al progress of
Europe was given by the idea of toleration which he thrust into the
methods of European statesmen. He, first of all statesmen in France,
saw that in French policy--to use his own words--"A Protestant Frenchman
is better than a Catholic Spaniard"; and he, first of all statesmen in
Europe, saw that, in European policy, patriotism must outweigh bigotry.

4. His faults in method were many. His underestimate of the sacredness
of human life was one; but that was the fault of his age. His frequent
workings by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method
accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit
the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and
great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force, but was there
not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only be a force of
right?

5. His faults in policy crystallized about one; for while he subdued the
serf-mastering nobility, he struck no final blow at the serf system
itself.

Our running readers of French history need here a word of caution. They
follow De Tocqueville, and De Tocqueville follows Biot in speaking of
the serf system as abolished in most of France hundreds of years before
this. But Biot and De Tocqueville take for granted a knowledge in their
readers that the essential vileness of the system, and even many of its
most shocking outward features, remained. Richelieu might have crushed
the serf system, really, as easily as Louis X and Philip the Long had
crushed it nominally. This Richelieu did not.

And the consequences of this great man's fault were terrible. Hardly was
he in his grave when the nobles perverted the effort of the Paris
Parliament for advance in liberty and took the lead in the fearful
revolts and massacres of the Fronde. Then came Richelieu's pupil,
Mazarin, who tricked the nobles into order; and Mazarin's pupil, Louis
XIV, who bribed them into order. But a nobility borne on high by the
labor of a servile class must despise labor; so there came those weary
years of indolent gambling and debauchery and "serf-eating" at
Versailles.

Then came Louis XV, who was too feeble to maintain even the poor decent
restraint imposed by Louis XIV; so the serf-mastering caste became
active in a new way, and their leaders in vileness unutterable became at
last Fronsac and De Sade.

Then came "the deluge." The spirit of the serf-mastering caste, as left
by Richelieu, was a mai