The New Hampshire Gazette

Picture of a wise Prince, Henry the Fourth of France.

"NO person," says Perefixe, "was so pleased with the peace of Vervins as this excellent Prince, who had this speech continually in his mouth, "That, it being contrary to the laws of Nature and of Christianity to make war for the love of war, a Christian Prince ought never to refuse to make peace, unless it was entirely to his disadvantage." The Duke of Savoy, asked this Prince one day, what revenue his subjects were worth to him. "Exactly what I please, Sir," replied Henry; "because, possessing the good will of my subjects, I can have whatever I please from them; and if God is so good as to continue my life a few years longer, I will so manage matters that every peasant in my dominions shall be able to have his fowl in his pot on a Sunday; and I shall be rich enough without applying to them for money, to pay my soldiers who are to keep in order all those who refuse to submit to my authority." To the Intendants and Governors of Provinces he used occasionally to write: take great care of my people, they are my children; God has entrusted them to my keeping; I am responsible to him for them." "One of the great changes that was made in France," says Perefixe, "by the firm establishment of this great Prince upon his throne, was the abolition of idleness. All the drones of his kingdom, adds he, "were turned into bees, and made excellent honey. Idleness became disgraceful, and was looked upon as a crime, in the true spirit of the old proverb, which says that idleness is the mother of all vice." A mind that will not take pains to occupy itself seriously, it is useless to itself and pernicious to the public; for that reason the officers of the police made search after the idle and the dissolute, the vagabonds, and men without any regular calling, and sent them off to serve his Majesty in his galleys, and obliged them to work in the very despite of themselves."