His admirable skill in supplying reason for every positive
fact sometimes confounds the cause which produces with
the argument that defends. He knows so many pleas for
privilege that he almost overlooks the class that has none:
and having no friendship for the clergy, he approves their
immunities. He thinks that aristocracy alone can preserve
monarchies, and makes England more free than any
commonwealth. He lays down the great conservative
maxim, that success generally depends on knowing the
time it will take; and the most purely Whig maxim in
his works, that the duty of a citizen is a crime when it
obscures the duty of man, is Fe"nelon's. His liberty is of
a Gothic type, and not insatiable. But the motto of his
work, Prolem sine matre creatam, was intended to signify
that the one thing wanting was liberty; and he had views
on taxation, equality, and the division of powers that gave
him a momentary influence in 1789. His warning that
a legislature may be more dangerous than the executive
remained unheard. The Esprit des lois had lost ground
in 1767, during the ascendancy of Rousseau. The mind
of the author moved within the conditions of society
familiar to him, and he did not heed the coming democracy.
He assured Hume that there would be no revolution, because the nobles were without civic courage. There was more divination in d'Argenson, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1745, and knew politics from the inside. Less acquiescent than his brilliant contemporary, he was perpetually contriving schemes of fundamental change, and is the earliest writer from whom we can extract the system of 1789. Others before him had perceived the impending revolution; but d'Argenson foretold that it would open with the slaughter of priests in the streets of Paris. Thirty-eight years later these words came true at the gate of St. Germain's Abbey As the supporter of the Pretender he was quite uninfluenced by admiration for England, and imputed, not to the English Deists and Whigs but to the Church and her divisions and intolerance, the unbelieving spirit that threatened both Church and State. It was conventionally
