1774.

EDUCATION OF LOUIS XVI.

205

excepted, excited but witticisms in Paris. "Terray is a spoiled child," said the cheated Parisians; "he puts his fingers into every one's pocket."

Louis XVI. was twenty years of age at his accession to the throne. His father, the devout dauphin, had intrusted his education to the duc de la Vauguyon, a noble of rigid and ascetic piety. This man bred up the future heir to the throne of France as if he were destined to be a monk; and took care to render him not only scrupulously ignorant of all polite learning, but even of history and the science of government. The very external appearance of Louis betrayed this tutelage: he was slovenly, melancholy, ungraceful, bashful, and so diffident, that his eyes often shrunk from the regard of his meanest subject; with all this, he had been inspired with such a religious horror of carnal affections, that he remained for many years on no closer terms than those of mere politeness with his young and lovely queen. Such was the character of the new sovereign, called to administer the realm at the most critical period of its history.

The first important step was the choice of a minister. The duc d'Aiguillon, as the ally of the prostitute Du Barry, was of course set aside. Choiseul had hopes, which were supported by the favor of Austria, and, consequently, of the young queen; but there remained too strong a prejudice in the mind of Louis against the minister who had humbled the high church. The dauphin, father to the monarch, had left a note containing his opinion of political characters: in this, the comte de Maurepas was characterized as strongly attached to those true political principles that La Pompadour had forsaken and opposed; in other words, he was the enemy of Choiseul and of the Austrian alliance. This suited the church party, and Maurepas, who was, moreover, the uncle of D'Aiguillon, was sent for to assume the place of minister.

The comte de Maurepas was an aged, experienced, cunning man of the world, somewhat resembling the prince Talleyrand of later days, unrivalled in address, in epigram, and persiflage. He had been exiled to his country-seat at Bourges, where four-and-twenty years' retirement had not weaned him from public interests. He had learned much in that time, and was too enlightened not to have progressed with his age. Hence the high church found Maurepas not what he had been or what they expected: he had corresponded with men of letters, was a friend of the Encyclopedists, and, in short, approached in principle much more near to Choiseul than to D'Aiguillon. This became manifest in filling up the places of the ministry: the count de Vergennes, the ambassador

who at Constantinople had seconded the views of Choiseu against Russia, was recalled to preside over the foreign department. The hated Maupeon and Terray were both discarded. Turgot, the friend of the economists, the statesman vaunted by the philosophers, replaced the latter; his name was a pledge of reform and amelioration. The first act of the new government was to dismiss the parliament of Mau peon, and re-establish the ancient judges and courts which had been dissolved by Louis XV.

The whole policy of the new government seemed to be that of conciliating public opinion; but, unfortunately, this opinion was not sufficiently general, enlightened, or united, to lead the monarch into the path of his own and the nation's safety. Turgot announced his financial plans and projects of reform. The principal of these were to do away with corvées and such taxes as weighed exclusively on the people, establishing a territorial impost, that would be borne equally by all classes of society, nobility and clergy not excluded. But these privileged orders, instead of deeming themselves called on to make sacrifices to the state, thought, on the contrary, that they were unjustly oppressed. Unfortunately the traditions of royalty, of aristocracy, and of the church, showed each possessed of paramount and almost sovereign authority. Each cherished the past, and looked there for its right and rule of conduct rather than in reason and in the present nature and condition of things. Neither could thus be induced to make sacrifices. Noblesse and clergy, the parties of Choiseul and d'Aiguillon, united against the audacious innovator Turgot, who pretended, that the privileged classes should support, according to their means, the burdens of the state. What is more astonishing, the parliament or legists united with these orders; they, too, saw danger in innovation: and thus the monarch's ministry, in its attempt to relieve the people and middling class, and in its attempt to introduce a necessary reform in government, was marred and checked and flung aback into the ancient and pernicious courses of absolute monarchy. Who were to blame in this? The aristocracy, the clergy, the parliament. Never did blindness and selfishness combine more grossly, or more deservedly merit the ruin and the punishment which they afterwards incurred. They were culpable. The crown was unwise. Accustomed to hold the balance betwixt these three parties, it knew of no other in the nation, of which the great body could then have saved it, as the commons centuries back had preserved royalty from the predominance of the feudal lords. Had Louis now summoned the states-general, they would have been grateful for their

1774.

FUTILE ATTEMPTS AT REFORM.

207

existence and for the influence which they afterwards wrested from the monarch. At this time, not only was the monarch beloved, but his queen was still uncalumniated, and had not yet been made to lose the affections of the people by the base slander of envious courtiers. But neither Maurepas, nor Louis, had the courage to rely on the popular mass. The tates-general were still the bugbear that they had been for enturies; and the sovereign, rather than recur to this his only support, the only body that could give him funds, and confidence, and stability, remained leaning alternately on the frail prop of mere court parties, sharing and bringing upon himself all the odium and contempt which the ignorance, the selfishness, and the empty pride of such counsellors earned from the public voice.

Turgot fell before this opposition of the privileged orders. Malesherbes, his friend and brother minister, who, as a legist of high character, and as a statesman not stained with the accusation of being a philosopher and a theorist, might be expected to have more influence in mastering the resistance of the parliament at least, fell also: both were successively dismissed. The unfortunate Marie Antoinette is accused of having influenced the king to get rid of them. Some of the courtiers might indeed have incited her to this act; but the blame rests not with her. Turgot and Malesherbes fell by the opposition of the noblesse and parliament, the latter then allowed to possess a legislative veto. They were sacrificed not to the queen but to circumstances; for of what use was their remaining in place, when neither their plans could be effected nor their counsels adopted?

Had, indeed, the monarch the good fortune to have met with a practical statesman, a hand and head like those of Richelieu, devoted to the principles of Turgot, then the parliament might have been again broken or reduced to its judicial functions, and the states might have been summoned to support the patriotic intentions of the crown. But Turgot was not fit for such a task, and Maurepas soon shrunk from the prospect back into the party of the aristocracy. The ideas of the finance minister embraced a vast scheme of amelioration. They were not limited to an equable and territorial tax, but contained a free municipal system, and an assembly of the deputies of the provinces to supersede the parliament in their functions of consenting to new imposts. An edict, issued to establish one of his principles, the free commerce of grain, unfortunately did not produce favorable results. The year being one of general scarcity, the want of corn was attributed to the edict, and Turgot's theories lost a great part of their

influence. A sedition broke out in Paris, occasioned by famine. Similar scenes took place throughout the kingdom, occasioned by the indigence, the unfixed and suffering state, of the peasant population, which has been described. The police, it seems, were not active to repress the tumult. Turgot declared that it was excited, not by the effects of his edict, but by his enemies. Maurepas represented this to the king as false and presumptuous. That minister already began to be disgusted with the popular ally that overshadowed him. This took place in 1775. In the following year, Turgot, who still held his ground, caused six edicts to be presented to the parliament. The chief ones ordered the abolition of the corvée as well as of certain monopolies and corporations. The parliament refused to register: the king overcame the opposition in a bed of justice; but the clamors of the noblesse at court were too great for Louis to resist. "It is only monsieur Turgot and I who love the people,” said the monarch; but the minister was nevertheless dismissed, and was followed in his retreat by Malesherbes.

Turgot is reproached with having been stiff, cold, and uncourteous, as wanting that tact which all offices require, in which men are to be dealt with. It required, certainly, great powers of address to reconcile the courtiers to innovation. An imitator of his, one who had caught up the mania for reform, was the count de St. Germain. He was created minister at war, and his first act was to reorganize the army. He introduced the Prussian discipline; and in his love of change broke up all the old regiments of household troops and mousquetaires, and much diminished the body-guard. Such reductions, however called for by economy, had the effect of disgusting the noblesse, which exclusively composed those corps, with the very name of reform; and was one of the great causes that accelerated the revolution, by disorganizing the army, and leaving no force to resist or awe the insurrectionary movements of the populace.

To Turgot succeeded Clugny in the department of finance. He re-established the corvée, to gratify those under whose auspices he was elevated. He died in a few months, and was succeeded by Taboureau. Maurepas held still the place of prime minister, or rather that of favorite. Without principles or party, his sole object was to reign; and thus the true administrators of the government had to please not only a royal but a ministerial master. Those were stormy days, however, in which incapacity could not long hold the helm. Louis XVI. was himself impatient at the difficulties of the govern nent, and the feeble attempts of his ministry to sur

1776.

NECKER.

209

mount them. Necker was recommended as a financier capable of effecting wonders; and he was accordingly appointed director of the treasury, subordinate to the comptroller-general Taboureau. He was a Swiss; a man of commercial wealth; and of social eminence, from the intellectual society that he gathered round him as envoy from Geneva. He had claims, too, as a writer: he had defended the establishment or resuscitation of the East India company against the sweeping condemnation of the economists. He had, with the same views, written against Turgot's doctrine of the free commerce of grain. His opinions formed a medium between the extremes of the old and the new systems: and he, who can thus occupy middle ground between contending parties, bids a fair chance to bear away the palm of wisdom for a time. Necker was honest, and skilled in business; these qualities formed his merits as a financier. His political knowledge was, however, as yet but narrow; and he entered into the ministry, as his daughter informs us, without the least idea of the necessity of a political change in the form of government. From Necker, in consequence, less was to be expected than from Turgot; and yet such is the confidence ever placed by the public in practical men, that the man of commerce in the ministerial seat rallied around him infinitely more confidence and popularity than the profound and systematic politician had acquired. Necker's high commercial character was his recommendation and support. Through it he procured loans on no exorbitant terms, and by this means relieved the distresses of the treasury. These, however, were only temporary expedients, such as Turgot had disdained, and to which that statesman declared that he would not stoop. What that bolder minister failed in procuring, viz. the diminution of expense and increase of the revenue, Necker could not and did not succeed in. Necker simply borrowed, and added yearly to the public burdens (a state of war certainly proving his ex cuse); making fair promises of an excess of revenue, yet to accrue from an economy that the minister had not the power to enforce.

Whilst the monarchy was thus scrambling on from expedient to expedient, a fresh quarrel broke out with England. The French public had always looked with satisfaction on the resistance of the North American colonies of that country. Choiseul had entertained the project of declaring for them, and aiding them in the commencement of the struggle. D'Aiguillon, and after him Maurepas, had not the boldness requisite for such a stroke. Under the administration of the atter, arms had been dispatched from France to the insur