[232] Concerning whom see Aulard, Culte, pp. 86–96. [↑]
[233] The Source, the Strength, and the True Spirit of Laws, Eng. tr. 1753, p. 6. [↑]
[234] E.g., in the Arrêt du Parlement of 9 juin, 1762, denouncing Rousseau’s Émile as tending to make the royal authority odious and to destroy the principle of obedience; and in the Examen du Béllisaire de M. Marmontel, by Coger (Nouv. éd. augm. 1767, p. 45 sq. Cp. Marmontel’s Mémoires, 1804, iii, 46, as to his being called ennemi du trône et de l’autel). This kind of invective was kept up against the philosophes to the moment of the Revolution. See for instance Le vrai religieux, Discours dédié à Madame Louise de France, par le R. P. C. A. 1787, p. 4: “Une philosophie orgueilleuse a renversé les limites sacrées que la main du Très-Haut avoit elle-même élevées. La raison de l’homme a osé sonder les décrets de Dieu.... Dans les accès de son ivresse, n’a-t-elle pas sapé les fondemens du trône et des lois,” etc. [↑]
[235] Cp. the admissions of Curnier (Rivarol, sa vie et ses œuvres, 1858, p. 149) in deprecation of Burke’s wild likening of Rivarol’s journalism to the Annals of Tacitus. [↑]
[236] Œuvres, ed. cited, pp. 136–40, 147–55. [↑]
[237] Cp. the critique of Sainte-Beuve, prefixed to ed. cited, pp. 14–17, and that of Arsène Houssaye, id. pp. 31–33. Mr. Saintsbury, though biassed to the side of the royalist, admits that “Rivarol hardly knows what sincerity is” (Miscellaneous Essays, 1892, p. 67). [↑]
[238] Charles Comte is thus partly inaccurate in saying (Traité de Législation, 1835, i, 72) that the charge against the philosophers began “on the day on which there was set up a government in France that sought to re-establish the abuses of which they had sought the destruction.” What is true is that the charge, framed at once by the backers of the Old Régime, has always since done duty for reaction. [↑]
[239] Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iii, 313; iv, 70; v, 346, 348. [↑]
[241] D’Argenson, noting in his old age how “on n’a jamais autant parlé de nation et d’État qu’aujourd’hui,” how no such talk had been heard under Louis XIV, and how he himself had developed on the subject, adds, “cela vient du parlement et des Anglois.” He goes on to speak of a reissue of the translation of Locke on Civil Government, originally made by the Jansenists (Mémoires, iv, 189–90). [↑]