rather of short-sightedness and weakness, than of sagacity and

power.

With the accession of Richelieu to office, under Louis XIII., the son and successor of Henry IV., the Italian policy again became dominant in the councils of France. It was a policy which bore the impress throughout of the country from which it came -of the country of Machiavelli, and of that country as it existed in his time. The republican experiences of this school in Italy had disposed them to look with distrust on the restraints imposed on the supreme authority of the state, whether by the community, or by a numerous aristocracy. The fact that an hereditary and arbitrary monarch might sometimes be personally a weak or a wicked ruler, presented much less difficulty in their view than was seen in the circumstances which seemed to ensure that the prince should always be politically weak, whatever his personal character might be. The checks laid on the supreme power, in respect to legislation, finance, and other matters, in the time of Louis XII., were accounted by this school as greatly more than enough to guard against danger from an excess of prerogative in the Much was done, accordingly, to discredit and supersede troublesome formalities of that nature, and to render the monarchy more and more absolute, and every step taken in that direction was regarded as so much achieved in the direction of political greatness. It was to further this object that the Court of France was made the centre of intrigues, treacheries, perjuries, poisonings, assassinations, massacre,-in short, of every conceivable crime, through the dark interval from the death of Francis I. to the accession of Henry IV.

crown.

Louis XIII. was a prince born to be ruled, and not to rule. Richelieu, as we have remarked, became king in his stead. He took up the web of the Italian policy, and carried it out with a sagacity, an unscrupulousness, and a pertinacity, truly Italian. Richelieu had been trained to arms, but had his seat among the clergy in the meeting of the States-General in 1614, as Bishop of Luçon, when not more than thirty years of age. The debates of that assembly extended over four months. Full and fearless were the exposures there made of the spoliations and oppressions to which the people of France were at that time subject. Sarcastic and bitter were the invectives thrown directly or indirectly at the classes who enriched themselves by those spoliations, and who were parties to those oppressions. But the root of these evils was too deep for the reach of rhetoric. The clergy, as is their wont, were more occupied with their pretensions as ecclesiastics, than with their duty as patriots, and in that spirit separated themselves from the noblesse and from the commons; while the

noblesse, in the same selfish vein, employed their oratory in endeavours to vindicate and uphold the accumulations of abuse in their favour, which the Revolution of 1789 was to sweep utterly away. Had the Three Estates been united at that time, in place of being thus antagonistic to each other, they might have restricted the power of the crown within reasonable limits, and have precluded revolution by ensuring the steady progress of a liberal policy. But by resolving themselves severally into so many factions, they furnished the court party with plausible grounds for making light of good councils, and for pursuing their

own course.

We learn from Richelieu himself the substance of the statements made by him in that assembly. He appears to have felt the moral force of the pleas urged in behalf of the suffering people; to have seen that little in the way of social amelioration was to be expected from the noblesse; and to have come even thus early to the conclusion, that the civilian mind in France was much less competent to deal with the difficulties of its position than the ecclesiastical. But the monarchical supremacy which had obtained in the church, was his model in regard to the state. He was prepared to do much to abate the sufferings of the commons, to do more to abate the privilege and power of the noblesse, and more still to humble and subdue the Huguenots,—and all this, that the monarchy might be so consolidated, as to be subject to no restraint beyond that of circumstances as interpreted by its own wisdom. In acting upon such a policy, the minister had to lay his account with formidable opposition from different quarters. But while he deprived the commons of liberty, he was careful to ensure their comparative comfort and protection. To the aristocracy of birth he opposed the rising aristocracy of letters, on whom he was studious to confer an effectual patronage; while no pains were spared to convey to the mind of the French people the impression, that the glory of France, and humiliation to the enemies of France, formed the great centre on which everything in his administration was meant to converge. All means that might conduce to these ends became to Richelieu lawful means. The sword, the dungeon, the scaffold; treachery, injustice, cruelty; all were among the expedients which he learnt to class as legitimate, according to occasion. By wisdom, by bribes, by artifice, or by terror, he rose to sovereignty over the whole country, over the king's household, even over his nearest kindred: discarding his confessor, degrading his brother, sending his favourites and relatives to the block, exiling his mother, and oppressing his wife. Measures that could not fail to make him unpopular, were so balanced by others that could not fail to give

him popularity, that he proved equal to all this. It is in the following terms that this extraordinary man sets forth, in a letter to the king, the object and result of his labours: When it pleased

your majesty,' he writes, to give me not only a place in your council, but a share in the conduct of your affairs, the Huguenots 'divided the state with you. The great lords were acting, not as 'your subjects, but as independent chieftains. The governors of 'your provinces were conducting themselves like so many sovereign princes. Foreign affairs and alliances were disregarded. The interest of the public was postponed to that of private men. 'In a word, your authority was at that time so torn to shreds, ' and so unlike what it ought to be, that, in the confusion, it was 'impossible to recognise the traces of your royal power.'

It was even so. All power had been made to give way, that the regal power might become absolute. But there was one thing which this man of so much worldly wisdom lacked,—he was not wise enough, while doing all this, to be still for a season, and to ask himself the question-supposing all this to be done, what next? True, gifted sir, you have provided that the sovereign power shall be in future absolute; but have you also provided that the men who shall come into the use of that perilous instrument shall be men knowing how to use it wisely? If this, too, be not made sure, then may not this liberty to do very foolish things, and very bad things, wholly without restraint, which you have put into the hands of the future monarchs of France, prove to be a temptation to bad doing of such potency as to ensure not the glory, not the perpetuity, of the French monarchy, but its humiliation and destruction? If history and experience are to go for anything, such a question should have come up as manifestly reasonable; and we know how analogous in this case the future was to the past. It seems to be a law of Providence, that the sagacity of bad men should take with it a material flaw somewhere, and that the oversights of it should be such as to show, in its season, that the wise have been taken in their own craftiness. To absorb the States-General, the Provincial States, the Parliament, the Municipalities, and the Magistracy itself, in the Crown -and this was the object aimed at, and for a season realized by the policy of Richelieu-was to do for the crown all that its worst enemy could do for it, to prepare it for giving itself to the excesses that could not fail to bring convulsion and ruin.

How Louis XIV. acted upon these lessons; how the tyranny of his time became allied with every sort of dissoluteness in the time of his successor; how the execration of the results of this Richelieu policy became such in the mind of the French nation, that the comparative moderation and virtue of Louis XVI., and

of his court, proved unequal to allay the storm that had grown up, and which raged on until clergy, noblesse, and monarchy itself, fell in one ruined mass,-all this we know from what is to us the page of history. The error of France was not in having a monarchy, but in allowing the monarchical power to become thus exaggerated-to be pushed thus into despotism, and so to become the means of its own destruction.

But if the aristocratic power and the monarchical power of France have suffered the same humiliations and overthrow, and from the same cause-viz., from being pushed to extremes, - from exaggerated manifestations, how has it fared with the principle of democracy in the annals of that country?

To estimate the manifestations of the democratic power in France, it will be necessary to glance at three phases of French history at the history of the Municipalities of France; at the history of the States-General, from their first meeting in 1301 to their meeting in 1614; and at the changes which have been effected by popular influence in that country since 1789. These topics present a large field; we can touch only on what is characteristic in the outlines relating to them.

The municipalities of France, especially in the south, date as far back as the times when Gaul first came under the influence and the authority of Rome. So much practical value was found in the institutions so derived-so tenacious were they of life, that through all the convulsions, conquests, and plunderings which issued in the fall of the empire and in the setting-up of the feudal system, these commonwealth forms of government continued to exist in the principal cities, and retained to the last perceptible traces of their origin. These cities were all in the hands of corporations, but of the kind which we intend by the expression close corporations. The official persons filled up vacancies in their own number. Office thus came to be restricted for the most part to the persons belonging to leading families. Still the families thus virtually privileged were citizen families, and were often greatly influenced, indirectly if not directly, by the popular feeling.

As the feudal system acquired stability, the feudal nobles having subject to them the districts in which cities and boroughs were included, naturally came to exercise authority over them. But in process of time, the royal authority intervened between that of the noble and the burgher; and in this choice of masters there were many reasons which disposed the burgher to prefer dependence on the crown-which, indeed, often prompted him to seek it by petition, and at considerable cost. That the

DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.

17

burghers should covet such a transfer, will not occasion surprise, if the oppressive nature of the sovereignty commonly exercised over them by their local superiors be borne in mind. In the south of France, indeed, where the comparatively free spirit which obtained in the Italian cities had diffused itself, the burghers could choose their own magistrates, and exercise many other functions of the self-governed. But over all that part of France which lies north of the Loire, the power of the feudal lord was so dominant and vexatious as to incline the burghers to seek relief from it in almost any quarter from which such relief might be expected. The feudal lords could levy tolls, and other imposts, on the towns and on the rural districts within his domain at pleasure. He gave laws to trade, and influenced the choice of magistrates. Without his consent, no father could dispose of his daughter in marriage, no widow could marry again. No man could bequeath immovable property, except in ways subject to his approval; and all property not claimed by the next heir within a given time fell into his hand. In general, and on the whole, the rule of these chiefs was not only as bad as these particulars would indicate, but worse.

Now some recent French writers, who are fond of seeing in ancient facts the working of ideas that are not ancient, and of insisting that the passionate love of freedom which has been so conspicuous in France in our time, has been the feeling of the French people in all time, may have described the burghers and kings of the middle age as influenced by a larger speculation in political matters than existed anywhere in those times. But be that as it may, it is unquestionable that the sufferings of the burghers from their immediate lords was great; it is also unquestionable that they passed in great numbers, more and more from century to century, into connexion with the crown, as imposing a yoke by no means so difficult to be borne; and no less manifest is it, that in this way, whether from much forecast, or from the natural course of events, the popular power did go over to the monarchy, in the course of its struggle with the aristocracy, so as to turn the scale memorably in its favour. It is not improbable that there were kings, and ministers of kings, in those days, wise enough to see whither this feature of change tended, and who furthered it because of that tendency. But the burghers, we may be sure, were far from meaning to do what they really did. For awhile, the new master ruled with leniency. The cities and boroughs, and many districts beyond, felt the royal authority to be less arbitrary, less costly, less liable to change, and more to be relied upon in the hour of need than that of their former lords. And so it continued, so long as the