The home policy of Richelieu, less perhaps than that of any other statesman, admits of palliatives and excuses. It is etched sharply on the plate of history in white and black. There are no neutral tints. He took for his motto that of the Romans of old, _Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos_, and if ever such a principle is admissible in human affairs it was admissible in France in the days of Richelieu. But it is clear the principle must be pronounced justifiable, not merely excusable, before the muse of history can smooth over the harsh black lines of the portrait which she has been accustomed to draw. A statesman may in the course of difficult affairs be betrayed into the commission of a great crime, as was Theodoric in his participation in the murder of Odoacer, and his character may yet stand out from among men noble and true, though his name must go down to posterity linked with a thousand virtues and one crime. But the conduct of a ruler, who deliberately from first to last acts upon an immoral principle of government, and steadily carries it out through his whole career, admits of no palliation. He may blunder perhaps into a noble and patriotic action as did Napoleon in the restoration of Christianity in France, but that cannot affect the general severity of the condemnation. So it is with Richelieu. We cannot pick and choose among his actions, admit that in one execution he was right, in another he was wrong. We cannot plead that a policy of terrorism is criminal, but in his particular case there was much to diminish the guilt. He will have none of such compromises and such excuses. Deliberately, unhesitatingly, in his lifetime he chose a policy stern, terrific, pitiless, and he carried it out relentlessly but not revengefully. Men accuse him of never sparing even the dupe and the fool, they do not accuse him of destroying the innocent. Not like Henry VIII. did he ever put men to death because they might at some future time prove seditious. Not like Charles II. did he permit innocent lives to be sworn away wholesale rather than face the danger of a popular tumult. No, all who suffered under him were legally guilty, but nearly all who were legally guilty suffered. It was a terrible policy--the extermination of the evil-doer, the establishment of the structure of firm government in the blood of its enemies,--but it is the policy which Richelieu adopted and defended in his lifetime, and for which for two centuries and a half he has stood at the bar of public opinion, pleading, as every line in his portrait shows, not palliation, not excuse, but the calm conviction of a man who knows that he is in the right. [Sidenote: =Their justification.=]