makes us
pay tribute, and those which in a thousand ways creep into all social
institutions." Can it be admitted that so many good intentions thus
operating together are to end in destruction?--All take courage,
government as well as the higher class, in the thought of the good
accomplished, or which they desire to accomplish. The king remembers
that he has restored civil rights to the Protestants, abolished
preliminary torture, suppressed the corvee in kind, established the free
circulation of grains, instituted provincial assemblies, built up the
marine, assisted the Americans, emancipated his own serfs, diminished
the expenses of his household, employed Malesherbes, Turgot and Necker,
given full play to the press, and listened to public opinion[4263]. No
government displayed greater mildness; on the 14th of July, 1789, only
seven prisoners were confined in the Bastille, of whom one was an
idiot, another kept there by his family, and four under the charge of
counterfeiting[4264]. No sovereign was more humane, more charitable,
more preoccupied with the unfortunate. In 1784, the year of inundations
and epidemics, he renders assistance to the amount of three millions.
Appeals are made to him direct, even for personal accidents. On the
8th of June, 1785, he sends two hundred livres to the wife of a Breton
laboring-man who, already having two children, brings three at once
into the world[4265]. During a severe winter he allows the poor daily to
invade his kitchen. It is quite probable that, next to Turgot, he is
the man of his day who loved the people most.--His delegates under him
conform to his views; I have read countless letters by intendants who
try to appear as little Turgots. "One builds a hospital, another admits
artisans at his table;"[4266] a certain individual undertakes the
draining of a marsh. M. de la Tour, in Provence, is so beneficent during
a period of forty years that the Tiers-Etat vote him a gold medal in
spite of himself[4267]. A governor delivers a course of lectures on
economical bread-making.--What possible danger is there for shepherds of
this kind amidst their flocks? On the king convoking the States-General
nobody had "any suspicion," nor fear of the future. "A new State
constitution is spoken of as an easy performance, and as a matter
of course."[4268]--"The best and most virtuous men see in this the
beginning of a new era of happiness for France and for the whole
civilized world. The ambitious r