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Any one who reads to much purpose in De Mably, or Guizot, or Henri Martin, knows that this part of Richelieu's statesmanship was but a masterful continuation of all great French statesmanship since the twelfth-century league of king and commons against nobles, and that Richelieu stood in the heirship of all great French statesmen since Suger.
I read him French books of the last century, the memoirs of Saint Simon, of Mably, Renal, Helvetius, Voltaire's correspondence, the encyclopedists, of course without understanding a word, even when, with a smile and a grimace, he ordered me, 'relire ce dernier paragraphe, qui est bien remarquable! Ivan Matveitch was completely a Frenchman.
To show how universal this strange disposition has been in France, I had need not only to have copied the whole of the works of Mably, Raynal, Rousseau, Fenelon, and to have made long extracts from Bossuet and Montesquieu, but to have given the entire transactions of the sittings of the Convention, I shall do no such thing, however, but merely refer the reader to them.
He did not propose any radical methods for dealing with these difficulties, which he thought would diminish in time, without, however, entirely disappearing. He was too deeply imbued with the views of the Economists to be seduced by the theories of Rousseau, Mably, Babeuf, and others, into advocating communism or the abolition of private property.
Mably, the chief dogmatic socialist of the century, and one of the most dignified and austere characters, is an important example of the detriment done by the influence of Rousseau to that of Montesquieu, in the earlier stages of the conflict between the two schools. "You will find everything in ancient history," he said. And he remained entirely in this groove of thought until Rousseau appeared.
"As to the works from which knowledge of this kind is to be obtained, Daguesseau has instanced Aristotle, Cicero, Grotius: I should add the best ancient and modern moralists, treatises on political economy published since the middle of the last century, the writings on political science in general, and on its details and application, of Macchiavelli, Bodin, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Mably, and the most enlightened of their disciples and commentators."
For it there is neither country, nor memories, nor property, nor religion. There is nothing and nobody but itself. Its dogma is equality, its prophet is Mably, and Baboeuf is its god. "Caius Gracchus" Babeuf, born 1764, and guillotined in 1797 for a conspiracy against the Directory, is sometimes called the first French socialist.
He seems desirous of raising the art of writing to a more disinterested profession than any other, requiring no fees for the professors. OLIVET presented his elaborate edition of Cicero to the world, requiring no other remuneration than its glory. The Abbé MABLY, the author of many political and moral works, lived on little, and would accept only a few presentation copies from the booksellers.
She had plunged fearlessly and headlong into Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Mably, Leibnitz, Bossuet, Pascal, Montaigne, Montesquieu; beginning to call many things in question, and, through the darkness and confusion into which she was sometimes thrown, trying honestly and sincerely to feel her way to some more glorious faith and light.
As I might be partial in my own cause, I shall transcribe the words of an unknown critic, observing only, that this dispute had been preceded by another on the English constitution, at the house of the Countess de Froulay, an old Jansenist lady. "Vous etiez chez M. de Foncemagne, mon cher Theodon, le jour que M. l'Abbe de Mably et M. Gibbon y dinerent en grande compagnie.
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