The following year he composed a treatise on religious tolerance, which he at one time hoped might reconcile the animosities of the Catholics and Protestants. If he failed in this, he left an example, rare at that time, of an enlightened and liberal spirit. Shortly after he wrote a memorial indicating the means by which the commerce and finances of France might be still further improved. At that time the political sciences could scarcely be said to exist; and it is not to be supposed that the minister’s views were at all times just and enlarged. They show, at all events, that he looked to the industry of the people as the source of national wealth; and to their welfare as one, at least, of the objects of government. “Tillage and pasturage,” it was a favourite saying of his, “are the two paps by which France is nourished—the real treasures of Peru.” To manufactures he was less favourable, and his obstinacy on this head retarded many of Henry’s schemes for the encouragement of national industry. His real glory as a minister is to be sought in the exactness which he introduced into the management of the finances; and in the vigour with which he repressed peculation in his subordinates, and gave the whole weight of his influence to check the needless expenditure of a profligate court, to curtail those feudal claims which bore hardest on the vassals, and to oppose all privileges and monopolies, commonly bestowed upon courtiers in those days, which cramp the prosperity of a nation, to put a comparatively trifling sum into the pocket of a single person. One day the Duchesse de Verneuil, one of Henry’s favourites, remonstrated with him for his severity in this respect, alleging that the King had a good right to make presents to his mistresses and nobility. His answer should be generally known. “This were well, Madam, if the King took the money from his own purse; but it is against reason to take it from the shopkeepers, artisans, and agricultural labourers, since it is they who support the King and all of us, and they would be well content with a single master, without having so many cousins, relations, and mistresses to maintain.” His enemies insinuated that in the service of the state he had not neglected his own interest; and it is certain that he acquired immense wealth. Cardinal Richelieu, however, no friend to him, contents himself with the insinuation that if the last years of his administration were less austere than the first, it could not, at least, be said that they were profitable to himself without being very profitable to the state also.