restorative ministry of cardinal de Fleury, nor the bankrupt ministry of
the abbe Terray had been able to make good, authority disregarded,
intractable parliaments, an imperious public opinion; such were the
difficulties which the new reign inherited from its predecessors. Of all
princes, Louis XVI., by his tendencies and his virtues, was best suited to
his epoch. The people were weary of arbitrary rule, and he was disposed to
renounce its exercise; they were exasperated with the burdensome
dissoluteness of the court of Louis XV.; the morals of the new king were
pure and his wants few; they demanded reforms that had become
indispensable, and he appreciated the public want, and made it his glory
to satisfy it. But it was as difficult to effect good as to continue evil;
for it was necessary to have sufficient strength either to make the
privileged classes submit to reform, or the nation to abuses; and Louis
XVI. was neither a regenerator nor a despot. He was deficient in that
sovereign will which alone accomplishes great changes in states, and which
is as essential to monarchs who wish to limit their power as to those who
seek to aggrandize it. Louis XVI. possessed a sound mind, a good and
upright heart, but he was without energy of character and perseverance in
action. His projects of amelioration met with obstacles which he had not
foreseen, and which he knew not how to overcome. He accordingly fell
beneath his efforts to favour reform, as another would have fallen in his
attempt to prevent it. Up to the meeting of the states-general, his reign
was one long and fruitless endeavour at amelioration.

In choosing, on his accession to the throne, Maurepas as prime minister,
Louis XVI. eminently contributed to the irresolute character of his reign.
Young, deeply sensible of his duties and of his own insufficiency, he had
recourse to the experience of an old man of seventy-three, who had lost
the favour of Louis XV. by his opposition to the mistresses of that
monarch. In him the king found not a statesman, but a mere courtier, whose