The next step of progress in the right direction was a vigorous effort to induce the king to be equally generous and patriotic in relinquishing some of his odious antiquated prerogatives. But Louis XVI. was unwilling to conform to the public wishes; he refused, because compliance would trench upon the sovereignty which he had received untouched from his royal ancestors, and which he resolved to transmit untarnished to his posterity. But when the pressure for a written constitution began to threaten his personal safety, he yielded with a mental reservation that he had given way to superior force; he conscientiously, but erroneously and fatally, believed his consent was not binding on him or his heirs. The representatives of the nation now maintained, that ministers having the national confidence should be called into the royal cabinet. To this reasonable request, the king refused his consent; but he temporized by reluctantly giving audience to Mirabeau, Talleyrand, and some others of the liberal party, leaving them under the mistaken impression that he would listen to their advice. But the king did not adopt their counsels; he did not intend that any of them should become his counsellors. Louis granted them a hearing in order to conceal his intentions. It was only a blind to cover his purpose, which was to resume, at the first opportunity, what he had relinquished, and to send Mirabeau and Talleyrand, with their friends the _sans-culottes_, adrift. {97} These liberals were consequently deceived; in truth, they aided in their own deception; they could not imagine the king would prove a traitor to his own interests. The king, however, was only playing over again the losing game practised by Charles I., and by his son, James II., of England. The stake in both countries was the same: it was, whether sovereignty should repose in the crown, as in ancient times, or in the people, in accordance with modern ideas. The prize cannot be divided, as some supposed; it can never be divided; in its very nature it is indivisible; it would be as impossible as to place one crown on two separate heads at the same time. Sir Henry Bulwer, as a true Briton, thinks, no doubt, the Stuart sovereigns were perjured knaves, because they deceived the House of Commons, and broke solemn promises made to their ministers; but he views the Bourbon king as foolish only in doing the same things, and pursuing the same line of policy. Now, in verity, the moral code applies alike to both dynasties, in both countries, in both centuries. Whatever royal promise is made should be royally and religiously fulfilled; but its violation does not justify a resort to the block at Whitehall or to the guillotine at the Carrousel. The execution of a monarch for defending his prerogatives by fair means or false promises, is no less a crime against civilization than it is a political error. No good can come of it; no good ever has.