THE STATES-GENERAL.

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impose new taxes, and do some other unpalatable things, so as to expose themselves to that popular disaffection which they had been so assiduous in turning against their predecessors. To demonstrate the strange mixture of incompetency and audacity which characterized these statesmen, it should be sufficient to say that they ended with adopting the very expedient, which, as resorted to by the prince, had called forth such loud censures, and insurrection itself in the capital-the expedient of depreciating the currency for the purpose of increasing the revenue. Le Cocq, the bishop of Laon, who had distinguished himself greatly as a popular leader in the meetings of the States-General, retired to his diocese, being observant of the signs of reaction which now began to make their appearance. But Marcel, the mayor of Paris, who had been no less conspicuous on the same side, lost nothing of his confidence. As the public feeling began to change, the prince had ventured to recal some of his old counsellors. Marcel claimed to be admitted to his presence, and complained there, with his wonted freedom, of what had been done, as a violation of the pledge which the prince had given. The dauphin, with the consent of the marshals of Normandy and Campaigne, who stood on either side of him, replied to this accusation, in terms which increased the indignation of Marcel, and at his bidding the two marshals were struck down, and lay murdered upon the floor. The prince, throwing himself at the feet of this ruffian, promised, in great terror, to be obedient in all things to his guidance; and consented to put on the red and blue cap which Marcel and his party had assumed as the badge of their faction! It happened that several of the kings of France were, we may say, educated into a hatred of popular freedom, by being made familiar in early life with excesses too nearly resembling those now described. Institutions which were eminently fitted to give strength and greatness to their people, became in this way the special objects of distrust and aversion. The dauphin, in whose presence Marcel had so conducted himself, became Charles V., and never seemed to forget or forgive the terror and outrage to which he had been exposed. It was a similar experience, in the same susceptible period of life, which gave a similar direction to the feelings of Charles VI., Charles VIII., and Louis XIV. During some reigns, the influence of the crown was hemmed in by the power of the nobles; during others, it was menaced by discontent and insurgency among the people. In the history of these struggles, the lessons which it was of moment that all should learn, but which none seemed to be capable of learning, were-that politics are not a fitting thing for any man to take up as a game or a pastime; that the edifice

of the state has a sacredness in it which must incline every rightly disposed man to approach it with reverence, and to attempt the work of change only for good reasons; that as to playing the demagogue, and finding fault, nothing can be more easy, while nothing is more common than to see such men utterly break down the moment the responsibilities of statesmanship are devolved upon them; that the strength of a state must ever consist, not in the degree in which certain of its powers are dominant over others, but in the degree in which all are brought into a healthy relativeness and harmony; and that while all must admit the expediency of using favourable junctures of affairs to realize such harmony, nothing can be more mischievous than to push the advantages of such occasions too far, and by so doing to provoke and justify a reactionary feeling, which, in its turn, may undo all that has been done, and extend somewhat further. These observations, which apply to the history of the States-General during the first century of their existence, apply to them, more or less, until their reputation falls so low that the king feels he can afford to dispense with their services. The grievances alleged were in general real grievances; the call for redress was strictly reasonable; but the limits to which that call should have been restricted were rarely observed, and the menace and violence so commonly resorted to in support of such petitions, tended to destroy, rather than to consolidate, the popular power, as a great power of the state.

Nothing could be larger-bolder, than the political maxims asserted from time to time in those assemblies: that the people are the source of all power; that kings have nothing which they have not derived from that source; that the subject should not be taxed without his consent:-these principles, and others like them, were avowed by French orators in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as clearly and emphatically as at the close of the eighteenth. But while the assemblies which broached such doctrines grew weaker and weaker, the power said to be thus wholly dependant upon them grew stronger and stronger, until the former ceased to exist at the pleasure of the latter! The secret of this fact lies in another. The community at large felt that the monarchy, with all its faults, gave them a better promise of safety than could be given either by noble or democrat, taken alone; and as it did not comport with the temper of the three powers,-monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, -that they should act in harmony, and the people were compelled to make choice between them, their decision came to be more and more in favour of the stability to be expected from a great central authority. It will ever be thus. The end of government is pro

WARS OF THE FRONDE.

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tection, and the power which can guarantee protection on the steadiest basis, will be, in the issue, the popular and ascendant.

When the States-General ceased to be convened, as was the case in 1614, and the centralizing policy of Richelieu had done its work, it was to be expected, from all the antecedents in French history, that reaction in some shape would ere long ensue. It came now, however, not in the shape of a reassembling of the States-General, but in connexion with what are called the wars of the Fronde. It may not be difficult to show that the most conspicuous persons in the history of these wars, both the men and the women, were persons of a natural restlessness of temper, and governed by vain and selfish passions, so as to be little worthy of confidence in any enterprise designed to subserve grave interests. But everything of this nature only serves to demonstrate still more clearly the strength of that tendency in the mind of the French people which flows from time to time in the direction of free principles. The times do come in the history of that people, in which they must have leadership for this object, and if the best may not be obtained, something below the best must suffice. It demonstrates also, that in France, to construct a despotism, and a despotism so compact and potent as that built up by Richelieu, it avails little to have the machinery-if that is to be perpetuated, means, as we have before remarked, must be found, to perpetuate the hand that shall work it with the requisite amount of skill and of intense pressure.

The materials which gave strength to the popular party in these commotions were of the kind which were sure to accumulate under the Richelieu policy. The poorer classes of the people felt the burdens which the attempt to humble the house of Austria had brought upon them to be intolerable; the nobles were mortified as they saw how their status had been reduced by the recent influence of the cardinal and the court; the municipalities became indignant as they compared the liberties of their predecessors with the servile condition to which they were themselves reduced; all who knew anything of the history of the States-General, and felt solicitous about the immunities that should have been secured to the state through that medium, looked on the past and the present in bitter discontent. England, in the meanwhile, had asserted her freedom, had even brought her king to the block; and the literature of the age began to teem with descriptions of popular liberty, as suggested by the memorable examples in classical history. As will be imagined, opposition to the court, originating from such sources, and sustained by such elements, would be an opposition having the most

favoured maxims of freedom for its watchwords. Nor were the men wanting in all instances in courage, in intelligence, or patriotism. Nevertheless, the next half century was to give to France, not a constitutional monarchy like that of England, but the absolute monarchy presented in the memorable reign of Louis XIV. How is this to be explained?

It must be remembered that the great leaders in this opposition were the judges in the four supreme courts of Paris; and the judge and the political agitator are functions that do not comport well together. If the knowledge of law possessed by these persons might seem an advantage, it must be borne in mind that the law they knew had scarcely any relation to constitutional law. Much was said by them in defence of the liberty of the person, against arbitrary taxation, and especially against laying heavy burdens on the poor; but in some material instances the practice of these learned gentlemen was not in accordance with their oratory. All they did, moreover, they did in the manner of lawyers, not with the directness and simplicity which the occasion required, but with the circumlocutions, distinctions, and subtleties, which belong so proverbially to their profession. In short, the functions assumed by these reformers in long robes, would have vested all the powers of the state in themselves, the legislative, the administrative, and the judicial, to the exclusion, not only of the crown and the nobles, but even of the States-General. The defects and oversights of the lawyers on the one hand, and the untrustworthy character of many of the noblesse who had made themselves parties to their movement on the other, were more than enough to ensure its failure. The force of these agitations had nearly spent itself when Louis XIV. came of age, and began to reign; and the transition from so much fruitless excitement to a comparative calm, was felt by the majority of the nation as a relief. Louis knew how to make his own uses of what had passed. It furnished him with the usual pleas for superseding the popular influence by other influences.

It is not necessary that we should attempt to show how the absolute power which appeared at one time to be so firmly rooted by Louis, prepared the way for the discontents of 1789, and the revolution which followed. We have all become familiar with the phases of wisdom and folly, of virtue and crime, which characterise the changes of that memorable period. We have all seen how the moderate purposes with which men began, were made to give place to others more and more removed from moderation; how by degrees men became worshippers of ideas, each party insisting that to its idea all France should be assimi

RELIGION IN FRANCE-FRANCIS I.

27

lated; and how, in this manner, when the monarchy had fallen, the elements of strife descended lower and lower, until Frenchmen seemed to have wholly forgotten what it became them to be and to do as Frenchmen, every feeling being absorbed in that of the partizan, the bigot, the man of faction. The military despotism which followed, came as a natural and retributive sequence. At this moment, France is in a condition too nearly resembling the condition thus induced. Her statesmen have become factious, and for the present they have found their common master in the sword.

we mean

There is still one other subject on which the peculiarities of French character have been manifested, and from which inferences may be deduced as to the France of the futurereligion. It may be anticipated, that the susceptibilities of the French mind would be powerfully influenced from this source. And, in fact, every phase of the religious, in common with every phase of the political, has had its development, more or less, among that people. Europe embraces nothing in either of these great departments which France has not embraced. It has had its speculations on principles of all kinds, and, what is more, the French have attempted, beyond any other people, to reduce principles of all kinds to experiment and practice. The temperament of the French people, in common with that of the ancient Greeks, disposes them towards an æsthetic worship-towards a religion of holiday and spectacle. But since the rise of Protestantism in Europe, France has always had her professors of that creed, and in no nation have the sufferings of the adherents to the Reformed faith been so great, certainly nowhere so protracted, as in that country. During more than two centuries prior to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the means employed in France to suppress and eradicate this new heresy, were often such as to cast a stain, never to be effaced, on the history of civilized humanity.

On the character and policy of Francis I., in relation to the Reformed faith, Dr. Félice thus writes:

Francis I. never knew either what he was or what he wished in matters of religion. Endowed with qualities rather brilliant than solid, he frequently mistook the variations in his temper for profound calculations of policy. Proud, above all, of being a true knight as well as a king, he had the passion for arms and adventures of gallantry, which distinguished chivalry; but he had none of its severe loyalty. He was tainted, so to say, with the Italy of the Borgias and the Machiavellis; and had he not protected men of learning, who gene