LETTER CXXIV. Usbek to Rhedi, at Venice.

WHAT can be the motives of those immense liberalities which princes lavish upon their courtiers?

Would they attach them to them? They have already gained them as much as they can. And, besides, if they gain some of their subjects by bribing them, they must by that very means lose a prodigious number of others by impoverishing them. When I think on the situation of princes, always surrounded with avaritious and insatiable men, I cannot but pity them: and I commiserate them the more, when they have not courage enough to refuse demands always burdensome to those who ask nothing. I never hear talk of their liberality, of the favours and pensions which they grant, without indulging myself with a thousand reflections: a crowd of ideas offer themselves to my mind: I think I hear this ordinance published: ‘The indefatigable courage of some of our subjects, in asking pensions from us, having, without ceasing, fatigued our royal magnificence, we have at last consented to the multitude of requests presented to us, which have hitherto been the greatest uneasiness of the throne. They have represented to us, that they have never failed, since our accession to the throne, attending at our levee; and that we have always seen them as we passed along, immoveable as the boundaries of land; and that they have greatly raised themselves above the shoulders of others, to behold our serenity. We have even received several petitions from some of the fair sex, supplicating us to observe, that it is notorious that they are of a very reserved conversation: and some of them, who are very ancient, shaking their heads, have intreated us to consider, that they have been the ornaments of the courts of the kings our predecessors; and that if the generals of our armies rendered the state formidable by their military actions, they no less rendered the court celebrated by their intrigues. Therefore, desirous to treat these suppliants graciously, and to grant them all their petitions, we have commanded what follows:—That every labourer having five children, shall daily retrench the fifth part of the bread he gives them.—We also enjoin fathers of families to make a diminution from each in their house, as justly as can be made. We expressly forbid all those who apply themselves to improve their estates, or who let them out in farms, to make any repairs in them of what kind soever. We also order, that all persons who exercise low trades and mechanics, who have never been at the levee of our majesty, shall hereafter purchase no clothes for themselves, their wives, and their children, but once in every four years: further, strictly forbidding them those little rejoicings which they were accustomed to make in their families upon the principal festivals in the year. And, forasmuch as we are informed, that the greatest part of the citizens of our good towns are wholly engaged in providing an establishment for their daughters, who have made themselves respectable in our state, only by a dull joyless modesty; we order that they delay marrying them, till they, having attained to the age appointed by ordinances, may have it in their power to oblige them to it. We charge our magistrates not to take care of the education of their children.’

Paris, the 1st of the moon Chalval,
1718.