h has in some countries inured men even to broil as it were
in the heat of the sun, has made things familiar to us which our
forefathers dreaded more than fire itself. We no longer feel the slavery
which they abhorred more for the interest of their King than for their
own. Cardinal de Richelieu counted those things crimes which before him
were looked upon as virtues. The Mirons, Harlays, Marillacs, Pibracs,
and the Fayes, those martyrs of the State who dispelled more factions by
their wholesome maxims than were raised in France by Spanish or British
gold, were defenders of the doctrine for which the Cardinal de Richelieu
confined President Barillon in the prison of Amboise. And the Cardinal
began to punish magistrates for advancing those truths which they were
obliged by their oaths to defend at the hazard of their lives.

Our wise Kings, who understood their true interest, made the Parliament
the depositary of their ordinances, to the end that they might exempt
themselves from part of the odium that sometimes attends the execution of
the most just and necessary decrees. They thought it no disparagement to
their royalty to be bound by them,--like unto God, who himself obeys the
laws he has preordained. ['A good government: where the people obey their
king and the king obeys the law'--Solon. D.W.] Ministers of State, who
are generally so blinded by the splendour of their fortune as never to be
content with what the laws allow, make it their business to overturn
them; and Cardinal de Richelieu laboured at it more constantly than any
other, and with equal application and imprudence.

God only is self-existent and independent; the most rightful monarchs and
established monarchies in the world cannot possibly be supported but by
the conjunction of arms and laws,--a union so necessary that the one
cannot subsist without the other. Laws without the protection of arms
sink into contempt, and arms which are not tempered by laws quickly turn
a State into anarchy. The Roman commonwealth being set aside by Julius
Caesar, the supreme power which was devolved upon his successors by force
of arms subsisted no longer than they were able to maintain the authority
of the laws; for as soon as the laws lost their force, the power of the
Roman Emperors vanished, and the very men that were their favourites,
having got possession of their seals and their arms, converted their
masters' substance into their own, and, as it were, sucked t