The active benevolence of St. Louis extended beyond this paternal interest in the private affairs of his people; he gave quite as much attention and interest to those measures which were required by the social conditions of the age and the general welfare of his kingdom. Among the twenty-six ordinances, edicts, and official letters of his reign contained in the first volume of the 'Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France,' seven at least were acts of great legislative and administrative importance. These decrees all bear the same character, and whatever may have been their result, their aim was never to extend the power of the Crown or to serve some special interest of royalty when it was struggling with other social forces; they were intended to effect great social and moral reforms, were directed against the violence, the disorder and the abuses of feudal society, and aimed at the extension of justice and peace in the nation, but they did not seek to destroy the existing conditions of society, or to control them exclusively in the interest either of the King or of any one class of citizens.
Many other of the King's ordinances and decrees have been published, either in the later volumes of the work already alluded to or in similar collections. M. Daunou, in an article on St. Louis which he has prepared for the continuation of 'L'Histoire Littéraire de France, par des Membres de l'Institut,' vol. xix. has alluded to a great many inedited documents to be found in different archives. The great collection of legislative enactments known as the 'Etablissements' of St. Louis, which seems to be a kind of general but confused code of laws of the period, is probably a work of jurisprudence of later date than this reign; but in it we see the same endeavour to secure practical and moral reform, and note the same absence of attempt to promote any private interests whatsoever. There is a spirit of such true piety in the paragraph which serves as a preface to this work, that it might have been dictated by St. Louis himself. I reproduce it here, with only such modifications in the language as may be necessary to render it intelligible.
'Louis, by the grace of God King of France, to all good Christians dwelling in the kingdom and under the suzerainty of France, and to all others present and to come, greeting in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
'Seeing that malice and fraud are so prevalent in the human race that some men often do wrong and injury and all kinds of evil to their fellows against the will and the law of God, and that there are many who have neither fear nor dread of the terrible day of judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ; and seeing that we wish all our subjects to live in peace and loyalty, and each one to beware of doing any ill to his neighbour for fear of bodily chastisement and loss of worldly goods; seeing that we desire also to punish and repress malefactors by means of the law and by a rigorous execution of justice, and by turning for help to God, who is a true and just Judge above all others: We have therefore ordained these enactments, and we require that justice shall be administered in accordance with them in all lay courts throughout the kingdom and suzerainty of France.'
At the head of one of his essays Montaigne wrote, 'This is an honest book.' We may say of the measures and decrees of St. Louis that they were acts of honest legislation, altogether devoid of egotistical ambition, of party spirit, or the desire of inventing a system; they were inspired solely by an instinctive respect for the common rights of all men, and by love of the public good.
Another act, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, is also given [Footnote 45] as the work of St. Louis, under date of March 1268. Its object is first to assert the rights, liberties, and canonical rules of the Church of France; then to forbid 'the exactions and very heavy pecuniary dues imposed, or which may at any future time be imposed, upon the said Church by the Court of Rome, by which our kingdom has been miserably impoverished, unless they arise from a reasonable, pious and very urgent necessity, from some unavoidable cause, and are imposed with our spontaneous and express consent, together with that of the Church of our kingdom.'
[Footnote 45: Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France, vol. i. p. 97.]