All the preceding remarks have been suggested by the perusal of a voluminous correspondence and other documents, entitled ‘Manufactures and Fabrics, Drapery, Dry-goods,’ which are to be found among the remaining papers belonging to the archives of the Intendancy of the Isle of France. They likewise contain frequent and detailed reports from the inspectors to the Intendant of the visits they have made to the various manufactures, in order to ascertain whether the regulations laid down for the methods of fabrication are observed. There are, moreover, sundry orders in council, given by the advice of the Intendant, prohibiting or permitting the manufacture, either in certain places, of certain stuffs, or according to certain methods.
The predominant idea in the remarks of these inspectors, who treat the manufacturers with great disdain, is that it is the duty and the right of the State to compel them to do their very best, not only for the sake of the public interest, but for their own. Accordingly they thought themselves bound to force them to adopt the best methods, and to enter carefully into every detail of their art, accompanying this kind interest with countless prohibitions and enormous fines.
Note (XVIII.)—Page [36], last line.
SPIRIT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XI.
No document better enables us to estimate the true spirit of the government of Louis XI. than the numerous constitutions granted by him to the towns. I have had occasion to study very carefully those which he conferred on most of the towns of Anjou, of Maine, and of Touraine.
All these constitutions are formed on the same model, and the same designs are manifest in them all. The figure of Louis XI., which they reveal to us, is rather different from the one which we are familiar with. We are accustomed to consider him as the enemy of the nobility, but at the same time as the sincere though somewhat stern friend of the people. Here, however, he shows the same hatred towards the political rights of the people and of the nobility. He makes use of the middle classes to pull down those above them, and to keep down those below: he is equally anti-aristocratic and anti-democratic; he is essentially the citizen-king. He heaps privileges upon the principal persons of the towns, whose importance he desires to increase; he profusely confers nobility on them, thus lowering its value, and at the same time he destroys the whole popular and democratic character of the administration of the towns, and restricts the government of them to a small number of families attached to his reforms, and bound to his authority by immense advantages.
Note (XIX.)—Page [37], line 30.