understood on the Continent that 1688 had been an
uprising of Nonconformists, and a Whig was assumed to
be a Presbyterian down to the death of Anne. It was
easy to infer that a more violent theological conflict would
lead to a more violent convulsion. As early as 1743 his
terrible foresight discerns that the State is going to pieces,
and its doom was so certain that he began to think of a
refuge under other masters. He would have deposed the
noble, the priest, and the lawyer, and given their power
to the masses. Although the science of politics was in
its infancy, he relied on the dawning enlightenment to
establish rational liberty, and the equality between classes
and religions which is the perfection of politics. The
world ought to be governed not by parchment and vested
rights, but by plain reason, which proceeds from the
complex to the simple, and will sweep away all that interposes between the State and the democracy, giving to
each part of the nation the management of its own affairs.
He is eager to change everything, except the monarchy
which alone can change all else. A deliberative assembly
does not rise above the level of its average members. It
is neither very foolish nor very wise. All might be well
if the king made himself the irresistible instrument of
philosophy and justice, and wrought the reform. But his
king was Lewis XV. D'Argenson saw so little that was
worthy to be preserved that he did not shrink from
sweeping judgments and abstract propositions. By his
rationalism, and his indifference to the prejudice of custom
and the claim of possession; by his maxim that every
man may be presumed to understand the things in which
his own interest and responsibility are involved; by his
zeal for democracy, equality, and simplicity, and his
dislike of intermediate authorities, he belongs to a generation later than his own. He heralded events without
preparing them, for the best of all he wrote only became
known in our time.
Whilst Montesquieu, at the height of his fame as the foremost of living writers, was content to contemplate the past, there was a student in the Paris seminary who taught
