The project also secured to the sovrans the heritage of their authority and guarded against civil wars.

This assumed that the various existing constitutions were fundamentally just.
The realisation of the scheme would have perpetuated all the evils of autocratic governments.

Its author did not perceive that the radical evil in France was irresponsible power.

It needed the reign of Louis XV.
and the failure of attempts at reform under his successor to bring this home.

The Abbe even thought that an increase of the despotic authority of the government was desirable, provided this were accompanied by an increase in the enlightenment and virtue of its ministers.
In 1729 he published an abridgment of his scheme, and here he looks beyond its immediate results to its value for distant posterity.