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The King is backing off.... He is always afraid of making a mistake. Once the first impulse is passed, he is no longer tormented by anything but the fear of having done an injustice... it seems to me that in government as in education one should not say "I will it" until one is sure of being right. But once having said it, never slack off from what you have ordered.
-- Madame Elisabeth, King Louis XVI's sister
Hindsight is 20-20. The tide of democracy was rising, and the French just may not have had as good a ground work of democratic institutions to make that transition more smoothly, in the way the English and the Americans did, relatively speaking. If Louis XVI was vacillating between paternalistic repression and idealistic cooperation with the rebellious masses and lesser aristocrats, it may be because there was just no easy way out of that historical jam, though it is also true that this king was no Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt - and certainly not the Sun King.
After finishing the "Suicides" chapter this morning, Monk is content to put aside Schama's "Citizens" for the weekend, and to finish off the rather frenchier "Spike Trap" this afternoon. All work and no play make the primate-protagonist a dull reader.
xXx
The King is backing off.... He is always afraid of making a mistake. Once the first impulse is passed, he is no longer tormented by anything but the fear of having done an injustice... it seems to me that in government as in education one should not say "I will it" until one is sure of being right. But once having said it, never slack off from what you have ordered.
-- Madame Elisabeth, King Louis XVI's sister
Hindsight is 20-20. The tide of democracy was rising, and the French just may not have had as good a ground work of democratic institutions to make that transition more smoothly, in the way the English and the Americans did, relatively speaking. If Louis XVI was vacillating between paternalistic repression and idealistic cooperation with the rebellious masses and lesser aristocrats, it may be because there was just no easy way out of that historical jam, though it is also true that this king was no Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt - and certainly not the Sun King.
After finishing the "Suicides" chapter this morning, Monk is content to put aside Schama's "Citizens" for the weekend, and to finish off the rather frenchier "Spike Trap" this afternoon. All work and no play make the primate-protagonist a dull reader.
