Currently the mempool isn't persisted across restarts. The historical argument against doing this is that it would make transactions immortal. Expiration now addresses that issue.

Without preserving the mempool node behavior changes drastically across restarts which complicates production use (e.g. mining overly small/low fee blocks) as well as development testing. The lack of retention also causes the loss of txn priority modifications made with prioritisetransaction which makes the API less reliable.

strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-forcednsseed", strprintf(_("Always query for peer addresses via DNS lookup (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_FORCEDNSSEED));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-listen", _("Accept connections from outside (default: 1 if no -proxy or -connect/-noconnect)"));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-listenonion", strprintf(_("Automatically create Tor hidden service (default: %d)"), DEFAULT_LISTEN_ONION));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-maxconnections=<n>", strprintf(_("Maintain at most <n> connections to peers (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_MAX_PEER_CONNECTIONS));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-maxreceivebuffer=<n>", strprintf(_("Maximum per-connection receive buffer, <n>*1000 bytes (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_MAXRECEIVEBUFFER));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-maxsendbuffer=<n>", strprintf(_("Maximum per-connection send buffer, <n>*1000 bytes (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_MAXSENDBUFFER));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-maxtimeadjustment", strprintf(_("Maximum allowed median peer time offset adjustment. Local perspective of time may be influenced by peers forward or backward by this amount. (default: %u seconds)"), DEFAULT_MAX_TIME_ADJUSTMENT));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-onion=<ip:port>", strprintf(_("Use separate SOCKS5 proxy to reach peers via Tor hidden services (default: %s)"), "-proxy"));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-onlynet=<net>", _("Only connect to nodes in network <net> (ipv4, ipv6 or onion)"));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-permitbaremultisig", strprintf(_("Relay non-P2SH multisig (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_PERMIT_BAREMULTISIG));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-peerbloomfilters", strprintf(_("Support filtering of blocks and transaction with bloom filters (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_PEERBLOOMFILTERS));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-port=<port>", strprintf(_("Listen for connections on <port> (default: %u or testnet: %u)"), Params(CBaseChainParams::MAIN).GetDefaultPort(), Params(CBaseChainParams::TESTNET).GetDefaultPort()));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-proxy=<ip:port>", _("Connect through SOCKS5 proxy"));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-proxyrandomize", strprintf(_("Randomize credentials for every proxy connection. This enables Tor stream isolation (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_PROXYRANDOMIZE));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-seednode=<ip>", _("Connect to a node to retrieve peer addresses, and disconnect"));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-timeout=<n>", strprintf(_("Specify connection timeout in milliseconds (minimum: 1, default: %d)"), DEFAULT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-torcontrol=<ip>:<port>", strprintf(_("Tor control port to use if onion listening enabled (default: %s)"), DEFAULT_TOR_CONTROL));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-torpassword=<pass>", _("Tor control port password (default: empty)"));
#ifdef USE_UPNP
#if USE_UPNP
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-upnp", _("Use UPnP to map the listening port (default: 1 when listening and no -proxy)"));
#else
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-upnp", strprintf(_("Use UPnP to map the listening port (default: %u)"), 0));
#endif
#endif
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-whitebind=<addr>", _("Bind to given address and whitelist peers connecting to it. Use [host]:port notation for IPv6"));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-whitelist=<netmask>", _("Whitelist peers connecting from the given netmask or IP address. Can be specified multiple times.") +
        " " + _("Whitelisted peers cannot be DoS banned and their transactions are always relayed, even if they are already in the mempool, useful e.g. for a gateway"));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-whitelistrelay", strprintf(_("Accept relayed transactions received from whitelisted peers even when not relaying transactions (default: %d)"), DEFAULT_WHITELISTRELAY));
    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-whitelistforcerelay", strprintf(_("Force relay of transactions from whitelisted peers even if they violate local relay policy (default: %d)"), DEFAULT_WHITELISTFORCERELAY));