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One evening, in the month of November, 1790, I returned home rather late; I there found the Prince de Poix; he told me he came to request me to assist him in regaining his peace of mind; that at the commencement of the sittings of the National Assembly he had suffered himself to be seduced into the hope of a better order of things; that he blushed for his error, and that he abhorred plans which had already produced such fatal results; that he broke with the reformers for the rest of his life; that he had given in his resignation as a deputy of the National Assembly; and, finally, that he was anxious that the Queen should not sleep in ignorance of his sentiments.
It further expressed the opinion that the Reformers of Upper Canada were bound to make common cause with their fellow-citizens in the Lower Province; and to render their coöperation more effectual it recommended that public meetings should be held and political associations organized throughout the country.
This combined opposition of sincere reformers and jealous courtiers hindered Metternich's policy; and it was decided that the City Guard should first be called out, and that the dictatorship of Windischgraetz should be kept in reserve as a last resource. In the mean time the struggle on the streets was raging fiercely.
I have said that my mother's temper was irritated by disease, and her judgment impaired in proportion. She gathered spirits and force from the resentment which the priests around her bed excited by their importunity, and the boldness of the stern sect of reformers, to which she had secretly adhered, seemed to animate her dying tongue.
By the arrival of Don John that work had been deranged. It had, however, been impossible for the Prince thoroughly to infuse his own ideas on the subject of toleration into the hearts of his nearest associates. He could not hope to inspire his deadly enemies with a deeper sympathy. Was he not himself the mark of obloquy among the Reformers, because of his leniency to Catholics?
During the persecutions inflicted in the interval of Popish restoration under the reign of Mary, upon all who favored the Reformation, many of the most zealous reformers had been compelled to fly their country. While residing on the continent of Europe, they had adopted the principles of the most complete and rigorous reformation, as taught and established by Calvin.
Strikes for higher wages naturally arose out of the increase in mill owners' profits, and the ferocious spirit displayed by the strikers against masters and fellow-workmen was attributed by reformers to the one-sided operation of the combination laws.
Most of us who do not accept usage and tradition as authoritative will continue, no doubt, to think our own thoughts about the matter. The Council of Trent marks the definite separation of the Roman Catholic Church from the Protestant reformers.
In three weeks there were sixty thousand conversions in the district of Bordeaux or Lower Guienne, twenty thousand in that of Montauban or Upper Guienne. According to the reports of Boufflers, Louvois, September 7th, reckoned that before the end of the month there would not remain in Lower Guienne ten thousand Reformers out of the one hundred fifty thousand found there August 15th.
One might have thought that the agitation which broke out all over the country, and the manner in which almost all Reformers seemed to have taken it for granted that the hereditary Chamber must be the enemy of all reform, might have put the peers on their guard and taught them the unwisdom of accepting the imputation against them, and thus proving that they had no sympathy with the cause of the people.
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