lent neglect was soon to be replied to by the
sinister echo of the sovereignty of the people. The clergy, scared by M.
Turgot's liberal tendencies, reiterated their appeals to the king against
the liberties tacitly accorded to Protestants. "Finish," they said to
Louis XVI., "the work which Louis the Great began, and which Louis the
Well-beloved continued." The king answered with vague assurances;
already MM. Turgot and de Malesherbes were entertaining him with a
project which conceded to Protestants the civil status.

M. de Malesherhes, indeed, had been for some months past seconding his
friend in the weighty task which the latter had undertaken. Born at
Paris on the 6th of December, 1721, son of the chancellor William de
Lamoignon, and for the last twenty-three years premier president in the
Court of Aids, Malesherbes had invariably fought on behalf of honest
right and sound liberty; popularity had followed him in exile; it had
increased continually since the accession of Louis XVI., who lost no time
in recalling him; he had just presented to the king a remarkable
memorandum touching the reform of the fiscal regimen, when M. Turgot
proposed to the king to call him to the ministry in the place of the Duke
of La Vrilliere. M. de Maurepas made no objection. "He will be the link
of the ministry," he said, "because he has the eloquence of tongue and of
heart." "Rest assured," wrote Mdlle. de Lespinasse, "that what is well
will be done and will be done well. Never, no never, were two more
enlightened, more disinterested, more virtuous men more powerfully knit
together in a greater and a higher cause." The first care of M. de.
Malesherbes was to protest against the sealed letters (_lettres de
cachet_--summary arrest), the application whereof he was for putting in
the hands of a special tribunal; he visited the Bastille, releasing the
prisoners confined on simple suspicion. He had already dared to advise
the king to a convocation of the states-general. "In France," he had
written to Louis XVI., "the nation has always had a deep sense of its
right and its liberty. Our maxims have been more than once recognized by
our kings; they have even gloried in being the sovereigns of a free
people. Meanwhile, the articles of this liberty have never been reduced
to writing, and the real power, the power of arms, which, under a feudal
government, was in the hands of the grandees, has been completely centred
in the kingly power.