218
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
remitted the matter to Rome: "Quantunque mi sia parso di trovarlo pieno di tale humilità, prudenza, spirito et cose che arguiscono che questa sia inspiratione veramente piuttosto che telnerità e leggerezza." In a volume which, though recent, is already rare, the Foreign Office published D' A vaux's advice to treat the Protestants of Ireland much as William treated the Catholics of Glencoe; and the argument of the Assassination Plot came originally from a Belgian seminary. There were at least three Inen living far into the eighteenth century \vho defended the massacre of St. Bartholomew in their books; and it was held as late as 174 I that culprits may be killed before they are condemned: "Etiam ante sententiam impune occidi possunt, quando de proximo erant banniendi, vel quando eorum delictum est notorium, grave, et pro quo poena capitis infligenda esset." Whilst these principles were current in religion as well as in society, the official censures of the Ch urch and the protests of every divine since Catharinus were ineffectual. Much of the profaner criticism uttered by such authorities as the Cardinal de Retz, Voltaire, Frederic the Great, Daunou, and Mazzini is not more convincing or more real. Linguet \vas not altogether \vrong in suggesting that the assailants knew Machiavelli at second hand: "Chaque fois que je jette les yeux sur les ouvrages de ce grand génie, je ne saurais concevoir, je I'avoue, la cause du décri où il est tombé. J e soupçonne fortement que ses plus grands ennemis sont ceux qui ne I'ont pas lu." Retz attributed to him a proposition which is not in his writings. Frederic and Algernon Sidney had read only one of his books, and Bolingbroke, a congenial spirit, who quotes him so often, kne\v him very little. . H ume spoils a serious remark by a glaring eighteenth-century comment: "1'here is scarcely any maxim in The PrÙzce which sub- sequent experience has not entirely refuted. The errors of this politician proceeded, in a great measure, from his having lived in too early an age of the world to be a good judge of political truth." Bodin had previously written: "II n'a jamais sondé Ie gué de la science politique."
