General of 1789, but not till the people had become thoroughly exasperated by the rapacious and spendthrift system of centuries. For centuries two most oppressive aristocracies, or rather three, had been favoured at their expense: first, that of the old nobles, who, as we have seen, had surrendered the vassals they should have protected to taille à merci et à miséricorde, to save themselves from their fair share of the public taxation. Secondly, the bastard aristocracy of the long robe, and the nouveaux anoblis, who, or whose forefathers, had bought with hard money their bran-new titles, or hereditary judicial offices, and had therewith purchased the supercilious scorn of the old nobility, and the envy and hatred of all who had not money wherewith to purchase privilege. Lastly, a sort of third bourgeois aristocracy, so far as regarded exemption from taille, consisting of the holders of petty municipal offices in the towns, which were constantly being multiplied by the Government for no purpose but to sell them-the charters of the towns, at recurring short periods, being revoked and renewed, solely for the purpose of selling those offices over again! That such a system should have gone on with continual aggravations in a country calling itself civilised-the most civilised in Europetill nearly the close of the last century-left little to wonder at in Revolution, except that it came no sooner.

The main weight of all these accumulated abuses in the matter of taxation-the most vital point where political abuses make themselves felt-fell on the broad but bent shoulders of Jacques Bonhomme-the peasant of the old régime. And that weight was increased infinitely in oppressive effect by its incalculableness from one year to another. It lay in the breast of the conseil du roi, and the contrôleur-général, what addition should be made year by year, to the amount of the taille; what public works should be undertaken, in what province, and what corvées (forced labours), at arbitrary and inadequate wages, imposed on the peasantry for their execution. It lay in the breast of the military administration what troops should be marched in what directions-corvées again on the wretched peasantry to provide means of transport, and probably get their horses lamed without compensation. But, besides all these burdens, laid mainly on Jacques Bonhomme's shoulders by the King's Government, were those laid exclusively on his shoulders not by the King's Government, but by the hereditary holders of feudal rights and dues-themselves, in large proportion, a most impoverished class, whose presence in the country was felt by the peasant only through their incessant exactionsfelt the more gallingly as relics of a system of feudal dependence,

whose

whose raison d'être (the payment of services for protection) had long ceased. The great nobles in the last ages of the monarchy were, for the most part, adorning Versailles and Paris with their (often unpaid for) fripperies; the poor provincial nobles -hobereaux, as Jacques Bonhomme nicknamed them-were snatching the last fowl from the peasant's pot in payment of their feudal dues-if, indeed, the poule au pot, which Henri Quatre wished for the peasant's pot, ever found its way there.

*

Picture to yourself,' says Tocqueville, a French peasant of the eighteenth century, or, I might rather say, the peasant now before your eyes, for the man is the same; his condition is altered, but not his character. Take him as he is described in the documents I have quoted-so passionately enamoured of the soil, that he will spend all his savings to purchase it, and to purchase it at any price. To complete this purchase he must first pay a tax, not to the Government, but to other landowners of the neighbourhood, as unconnected as himself with the administration of public affairs, and hardly more influential than he is. He possesses it at last; his heart is buried in it with the seed he sows. This little nook of ground, which is his own in this vast universe, fills him with pride and independence. But again these neighbours call him from his furrow, and compel him to come to work for them without wages. He tries to defend his young crops from their game; again they prevent him. As he crosses the river they wait for his passage to levy a toll. He finds them at the market, where they sell him the right of selling his own produce; and when, on his return home, he wants to use the remainder of his wheat for his own sustenance-of that wheat which was planted by his hands, and has grown under his eyes-he cannot touch it till he has ground it at the mill and baked it at the bakehouse of these same A portion of the income of his little property is paid away in quit-rents to them also, and these dues can neither be extinguished nor redeemed.

men.

'Whatever he does, those troublesome neighbours are everywhere in his path, to disturb his happiness, to interfere with his labour, to consume his profits; and when these are dismissed, others in the black garb of the Church present themselves to carry off the clearest profit of his harvest. Picture to yourself the condition, the wants, the character, the passions of this man, and compute, if you are able, the stores of hatred and of envy which are accumulated in his heart.'

An incident related in Rousseau's 'Confessions,' which M. Taine does not cite, probably because he supposes it already familiar to French readers, is strikingly illustrative of the sort of vexatious espionage practised on the French peasantry, for the purpose of discovering fresh matter for fiscal extortion, and which was naturally encountered by every art of concealment of

* Mr. Reeve's Translation, p. 37.

whatever

whatever means they possessed. The incident occurred in a youthful journey on foot between Paris and Lyons.

'One day in particular, having wandered out of my road to look at a landscape which attracted me, I fairly lost my way altogether, and, after hours of unavailing effort to retrace it, weary and half-dead with thirst and hunger, I entered a peasant's house of no very promising aspect, but which was the only house I saw within reach. I expected to be made welcome as in Geneva or Switzerland, where all the inhabitants in any tolerable circumstances are ready to exercise hospitality. I begged the peasant to give me dinner, which I said I would pay for. He set before me skimmed-milk and coarse barleybread, telling me it was all he had. I drank the milk with eagerness, and ate the bread, straw and all, with good appetite; such fare, however, was not very restorative for a man exhausted with fatigue. My host, who was watching me, inferred the truth of my tale from the evidence of my appetite. All at once, exclaiming that he saw I was an honest young man, who did not come there to inform on him; he opened a little trap-door beside his kitchen, descended, and returned a moment after with a loaf of brown wheaten bread, a ham very appetising though well cut into, and a bottle of wine, the sight of which rejoiced my eyes more than all the rest. To these good things he added a tolerably substantial omelet, and I made such a meal as no one ever did but a foot wayfarer. When it came to paying, his uneasy apprehensions again laid hold on him; he would have none of my money, and refused it with renewed symptoms of alarm. I could not conceive what he was afraid of. At last he uttered with trembling the terrible words of "commis" and "rats-de-cave." He gave me to understand that he concealed his wine because of the aides, that he concealed his bread because of the taille, and that he should be a ruined man if it came to be suspected that he was not dying of hunger. All that he said to me, and of all of which I had no previous idea, made an impression on me which will never be effaced, and was the germ of that inextinguishable hatred which has since developed itself in my heart against the oppressions endured by the poor miserable people, and against their oppressors. This man, though in easy circumstances, dared not openly eat the bread he had earned by the sweat of his brow, and could escape ruin only by making show outwardly of the same indigence as reigned all round him. I left the house full of indignation as of compassion, and deploring the lot of a country on which the bounties of nature have been lavished only to leave her the prey of barbarous publicans [revenue-farmers]."'

Contrast the condition thus imposed, under the old régime, on the great majority of Frenchmen, the actual cultivators of the soil, with that of the classes partially, when not wholly, exempt from fiscal imposts.

'In the bishop, the abbot, or the count,' says M. Taine, 'the King respected the possessor of feudal rights while reducing to subjection

the

the former rival in sovereign power. The King felt that he himself was only the most privileged of the privileged. Treaties, precedents, immemorial usage, founded on former independent positions, forbade fiscal exactions from nobles who were once Sovereigns. In Alsace, the foreign princes, lords of the soil, the Teutonic order, and that of the knights of Malta, enjoyed entire exemption from all contributions, real or personal. In Lorraine, the Chapter of Remiremont had the privilege of taxing itself. Throughout the provinces, whether pays d'États or pays d'élection, the taille only reached the property of nobles through their roturier tenants. Accordingly, in the Limousin, and other districts, where the main part of the products of the soil were from pasture and vineyards, the noble owner took care to keep his property in his own hands, or those of his agents, thus exempting himself and them from the unwelcome visits of the collector. Further, the exemption of the privileged orders extended to their servants and servants' servants, from being drawn for the milice, from having troops quartered on them, and from subjection to forced labour on public works, roads, &c. Besides the poll-tax (capitation), intended equally to reach all, being assessed according to the taille, the nobles paid little, having little taille to pay. "In the provinces," wrote Turgot, "the capitation of the privileged orders has undergone successive reductions to a very low figure, while that of the taillables almost equals the amount of their taille." Towards the privileged orders, besides, the collectors thought themselves obliged to observe ménagements. The Duke of Orleans [afterwards Philippe Égalité], avowed "Je m'arrange with the intendants. I pay pretty much what I choose." And then complained that the new provincial assemblies instituted two or three years before the Revolution, by assessing him strictly, were going to make him lose 300,000 livres de rente.'

Under the old régime, adds M. Taine, exemption from imposts was a last rag of sovereignty, or at least of royal or noble independence. The prince or noble evaded or resisted taxation not only as detriment, but dishonour. It was the sufferancebadge of roture, that is to say, of servitude, and he repulsed the tax-gatherer quite as much from pride as interest.

The princes of the blood, in fact, retained many rights of sovereignty. Throughout the domains forming their appanages, and extending over more than twelve of the present departments, the appointments to ecclesiastical benefices and judicial offices were in their hands. They were a sort of lesser kings, and received not only the dues which the King would have received as seigneur, but a portion of those he elsewhere received as Sovereign. The House of Orleans, for instance, received the aides, that is to say, the duties on wine and spirits, on manufactures of gold, silver, iron, steel, cards, and starch-the whole amount, in short, of one of the largest branches of indirect taxation. It was not surprising if princes so nearly placed in the position of Sovereigns had, like Sovereigns, a council, a chancellor, a debt, a court, and whole code of domestic ceremonial.'

It was not perhaps surprising, but it was surely scandalous, that the Duke of Orleans, like other princes du sang, with all their appanages, was an importunate and successful applicant to royalty for out-door relief. During the life of his father, he had received a pension from the Crown of 150,000 livres (francs) on the plea of poverty. The succession to his father having enriched him above 3,000,000 per annum, he resigned his pension, but presently again applied for it, representing to the King that he found his expenditure exceed his income. The Prince de Conti had 1,150,000 francs from Louis XVI. to pay his debts. Any noble gentleman, or noble lady, who had debts to pay (especially under the Calonne and Brienne ministries, which just preceded the Revolution) had only to ask the good easy monarch for money to pay them with-and get it. Quand ï'ai vu,' said a courtier of that epoch, 'que tout le monde tendait la main, j'ai tendu mon chapeau?'

The Court, said D'Argenson (and the courtiers called him la bête, for speaking the truth about them), became in effect 'the only senate in the nation;' and such a senate was of course often swayed by its most worthless members, or parasites, male or female. The Court was the only institution of the country left standing, towards which all eyes were turned; and the pomp of Versailles, costly and cumbrous as it was, was not more than proportioned to the use made of it—an use, however, which ended by rendering nobles and King alike useless. That use was to keep a whole nobility occupied daily in doing nothing -or, in official language, in discharging their duties about the King's person. It was, as M. Taine observes, a courtly continuation of the old feudal homage. The staff of nobles was bound to appear daily en grande tenue around their born general. Absence from Court, or slack attendance there, was regarded as a mark of independence or indifference, and never escaped the vigilant eye of Louis XIV. glancing round his circle. The Duke de Larochefoucauld, grand veneur under that monarch, was a model of the courtly virtues. For ten years together he would miss no day's attendance at the royal lever, coucher, chasse, or promenade, with the appropriate and prescribed change of dress for each. And in more than forty years he had not slept twenty times out of Paris, or asked leave for any more latitude of movement than occasionally to dine out en ville, thus missing his usual attendance on the royal promenade.

To reduce a noblesse to mere idle ornaments of a court was for the monarch to subject himself to the like servitude as he imposed. The King, says M. Taine, had undertaken to find occupation for a whole aristocracy, and by consequence

to