As the revolution thus ran its course, and the ultra democratic party, with the populace behind it, threatened by its activity and unscrupulousness in time to make itself entire master of the political arena, the stronger had become Mirabeau’s desire to enter the ministry and direct the counsels of the King. From entrance into the council he was, however, for the time hopelessly debarred. To nip his ambition in the bud, Necker and his colleagues, shortly after the King’s arrival in Paris, had instigated the Assembly to decree that no deputy should be a minister. In the spring of 1790 the King and Queen were induced to enter into secret communication with the great orator. He tendered them advice in a written form, and the King in return for his services made him monthly payments. But Mirabeau soon experienced that except in trivial matters his advice was never followed. He demanded a far fuller and more generous acceptance of the principles of the revolution than it was possible for Louis to give. He accepted as absolute gain, both for the King and the nation, the fall of the parliaments, the abolition of privileges, the destruction of the orders of nobles and clergy, and the freeing of land and labour. Unceasingly he urged and implored Louis to win the confidence of the nation by turning his back wholly on the past, and separating the cause of the crown from that of the upper orders. ‘To accomplish a reaction,’ he wrote, ‘you must destroy at a blow a whole generation or make blank the memories of twenty-five millions of men.’ Mirabeau accepted also as the noblest fruits of the revolution freedom of worship, freedom of the press, and the freedom of the individual from arbitrary treatment in property and person. But while detesting government that was arbitrary, or which went astray through want of means to test public opinion, Mirabeau had little faith in the wisdom of collective bodies of men, or in the political intelligence of the middle and lower classes, of whom he believed that, in the long run, the one would sell political liberty for order, the other for bread. He, therefore, looked to the King to be the guide and leader of the nation. His belief was that if only the existing barriers of distrust were broken down, the middle-class, relieved from fear of reaction in favour of the nobility and the Church, would readily assent to the establishment of a strong executive and the repeal of the decrees making administrative bodies independent of the central government, and excluding ministers from the legislature. He had, moreover, the penetration to see that the abolition of aristocratic institutions, and the parcelling out of the country into equal divisions, without historical traditions, were measures destructive of variety and vigour in the national life, and thereby favourable to the exercise of power by the crown. Unless the course that he advised were followed he predicted the fall of the throne. ‘The mob,’ he repeatedly