The unhappy Louis XVI. was a man of the best intentions that probably
ever reigned. He was by no means deficient in talents. He had a
most laudable desire to supply by general reading, and even by
the acquisition of elemental knowledge, an education in all points
originally defective; but nobody told him (and it was no wonder he
should not himself divine it) that the world of which he read, and the
world in which he lived, were no longer the same. Desirous of doing
everything for the best, fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment,
he sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. But as
courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre for
mountebanks and imposters. The cure for both those evils is in the
discernment of the prince. But an accurate and penetrating discernment
is what in a young prince could not be looked for.
His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but, like most other of his
well-meant designs, it failed in his hands. It failed partly from mere
ill fortune, to which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that
very large share to which she is justly entitled in human affairs. The
failure, perhaps, in part was owing to his suffering his system to
be vitiated and disturbed by those intrigues, which it is, humanly
speaking, impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or indeed under any
form of government. However, with these aberrations, he gave himself
over to a succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In other things
he thought that he might be a king on the terms of his predecessors. He
was conscious of the purity of his heart, and the general good tendency
of his government. He flattered himself, as most men in his situation
will, that he might consult his ease without danger to his safety. It
is not at all wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving way
abundantly in other respects to innovation, should take up in policy
with the tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors the monarchy
had subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support
of republics. First, the Swiss republics grew under the guardianship
of the French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished
under the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was,
under the influence of France, established in the empire against the
pretensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of France, by
a series of wars and negociations, and lastly, by the treaties of
Westphalia, had obtained the establishment of the Protestants in Germany
as a law of the empire, the same monarchy under Louis the Thirteenth,
had force enough to destroy the republican system of the Protestants at
home. Louis the Sixteenth was a diligent reader of history. But the very
lamp of prudence blinded him. The guide of human life led him astray.
A silent revolution in the moral world preceded the political, and
prepared it. It became of more importance than ever what examples were
given, and what measures were adopted. Their causes no longer lurked
in the recesses of cabinets, or in the private conspiracies of the
factious. They were no longer to be controlled by the force and
influence of the grandees, who formerly had been able to stir up
troubles by their discontents, and to quiet them by their corruption.
The chain of subordination, even in cabal and sedition, was broken in
its most important links. It was no longer the great and the populace.
Other interests were formed, other dependencies, other connections,
other communications. The middle classes had swelled far beyond their
former proportion. Like whatever is the most effectively rich and great
in society, these classes became the seat of all the active politics;
and the preponderating weight to decide on them. There were all the
energies by which fortune is acquired; there the consequence of their
success. There were all the talents which assert their pretensions, and
are impatient of the place which settled society prescribes to them.
These descriptions had got between the great and the populace; and the
influence on the lower classes was with them. The spirit of ambition
had taken possession of this class as violent as ever it had done of any
other. They felt the importance of this situation. The correspondence
of the monied and the mercantile world, the literary intercourse of
academies, but, above all, the press, of which they had in a manner
entire possession, made a kind of electric communication everywhere.
The press in reality has made every government, in its spirit, almost
democratic. Without it the great, the first movements in this Revolution
could not, perhaps, have been given. But the spirit of ambition, now for
the first time connected with the spirit of speculation, was not to
be restrained at will. There was no longer any means of arresting a
principle in its course. When Louis the Sixteenth, under the influence
of the enemies to monarchy, meant to found but one republic, he set up
two. When he meant to take away half the crown of his neighbour, he
lost the whole of his own. Louis the Sixteenth could not with impunity
countenance a new republic: yet between his throne and that dangerous
lodgment for an enemy, which he had erected, he had the whole Atlantic
for a ditch. He had for an outwork the English nation itself, friendly
to liberty, adverse to that mode of it. He was surrounded by a rampart
of monarchies, most of them allied to him, and generally under his
influence. Yet even thus secured, a republic erected under his auspices,
and dependent on his power, became fatal to his throne. The very money
which he had lent to support this republic, by a good faith, which to
him operated as perfidy, was punctually paid to his enemies, and became
a resource in the hands of his assassins.