meeting of the States. 3. To consult on the necessary restriction on
_lettres de cachet_; and 4. How far the press might be made free. 5. It
admits that the States are to appropriate the public money; and 6.
That Ministers shall be responsible for public expenditures. And these
concessions came from the very heart of the King. He had not a wish but
for the good of the nation; and for that object, no personal sacrifice
would ever have cost him a moment's regret; but his mind was weakness
itself, his constitution timid, his judgment null, and without
sufficient firmness even to stand by the faith of his word. His Queen,
too, haughty and bearing no contradiction, had an absolute ascendancy
over him; and around her were rallied the King's brother D'Artois,
the court generally, and the aristocratic part of his Ministers,
particularly Breteuil, Broglio, Vauguyon, Foulon, Luzerne, men whose
principles of government were those of the age of Louis XIV. Against
this host, the good counsels of Necker, Montmorin, St. Priest, although
in unison with the wishes of the King himself, were of little avail. The
resolutions of the morning, formed under their advice, would be reversed
in the evening, by the influence of the Queen and court. But the hand
of Heaven weighed heavily indeed on the machinations of this junto;
producing collateral incidents, not arising out of the case, yet
powerfully co-exciting the nation to force a regeneration of its
government, and overwhelming, with accumulated difficulties, this
liberticide resistance. For, while laboring under the want of money
for even ordinary purposes, in a government which required a million
of livres a day, and driven to the last ditch by the universal call
for liberty, there came on a winter of such severe cold, as was without
example in the memory of man, or in the written records of history. The
Mercury was at times 50 deg. below the freezing point of Farenheit, and 22 deg.
below that of Reaumur. All out-door labor was suspended, and the poor,
without the wages of labor, were, of course, without either bread
or fuel. The government found its necessities aggravated by that of
procuring immense quantities of firewood, and of keeping great fires at
all the cross streets, around which the people gathered in crowds, to
avoid perishing with cold. Bread, too, was to be bought, and distributed
daily, _gratis_, until a relaxation of the season should enable the
people to work: and the slende