ible and ancient history,
evidently has contemporary France in mind. 3. The people may resist a
tyrant who is oppressing or ruining the state. Originally, in the
author's view, the people either elected the king, or confirmed him,
and if they have not exercised this right for a long time it is a legal
maxim that no prescription can run against the public claims. Laws
derive their sanction from the people, and should be made by them;
taxes may only be levied by their representatives, and the king who
exacts imposts of his own will is in no wise different from an enemy.
The kings are not even the owners of public property, but only its
administrators, are bound by the contract with the governed, and may be
rightly punished for violating it. 4. The fourth thesis advanced by
Mornay is that foreign aid may justly be called in against a tyrant.

[Sidenote: La Boetie, 1530-63]

Not relying exclusively on their own talents the Huguenots were able to
press into the ranks of their army of pamphleteers some notable
Catholics. In 1574 they published as a fragment, and in 1577 entire,
_The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude_, commonly called the _Contr'un_,
by Stephen de la Boetie. This gentleman, dying at the age of
thirty-three, had left all his manuscripts to his bosom friend
Montaigne. The latter says that La Boetie composed the work as a prize
declamation at the age of sixteen or eighteen. [Sidenote: 1546-8] But
along with many passages in the pamphlet, which might have been
suggested by Erasmus, are several {600} allusions that seem to point to
the character of Henry III--in 1574 king of Poland and in 1577 king of
France--and to events just prior to the time of publication. According
to an attractive hypothesis, not fully proved, these passages were
added by Montaigne himself before he gave the work to one of his
several Huguenot friends or kinsmen. La Boetie, at any rate, appealed
to the passions aroused by St. Bartholomew in bidding the people no
longer to submit to one man, "the most wretched and effeminate of the
nation," who has only two hands, two eyes, and who will fall if
unsupported. And yet, he goes on rhetorically, "you sow the fruits of
the earth that he may waste them; you furnish your houses for him to
pillage them; you rear your daughters to glut his lust and your sons to
perish in his wars; . . . you exhaust your bodies in labor that he may
wallow in vile pleasures."

As Montaigne and La Boetie wer