Was this the case of France? I have no way of determining the
question but by a reference to facts. Facts do not support this
resemblance. Along with much evil, there is some good in monarchy
itself; and some corrective to its evil from religion, from laws, from
manners, from opinions, the French monarchy must have received, which
rendered it (though by no means a free, and therefore by no means a good
constitution) a despotism rather in appearance than in reality.
Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country
are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as not
the least certain. No country in which population flourishes, and is in
progressive improvement, can be under a _very_ mischievous government.
About sixty years ago, the Intendants of the Generalities of France
made, with other matters, a report of the population of their several
districts. I have not the books, which are very voluminous, by me, nor
do I know where to procure them, (I am obliged to speak by memory, and
therefore the less positively,) but I think the population of France was
by them, even at that period, estimated at twenty-two millions of
souls. At the end of the last century it had been generally calculated
at eighteen. On either of these estimations, France was not ill-peopled.
M. Necker, who is an authority for his own time at least equal to the
Intendants for theirs, reckons, and upon apparently sure principles, the
people of France, in the year 1780, at twenty-four millions six hundred
and seventy thousand.
Pages:
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453