ly well ordered. Good order, politically, is indispensable
if liberty, intellectually, is to develop itself regularly and do the
community more good than it causes of trouble and embarrassment. They
only who have confidence in human intelligence sincerely admit its right
to freedom; and confidence in human intelligence is possible only in the
midst of a political regimen which likewise gives the human community the
guarantees whereof its interests and its lasting security have absolute
need. The sixteenth century was a long way from these conditions of
harmony between the intellectual world and the political world, the
necessity of which is beginning to be understood and admitted by only the
most civilized and best governed amongst modern communities. It is one
of the most tardy and difficult advances that people have to accomplish
in their life of labor. The sixteenth century helped France to make
considerable strides in civilization and intellectual development; but
the eighteenth and nineteenth have taught her how great still, in the art
of governing and being governed as a free people, are her children's want
of foresight and inexperience, and, to what extent they require a strong
and sound organization of political freedom in order that they may
without danger enjoy intellectual freedom, its pleasures and its glories.

From 1576 to 1588, Henry III. had seen the difficulties of his government
continuing and increasing. His attempt to maintain his own independence
and the mastery of the situation between Catholics and Protestants, by
making concessions and promises at one time to the former and at another
to the latter, had not succeeded; and in 1584 it became still more
difficult to practise. On the 10th of June in that year Henry III.'s
brother, the Duke of Anjou, died at Chateau-Thierry. By this death the
leader of the Protestants, Henry, King of Navarre, became lawful heir to
the throne of France. The Leaguers could not stomach that prospect. The
Guises turned it to formidable account. They did not hesitate to make
the future of France a subject of negotiation with Philip II. of Spain,
at that time her most dangerous enemy in Europe. By a secret convention
concluded at Joinville on the 31st of December, 1584, between Philip and
the Guises, it was stipulated that at the death of Henry III. the crown
should pass to Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, sixty-four years of age, the
King of Navarre's uncle, who, in