who made any public exertions for the mitigation and final extinction of Negro slavery.

[1 ]Louis XVI (1754-93) was tried and executed in January 1793.

[2 ]Grégoire’s colleagues were Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles (1760-94), Grégoire Marie Jagot (1751-1838), and EdouardThomas Simon (1740-1818).

[3 ]Jean Pierre Brissot (called de Warville) (1754-93), lawyer and radical reformer, was one of the founders in 1788 of the Société des Amis des Noirs.