(Christian William de Lamoignon) was born December the 6th 1721. At the age of 24 he became a counsellor of Parliament, and six years afterwards chief president of the cour des aides. He remained in that important situation during a period of 25 years, and displayed on many occasions proofs of firmness, eloquence, and wisdom.

When the prince of Condé was sent by the king in 1768 to silence the magistrates who opposed the taxes, Maleherbes replied to him, "Truth, Sir, must indeed be formidable, since so many efforts are made to prevent its approach to the throne." About the same time that he became president of the cour des aides, he was appointed by his father, then chancellor of France, superintendent of the press; an office of the greatest importance, of which the principles which Maleherbes had imbibed from D'Alembert rendered him very ill qualified to discharge the duties. He was what the French called a philosopher; a term with them of the same import with a naturalist, who openly denies revealed religion, and has no adequate notions of the moral attributes of God. The consequence was, that when the authors of impious and immoral books were brought before him in his official capacity to undergo examination, he appeared to them as advising, afflicting, and protecting them, against that very power which was vested in himself; and they were commonly dismissed with this senseless observation, that all books of whatever tendency should be considered merely as objects of commerce. Had it not been for the protecting influence of Maleherbes, the Encyclopédie, of which the publication was frequently suspended (see Diderot in this Supplement), would probably have been altogether suppressed; and the works of Rousseau and Raynal, which so powerfully contributed to that revolution in which he was overwhelmed, would certainly not have spread so rapidly over the kingdom of France. It was he, said D'Alembert, who broke the shackles of literature.

In vain will it be replied, that he left the same liberty to the religious as to the impious writers; for that was not always strictly true. The Abbé Barruel has brought the testimony of D'Alembert himself to prove, that it was much against his will that Maleherbes suffered works refuting the sophisters to appear; and, as he very properly observes, what a minister allows with reluctance, he finds abundant means of preventing.

In 1775 he resigned the office of chief president of the cour des aides, and was appointed minister and secretary of state in the place of La Vrillière. Thus placed in the centre of a frivolous yet brilliant court, Maleherbes did not in the least deviate from his former simplicity of life and manners; but, in lieu of complying with the established etiquette which required magistrates, when they became ministers of state, to exchange their fable habit and head-dress for a coloured suit, bag-wig, and sword, he retained his black coat and magisterial periwig! This is recorded by a panegyrist to his honour; but we perceive not the honour which which it reflects on him. It surely requires no great powers of abstraction to discover, that a coloured coat, bag-wig, and sword, are not in themselves more frivolous or contrary to nature, than a black coat and enormous periuke; and if the manners of a country have appropriated these different drapery to different stations in life, the individual must be actuated by a very absurd kind of pride, who sets up his own caprice against the public opinion.

As, when invested with the power to restrain within just limits the freedom of the press, it was his chief aim to encourage and extend that freedom; so, when raised to an office which gave him the unlimited power of issuing lettres de cachet, it was his total suppression that became the earliest object of his most ardent zeal. Till that time lettres de cachet, being considered as a part of the general police, as well as of the royal prerogative, were issued not only at the will of the minister, but even at the pleasure of a common clerk, or persons still more insignificant. Maleherbes began by relinquishing himself this absurd and iniquitous privilege. He delegated the right to a kind of tribunal, composed of the most upright magistrates, whose opinion was to be unanimous, and founded upon open and well-established facts. He had but one more object to attain, and that was to substitute a legal tribunal in the place of that which he had established; and this object he was upon the point of accomplishing, when the intrigues of the court procured the deposition of Turgot; and Maleherbes, in consequence, resigned on the 12th of May 1776. For this part of his conduct he is intitled to praise, which we feel ourselves inclined to withhold from his memory. Even M. Barruel admits, that he had many moral virtues, and that he displayed real benevolence when alleviating the rigours of imprisonment, and remedying the abuse of lettres de cachet; but France, says he, shall nevertheless demand of him her temples that have been destroyed; for it was he who, above all other ministers, abused his authority to establish in that kingdom the reign of impiety.

After this epoch he undertook several journeys into different parts of France, Holland, and Switzerland, where he collected with zeal and taste objects of every kind interesting to arts and sciences. As he travelled with the simplicity and economy of a man of letters, who had emerged from obscurity for the purpose of making observations and acquiring knowledge, he by that means was enabled to reserve his fortune for important occasions, in which it might procure him information on interesting subjects. He travelled slowly, and frequently on foot, that his observations might be the more minute; and employed part of his time in suitably arranging them. These observations formed a valuable collection of interesting matter relative to the arts and sciences, but which has been almost totally destroyed by the fury of revolutionists, who have done as much prejudice to the interests of science as of humanity.

Returning from his travels, Maleherbes for several years enjoyed a philosophic leisure, which he well knew how to direct to useful and important objects. The two treatises which he composed in the years 1785 and 1786 on the civil state of the protestants in France are well known. The law which he proposed in these, was only preparatory to a more extensive reform; and these treatises were to have been followed up by another work, the plan of which he had already laid down, when affairs growing too difficult to be managed by those who held the reins of government, they were compelled to call him to their councils. They did not, however, assign him the direction of any department, and introduced him merely (as subsequent events have shewn) to cover their transactions under a popular name, and pass them on the world as acts in which he had taken part. Maleherbes accepted their overtures merely to satisfy the desire he felt to reveal some useful truths; but it was not for that purpose that they had invited him to their councils. Those who presided at them took umbrage at his first efforts to call their attention to the voice of truth and wisdom; and succeeded so well in their opposition, that he was reduced to the necessity of delivering in writing the counsel which he wished to offer. Such was the origin of two treatises relative to the calamities of France, and the means of repairing them. He transmitted these treatises to the king, who never read them; nor was he ever able to obtain a private audience although a minister of state.

Such is the account of his last conduct in office which is given by his friends; and as we have not read his treatises on the calamities of France, we have no right to controvert it. From his known principles, however, we are intitled to conclude, that his plans of reformation were similar to those of Neckar, the offspring rather of a head teeming with visionary theories, than of the enlightened mind of a practical statesman, or the corrupt heart of a Jacobin conspirator.

Perceiving the insufficiency of his endeavours, disgusted with what he thought the repeated errors of the government, and deprived of every means of exposing them, or preventing their fatal effects; after frequent solicitations, he at length obtained leave to retire. He repaired to his estate at Maleherbes, and from that moment entirely devoted his time to those occupations that had ever formed the chief pleasure of his life. He passed the evenings and a great part of the night in reading and study.

In this tranquil state he was passing the evening of his days amidst his woods and fields, when the horrors of the Revolution brought him again to Paris. During the whole of its progress, he had his eyes constantly fixed on his unhappy sovereign, and, subduing his natural fondness of retirement, went regularly to count every Sunday, to give him proofs of his respect and attachment. He imposed it as a duty on himself to give the ministers regular information of the designs of the regicide faction; and when it was determined to bring the king to trial, he voluntarily offered to be the defender of his master, in his memorable letter of the 14th vol. iii. of December 1792, that eternal monument of his loyalty and affection. His offer was accepted; and he pleaded the cause of the monarch with a strength of argument that nothing could have resisted but the blood-thirsty minds of a den of Jacobins. "What Frenchman (says a valuable writer), what virtuous man, of any country, can ever forget that affecting scene, when the respectable old man, penetrating, for the first time, into the prison of the Temple, melted into tears, on finding himself prefigured in the arms of his king; and that still more affecting scene, when, entrusted with the most agonizing commission that a subject could possibly have to his sovereign, he threw himself at the feet of the innocent victim, while, suffocated with his sobs, his voice..." till re-animated by the courage of the virtuous Louis, was inadequate to announce the fatal sentence of death.*

Having discharged this painful and hazardous duty he once more returned to his country residence, and resumed his tranquil course of life. But this tranquillity was of short duration. About a twelvemonth afterwards, in the month of December 1793, three worthy members of the Revolutionary Committee of Paris came to reside with him, his son-in-law, and his daughter, and apprehended the two latter as criminals. Left alone with his grandchildren, Malherbes endeavoured to console the rest of his unfortunate family with the hopes which he himself was far from entertaining; when, the next day, the new formed guards arrived to apprehend him, and the whole of his family, even the youngest infants. This circumstance spread a general consternation throughout the whole department; for there was hardly a man in France, a few exceptions excepted, who did not revere the mild virtues of the last friend of the unfortunate king.

In this calamity Malherbes preserved the undisturbed equanimity of virtue. His affability and good humour never forsook him, and his conversation was as usual; so that to have beheld him (without noticing his wretched guards), it seemed that he was travelling for his pleasure with his neighbours and friends. He was conducted the same night to the prison of the Madelotette with his grandson Louis Lepelletier, at the same time that his other grandchildren were separated into different prisons. This separation proving extremely afflicting to him, he earnestly solicited against it; and at length, on his repeated entreaties, they all met together once more at Port-Libre. They remained there but a short period. The son-in-law of Malherbes, the virtuous Lepelletier Rafaëlo, the first of them who was arrested, was ordered into another prison, and sacrificed a few days after. Malherbes himself, his daughter, his grand-daughter, and her husband, were soon after all brought to the guillotine. They approached it with fortitude and serenity. It was then that his daughter addressed these pathetic words to Mademoiselle Sombreuil, who had saved the life of her own father on the 2d of September: "You have had the exalted honour to preserve your father—I have, at least, the consolation to die with mine."

Malherbes, still the same, even to his last moments exhibited to his relations an example of fortitude. He conversed with the persons that were near him without bestowing the least attention on the brutalities of the wretches who tied his hands. As he was leaving the prison to ascend the fatal cart, he stumbled against a stone, and made a false step. "See (said he smiling), how bad an omen! A Roman in my situation would have been sent back again." He passed through Paris, ascended the scaffold, and submitted to death with the same unshaken courage. He died at the age of 52 years, 4 months, and 15 days. He had only two daughters, and the son of one of them alone remains to succeed. From this account of Malherbes's behaviour at his last moments, we are inclined to believe that his intentions were better than some parts of his practical conduct; and we know, that having dispelled the vain illusions of philosophy, he acknowledged his past errors; exclaiming, in the accents of grief, "That false philosophy (to which I confess I was myself a dupe) has plunged us into the gulph of destruction, and, by Malherbes's Journal, p. 158—196.

For the simple words political liberty, France has lost that social freedom which she possessed in every respect, in a higher degree, than any other nation! How truly great did the king appear in his last moments! All their efforts to degrade him were vain; his unfathomable virtue triumphed over their wickedness. It is true, then, that religion alone transmutes sufficient courage into the mind of man, to enable him to support, with so much dignity, such dreadful trials.