ettres d'un Royaliste
Savoisien_; inspired by the mystical Saint-Martin, in his
_Considerations sur la France_, he interpreted the meaning of the
great political cataclysm as the Divine judgment upon France--assigned
by God the place of the leader of Christendom, the eldest daughter of
the Church--for her faithlessness and proud self-will. The sacred
chastisement accomplished, monarchy and Catholicism must be restored
to an intact and regenerated country. During fifteen years Maistre
served the King of Sardinia as envoy and plenipotentiary at the
Russian Court, maintaining his dignity in cruel distress upon the
salary of a clerk. Amiable in his private life, he was remorseless--with
the stern charity of an inquisitor--in dogma. In a style of
extraordinary clearness and force he expounded a system of ideas,
logically connected, on which to base a complete reorganisation of
European society. Those ideas are set forth most powerfully in the
dialogues entitled _Les Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg_ and the
treatises _Du Pape_ and _De l'Eglise Gallicane_.

He honours reason; not the individual reason, source of innumerable
errors, but the general reason, which, emanating from God, reveals
universal and immutable truth--_quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab
omnibus_. To commence philosophising we should despise the
philosophers. Of these, Bacon, to whose errors Maistre devotes a
special study, is the most dangerous; Locke is the most contemptible.
The eighteenth century spoke of nature; Maistre speaks of God, the
Grand Monarch who rules His worlds by laws which are flexible in His
hands. To punish is the prime duty of authority; the great Justiciary
avenges Himself on the whole offending race of men; there is no
government without an executioner. But God is pitiful, and allows
us the refuge of prayer and sacrifice. Without religion there is no
society; without the Catholic Church there is no religion; without
the sovereign Pontiff there is no Catholic Church. The sovereignty
of the Pope is therefore the keystone of civilisation; his it is to
give and take away the crowns of kings. Governments absolute over
the people, the Pontiff absolute over governments--such is the
earthly reflection of the Divine monarchy in heaven. To suppose that
men can begin the world anew from a Revolutionary year One, is the
folly of private reason; society is an organism which grows under
providential laws; revolutions are the expiation for sins. Such ar