This power of seizing on the spirit of the question, clearing the view of the assembly, and leading it onward in the right road, he exerted memorably on the 24th September, when Necker, to remedy the disastrous state of the finances, proposed a patriotic contribution of a fourth of the incomes. A committee, after three days spent in examination, approved the plan. Mirabeau, the known enemy of Necker, spoke, to engage the assembly to adopt it at once, on the recommendation of the minister, without taking any responsibility on itself. The friends of Necker saw the snare, and accused him of injuring the plan of the minister, while he pretended to support it. Mirabeau replied, that he was not the partisan, but, were he the dearest friend of the minister, he should not hesitate to compromise him rather than the assembly. Necker might deceive himself, and the kingdom receive no detriment; but that the public weal were compromised, if the assembly lost its credit. These words had some effect, but still the discussion went on, and still the deputies hesitated to adopt Necker's proposition, till Mirabeau, again ascending the tribune, burst forth with a torrent of overwhelming eloquence in its favour: he painted the horrors of a national bankruptcy, and the consequent guilt of incurring it; he expatiated on the wide-spread misery that must ensue. He continued,--"Two centuries of robbery and depredation have opened a gulf in which the kingdom is nearly swallowed; this gulf must be filled up. Here is a list of French proprietors; select among the richest, so to lessen the number of victims; but still select--for must not a few perish to save the many? Two thousand notables possess enough to fill up the deficit, to bring back order into your finances, and peace and prosperity to the kingdom. Strike! immolate without pity these hapless victims--precipitate them into the abyss;--it will close! Ha! you draw back with horror. Inconsistent pusillanimous men! Do you not see that when you decree bankruptcy, or, what is still more odious, when you render it inevitable without decreeing it, you stain yourselves with a still greater and yet a gratuitous crime? for this sacrifice will at least fill up the deficit. But do you think, because you do not pay, you will no longer be in debt? Do you believe that the thousands, the millions of men, who in one moment will lose by the explosion, or by its reaction, all that made the comfort of their lives, and, perhaps, their only means of support, will allow you to reap the fruits of your crime in peace? Stoical contemplators of the incalculable ills which this catastrophe will bring on France! Insensible egotists! who think that the convulsions of despair and misery will pass away like every other, and the more quickly as they are more violent;--are you sure that so many men, without bread, will tranquilly permit you to taste the viands whose quantity and delicacy you will not suffer to be diminished? No!--you will perish in