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Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

193.: DEATH OF CHARLES LAMETH EXAMINER, 6 JAN., 1833, P. 8 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, 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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193.

DEATH OF CHARLES LAMETH

EXAMINER, 6 JAN., 1833, P. 8

This article, headed “London, January 6, 1833,” is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An obituary notice of Charles Lameth in the Examiner of 6th Jany 1833” (MacMinn, p. 24). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets (including the note), with three corrections: at 542.15, “survivors” is altered to “survivor”, at 542n.15 “Marre” is altered to “Marne”, and at 542n.16 “Martin” is altered to “Merlin” (but “Douni” is not corrected to “Douai”).

charles lameth is dead.1 He was one of the few survivors of the Constituent Assembly; that illustrious body which contained within it so much of wisdom and virtue, and to which mankind have never yet acknowledged all the debt they owe. At the opening of the Revolution Charles de Lameth, then a high-spirited, young officer, of noble birth and high prospects, yet espoused warmly the cause of the Revolution. He was the friend of Barnave,2 and along with that lofty and pure spirit, with his own brother Alexandre de Lameth, and the most instructed and reflecting statesman in the assembly, Adrien Duport, formed what was then considered the extreme democratic party. Barnave, the greatest orator but one3 of that brilliant period, perished by the guillotine, when the Revolution (to use the words of Danton on the scaffold) began like Saturn to devour her children.4 Duport died in exile. The two Lameths returned to France with the Bourbons, and distinguished themselves in the côté gauche of the Chamber of Deputies. The elder died a few years since. Charles de Lameth, always the least conspicuous of the four in intellectual endowments, may be pardoned if his own personal sufferings, and the disappointment of his early enthusiastic hopes, made him go the way of the timid, and resist the democratic tendency of the times. He was a strenuous supporter of the juste milieu, or resistance party, after the July Revolution; but he never was false to the recollections of his better days, and but a few months since, he made a speech in the Chamber in affectionate vindication of the memory of his illustrious friend Barnave.5 Peace be with them both, and with the last immortal honour!

How few remain of that noble representative body, and these few how various! Lafayette is still spared to us. There are still alive Talleyrand, Sieyès, Montlosier, Roederer, Pontécoulant, the only survivor of the proscribed Girondists; Barrère,6 the only survivor of the terrible Committee of Public Safety:* and probably a few others whom we remember not. None now remain of that still nobler body, the signers of the American Declaration of Independence. The last of them, Carroll of Carrolton, died a few months ago at a most advanced age.7

[1 ]He died on 28 Dec.

[2 ]Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave (1761-93) played a prominent role in the Constituent Assembly, of which he became President in October 1790. When the Assembly dissolved in September 1791, he returned to Grenoble where he was arrested, brought back to Paris, and guillotined on 30 Nov., 1793.

[3 ]The greatest orator was Mirabeau.

[4 ]Georges Jacques Danton (1759-94) belonged to the Committee of Public Safety, sharing responsibility for the September massacres; he lost the power struggle with Robespierre, and was guillotined on 5 Apr., 1794. The mot, said to have originated with Vergniaud, was perhaps taken by Mill from Joachim Vilate, Causes secrètes de la journée du 9 au 10 thermidor, in Le vieux cordelier, par Camille Desmoulins; Causes secrètes . . . , par Vilate . . . (Paris and Brussells: Baudoin, 1825), p. 192: “La révolution, comme Saturne, eut bientôt dévoré ses plus tendres enfans.” Vilate, however, does not attribute the phrase, but applies it to Desmoulins and Danton.

[5 ]In a speech on 10 Mar., Lameth had nominated Barnave for inclusion in the projected Panthéon (Moniteur, 1832, p. 712).

[6 ]Bertrand de Barère de Vieuzac (1755-1841), one of the most extreme members of the National Convention and a member of the Committee of Public Safety, first supported Robespierre and then drafted the report denouncing him. He served Bonaparte, and went into exile under the Restoration, returning in 1830.

[* ]Unless, of which we are not certain, Prieur de la Marne still survives. We forget whether the ex-director and eminent lawyer, Merlin de Douai, was a member of the Constituent Assembly. [Pierre Louis Prieur de la Marne (1756-1827), a lawyer, member of the Committee of Public Safety and President of the Convention, known for his bitter attacks on the ancien régime, was banished as a regicide in 1816 and had died in Brussels in 1827. Merlin de Douai, who was still alive, had been a member of the Constituent Assembly.]

[7 ]Charles Carroll (1737-1832), owner of Carrollton Manor in Maryland, was a delegate to the Maryland Convention of 1776, which declared for separation from England, a delegate to the Continental Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He always signed his name Carroll of Carrollton.