facts, so as to explain one by another, and to reanimate those well known, without our being able to discover in them by what principle of life one could have originated another.

What then is the reason that a history, rich in great events, has been thus stripped of all interest, a history in which every name of places and of families, speaking to the imagination of Frenchmen, must recal interesting recollections, in which light is thrown on every event by opinions and customs still existing, or of which traces at least remain ; in which the attention ought to be awakened by rights still enjoyed, or by those, the loss of which is still deplored?

It may be replied in a general manner to this question, that the great cause of the want of interest in the history of France, and in all modern histories, is the want of truth, of that complete truth without caution, without mental reservation, which is only found in the historians of antiquity.

No modern history is entirely free from those imposed falsehoods, that conventional flattery, that respect ful rserve, which entirely destroy our confidence in the writer, and our comprehension of the facts he relates, because the links which connect them are hidden. The religion and politics of a state, those two great levers, which put in motion all human society, have never been discussed with complete unreserve; never has blame been freely attached to whatever appeared to deserve it. Even those writers who wished to attack the church or the monarchy have veiled their sometimes exaggerated accusations, under protestations not less false: protestations of respect serving to mask aggression. They seem to depend on their readers not understanding literally all they say; and they employ a great deal of talent to destroy that character for good faith, the most important to be preserved by all who wish to be listened to.

It is not the slavery of the press alone which has prevented the writers of history from telling the truth as they have seen and known it. The authority attributed to past times has perverted historical criticism, by making it serve all parties and all objects. Many great writers have not scrupled to torture facts, that they might bring forward under their sanction, opinions, the theory of which they dared not expose; many others have believed that they could discover in past times, those principles which they desired to establish in the present. The rights of the present generation have been sought for in history, not examples to be a guide to posterity. The measure of the prerogatives of kings, of the liberties of the people, has been demanded from past ages, as if nothing could exist now which had not formerly existed, and truth has suffered because every

party has falsified ancient events, that they might convert them into arms in favour of new pretensions.

History is the basis of social science, but it is because she presents us with an assemblage of the lessons which experience has taught, not of the titles which force or fraud have acquired. The legislator who endeavours to organize society ought to seek for what tends most to the moral development, and to the happiness of men. His only guide in this search is experience; he cannot, however, be enlightened by his own, since it frequently requires many generations for the result of laws and institutions to be known. It is therefore the experience of the whole world that he must consult, he must compare the effects of the same cause in different countries and in different circumstances, that he may disentangle the cause from the accidents which render it complex. One single fact, one single event, can scarcely be regarded in this science as an instructive example, because it is too difficult to assign to it its true cause, and to strip it of all those accidental circumstances which will not occur again. It is difficult too, in judging of an isolated fact, to keep continually in view the received habits, the deeply-rooted prejudices, the prevalent opinions of any given period, the point of honour peculiar to any nation, its state as to riches or poverty, its pastoral, agricultural or manufacturing occupations, the servile salaried or independent condition of the lower classes of society. To judge of the Spartiates of the present day by the Spartans in the time of Lycurgus, or of the Franks of the time of Clovis by the French of our times, would be to make experience give credit to absurdity; for what satisfied our fathers would most probably only offend us. But if the isolated effects attributed to any institution would only lead to error, the constantly analogous effects of similar institutions afford the only evidence of which social science is susceptible.

In forming those associations which constitute political bodies, men ought to propose to themselves a double end; first their happiness, next their moral improvement. It is not from an anterior contract, it is not primitive engagements which bind men now to the state, of which they form a part: it is, that every day they sacrifice a part of their rights in return for a positive social protection. They are, and they remain, the same nation, not because of the past, but because of the future; because of the security which is guaranteed to them by political order; because of the moral development which union, strength, peace, liberty and happiness must produce. Rights are not founded on the laws, or the constitutional arrangements of States. On the contrary, these laws, these constitutional ar

rangements, are only means to guarantee to all men their anterior right to happiness and virtue; means to maintain on equitable terms that daily exchange, which every member of the State makes, of a part of his independence for a certain protection. The advantage of all may require that, in the name of all, each should be obliged to accept the terms of this exchange: but nothing can absolve the legislator from making this exchange advantageous. A citizen of the State is not permitted to say, in order to excuse himself from fulfilling social obligations, that he has not given his consent to them; the advantage of all requires that this consent should be taken for granted. But every citizen, every nation, may always plead that the conditions of the association are prejudicial and not useful: that it deprives them of more rights than it gives them privileges; that it is not calculated for the advantage of all, or does not produce that advantage; that it makes man unhappy, or debases him; that it attacks his enjoyment, or his virtue; that it is opposed to his prosperity or to his improvement.

It is in the name of universal good that society exists; it is by reason of what man hopes to gain by it that society has acquired rights; all these rights are annihilated if the object has failed, if the association is oppressive. Thus laws and institutions which have not for their end and effect the constant progress of the human race towards happiness and moral amelioration, should they have existed from the earliest historial ages, are not the less amenable to reform or abolition, for they are in contradiction to the primitive right of mankind, his most ancient and prescriptive right. A law which violence or usurpation may have established, but of which the result may be to make men better and happier, would be legitimatised by that result, for that is the only end, and the only guarantee of all law. Time and duration are not a principle of right, but a means of stability, a guarantee of experience; law must be judged by history, not founded on it. After having told us that our fathers did so and so, history must demonstrate to us, that they were the better for so doing, otherwise their example shows us what we ought to avoid, not what we ought to follow.

It is not thus that history has been considered in France; she has been made use of to establish the rights of kings, or of dukes and peers, or of parliaments, or of prelates, or of the people. Instead of demanding from her an account of the faults of all these powers, that they might be avoided for the future, men, not less ingenious than learned, have perverted facts, that they might appeal to them in support of their theories: for, their respect for the past not being sufficient to repress the spring of

their imagination, they have, and almost always with conscientious intentions, created an antiquity in accordance with their own wishes, that they might afterwards make it a foundation for their own systems. Boulainvilliers, Du Bos, Montesquieu, l'Abbé de Mably, and in our own time, more than one party writer, have sought in the ancient monarchy, for rights which they regretted, or which they wished to establish. They would have considered facts with more impartiality, they would have represented them under truer colours, they would have sacrificed less to the spirit of system, if they had not lost sight of the principle, that an ancient custom does not prove a right, any more than an abuse, and that the past ought to enlighten, but not to bind us.

This reproach may also in part be attached to the learned men and civilians of Germany, though their immense research, their ingenious criticism, and that art of bringing circumstances together, by which new truths are devolved from ancient facts, have shed a totally unexpected light on antiquities common to the Franks and to the Germans. But they have been too much in love with their own work, too desirous of presenting to the admiration and imitation of their contemporaries the ancient institutions which they have discovered or guessed at; occupied unceasingly in claiming from their princes those rights of their city or their country, which are withheld, they imagined that it was as ancient German rights that they ought to demand them; and they have not sufficiently observed that the rights of which they speak ought to be judged by their effects; that the liberty, the justice and the wisdom of their forefathers, the marks of which they pretend to find in their legislation, could be only proved by a prosperity which is in vain sought for in the history of those times when that legislation was in force.

Historical truth has been almost universally perverted in another manner; by that partiality which most historians have imposed upon themselves as a national duty. They have seemed to think that their patriotism called upon them, above every thing else, to be the advocates of their own nation, and of its princes. The French nation is so great and glorious, that she need feel no shame at the recollection of her reverses, or her faults: and it may be said of the gendarmes of Francis the First, "qu'ils n'etaient que lièvres armées," only armed hares, without any fear of casting a doubt on the national courage. If it were even true, that during a whole generation, or during several generations, that valour, of which the nation has given many proofs, had been entirely extinguished, far from

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dissembling this fact, or stifling the recollection of it, it ought more particularly to be attended to, that the explanation may be sought for in the institutions of that period. Whilst our whole study ought to be, to trace back facts to their causes, can we understand any of them if we suppress their effects?

To dissemble the vices of the Government, is, on the part of the historian, still more imprudent and criminal. When we collect national memorials, we ought to think less of the reputation of the dead, than of the welfare of the living. Clovis, Philippe le Bel, or Louis the Thirteenth, will not suffer from the reproaches cast on their memory, but the sufferings which they inflicted on their contemporaries will be renewed on us and our descendants, if we do not learn by their example what treachery may be allied to false piety, what crimes may be hidden under the cloak of policy, what cruelty may be the consequence of weakness alone; if we do not see into what an abyss a nation is dragged by absolute power. What can we learn of the education of princes, of the intrigues of ministers, of the discontents of the people, if kings are always pourtrayed to us different from what they really were? Of what use to us are the flattering portraits, the justifications of the kings of Burgundy, so well written by Le Pere Plancher; of the kings of the Visigoths by Les Peres Vic and Vaissette; of the kings of France by Le Pere Daniel? What lesson does l'Abbé Velly give us by making an apology for even Brunehault herself, when kings and subjects ought to draw instruction from her horrible punishment?

It is with a more lofty idea of the duties of the historian, and of the use which may be made of his labours; it is with a more conscientious feeling of that entire truth which we owe to our readers, without caution, without subterfuge, without reservation, that this History of the French is undertaken: we shall seek neither to exalt the glory, nor to deepen the shame, of the kings and people who have passed before us on this earth ; we shall exaggerate neither their virtues nor their crimes; we shall not stop to ask ourselves whether the reader, after what we have related, will love France more or less, will be more or less proud of his country; whether he will be more or less attached to her laws, to her religion, to the ancient forms of her government, to the families from which his forefathers are descended. We do not feel that confidence in our own opinions which would make us prefer any theory to experience, and which would allow us to treat our readers like great children, to whom those truths only ought to be revealed which we judge it useful for them to know. All truths are equally, in our eyes, a common right. It is from taking them altogether