proof of an incomprehensible obstinacy, who refused to recognise evidence, and only lived on lies.
From the Inquisition to the political justice of the monarchy, and from this to the revolutionary courts of justice, there was a constant progress towards greater severity in laws, the extension of the use of force, and the amplification of authority. For a considerable time the Church had felt doubts about the value of the exceptional methods practised by its inquisitors.[1] The monarchy, especially when it had reached its full maturity, was troubled with very few scruples about the matter; but the Revolution displayed the scandal of its superstitious cult of the State quite openly, in the full light of day.
A reason of an economical order gave to the State at that time a strength which the Church had never possessed. At the beginning of modern times, Governments, by their maritime expeditions and the encouragement they gave to industry, had played a very great part in production; but in the eighteenth century this part had become exceptionally important in the minds of theorists. People at that time had their heads full of great projects; they conceived kingdoms as vast companies undertaking to colonise and cultivate new lands, and they made efforts to ensure the good working of these companies. Thus the State was the god of the reformers. "They desire," wrote Tocqueville, "to borrow the authority of the central power and to use it to break up and to remake everything according to a new plan which they have themselves conceived; the central power alone appears to them capable of accomplishing such a task. The power of the State must be limitless, as its rights,[2] they say;
- ↑ Modern authors, by taking literally certain instructions of the papacy, have been able to maintain that the Inquisition had been relatively indulgent, having regard to the customs of the time.
- ↑ Tocqueville is probably alluding here to the maxims of Blackstone on the unlimited power of the English Parliament. The economists
