From the year 1671 to the year 1758, the prize subjects proposed by the French Academy related to questions of religion and morality.  The eloquence of the candidates had therefore had to exercise itself successively on the knowledge of salvation; on the merit and dignity of martyrdom; on the purity of the soul and of the body; on the danger there is in certain paths that appear safe, &c. &c.  It had even to paraphrase the Ave Maria.  According to the literal intentions of the founder, (Balzac,) each discourse was ended by a short prayer.  Duclos thought in 1758, that five or six volumes of similar sermons must have exhausted the matter, and on his proposal the Academy decided that, in future, it would give as the subject of the eloquence prize, the eulogiums of the great men of the nation.  Marshal Saxe, Duguay Trouin, Sully, D’Aguesseau, Descartes, figured first on this list.  Later, the Academy felt itself authorized to propose the eloge of kings themselves; it entered on this new branch at the beginning of 1767, by asking for the eloge of Charles V.

Bailly entered the lists, but his essay obtained only an honourable mention.

Nothing is more instructive than to search out at what epoch originated the principles and opinions of persons who have acted an important part on the political scene, and how those opinions developed themselves.  By a fatality much to be regretted, the elements of these investigations are rarely numerous or faithful.  We shall not have to express these regrets relative to Bailly.  Each composition shows us the serene, candid, and virtuous mind of the illustrious writer, in a new and true point of view.  The eloge of Charles V. was the starting point, followed by a long series of works, and it ought to arrest our attention for a while.

The writings, crowned with the approbation of the French Academy, did not reach the public eye till they had been submitted to the severe censure of four Doctors in Theology.  A special and digested approbation by the high dignitaries of the Church, whom the illustrious assembly always possessed among her members, was not a sufficient substitute for the humbling formality.  If we are sure that we possess the eloge of Charles V. such as it flowed from the author’s pen; if we have not reason to fear that the thoughts have undergone some mutilation, we owe it to the little favour that the discourse of Bailly enjoyed in the sitting of the Academy in 1767.  Those thoughts, however, would have defied the most squeamish mind, the most shadowy susceptibility.  The panegyrist unrolls with emotion the frightful misfortunes that assailed France during the reign of King John.  The temerity, the improvidence of that monarch; the disgraceful passions of the King of Navarre; his treacheries; the barbarous avidity of the nobility; the seditious disposition of the people; the sanguinary depredations of the great companies; the ever recurring insolence of England; all this is expressed without disguise,