Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v1.djvu/240

208 in this description, for Evelyn was a grumbling Puritan, tainted with republican notions. He did not appreciate the profitable example set by kings in those grand Babylonian gaieties, which, after all, provide employment for the poor. He did not understand the utility of vice. Here is a maxim: Do not extirpate vice, if you want to have charming women; if you do, you are like idiots who destroy the chrysalis while they delight in the butterfly.

Charles II., as we have said, scarcely remembered that a rebel called Clancharlie existed; but James II. was more mindful of him. Charles II. governed gently, it was his way; we may add that he did not govern the worse on that account. A sailor sometimes makes, on a rope intended to baffle the wind, a slack knot which he leaves to the wind to tighten. Such is the stupidity of the storm and of a nation. The slack knot soon becomes a tight one. So did the government of Charles II.

Under James II. the throttling began,—a necessary throttling of what remained of the revolution. James II. had a laudable ambition to be an efficient king. The reign of Charles II. was, in his opinion, but an attempt at restoration. James wished for a still more complete restoration of the old order of things. In 1660, he deplored that they had confined themselves to the hanging of ten regicides. He was a more genuine reconstructor of authority. He infused vigour into serious principles. He installed true justice, which is superior to sentimental declamations, and attends, above all things, to the interests of society. In his protecting severities we recognize the father of the State. He intrusted the hand of justice to Jefferies and its sword to Kirke. That useful colonel one day hung and rehung the same man, a republican; asking him each time: "Will you renounce the republic?" The villain, having each time