of his reign becomes highly instructive, because we see in it the most remarkable instance of despotism which has ever occurred; a despotism of the largest and most comprehensive kind; a despotism of fifty years over one of the most civilized people in Europe, who not only bore the yoke without repining, but submitted with cheerfulness, and even with gratitude, to him by whom it was imposed.433
What makes this the more strange is, that the reign of Louis XIV. must be utterly condemned if it is tried even by the lowest standard of morals, of honour, or of interest. A coarse and unbridled profligacy, followed by the meanest and most grovelling superstition, characterized his private life, while in his public career he displayed an arrogance and a systematic perfidy which eventually roused the anger of all Europe, and brought upon France sharp and signal retribution. As to his domestic policy, he formed a strict alliance with the church; and although he resisted the authority of the Pope, he willingly left his subjects to be oppressed by the tyranny of the clergy.434 To them he abandoned everything except the exercise of his own prerogative.435 Led on by them, he, from the moment he assumed the Government, began to encroach upon those religious liberties of which Henry IV. had laid the foundation, and which down to this period had been preserved intact.436 It was at the instigation of the clergy that he revoked the Edict of Nantes, by which the principle of toleration had for nearly a century been incorporated with the law of the land.437 It was at their instigation that, just before this outrage upon the most sacred rights of his subjects, he, in order to terrify the Protestants into conversion, suddenly let loose upon them whole troops of dissolute soldiers, who were allowed to practise the most revolting cruelties. The frightful barbarities which followed are related by authentic writers;438 and of the effect produced on the material interests of the nation, some idea may be formed from the fact, that these religious persecutions cost France half a million of her most industrious inhabitants, who fled to different parts, taking with them those habits of labour, and that knowledge and experience in their respective trades, which had hitherto been employed in enriching their own country.439 These things are notorious, they are incontestable, and they lie on the surface of history. Yet, in the face of them there are still found men who hold up for admiration the age of Louis XIV. Although it is well known that in his reign every vestige of liberty was destroyed; that the people were weighed down by an insufferable taxation; that their children were torn from them by tens of thousands to swell the royal armies; that the resources of the country were squandered to an unprecedented extent; that a despotism of the worst kind was firmly established; – although all this is universally admitted, yet there are writers, even in our own day, who are so infatuated with the glories of literature, as to balance them against the most enormous crimes, and who will forgive every injury inflicted by a prince during whose life there were produced the Letters of Pascal, the orations of Bossuet, the Comedies of Molière, and the Tragedies of Racine.
This method of estimating the merits of a sovereign is, indeed, so rapidly dying away, that I shall not spend any words in refuting it. But it is connected with a more widely diffused error respecting the influence of royal patronage upon national literature. This is a delusion which men of letters have themselves been the first to propagate. From the language too many of them are in the habit of employing, we might be led to believe that there is some magical power in the smiles of a king which stimulates the intellect of the fortunate individual whose heart they are permitted to gladden. Nor must this be despised as one of those harmless prejudices that still linger round the person of the sovereign. It is not only founded on a misconception of the nature of things, but it is in its practical consequences very injurious. It is injurious to the independent spirit which literature should always possess; and it is injurious to princes themselves, because it strengthens that vanity of which they generally have too large a share. Indeed, if we consider the position they now occupy in the most civilized countries, we shall at once see the absurdity of an opinion which, in the present state of knowledge, is unfit to be held by educated men.
From the moment that there was finally abandoned the theological fiction of the divine right of kings, it necessarily followed that the respect felt for them should suffer a corresponding diminution.440 The superstitious reverence with which they were formerly regarded is extinct, and at the present day we are no longer awed by that divinity with which their persons were once supposed to be hedged.441 The standard, therefore, by which we should measure them is obvious. We should applaud their conduct in proportion as they contribute towards the happiness of the nation over which they are intrusted with power; but we ought to remember that, from the manner in which they are educated, and from the childish homage always paid to them, their information must be very inaccurate, and their prejudices very numerous.442 On this account, so far from expecting that they should be judicious patrons of literature, or should in any way head their age, we ought to be satisfied if they do not obstinately oppose the spirit of their time, and if they do not attempt to stop the march of society. For, unless the sovereign, in spite of the intellectual disadvantages of his position, is a man of very enlarged mind, it must usually happen that he will reward, not those who are most able, but those who are most compliant; and that while he refuses his patronage to a profound and independent thinker, he will grant it to an author who cherishes ancient prejudices and defends ancient abuses. In this way, the practice of conferring on men of letters either honorary or pecuniary rewards, is agreeable, no doubt, to those who receive them; but has a manifest tendency to weaken the boldness and energy of their sentiments, and therefore to impair the value of their works. This might be made evident by publishing a list of those literary pensions which have been granted by European princes. If this were done, the mischief produced by these and similar rewards would be clearly seen. After a careful study of the history of literature, I think myself authorised to say, that for one instance in which a sovereign has recompensed a man who is before his age, there are at least twenty instances of his recompensing one who is behind his age. The result is, that in every country where royal patronage has been long and generally bestowed, the spirit of literature, instead of being progressive, has become reactionary. An alliance has been struck up between those who give and those who receive. By a system of bounties, there has been artificially engendered a greedy and necessitous class; who, eager for pensions, and offices, and titles, have made the pursuit of truth subordinate to the desire of gain, and have infused into their writings the prejudices of the court to which they cling. Hence it is, that the marks of favour have become the badge of servitude. Hence it is, that the acquisition of knowledge, by far the noblest of all occupations, an occupation which of all others raises the dignity of man, has been debased to the level of a common profession, where the chances of success are measured by the number of rewards, and where the highest honours are in the gift of whoever happens to be the minister or sovereign of the day.
This tendency forms of itself a decisive objection to the views of those who wish to entrust the executive government with the means of rewarding literary men. But there is also another objection, in some respects still more serious. Every nation which is allowed to pursue its course uncontrolled, will easily satisfy the wants of its own intellect, and will produce such a literature as is best suited to its actual condition. And it is evidently for the interest of all classes that the production shall not be greater than the want; that the supply shall not exceed the demand. It is, moreover, necessary to the well-being of society that a healthy proportion should be kept up between the intellectual classes and the practical classes. It is necessary that there should be a certain ratio between those who are most inclined to think, and those who are most inclined to act. If we were all authors, our material interests would suffer; if we were all men of business, our mental pleasures would be abridged. In the first case, we should be famished philosophers; in the other case, we should be wealthy fools. Now, it is obvious that, according to the commonest principles of human action the relative numbers of these two classes will be adjusted, without effort, by the natural, or, as we call it,
On the disgraceful subserviency of the most eminent men of letters, see
The terms of this compact between the crown and the church are fairly stated by M. Ranke: ‘Wir sehen, die beiden Gewalten unterstützten einander. Der König ward von den Einwirkungen der weltlichen, der Clerus von der unbedingten Autorität der geistlichen Gewalt des Papstthums freigesprochen.’
This part of his character is skilfully drawn by Sismondi,
Flasson supposes that the first persecuting laws were in 1679: ‘Des l'année 1679 les concessions faites aux protestans avaient été graduellement restreintes.’
An account of the revocation will be found in all the French historians; but I do not remember that any of them have noticed that there was a rumour of it in Paris twenty years before it occurred. In March 1665 Patin writes, ‘On dit que, pour miner les huguenots, le roi veut supprimer les chambres de l'édit, et abolir l'édit de Nantes.’
Compare
The two original sources for our knowledge of these events are,
M. Blanqui (
On the diminished respect for kings, caused by the abandonment of divine right, see
‘Qu'est devenu, en effet, le droit divin, cette pensée, autrefois acceptée par les masses, que les rois étaient les représentants de Dieu sur la terre, que la racine de leur pouvoir était dans le ciel? Elle s'est évanouie devant cette autre pensée, qu'aucun nuage, aucun mysticisme n'obscurcit; devant cette pensée si naturelle et brillant d'une clarté si nette et si vive, que la souveraine puissance, sur la terre, appartient au peuple entier, et non à une fraction, et moins encore à un seul homme.’
In this, as in all instances, the language of respect long survives the feeling to which the language owed its origin. Lord Brougham (
