reconciling private independence with public peace, civil rights with
the existence of justice,--and this without precedent or tradition,
without that rooted stock on which freedom, in order to grow and bear
fruit, must be grafted,--was a conception which, however familiar to our
age, was utterly unknown, and impracticable to that of Richelieu. With
the horrors of civil war fresh in the memory of all, the general desire
was for tranquillity and peace, not liberty; to which, moreover, had it
been contemplated, the first necessary step was that of humbling the
aristocracy. It was impossible that constitutional freedom could grow
out of the chaos of privileges, and anarchy, and organized rebellion,
that the government had to contend with. In building up her social
fabric France had in fact gone wrong, destroyed the old foundations, and
rebuilt on others without solidity or system. To introduce order or add
solidity to so ill-constructed a fabric, was impossible; Richelieu found
it necessary to raze all at once to the ground, except the central
donjon of despotism, which he left standing. Had Richelieu, with all
his genius and sagacity, undertaken for liberty what he achieved for
royalty, his age would have rejected or misunderstood him, as it did
Bacon and Galileo. He might, indeed, as a man of letters, have consigned
such a political dream to the volume of an Utopia, but from action or
administration he would have been soon discarded as a dreamer. Liberty
must come of the claim of the mass; of the general enlightenment,
firmness, and probity. It is no great physical secret, which a single
brain, finding, may announce and so establish: it is a moral truth,
which, like a gem, hides its ray and its preciousness in obscurity, nor
becomes refulgent till all around it is beaming with light.--_Cabinet
Cyclopaedia--History of France._

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