r own. They
provide only for the necessity of the day, but there is no spirit of
government in their acts. The military changes that have taken place
disgust the troops, and cause the most deserving officers to resign; a
seditious flame has sprung up in the very bosom of the Parliaments; you
seek to corrupt them, and the remedy is worse than the disease. It is
introducing vice into the sanctuary of justice, and gangrene into the
vital parts of the commonwealth. Would a corrupted Parliament have
braved the fury of the League, in order to preserve the crown for the
legitimate sovereign? Forgetting the maxims of Louis XIV., who well
understood the danger of confiding the administration to noblemen, you
have chosen M. de Choiseul, and even given him three departments; which
is a much heavier burden than that which he would have to support as
Prime Minister, because the latter has only to oversee the details
executed by the Secretaries of State. The public fully appreciate this
dazzling Minister. He is nothing more than a 'petit-maitre', without
talents or information, who has a little phosphorus in his mind. There
is a thing well worthy of remark, Sire; that is, the open war carried on
against religion. Henceforward there can spring up no new sects, because
the general belief has been shaken, that no one feels inclined to occupy
himself with difference of sentiment upon some of the articles. The
Encyclopedists, under pretence of enlightening mankind, are sapping the
foundations of religion. All the different kinds of liberty are
connected; the Philosophers and the Protestants tend towards
republicanism, as well as the Jansenists. The Philosophers strike at the
root, the others lop the branches; and their efforts, without being
concerted, will one day lay the tree low. Add to these the Economists;
whose object is political liberty, as that of the others is liberty of
worship, and the Government may find itself, in twenty or thirty years,
undermined in every direction, and will then fall with a crash. If Your
Majesty, struck by this picture, but too true, should ask me for a
remedy, I should say, that it is necessary to bring back the Government
to its principles, and, above all, to lose no time in restoring order to
the state of the finances, because the embarrassments incident to a
country in a state of debt necessitate fresh taxes, which, after grinding
the people, induce them towards revolt. It is my opinion th