ADAM SMITH. 97 



forms the first and the essential merit of didactic com- 

 position. 



It must be added that on the structure of government, 

 the doctrines of the sect were far less enlightened than 

 upon its functions. While they held the whole happiness 

 of society to depend upon a wise and honest administra- 

 tion of the supreme power in the state, they never con- 

 sidered how necessary it was to provide a security for 

 that course being pursued, by establishing checks upon 

 the rulers. Their doctrine was that what they called 

 a despotisme legale, or an absolute power vested in the 

 sovereign, and exercised according to fixed laws, is the 

 most perfect form of government; and they entirely 

 forgot that either no change whatever can be made in 

 these laws, let ever so great a change happen in the cir- 

 cumstances of the community, or that all laws may be 

 abrogated or altered at the monarch's pleasure, and thus, 

 that the epithet " legal" dropt from their definition. In 

 short they forgot, that their theory to be tolerable re- 

 quired the despot to be an angel, in which case, no doubt, 

 their constitution would be perfect, but in no other. It 

 is singular, that with all this, we find in the authentic 

 accounts of their founder's habits that he never could 

 feel at his ease in the presence of Louis XV., and confes- 

 sed his reason to be, his thinking all the while that he 

 stood before a man who had the power of destroying him. 

 This is recorded in the Memoirs to which I have above re- 

 ferred, and we find two instances in the same work, illus- 

 trating the practical operation of the " despotisme legate" 

 To the Doctor's great dismay, M. de Mirabeau, his steady 

 follower, was suddenly hurried away to the fortress of 

 Vincennes, because an expression in his speculative work 



H 



