for the welfare of the commonwealth.”  The assembly so solemnly convoked opened its sittings at the palace of the Tuileries on the 2d of December, 1626.  The state of the finances was what chiefly occupied those present; and the cardinal himself pointed out the general principles of the reform he calculated upon establishing.  “It is impossible,” he said, “to meddle with the expenses necessary for the preservation of the state; it were a crime to think of such a thing.  The retrenchment, therefore, must be in the case of useless expenses.  The most stringent rules are and appear to be, even to the most ill-regulated minds, comparatively mild, when they have, in deed as well as in appearance, no object but the public good and the safety of the state.  To restore the state to its pristine splendor, we need not many ordinances, but a great deal of practical performance.”

The performance appertained to Richelieu, and he readily dispensed with many ordinances.  The Assembly was favorable to his measures; but amongst those that it rejected was the proposal to substitute loss of offices and confiscation for the penalty of death in matters of rebellion and conspiracy.  “Better a moderate but certain penalty,” said the cardinal, “than a punishment too severe to be always inflicted.”  It was the notables who preserved in the hands of the inflexible minister the terrible weapon of which he availed himself so often.  The Assembly separated on the 24th of February, 1627, the last that was convoked before the revolution of 1789.  It was in answer to its demands, as well as to those of the states of 1614, that the keeper of the seals, Michael Marillac, drew up, in 1629, the important administrative ordinance which has preserved from its author’s name the title of Code Michau.

The cardinal had propounded to the Notables a question which he had greatly at heart—­the foundation of a navy.  Already, when disposing, some weeks previously, of the government of Brittany, which had been taken away from the Duke of Vendome, he had separated from the office that of admiral of Brittany; already he was in a position to purchase from M. de Montmorency his office of grand admiral of France, so as to suppress it and substitute for it that of grand master of navigation, which was personally conferred upon Richelieu by an edict enregistered on the 18th of March, 1627 .

“Of the power which it has seemed agreeable to his Majesty that I should hold,” he wrote on the 20th of January, 1627, “I can say with truth, that it is so moderate that it could not be more so to be an appreciable service, seeing that I have desired no wage or salary so as not to be a charge to the state, and I can add without vanity that the proposal to take no wage came from me, and that his Majesty made a difficulty about letting it be so.”