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him, and so re-adjusted taxes that Louis henceforth had
 
income enough to wage war when he would, and, at the
 
same time, pension every promising leader or emerging
 
writer, not excluding scores in Germany and Spain. The
 
recalcitrant landed aristocracy was everywhere subdued,
 
parliaments were not allowed to assemble, while the new-
 
rich and all the talent of the time were allowed to bask
 
in the sunshine of the royal presence. The young monarch
 
rose to unparalleled eminence in Europe and Colbert applied
 
by decree an import-export system like that of England.
 
Nothing could come in except upon approval and the payment
 
of high tariffs. Every surplus, except gold, must go out
 
at whatever prices could be obtained. A third class like
 
that of England arose. Monopoly privileges prevailed every-
 
where. A countryman who objected to aristocratic hunters
 
running over his ripe wheat fields was simply shot like a
 
pheasant or a partridge. France was wonderfully organized
 
from the top-like Augustus Caesar's reorganized Rome. There
 
was not a popular assembly in a hundred and forty years,
 
and terrorizing wars were the older of the time 1666-7,
 
1672-6, 1683-7, 1190-97, 1701-13. France was perfectly
 
pyramided at home and on the continent. The glamor of Ver-
 
sailles was seen and imitated all over Germany, while
 
thousands of men rotted in French prisons because they had
 
ventured to protect; and peasant farmers reached so low an
 
estate that, like North American Indians, they lived off
 
roots and herbs or died unwept along the roadside, as they
 
do today in a great minority government of our time.
 
It was the economic nationalism which "had saved
 
 
France