I am now alluding to the first part of this exposition, that which treats of the centralization of the government in the hands of royal officials as the deepest root of all this mischief. The worst side of this centralization had been incontrovertibly exposed by De Tocqueville, but none the less his representation was unfair and unjust, because it made no mention of the brighter side. No one can contest that the political inactivity of men of all positions in a system that referred the general interests of France to a bureaucracy, demoralized the higher classes and left the lower ignorant and inexperienced. Still the historian should not forget the actual achievements of this great bureaucracy. Under Colbert's guidance it created the civic order and economical beginnings of modern France. It, for the first time in France, rendered throughout a century a burghers' war an impossible thing, and it stimulated internal traffic by roads and canals, which gave rise to countless industrial and commercial undertakings. Later, under Turgot and Necker, it waged, on behalf of the people, war against the pressure of privileges, thought primarily of reform and progress, and saw with bitter regret the defeat of its popular efforts by the opposition of the nobles. Tocqueville himself tells how the Liberal parties before the Revolution thought more of reforms than liberties--that is to say, they expected the improvement of their condition from a further strengthening of the Monarchy. It came to a Revolution first, however. The Monarchy, wielded by the feeble hand of Louis XVI., was unequal to the task; then privileges fell for ever, but after ten years monarchical centralization arose anew in order a second time to satisfy the needs and inclinations of the French people throughout three generations. It seems therefore a mistake to paint this institution so out and out black. We may lament that it has not merely done nothing to educate the French in political liberty, but has as much as possible stifled liberty and the very sense of it among them. But how without it, under the circumstances that succeeded to the religious wars and the Fronde, anything like a positive constitution ever could have arisen in France, De Tocqueville does not say. We are indeed amazed when Taine, in his enumeration of the privileged classes as those luxurious idlers, those once political servants who had now renounced all political influence, numbers, as third with the clergy and nobility, the King--the head of that Government, which was only too zealous in working, and thereby drew all the power of the State to itself and excluded all others from care for the common weal. Here there is an evident contradiction, nor is it any way cleared up by the circumstance that personally Louis XV. vied in indolence and debauchery with the worst of his courtiers, or that his unfortunate successor spent much of his time and energy in Court etiquette and the chase. For the reign of Louis XVI.