[Footnote 2318: The opinion, or rather the resignation which confers omnipotence on the central power, goes back to the second half of the fifteenth century, after the Hundred Years' war, and is due to that war; the omnipotence of the king was then the only refuge against the English invaders, and the ravages of the Écorcheurs.--Cf. Fortescue, "In leges Angliæ," and" "The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy" (end of the fifteenth century), on the difference at this date between the English and the French government.--The same decision is found in the dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors of this date: "In France everything is based on the will of the king. Nobody, whatever might be his conscientious scruples, would dare express an opinion opposed to his. The French respect their king to such an extent that they would not only sacrifice their property for him, but again their souls." (Janssen, "L'Allemagne à la fin du moyen âge. I. 484.)--As to the passage of the monarchical to the democratic idea, we see it plainly in the following quotations from Restif de la Bretonne: "I entertained no doubt that the king could legally oblige any man to give me his wife or his daughter, and everybody in my village (Sacy in Burgundy) thought so too." ("Monsieur Nicolas," I., 443.)--In relation to the September massacres: "No, I do not pity them, those fanatical priests... When a community or its majority wants anything, it is right. The minority is always culpable, even when right morally. Common sense is that is needed to appreciate that truth. It is indisputable that the nation has the power to sacrifice even an innocent person." ("Nuits de Paris," XVth, p.377.)] [Footnote 2319: "The Revolution," III., 393. (Laff. II. p. 291)] [Footnote 2320: "Contrat Social," book 1st, ch. III.: "It is accordingly essential that, for the enunciation of the general will, no special organization should exist in the State, and that the opinion of each citizen should accord with that. Such was the unique and sublime law of the great Lycurgus."] [Footnote 2321: "The Revolution," I., 170. (Laff. I. 433.)] [Footnote 2322: Ibid., II., 93; III., 78-82. (Laff. I. p. 632 and II. pp. 65-68.)]