There is a secret power called public credit which will speedily bring such a career to its close. Public credit was now exhausted. No more money could be borrowed. The taxes for some time in advance were already pledged in payment of loans. The people, crushed by their burdens, could not bear any augmentation of taxes. The crisis seemed to have come. Calonne now awoke to the consciousness of his condition, and was overpowered by the magnitude of the difficulties in which he was involved. There was but one mode of redress—an immediate retrenchment of expenses and the including of the privileged class in the assessment of taxes. Whoever had attempted this had been crushed by the aristocratic Parliament. Could Calonne succeed? After long and anxious deliberation he became conscious that it would be impossible to induce the Parliament to consent to such a reform, that it would be very hazardous to call a meeting of the States-General, where the people could make their voice to be heard, and yet it was essential to have some public body upon which he could lean for support. He therefore recommended that the king should convene an assembly of the notables, to be composed of such individuals as the king should select from the clergy, the nobles, and the magistracy, they all belonging to the privileged class. Such an assembly had never been convened since Richelieu called one in 1626.
LOUIS XVI. AS LOCKSMITH.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Historical View of the French Revolution, by J. Michelet, vol. i., p. 64.
[39] Louis XVI. was born Aug. 22, 1754. In May, 1770, when not quite sixteen, he married Marie Antoinette. In May, 1774, he wanted three months of being twenty years of age. Marie Antoinette was born Nov. 2, 1755. She was but fourteen years and six months old when married. She was but eighteen years and six months old when she became Queen of France.—Encyclopædia Americana.
[40] "It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision! I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy."—Burke's Reflections.
[41] Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan, i., 75.
[42] Encyclopædia Americana, article Louis XVI.