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128 been put to Smith or to Franklin in the present age, what sounder advice could they have offered?

In one of Fenelon’s Dialogues of the Dead, the following remarkable words are put into the mouth of Socrates: “It is necessary that a people should have written laws, always the same, and consecrated by the whole nation; that these laws should be paramount to everything else; that those who govern should derive their authority from them alone; possessing an unbounded power to do all the good which the laws prescribe, and restrained from every act of injustice which the laws prohibit.”

But it is chiefly in a work which did not appear till many years after his death, that we have an opportunity of tracing the enlargement of Fenelon’s political views, and the extent of his Christian charity. It is entitled Direction pour la Conscience d’un Roi; and abounds with as liberal and enlightened maxims of government as, under the freest constitutions, have ever been offered by a subject to a sovereign. Where the variety of excellence renders selection so difficult, I must not venture upon any extracts; nor, indeed, would I willingly injure the effect of the whole by quoting detached passages. A few sentences on liberty of conscience (which I will not presume to translate) may suffice to convey an idea of the general spirit with which it is animated. “Sur toute chose, ne forcez jamais vos sujets à changer de religion. Nulle puissance humaine ne peut forcer le retranchement impénétrable de la liberté du cœur. La force ne peut jamais persuader les hommes; elle ne fait que des hypoсrites. Quand les rois se mêlent de religion, au lieu de la protéger, ils la mettent en servitude. Accordez à tous la tolerance civile, non en approuvant tout comme indifférent, mais en souffrant avec patience tout ce que Dieu souffre, et en tâchant de ramener les hommes par une douce persuasion.”

for the French philosophy of the seventeenth century. The extracts last quoted forewarn us, that we are fast approaching to a new era in the history of the Human Mind. The glow-worm ’gins to pale his ineffectual fire; and we scent the morning air of the coming day. This era I propose to date from the publications of Locke and of Leibnitz; but the remarks which I have to offer on their writings, and on those of their most distinguished successors, I reserve for the Second Part of this Discourse; confining myself, at present, to a very short retrospect of the state of philosophy, during the preceding period, in some other countries of Europe.