The
failure, perhaps, in part, was owing to his suffering his system to be
vitiated and disturbed by those intrigues which it is, humanly speaking,
impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or indeed under any form of
government. However, with these aberrations, he gave himself over to a
succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In other things he
thought that he might be a king on the terms of his predecessors. He was
conscious of the purity of his heart and the general good tendency of
his government. He flattered himself, as most men in his situation will,
that he might consult his ease without danger to his safety. It is not
at all wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving way abundantly
in other respects to innovation, should take up in policy with the
tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors, the monarchy had
subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of
republics. First, the Swiss republics grew under the guardianship of the
French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under
the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under
the influence of France, established in the Empire, against the
pretensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of France, by a
series of wars and negotiations, and lastly by the Treaties of
Westphalia, had obtained the establishment of the Protestants in Germany
as a law of the Empire, the same monarchy under Louis the Thirteenth had
force enough to destroy the republican system of the Protestants at
home.
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