is XIV., the
life and the centre of all great movements in his country. He was an
automaton, a pageant; not because the constitution imposed checks on
his power, but because he was weak and vacillating. He, therefore,
performing no great part in history, is only to be alluded to, and
attention should be mainly directed to his ministers.

[Sidenote: Regency of the Duke of Orleans.]

During the minority of the king, the reins of government were held by
the Duke of Orleans, as regent, and who, in case of the king's death,
would be the next king, being grand-nephew of Louis XIV. The
administration of the Duke of Orleans is nearly contemporaneous with
that of Sir Robert Walpole. The most pressing subject which demanded
the attention of the regent, was that of the finances. The late king
had left a debt of one thousand millions of livres--an enormous sum in
that age. To get rid of this burden, the Duke of St. Simon proposed a
bankruptcy. "This," said he, "would fall chiefly on the commercial and
moneyed classes, who were not to be feared or pitied; and would,
moreover, be not only a relief to the state, but a salutary warning to
the ignoble classes not to lend their money." This speech illustrates
the feelings and opinions of the aristocratic class in France, at that
time. But the minister of finance would not run the risk of incurring
the popular odium which such a measure would have produced, and he
proposed calling together the States General. The regent duke,
however, would not hear of that measure, and yet did not feel inclined
to follow fully the advice of St. Simon. He therefore compromised the
matter, and resolved to rob the national creditor. He established a
commission to verify the bills of the public creditors, and, if their
accounts did not prove satisfactory, to cancel them entirely. Three
hundred and fifty millions of livres--equal, probably, to three
hundred millions of dollars in this age--were thus swept away. But it
was resolved not only to refuse to pay just debts, but to make people
repay the gains which they had made. Those who had loaned money to the
state, or had farmed the revenues, were flung into prison, and
threatened with confiscation of their goods, and even death,--treated
as Jews were treated in the Dark Ages,--unless they redeemed
themselves by purchasing a pardon. Never before did men suffer such a
penalty for having befriended an embarrassed state. To this injustice
and cruelty the magistr