II.

CHAP. restraints on the freedom of human action; but it is not the less true that they provide for the classification of men according to their professions and crafts-the best system which human wisdom has ever devised to extend their legitimate influence, and assuage their unavoidable misfortunes. It is true that all taxation must ultimately be paid from the produce of the soil in the country where it is imposed, or in those which exchange their rude produce for its manufactured articles; but it is not less true that the sum drawn from the latter source may, in a commercial community, come to be greater than that derived from the former, so that the taxes it can afford to pay may greatly exceed the whole rent of its land.* It is true that there is an order to which nature points, and which wisdom approves, in human society; but it is not the less true that this can be nowhere completely established, in consequence of the innumerable existing interests which have grown up under a different system; and the philosopher who unfolds, in one chapter, the benevolent intentions of Providence in the adaptation of the human mind to the varying exigencies of society, would do well to devote the next to the modification which these principles must ever receive from the follies, the vices, and the selfishness of man.+

68.

the nobles.

X. Insult is more keenly resented than injury. The Privileges of pride of nobility is more difficult to tolerate than all the exclusive advantages which its order possesses. "Numerous and serious as the grievances of the French nation were," says the ablest of the royalist writers, "it was not they that occasioned the Revolution. Neither the taxes,

*This has long been the case in Great Britain. The rental of the land in the island is now £45,753,615, while the taxes are upwards of £50,000,000; and during the latter years of the war were above £70,000,000, or double the whole land rent of the country at that period.

The doctrines of the Economists, which deserve much more attention than they have hitherto received, or are likely to receive, in the mercantile community of Great Britain, are disclosed in several able works. The "Physiocratie, ou Constitution Naturelle des Gouvernemens," by Quesnay, published and edited by Dupont de Nemours, contains, in three small volumes, their whole principles; but this work is exceedingly rare. In "L'Ordre des Sociétés," by

6

II.

nor the lettres-de-cachet, nor the other abuses of authority, CHAP. nor the vexations of the intendants, nor the ruinous delays of justice, have irritated the nation; it is the prestige of nobility which has excited all the ferment: a fact which proves that it was the shopkeepers, the men of letters, the moneyed interest-in fine, all those who were jealous of the nobility-who roused against them the lower classes in the towns, and the peasantry in the country. In truth, it is an extraordinary circumstance, that the nation should say to a child possessed of parchment, You shall one day be either a prelate, a marshal, or an ambassador, as you choose,' while it has nothing to offer to its other children." In fact, the men of talent and the men of fortune found this distinction so insupportable, that they invariably purchased a patent of nobility when they had the means of doing so ; but from this arose a new difficulty, and fresh dangers to the monarchy. The wealth which bought titles could not confer eminence; it could not give historic names, or remove the stain of ignoble birth. Hence the distinction between the old families and those newly ennobled, and a division in the aristocracy itself, which prevented that body as a whole from ever adopting any common measures for the general safety. The great families were more jealous of the parvenus than of the inferior classes of the people. From the last they antici- 1 Rivarol, pated no danger; the first were placed in a situation 93, 94. De approaching too closely to their exclusive domain, to admit 198. of their ever combining with them in measures for their common defence. 1

The distinction of nobility and base-born was carried to a length in France, of which it is difficult, in this free Mercier de la Rivière, in two volumes, the same doctrines are very ably stated; and again more fully developed in La Trone's "Ordre Social," in one large volume. The Comte de Mirabeau, (father of the great Mirabeau,) in his celebrated work entitled "L'Ami des Hommes," in five volumes, has fully expounded the same views in an eloquent and systematic manner. The great defect which strikes an English reader in them all, is the ignorance of real business, and of the practical working of men in society, which was, without doubt, the unavoidable result of ingenious minds speculating under a despotic government on such subjects, without the benefit of any real experience.

Stael, i. 44,

II.

Rigorous

of noble and

roturier in

France.

CHAP. country, to form a conception. Every person was either noble or roturier; no middle class, no shades of distinction 69. were known. On the one side were a hundred and fifty distinction thousand privileged individuals; on the other, the whole body of the French people. All situations of importance in the church, the army, the court, the bench, or the diplomatic line, were exclusively enjoyed by the former of these classes. Louis XIV., indeed, had laboured to break down this exclusive system, and the great talent which has immortalised his reign, in every walk of knowledge, was mainly selected by his discriminating eye from the middle classes of society. But the abuses and rigid exclusion of the old regime reappeared during the weakness of his successors, and had now been acted on for nearly a century. In a flourishing and prosperous country, such a system is of itself sufficient to produce a revolution. Men of fortune will not long submit to the insolence of aristocratic pridemen of talent, in the end, will scorn the trammels of patronage and the condescension of fashion. When a public has arisen, and the means of arriving at distinction, independent of the support of the nobility, exist, genius will generally incline, in a country so situated, to the side, whatever it is, which is opposed to the government. This tendency may be observed in all free countries, and in none more than in England, as shown by its recent history. It is provided for in the independence of thought which is the general accompaniment of intellectual strength, and is the counterpoise provided by nature to the influence of government, which might otherwise prove overwhelming. This change, accordingly, had taken place in France before the Revolution. The industrious classes, the men of talent, the men of wealth, were unanimous in their hatred of the nobility; the universal cry was for Liberty and EQUALITY, -a cry almost unknown during the English Rebellion. Equality of rank, abolition of privileges, equal eligibility for office, were the universal objects of desire to the nation;

* "Lords and Ladies don't like to have their mouths stopped."-JOHNSON.

1

II.

34,35. Nap.

because they were the pressing evils which had excited the CHAP. discontents, and thwarted the vanity which has always, by their own admission, been the leading feature of the French character. The insurrection was less against the Thiers, i. throne than against the nobility; against the oppressive in D'Abran. weight of feudal tyranny, inconsistent with the spirit of Rivarol, 7. the age, and bequeathed by the power of barbarian conquest. 1

:

vii. 169.

70.

tion of the

iv. 21.

The noble families of France had contrived, in a long course of years, to engross the whole offices in the gift of Composithe crown. The higher situations in the magistracy were privileged confined to fifty families, in which they had become almost classes. hereditary, and which could number among their ancestors some of the greatest men and purest patriots of France. Still, though their merit in this respect was universally admitted, the monopoly they enjoyed of all elevated situations in the judicial establishment was justly complained of as a very serious grievance.2 The whole commissions Soulavie, in the army, above the rank of a lieutenant, were given to persons of noble birth those in the Maison du Roi, or body-guards, who were twelve thousand strong, were confined to the higher nobility, and in the more favoured corps of that body the privates even were required to be of noble birth. Notwithstanding these substantial advantages, the nobility, generally speaking, had much declined. from their ancient splendour. There were in France about eighty thousand families claiming noble descent, and to them belonged nearly a hundred and fifty thousand individuals who formed the privileged class. Four thousand civil offices either conferred or transmitted the rights of nobility; but instances of their being thus acquired by the Tiers Etat were not frequent. Of these eighty thousand families, about one thousand could trace back their origin to the distant ages of the monarchy; but such had been the extravagance of successive generations, or the misfortunes in which they had come to be involved, that not more than three hundred of them were in affluence when

II.

CHAP. the Revolution broke out. Only two hundred had historic names, or could boast of public services rendered by their ancestors to the state; the remainder, unknown alike in past and present times, enjoyed no advantage but exemption from several of the most oppressive direct taxes, and the favour of the court in the obtaining of commissions in the army. Most of them were miserably poor, and debarred alike by private pride and public opinion from engaging in those lucrative commercial pursuits by which the Tiers Etat had been so much enriched. Many of this latter class were superior to the most prosperous of the nobility, a few great families alone excepted, in wealth, talents, and personal respectability; but still they were ineligible to the higher situations in the magistracy, the church, or the army; and they could not, if strictly watched, obtain a place in any of the parliaments in the kingdom. In the nobility itself, a distinction, considered to the last degree invidious by the older families, existed. This arose from the nouveaux anoblis, or new nobility, who had acquired titles in recent times by purchase, or by the holding of offices which conferred that distinction, and whose newly acquired wealth often eclipsed the decayed and now antiquated splendour of the ancient houses. The most part of the great estates which conferred titles had fallen into the hands of farmers of the finance, or rich merchants, while the titled heirs of their original owners hung about the court, a useless and discreditable burden on the state. Thus power and influence was confined to 50,51. Rév. a class little qualified to exercise them; while the vast 51. Smyth's majority in numbers, and no inconsiderable part of the i. 166. holders of property in the state, were excluded from any

1 Bouillé's Memoirs,

Mem. vii.

French Rev.

71.

enjoyment of either.1

XI. While the nobility was thus lowered in consideraProsperous tion and divided in feeling, the third estate, or Tiers Etat, condition of had immensely advanced, during the eighteenth century,

the Tiers

Etat.

in numbers, wealth, and respectability. The calamitous termination of the wars of Louis XIV. had, for a quarter