There was no point on which the discontented diplomatic politicians so bitterly arraigned their cabinet as for the decay of French influence in all others.  From quarrelling with the court, they began to complain of monarchy itself, as a system of government too variable for any regular plan of national aggrandizement.  They observed that in that sort of regimen too much depended on the personal character of the prince:  that the vicissitudes produced by the succession of princes of a different character, and even the vicissitudes produced in the same man, by the different views and inclinations belonging to youth, manhood, and age, disturbed and distracted the policy of a country made by Nature for extensive empire, or, what was still more to their taste, for that sort of general overruling influence which prepared empire or supplied the place of it.  They had continually in their hands the observations of Machiavel on Livy.  They had Montesquieu’s Grandeur et Decadence des Romains as a manual; and they compared, with mortification, the systematic proceedings of a Roman Senate with the fluctuations of a monarchy.  They observed the very small additions of territory which all the power of Prance, actuated by all the ambition of France, had acquired in two centuries.  The Romans had frequently acquired more in a single year.  They severely and in every part of it criticized the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, whose irregular and desultory ambition had more provoked than endangered Europe.  Indeed, they who will be at the pains of seriously considering the history of that period will see that those French politicians had some reason.  They who will not take the trouble of reviewing it through all its wars and all its negotiations will consult the short, but judicious, criticism of the Marquis de Montalembert on that subject.  It may be read separately from his ingenious system of fortification and military defence, on the practical merit of which I am unable to form a judgment.

The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and who formed by far the majority in that class, made disadvantageous comparisons even between their more legal and formalizing monarchy and the monarchies of other states, as a system of power and influence.  They observed that France not only lost ground herself, but, through the languor and unsteadiness of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce at naval force which she never could attain without losing more on one side than she could gain on the other, three great powers, each of them (as military states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on the Continent.  Russia and Prussia had been created almost within memory; and Austria, though not a new power, and even curtailed in territory, was, by the very collision in which she lost that territory, greatly improved in her military discipline and force.  During the reign of Maria Theresa, the interior economy of the country was made more to correspond with the support of great armies