nobody told him, (and it was no wonder he
should not himself divine it,) that the world of which he read, and
the world in which he lived, were no longer the same. Desirous of
doing everything for the best, fearful of cabal, distrusting his own
judgment, he sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony.
But as courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre
for mountebanks and impostors. The cure for both those evils is in the
discernment of the prince. But an accurate and penetrating discernment
is what in a young prince could not be looked for.

His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but, like most other of
his well-meant designs, it failed in his hands. It failed partly from
mere ill-fortune, to which speculators are rarely pleased to assign
that very large share to which she is justly entitled in all human
affairs. The failure, perhaps, in part was owing to his suffering his
system to be vitiated and disturbed by those intrigues, which it is,
humanly speaking, impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or indeed
under any form of government. However, with these aberrations, he gave
himself over to a succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In
other things he thought that he might be a king on the terms of his
predecessors. He was conscious of the purity of his heart and the
general good tendency of his government. He flattered himself, as most
men in his situation will, that he might consult his ease without
danger to his safety. It is not at all wonderful that both he and his
ministers, giving way abundantly in other respects to innovation,
should take up in policy with the tradition of their monarchy. Under
his ancestors the monarchy had subsisted, and even been strengthened,
by the generation or support of republics. First, the Swiss republics
grew under the guardianship of the French monarchy. The Dutch
republics were hatched and cherished under the same incubation.
Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under the influence of
France, established in the empire against the pretensions of its
chief. Even whilst the monarchy of France, by a series of wars and
negotiations, and lastly by the treaties of Westphalia, had obtained
the establishment of the Protestants in Germany as a law of the
empire, the same monarchy under Louis XIII. had force enough to
destroy the republican system of the Protestants at home.

Louis XVI. was a diligent reader of history. But the very lamp of
p