MOLE, Lours MATTMEII, Comte, a French statesman, and a descendant of the famous French statesman and magistrate, Matthieu Mole (b. 1584; d. 1653), was b. at Paris, Jan. 24, 1781. His father, president of the parliament of Paris, died by the guil lotine in 1704. Ilis mother was a daughter of Malesherbes. Mold was for the most part his own preceptor, and displayed a wonderfully precocious love of hard work and inde pendent reflection. In 1805 he published Essais de Morale et de Politigue, in which lie vindicated the government of Napoleon on the ground of necessity. The attention of the emperor was drawn to him; he was appointed to various offices in succession, and raised to the dignity of a count, and to a place in the cabinet. After Napoleon's return from Elba, lie refused to subscribe the declaration of the council of state banishing the Bourbons forever from France, and declined to take his seat in the chamber of peers. In 1815 Louis XVIII. made him a peer, and he voted for the death of Ney. In 1817 he was for a short time minister of marine, but afterwards acted independently of party, and was one of the principal orators in the chamber of peers. In 1830 he became min
ister of foreign affairs in Louis Philippe's first cabinet, but only for a short time. In 1836 he succeeded Thiers as prime minister; but, in the eyes of the liberal party, he dis played too eptire a devotedness to the wishes of the king, and thus rendered his min istry very unpopular, so that in 1830 he felt it necessary to resign. In 1840 he was chosen a member of the Academie Franfaise. From that time he took little part in political affairs, but after the revolution of 1848 exerted himself, but in vain, to rally and unite the party of order in the assembly to which he had been elected. He died at Champlit treux, Nov. 23, 1855. Mold was fiercely attacked and abused in the latter part of his political career, but it is not now believed that he, was servile toward the court. He detested anarchy, and believed in the necessity of a strong government; but he loved genuine liberty. and always placed the constitution above the king. When Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat extinguished the republic, Mole proudly said that henceforth he could have nothing to do with politics.