So far I have not known anyone who has not governed some state. I am not talking about right honourable ministers, who really do govern, some for two or three years, others for six months, others for six weeks; I am talking about all those other men who, over supper or in their study, set out their systems of government, reform the army, the Church, the law and [the world of] finance.

The abbé Bourzeis set about governing France around 1645 in the name of Cardinal Richelieu, and wrote that Political testament in which he wants to draft the nobility into the cavalry for three years, make the Audit Office and the parlements pay taxes, and deprive the king of income from the salt tax. He contends in particular that for the sake of economy a hundred thousand men should be raised in order to wage a campaign with fifty thousand. He maintains that ‘Provence alone has more good ports than Spain and Italy put together.’

The abbé Bourzeis had done no travelling. Moreover, his work teems with anachronisms and mistakes; he makes Cardinal Richelieu sign in a way that he never signed, just as he made him speak as he never spoke. For the rest, he takes a whole chapter to say that reason must be a state's rule of thumb’, and to seek to prove this discovery.