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Updated: June 1, 2025
Representations were made to the king by the Council of State of the general discontent throughout the country, of the deplorable results of the policy of force and repression, and urging the withdrawal of the troops, the mitigation of the edicts, and the appointment of a member of the royal house to the governorship.
The act of the last session of Congress concerning the commercial intercourse between the United States and Great Britain and France and their dependencies having invited in a new form a termination of their edicts against our neutral commerce, copies of the act were immediately forwarded to our ministers at London and Paris, with a view that its object might be within the early attention of the French and British Governments.
Every doubt which had hitherto existed as to the intention of the government was swept away. No argument was thenceforward to be permissible as to the constitutionality of the edicts as to the compatibility of their provisions with the privileges of the land. The cry of a people in its agony ascended to Heaven. The decree was answered with a howl of execration.
For this was the city's wild occasion of suspended laws, when two edicts only hold in the favored points of rendezvous, "Nothing but wine," and, "Everything goes." Vendors of paper caps, false mustaches, confetti, balloons and all the noise-swelling devices ever bred of deviltry, hawked their wares along the curbs, and the furs of women glittered with atoms of colored paper.
Besides that, their principal direction in all law matters comes to their hands from one Tribonian, a wicked, miscreant, barbarous, faithless and perfidious knave, so pernicious, unjust, avaricious, and perverse in his ways, that it was his ordinary custom to sell laws, edicts, declarations, constitutions, and ordinances, as at an outroop or putsale, to him who offered most for them.
"And persecution," said the Bailie, "maketh wise men mad." "What must it do then to men like us, living as our fathers did a thousand years since, and possessing scarce more lights than they did? Can we view their bluidy edicts against us their hanging, heading, hounding, and hunting down an ancient and honourable name as deserving better treatment than that which enemies give to enemies?
It was utterly impossible to carry the edicts into execution. Nearly all the governors of provinces had told her plainly that they would not help to burn fifty or sixty thousand Netherlanders. Thus bitterly did Margaret of Parma bewail the royal decree; not that she had any sympathy for the victims, but because she felt the increasing danger to the executioner.
As it was, he saved her from the Inquisition; his hand drew the edicts which aimed at enforcing toleration on France; he guided the assembly of notables which gathered at Fontainebleau, and induced them to attempt a compromise which moderate Catholics and Calvinists might accept, and which might lessen the power of the Guises.
The edicts and inquisition having been so vigorously insisted upon by the King, nothing was to be done but to issue new proclamations throughout the country, together with orders to bishops, councils, governors and judges, that every care should be taken to enforce them to the full. This report came before the state council, and was sustained by some of its members.
The Pacification of Ghent would never be maintained in letter and spirit by the vicegerent of Philip; for however its sense might be commented upon or perverted, the treaty, while it recognized Catholicism as the state religion, conceded, to a certain extent, liberty of conscience. An immense stride had been taken, by abolishing the edicts, and prohibiting persecution.
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