licy
more than to popular demand. It is said that power is an object of
such ardent desire to man, that the voluntary surrender of it is
absurd in psychology and unknown in history. Lewis XVI. no doubt
calculated the probabilities of loss and gain, and persuaded himself
that his action was politic even more than generous. The Prussian
envoy rightly described him in a despatch of July 31, 1789. He says
that the king was willing to weaken the executive at home, in order to
strengthen it abroad; if the ministers lost by a better regulated
administration, the nation would gain by it in resource, and a limited
authority in a more powerful state seemed preferable to absolute
authority which was helpless from its unpopularity and the irreparable
disorder of finance. He was resolved to submit the arbitrary
_government of his ancestors to the rising forces of the_ day. The
royal initiative was pushed so far on the way to established freedom
that it was exhausted, and the rest was left to the nation. As the
elections were not influenced, as the instructions were not inspired,
the deliberations were not guided or controlled. The king abdicated
before the States-General. He assigned so much authority to the new
legislature that none remained with the Crown, and its powers, thus
practically suspended, were never recovered. The rival classes, that
only the king could have reconciled and restrained, were abandoned to
the fatal issue of a trial of strength.

In 1786 the annual deficit amounted to between four and five millions,
and the season for heroic remedies had evidently come. The artful and
evasive confusion of accounts that shrouded the secret could not be
maintained, and the minister of finance, Calonne, convoked the
Notables for February 1787. The Notables were a selection of important
personages, chiefly of the upper order, without legal powers or
initiative. It was hoped that they would strengthen the hands of the
government, and that what they agreed to would be accepted by the
class to which they belonged. It was an experiment to avert the evil
day of the States-General. For the States-General, which had not been
seen for one hundred and seventy-five years, were the features of a
bygone stage of political life, and could neither be revived as they
once had been, nor adapted to modern society. If they imposed taxes,
they would impose conditions, and they were an auxiliary who might
become a master. The Notables were soon f