relation du lit de justice that has operated the miracle.  When two ministers are found so humane, so virtuous, so excellent, as to study nothing but the welfare and deliverance of the people; when a king listens to such excellent men; and when a parliament, from the basest, most interested motives, interposes to intercept the blessing, must I not change my opinions, and admire arbitrary power? or can I retain my sentiments, without varying the object?

Yes, Sir, I am shocked at the conduct of the Parliament—­one would think it was an English one!  I am scandalised at the speeches of the Avocat-general,[1] who sets up the odious interests of the nobility and clergy against the cries and groans of the poor; and who employs his wicked eloquence to tempt the good young monarch, by personal views, to sacrifice the mass of his subjects to the privileges of the few—­But why do I call it eloquence?  The fumes of interest had so clouded his rhetoric, that he falls into a downright Iricism.—­He tells the King, that the intended tax on the proprietors of land will affect the property not only of the rich, but of the poor.  I should be glad to know what is the property of the poor?  Have the poor landed estates?  Are those who have landed estates the poor?  Are the poor that will suffer by the tax, the wretched labourers who are dragged from their famishing families to work on the roads?—­But it is wicked eloquence when it finds a reason, or gives a reason for continuing the abuse.  The Advocate tells the King, those abuses presque consacres par l’anciennete; indeed, he says all that can be said for nobility, it is consacree par l’anciennete; and thus the length of the pedigree of abuses renders them respectable!

[Footnote 1:  The Avocat-General was M. de Seguier; and, under his guidance, the Parliament had passed the monstrous resolution that “the people in France was liable to the tax of la taille, and to corvee at discretion” (etait tailleable et corveable a volonte), and that their “liability was an article of the Constitution which it was not in the power of even the King himself to change” ("France under the Bourbons,” iii. 422).]

His arguments are as contemptible when he tries to dazzle the King by the great names of Henri Quatre and Sully,[1] of Louis XIV. and Colbert, two couple whom nothing but a mercenary orator would have classed together.  Nor, were all four equally venerable, would it prove anything.  Even good kings and good ministers, if such have been, may have erred; nay, may have done the best they could.  They would not have been good, if they wished their errors should be preserved, the longer they had lasted.

[Footnote 1:  Sully and Colbert were the two great Finance Ministers of Henry IV. and Louis XIV.]