their creator; and though they may be a powerful element in his success by helping on the growth of his innate qualities, they will fail miserably whenever they attempt to alter these, or to extend them beyond their natural limits. In a word, they cannot achieve the impossible.
Ill-fitting institutions, however, together with their consequences, have played a great part in the world. When Charles I, by the evil counsels of the Earl of Strafford, wished to force absolute monarchy on the English, the King and his minister were walking on the blood-stained morass of political theory. When the Calvinists dreamed of bringing the French under a government that was at once aristocratic and republican, they were just as far away from the right road.
When the Regent[1] tried to join hands with the nobles who were conquered in 1652, and to carry on the government by intrigue, as the co-adjutor and his friends had desired.[2] her efforts pleased nobody, and offended equally the nobility, the clergy, the Parliament, and the Third Estate. Only a few taxfarmers were pleased. But when Ferdinand the Catholic promulgated against the Moors of Spain his terrible, though necessary, measures of destruction; when Napoleon re-established religion in France, flattered the military spirit, and organized his power in such a way as to protect his subjects while coercing them, both these sovereigns, having studied and understood the special character of their people, were building their house upon a rock. In fact, bad institutions are those which, however well they look on paper, are not in harmony with the national qualities or caprices, and so do not suit a particular State, though they might be very successful in the neighbouring country. They would bring only anarchy and disorder, even if they were taken from the
- ↑ Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV.—Tr.
- ↑ The Comte de Saint-Priest, in an excellent article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, has rightly shown that the party crushed by Cardinal Richelieu had nothing in common with feudalism or the great aristocratic methods of government. Montmorency, Cinq-Mars, and Marillac tried to overthrow the State merely in order to obtain favour and office for themselves. The great Cardinal was quite innocent of the "murder of the French nobility," with which he has been so often reproached.
