The world praised the Cardinal de
Richelieu, who took the first opportunity to strip them of their
fortified places and cautionary towns. The same world held and does hold
in execration (so far as that business is concerned) the memory of Louis
the Fourteenth, for the total repeal of that favorable edict; though the
talk of "fundamental laws, established religion, religion of the prince,
safety to the state," &c., &c., was then as largely held, and with as
bitter a revival of the animosities of the civil confusions during the
struggles between the parties, as now they can be in Ireland.
Perhaps there are persons who think that the same reason does not hold,
when the religious relation of the sovereign and subject is changed; but
they who have their shop full of false weights and measures, and who
imagine that the adding or taking away the name of Protestant or
Papist, Guelph or Ghibelline, alters all the principles of equity,
policy, and prudence, leave us no common data upon which we can reason.
I therefore pass by all this, which on you will make no impression, to
come to what seems to be a serious consideration in your mind: I mean
the dread you express of "reviewing, for the purpose of altering, the
_principles of the Revolution_.
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