The persons who have worked this engine
the most busily are those who have ended their panegyrics in dethroning
his successor and descendant: a man as good-natured, at the least, as
Henry the Fourth; altogether as fond of his people; and who has done
infinitely more to correct the ancient vices of the state than that
great monarch did, or we are sure he ever meant to do. Well it is for
his panegyrists that they have not him to deal with! For Henry of
Navarre was a resolute, active, and politic prince. He possessed,
indeed, great humanity and mildness, but an humanity and mildness that
never stood in the way of his interests. He never sought to be loved
without putting himself first in a condition to be feared. He used soft
language with determined conduct. He asserted and maintained his
authority in the gross, and distributed his acts of concession only in
the detail. Ho spent the income of his prerogative nobly, but he took
care not to break in upon the capital,--never abandoning for a moment
any of the claims which he made under the fundamental laws, nor sparing
to shed the blood of those who opposed him, often in the field,
sometimes upon the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtues
respected by the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those whom,
if they had lived in his time, he would have shut up in the Bastile, and
brought to punishment along with the regicides whom he hanged after he
had famished Paris into a surrender.
Pages:
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465