One privilege remains the most considerable of all, that of the king; for, in his staff of hereditary nobles he is the hereditary general. His office, indeed, is not a sinecure, like their rank; but it involves quite as grave disadvantages and worse temptations. Two things are pernicious to Man, the lack of occupation and the lack of restraint; neither inactivity nor omnipotence are in harmony with his nature. The absolute prince who is all-powerful, like the listless aristocracy with nothing to do, in the end become useless and mischievous.—In grasping all powers the king insensibly took upon himself all functions; an immense undertaking and one surpassing human strength. For it is the Monarchy, and not the Revolution, which endowed France with administrative centralization 1432. Three functionaries, one above the other, manage all public business under the direction of the king's council; the comptroller-general at the center, the intendant in each generalship,1433 the sub-delegate in each election, fixing, apportioning and levying taxes and the militia, laying out and building highways, employing the national police force, distributing succor, regulating cultivation, imposing their tutelage on the parishes, and treating municipal magistrates as valets. "A village," says Turgot,1434 "is simply an assemblage of houses and huts, and of inhabitants equally passive. . . . Your Majesty is obliged to decide wholly by yourself or through your mandataries. . . . Each awaits your special instructions to contribute to the public good, to respect the rights of others, and even sometimes to exercise his own." Consequently, adds Necker, "the government of France is carried on in the bureaux. . . .The clerks, relishing their influence, never fail to persuade the minister that he cannot separate himself from command in a single detail." Bureaucratic at the center, arbitrariness, exceptions and favors everywhere, such is a summary of the system. "Sub-delegates, officers of elections, receivers and comptrollers of the vingtiÈmes, commissaires and collectors of the tailles, officers of the salt-tax, process-servers, voituriers-buralistes, overseers of the corvÉes, clerks of the excise, of the registry, and of dues reserved, all these men belonging to the tax-service. Each of these will, aided by his fiscal knowledge and petty authority, so overwhelm the ignorant and inexperienced tax payer that he does not recognize that he is being cheated." 1435 A rude species of centralization with no control over it, with no publicity, without uniformity, thus installs over the whole country an army of petty pashas who, as judges, decide causes in which they are themselves contestants, ruling by delegation, and, to sanction their theft or their insolence, always having on their lips the name of the king, who is obliged to let them do as they please.—In short, the machine, through its complexity, irregularity, and dimensions, escapes from his grasp. A Frederick II. who rises at four o'clock in the morning, a Napoleon who dictates half the night in his bath, and who works eighteen hours a day, would scarcely suffice for its needs. Such a rÉgime cannot operate without constant strain, without indefatigable energy, without infallible discernment, without military rigidity, without superior genius; on these conditions alone can one convert twenty-five millions of men into automatons and substitute his own will, lucid throughout, coherent throughout and everywhere present, for the wills of those he abolishes. Louis XV lets "the good machine" work by itself, while he settles down into apathy. "They would have it so, they thought it all for the best,"1436 is his manner of speaking when ministerial measures prove unsuccessful. "If I were a lieutenant of the police," he would say again, "I would prohibit cabs." In vain is he aware of the machine being dislocated, for he can do nothing and he causes nothing to be done. In the event of misfortune he has a private reserve, his purse apart. "The king," said Mme. de Pompadour, "would sign away a million without thinking of it, but he would scarcely bestow a hundred louis out of his own little treasury."—Louis XVI strives for some time to remove some of the wheels, to introduce better ones and to reduce the friction of the rest; but the pieces are too rusty, and too weighty. He cannot adjust them, or harmonize them and keep them in their places; his hand falls by his side wearied and powerless. He is content to practice economy himself; he records in his journal the mending of his watch, and leaves the State carriage in the hands of Calonne to be loaded with fresh abuses that it may revert back to the old rut from which it is to issue only by breaking down.

Undoubtedly the wrong they do, or which is done in their name, dissatisfies the kings and upsets them, but, at the bottom, their conscience is not disturbed. They may feel compassion for the people, but they do not feel guilty; they are its sovereigns and not its representatives. France, to them, is as a domain to its lord, and a lord is not deprived of honor in being prodigal and neglectful. He merely gambles away his own property, and nobody has a right to call him to account. Founded on feudal society, royalty is like an estate, an inheritance. It would be infidelity, almost treachery in a prince, in any event weak and base, should he allow any portion of the trust received by him intact from his ancestors for transmission to his children, to pass into the hands of his subjects. Not only according to medieval traditions is he proprietor-commandant of the French and of France, but again, according to the theory of the jurists, he is, like Caesar, the sole and perpetual representative of the nation, and, according to the theological doctrine, like David, the sacred and special delegate of God himself. It would be astonishing, if, with all these titles, he did not consider the public revenue as his personal revenue, and if, in many cases, he did not act accordingly. Our point of view, in this matter, is so essentially opposed to his, we can scarcely put ourselves in his place; but at that time his point of view was everybody's point of view. It seemed, then, as strange to meddle with the king's business as to meddle with that of a private person. Only at the end of the year 17881437 the famous salon of the Palais-Royal "with boldness and unimaginable folly, asserts that in a true monarchy the revenues of the State should not be at the sovereign's disposition; that he should be granted merely a sum sufficient to defray the expenses of his establishment, of his donations, and for favors to his servants as well as for his pleasures, while the surplus should be deposited in the royal treasury to be devoted only to purposes sanctioned by the National Assembly. To reduce the sovereign to a civil list, to seize nine-tenths of his income, to forbid him cash on demand, what an outrage! The surprise would be no greater if at the present day it were proposed to divide the income of each millionaire into two portions, the smallest to go for the owner's support, and the largest to be placed in the hands of a government to be expended in works of public utility. An old farmer-general, an intellectual and unprejudiced man, gravely attempts to justify the purchase of Saint-Cloud by calling it "a ring for the queen's finger." The ring cost, indeed, 7,700,000 francs, but "the king of France then had an income of 447,000,000. What could be said of any private individual who, with 477,000 livres income, should, for once in his life, give his wife diamonds worth 7,000 or 8,000 livres?"1438 People would say that the gift is moderate, and that the husband is reasonable.

To properly understand the history of our kings, let the fundamental principle be always recognized that France is their land, a farm transmitted from father to son, at first small, then slowly enlarged, and, at last, prodigiously enlarged, because the proprietor, always alert, has found means to make favorable additions to it at the expense of his neighbors; at the end of eight hundred years it comprises about 27,000 square leagues of territory. His interests and his vanity harmonize, certainly, in several areas with public welfare; he is, all in all, not a poor administrator, and, since he has always expanded his territory, he has done better than many others. Moreover, around him, a number of expert individuals, old family councilors, withdrawn from business and devoted to the domain, with good heads an gray beards, respectfully remonstrate with him when he spends too freely; they often interest him in public improvements, in roads, canals, homes for the invalids, military schools, scientific institutions and charity workshops; in the control of trust-funds and foundations, in the tolerance of heretics, in the postponement of monastic vows to the age of twenty-one, in provincial assemblies, and in other reforms by which a feudal domain becomes transformed into a modern domain. Nevertheless, the country, feudal or modern, remains his property, which he can abuse as well as use; however, whoever uses with full sway ends by abusing with full license. If, in his ordinary conduct, personal motives do not prevail over public motives, he might be a saint like Louis IX, a stoic like Marcus Aurelius, while remaining a seignior, a man of the world like the people of his court, yet more badly brought up, worse surrounded, more solicited, more tempted and more blindfolded. At the very least he has, like them, his own vanity, his own tastes, his own relatives, his mistress, his wife, his friends, all intimate and influential solicitors who must first be satisfied, while the nation only comes after them.—The result is, that, for a hundred years, from 1672 to 1774, whenever he makes war it is through wounded pride, through family interest, through calculation of private advantages, or to gratify a woman. Louis XV maintains his wars yet worse than in undertaking them;"1439 while Louis XVI, during the whole of his foreign policy, finds himself hemmed in by the marriage he has made.—At home the king lives like other nobles, but more grandly, because he is the greatest lord in France; I shall describe his court presently, and further on we shall see by what exactions this pomp is made possible. In the meantime let us note two or three details. According to authentic statements, Louis XV expended on Mme. de Pompadour thirty-six millions of livres, which is at least seventy-two millions nowadays1440 According to d'Argenson,1441 in 1751, he has 4,000 horses in his stable, and we are assured that his household alone, or his person, "cost this year 68,000,000," almost a quarter of the public revenue. Why be astonished if we look upon the sovereign in the manner of the day, that is to say, as a lord of the manor enjoying of his hereditary property? He constructs, he entertains, he gives festivals, he hunts, and he spends money according to his station. Moreover, being the master of his own funds, he gives to whomsoever he pleases, and all his selections are favors. AbbÉ de Vermond writes to Empress Maria Theresa1442

"Your Majesty knows better than myself, that, according to immemorial custom, three-fourths of the places honors and pensions are awarded not on account of services but out of favor and through influence. This favor was originally prompted by birth, alliance and fortune; the fact is that it nearly always is based on patronage and intrigue. This procedure is so well established, that is respected as a sort of justice even by those who suffer the most from it. A man of worth not able to dazzle by his court alliances, nor through a brilliant expenditure, would not dare to demand a regiment, however ancient and illustrious his services, or his birth. Twenty years ago, the sons of dukes and ministers, of people attached to the court, of the relations and protÉgÉs of mistresses, became colonels at the age of sixteen. M. de Choiseul caused loud complaints on extending this age to twenty-three years. But to compensate favoritism and absolutism he assigned to the pure grace of the king, or rather to that of his ministers, the appointment to the grades of lieutenant-colonel and major which, until that time, belonged of right to priority of services in the government; also the commands of provinces and of towns. You are aware that these places have been largely multiplied, and that they are bestowed through favor and credit, like the regiments. The cordon bleu and the cordon rouge are in the like position, and abbeys are still more constantly subject to the rÉgime of influence. As to positions in the finances, I dare not allude to them. Appointments in the judiciary are the most conditioned by services rendered; and yet how much do not influence and recommendation affect the nomination of intendants, first presidents" and the others?

Necker, entering on his duties, finds twenty-eight millions in pensions paid from the royal treasury, and, at his fall, there is an outflow of money showered by millions on the people of the court. Even during his term of office the king allows himself to make the fortunes of his wife's friends of both sexes; the Countess de Polignac obtains 400,000 francs to pay her debts, 100,000 francs dowry for her daughter, and, besides, for herself, the promise of an estate of 35,000 livres income, and, for her lover, the Count de Vaudreil, a pension of 30,000 livres; the Princess de Lamballe obtains 100,000 crowns per annum, as much for the post of superintendent of the queen's household, which is revived on her behalf, as for a position for her brother.1443 The king is reproached for his parsimony; why should he be sparing of his purse? Started on a course not his own, he gives, buys, builds, and exchanges; he assists those belonging to his own society, doing everything in a style becoming to a grand seignior, that is to say, throwing money away by handfuls. One instance enables us to judge of this: in order to assist the bankrupt GuÉmÉnÉe family, he purchases of them three estates for about 12,500,000 livres, which they had just purchased for 4,000,000; moreover, in exchange for two domains in Brittany, which produce 33,758 livres income, he makes over to them the principality of Dombes which produces nearly 70,000 livres income.1444—When we come to read the Red Book further on we shall find 700,000 livres of pensions for the Polignac family, most of them revertible from one member to another, and nearly 2,000,000 of annual benefits to the Noailles family.—The king has forgotten that his favors are mortal blows, "the courtier who obtains 6,000 livres pension, receiving the taille of six villages."1445 Each largess of the monarch, considering the state of the taxes, is based on the privation of the peasants, the sovereign, through his clerks, taking bread from the poor to give coaches to the rich.—The center of the government, in short, is the center of the evil; all the wrongs and all the miseries start from it as from the center of pain and inflammation; here it is that the public abscess comes to the head, and here will it break.1446