bly ever reigned. He was by no means deficient in talents. He had a
most laudable desire to supply by general reading, and even by the
acquisition of elemental knowledge, an education in all points
originally defective; but nobody told him (and it was no wonder he
should not himself divine it) that the world of which he read and the
world in which he lived were no longer the same. Desirous of doing
everything for the best, fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment,
he sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. But as
courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre for
mountebanks and impostors. The cure for both those evils is in the
discernment of the prince. But an accurate and penetrating discernment
is what in a young prince could not be looked for.

His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but, like most other of his
well-meant designs, it failed in his hands. It failed partly from mere
ill fortune, to which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that very
large share to which she is justly entitled in all human affairs. The
failure, perhaps, in part, was owing to his suffering his system to be
vitiated and disturbed by those intrigues which it is, humanly speaking,
impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or indeed under any form of
government. However, with these aberrations, he gave himself over to a
succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In other things he
thought that he might be a king on the terms of his predecessors. He was
conscious of the purity of his heart and the general good tendency of
his government. He flattered himself, as most men in his situation will,
that he might consult his ease without danger to his safety. It is not
at all wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving way abundantly
in other respects to innovation, should take up in policy with the
tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors, the monarchy had
subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of
republics. First, the Swiss republics grew under the guardianship of the
French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under
the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under
the influence of France, established in the Empire, against the
pretensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of France, by a
series of wars and negotiations, and lastly by the Treaties of
Westphalia, had obtained the establishment of the Protestant