t,"
said Monseigneur to the Clerks. (Toulongeon, Histoire de France depuis
la Revolution de 1789 (Paris, 1803), i. app. 4.)--Written accordingly it
is; and what is more, will be acted by and by.

Chapter 1.3.IV.

Lomenie's Edicts.

Thus, then, have the Notables returned home; carrying to all quarters
of France, such notions of deficit, decrepitude, distraction; and that
States-General will cure it, or will not cure it but kill it. Each
Notable, we may fancy, is as a funeral torch; disclosing hideous
abysses, better left hid! The unquietest humour possesses all men;
ferments, seeks issue, in pamphleteering, caricaturing, projecting,
declaiming; vain jangling of thought, word and deed.

It is Spiritual Bankruptcy, long tolerated; verging now towards
Economical Bankruptcy, and become intolerable. For from the lowest dumb
rank, the inevitable misery, as was predicted, has spread upwards. In
every man is some obscure feeling that his position, oppressive or else
oppressed, is a false one: all men, in one or the other acrid dialect,
as assaulters or as defenders, must give vent to the unrest that is in
them. Of such stuff national well-being, and the glory of rulers, is not
made. O Lomenie, what a wild-heaving, waste-looking, hungry and angry
world hast thou, after lifelong effort, got promoted to take charge of!

Lomenie's first Edicts are mere soothing ones: creation of Provincial
Assemblies, 'for apportioning the imposts,' when we get any; suppression
of Corvees or statute-labour; alleviation of Gabelle. Soothing measures,
recommended by the Notables; long clamoured for by all liberal men.
Oil cast on the waters has been known to produce a good effect. Before
venturing with great essential measures, Lomenie will see this singular
'swell of the public mind' abate somewhat.

Most proper, surely. But what if it were not a swell of the abating
kind? There are swells that come of upper tempest and wind-gust. But
again there are swells that come of subterranean pent wind, some
say; and even of inward decomposion, of decay that has become
self-combustion:--as when, according to Neptuno-Plutonic Geology, the
World is all decayed down into due attritus of this sort; and shall now
be exploded, and new-made! These latter abate not by oil.--The fool
says in his heart, How shall not tomorrow be as yesterday; as all
days,--which were once tomorrows? The wise man, looking on this France,
moral, intellectual, economical, sees,