agents,' he writes again, 'but only a few real friends and servants among them, and none of ability. You and I need one another. Why refuse to act with me?' But to all these overtures Lafayette returned steadily the same chilling refusal, and after June, 1790, Mirabeau gave up trying to win him, and contented himself with watching the General, and with defeating his manœuvres, whenever he could. Meanwhile, in the Assembly, Mirabeau's ascendency increased every day. On all questions, in all difficulties, his wide knowledge and practical ability contrasted conspicuously with the vagaries of his colleagues, and made him inevitably, except when intrigues or theories carried the day against him, the leader of the House. His speeches on financial questions showed him to be by far the ablest financier there, and more than once decided the Assembly's policy in that department. In foreign affairs he undertook the entire management of the policy of France, and with the assistance of Montmorin in the Ministry, and of his own surpassing knowledge and eloquence in the House, steered the King's tottering administration safely through diplomatic troubles till his death. On the question of giving to the Executive or to the Assembly the initiative in matters of peace and war, Mirabeau fearlessly risked his popularity in order to secure that essentially executive function to the Crown. On the questions of enforcing order, of forbidding emigration, of re-organising the army and navy, of strengthening the administration, Mirabeau alone showed in a high degree the instinct of a sound and practical statesman; and if eloquence, enthusiasm, courage and understanding could have made his views prevail, the labours of the Assembly might have taken a happier direction and might have had happier results. On one point only, the question of the Church, did Mirabeau fail to display his wonted wisdom. The violence of his language and advice upon this point is in marked contrast with his usual sagacity, and is, it may be, largely responsible for the errors into which the Church policy of the Assembly fell. It is possible that his action in urging the House to take extreme measures against the non-juring clergy, was part of the Machiavellian scheme which he had formed for discrediting the Assembly by driving it into reckless courses. But even that explanation, if it be true, is very far from relieving him from censure, and it seems more probable that his language on Church questions was the genuine expression of his feelings. Apart from that, and apart from other faults of judgment and of temper which he sometimes showed, but which, considering his ceaseless activity and the innumerable subjects with which he had to deal, were singularly few and rare, Mirabeau's conduct in the Constituent Assembly reveals him as one of the most extraordinary statesmen whom a great crisis ever produced.