ON THE REVOLUTION OF FRANCE ^ 



The gross infamy which attended lettres de cachet and the Bastile 

 during the whole reign of Louis XV. made them esteemed in 

 England by people not well informed as the most prominent 

 features of the despotism of France. They were certainly carried 

 to an excess hardly credible; to the length of being sold, with 

 blanks, to be filled upwith names at the pleasure of the purchaser ; 

 who was thus able in the gratification of private revenge to tear 

 a man from the bosom of his family and bury him in a dungeon 

 where he would exist forgotten and die unknown ! ^ — But such 

 excesses could not be common in any country; and they were 

 i-educed almost to nothing from the accession of the present 

 king. The great mass of the people, by which I mean the lower 

 and middle ranks, could suffer very little from such engines, and 

 as few of them are objects of jealousy, had there been nothing 

 else to complain of, it is not probable they would ever have 

 been brought to take arms. The abuses attending the levy of 

 taxes were heavy and universal. The kingdom was parcelled 



1 From Part II., chap. xxii. 



* An anecdote, which I have from an authority to be depended on, will 

 explain the profligacy of government in respect to these arbitrary im- 

 prisonxnents. Lord Albemarle, when ambassador in France, about the 

 year 1753, negotiating the fixing of the limits of the American colonies 

 which three years after produced the war, calling one day on the minister 

 for foreign affairs, was introduced, for a few minutes, into his cabinet while 

 he finished a short conversation in the apartment in . which he usually 

 received those who conferred with him. As his lordship walked back- 

 wards and forwards in a very small room (a French cabinet is never a 

 large one), he could not help seeing a paper lying on the table written in a 

 large legible hand, and containing a list of the prisoners in the Bastile, in 

 which the first name was Gordon. When the minister entered Lord 

 Albemarle apologised for his involuntarily remarking the paper; the 

 other replied that it was not of the least consequence, for they made no 

 secret of the names. Lord Albemarle then said that he had seen the 

 name of Gordon first in the list, and he begged to know, as in all pro- 

 bability the person of this name was a British subject, on what accoimt 

 he had been put into the Bastile. The minister told him that he knew 

 nothing of the matter, but would make the proper inquiries. The next 

 time he saw Lord Albemarle he informed him that, on inquiring into the 

 case of Gordon, he could find no person who could give him the least in- 

 formation; on which he had Gordon -himself interrogated, who solemnly 

 afiirmed that he had not the smallest knowledge or even suspicion of the 

 cause of his imprisonment, but that he had been confined thirty years; 

 however, added the minister, I ordered him to be immediately released, 

 and he is now at large. Such a case wants no comment. — Author's note. 



328 



