Two years after these words were written a profound change had taken place. The terms of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had created grave discontent; and it was fanned to the heat of fury by the news that the idol of the Parisian populace, the English Prince Charles Edward, was to be expelled from France. His violent arrest at the doors of the Opera aroused bitter indignation, which d'Argenson shared.
"This 'garrotting' will be an eternal disgrace for France. We shall be put, no doubt, by the side of Cromwell, who beheaded his king. For no purpose whatever we have garrotted the lawful heir to this Crown. Nay more, he had been useful to us, and we were indebted to him for an effective diversion which placed Brussels in our hands. It will be long before people have done talking of this" (December, 1748).[380]
People did more than talk. The event gave rise to some of the most venomous tirades that indignation ever wrung from helplessness; and curiously enough, it was the starting point of that alert and violent opposition which vexed the country for forty years. The excitement occasioned by it had not subsided when a renewal of the great struggles between the Crown, the Clergy, and the Parlement, gave a new motive to popular passion. The clergy refused to administer extreme unction to those who had not accepted the Bull Unigenitus; they were opposed by the resolution of the Parlement of Paris; the Crown interfered on behalf of the clergy; and Church and Crown united their forces in an endeavour to coerce the Parlement. At the same time the attempt of the Controller-General Machault to force the vingtième upon clergy and people alike united the Church and the Parlement in opposition to the Crown. The Crown, incapable of pursuing a policy of its own, allowed itself to be buffetted between the two parties; it was regarded with alternate scorn and fury; and popular feeling rallied in support of the outraged Parlement of Paris. The Church too was feared, hated, and afterwards despised;[381] and every day added to the influence and prestige of the rising party of Enlightenment.[382]
D'Argenson's attitude throughout the controversy may be summed in a single word. He was with the Parlement against the Church, and with both against the Crown. It is often an occasion of wonder that Machault's proposal to bring the clergy under the ordinary fiscal arrangements of the realm should have met with such violent opposition. In a single sentence d'Argenson reveals the reason:—
"These pamphlets" (for proving "that the King has the whole right and jurisdiction over the property of the clergy") "have been unfavourably received, their cause, their object, being nothing but money, the need of money, the Treasury already so full of money, the Ministry appearing to think so little of relieving the burden of the people, the Court spending right and left; and not a wise reformation of the clergy. That is the thing to excite the people against the soundest principles."[383]
Such a passage alone is sufficient to show the deep distrust into which the Government had fallen. The organ of that distrust was the Parlement of Paris. D'Argenson at first had trembled for its existence; he soon saw that the forces behind it were irresistible.
"In the general commotion," he writes, "the Parlement of Paris has nothing more to fear. The entire nation is rising in opposition to ungoverned and arbitrary will, and they have the Parlements at their head" (April, 1752).[384]
So acute an observer could not fail to see that the most alarming features of the struggle were the indirect results which it might produce. It had scarcely begun when he devoted to it one of the boldest and most penetrating of all his reflections.
"I am afraid that all this, if pushed too far, may produce some great outbreak. Men may arise who, under colour of the clerical cause, will sustain the cause of the nation. With little merit or ability of their own, these men will obtain influence, they will secure the affection of the people. Let no one say that such men exist no longer. The statue is in the block of marble; the meanest of men will rise to the occasion. Even to-day mark how many writers there are of learning and enlightenment. For some years the wind has been blowing from England upon these materials; the materials may catch fire. Look at the tone of the remonstrances against the vingtième prepared by the Parlements and the Estates. These Attorneys-General of Parlement, these syndics of Estates, such might be these great men I speak of; the whole nation might catch fire, the Nobility throwing in its lot with the Clergy, and afterwards the Third Estate. If the result were that it became necessary to summon the States-General of the Realm, they would find occasion to regulate the finances and the demands of money for the future. Those Estates would not assemble in vain. Let the men in power have a care; they would be very much in earnest" (December, 1750).[385]
D'Argenson's apprehensions were soon confirmed. A year later he writes: