The insatiable avarice of Constable Montmorency—­[Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France in 1538, died 1567.]—­tended rather to enlarge than restrain the authority of Francois I. The extended views and vast designs of M. de Guise would not permit them to think of placing bounds to the prerogative under Francois II.  In the reigns of Charles IX. and Henri III. the Court was so fatigued with civil broils that they took everything for rebellion which was not submission.  Henri IV., who was not afraid of the laws, because he trusted in himself, showed he had a high esteem for them.  The Duc de Rohan used to say that Louis XIII. was jealous of his own authority because he was ignorant of its full extent, for the Marechal d’Ancrel and M. de Luynes were mere dunces, incapable of informing him.  Cardinal de Richelieu, who succeeded them, collected all the wicked designs and blunders of the two last centuries to serve his grand purpose.  He laid them down as proper maxims for establishing the King’s authority, and, fortune seconding his designs by the disarming of the Protestants in France, by the victories of the Swedes, by the weakness of the Empire and of Spain, he established the most scandalous and dangerous tyranny that perhaps ever enslaved a State in the best constituted monarchy under the sun.

Custom, which has in some countries inured men even to broil as it were in the heat of the sun, has made things familiar to us which our forefathers dreaded more than fire itself.  We no longer feel the slavery which they abhorred more for the interest of their King than for their own.  Cardinal de Richelieu counted those things crimes which before him were looked upon as virtues.  The Mirons, Harlays, Marillacs, Pibracs, and the Fayes, those martyrs of the State who dispelled more factions by their wholesome maxims than were raised in France by Spanish or British gold, were defenders of the doctrine for which the Cardinal de Richelieu confined President Barillon in the prison of Amboise.  And the Cardinal began to punish magistrates for advancing those truths which they were obliged by their oaths to defend at the hazard of their lives.

Our wise Kings, who understood their true interest, made the Parliament the depositary of their ordinances, to the end that they might exempt themselves from part of the odium that sometimes attends the execution of the most just and necessary decrees.  They thought it no disparagement to their royalty to be bound by them,—­like unto God, who himself obeys the laws he has preordained. [’A good government:  where the people obey their king and the king obeys the law’—­Solon.  D.W.] Ministers of State, who are generally so blinded by the splendour of their fortune as never to be content with what the laws allow, make it their business to overturn them; and Cardinal de Richelieu laboured at it more constantly than any other, and with equal application and imprudence.