which in an increasing degree menaced her rule. Under the regency of
Orléans (1715-1723), the open disorder of the court on the one hand
and the ruin of the disastrous financial experiment of Law on the
other were at least favourable to toleration; but under the Duc de
Bourbon, put in power and soon superseded by Fleury (bishop of Fréjus
and tutor of Louis XV; later cardinal) there was a renewal of the
rigours against the Protestants and the Jansenists; the edict of 1715
was renewed; emigration recommenced; and only public outcry checked
the policy of persecution on that side. But Fleury and the king went
on fighting the Jansenists; and while this embittered strife of the
religious sections could not but favour the growth of freethought,
it was incompatible alike with official tolerance of unbelief and
with any effectual diffusion of liberal culture. Had the terrorism and
the waste of Louis XIV been followed by a sane system of finance and
one of religious toleration; and had not the exhausted and bankrupt
country been kept for another half century--save for eight years
of peace and prosperity from 1748 to 1755--on the rack of ruinous
wars, alike under the regency of Orléans and the rule of Louis XV,
the intellectual life might have gone fast and far. As it was, war
after war absorbed its energy; and the debt of five milliards left
by Louis XIV was never seriously lightened. Under such a system the
vestiges of constitutional government were gradually swept away.