*

II.

of a century, diverted the ambition of France from foreign CHAP. conquest; and the subsequent contests, terminated by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1749 and that of Paris in 1763, had not been of such extent or duration as seriously to affect the internal prosperity of the kingdom. During this long period, the industry and activity of the Tiers Etat had brought about an extraordinary change in their condition and feelings. France had founded colonies in America. She had immensely extended her maritime commerce; that to the single island of St Domingo maintained, as already noticed, sixteen hundred vessels and twenty-seven thousand sailors. Domestic manufactures had spread to a very great degree; foreign commerce was flourishing; her commercial marine was second only to that of Great Britain; her warlike navy, as the American war proved, was almost on a level, for the first time in history, with that of her great antagonist. The riches flowing into the state, from this prodigious increase of mercantile industry, had all been centred in the Tiers Rév. Etat; the nobility, disdaining the humble employments of 93, 94, 151. commerce, remained in secluded pride, strangers alike to 55. the wealth which this industry had produced, and the feelings to which it had unavoidably given rise. 1

1 Necker,

France, i.

Bouillé, 52,

72.

of Paris and

the king

As a natural consequence of this state of commercial prosperity, the principal harbours and manufacturing Vast growth towns in France had greatly increased in wealth, popu- the princilation, and influence. Lyons, Rouen, Bordeaux, Mar- pal towns of seilles, Nantes, were larger cities than the capitals of dom. most of the adjoining kingdoms. Paris had increased to a degree that had even become alarming; it numbered nearly seven hundred thousand inhabitants, and their intelligence and mental activity rendered them more influential than did even the vast aggregate of their

* The exports of France to the Spanish and French St Domingo, in 1789, amounted to no less than 250,000,000 francs, or £10,000,000 sterling: its imports from that island, to 189,000,000 francs, or £7,560,000. The whole exports of Great Britain to all her West India islands put together are only £3,600,000 at this time, (1842.)-See DUMAS, Guerre de 1799 à 1808, viii. 112, 113.

II.

CHAP. numbers. During a succession of ages, they had largely profited by the policy of Richelieu and Louis XIV., who attracted the nobles to the capital: the extravagance and prodigality of these haughty seigneurs had insensibly, but certainly, caused their wealth to glide into the coffers of the jewellers and money-lenders. Almost all the provincial towns were the seats of flourishing branches of manufacture, or of a multitude of legal practitioners before the local courts, stewards and factors on estates, or other functionaries, who largely partook in the spoils of the absent and heedless nobility. In a higher class, the farmers of fiefs, or of the royal revenue, had in great part accumulated considerable, sometimes great fortunes; and it was hard to say whether the royal influence was most Mém.52,53. impaired by the large portion of the revenue which they Rév. diverted from the public treasury, or by the consideration 150, 152. they imparted to the Tiers Etat, now, if not in open hostility to, at least in sullen alienation from the crown.1

1 Bouillé's

Necker,

France, i.

73. Superior education

Etat.

It was the natural result of this prosperous condition of the middle classes, that they had, in great part at least, of the Tiers received an education which might put their superiors to the blush, if they reflected on the greater advantages they had enjoyed, and the larger means of acquisition which they had misapplied. This was the unavoidable consequence of their situation; for they were brought up to professions, such as the law, medicine, commerce, or the humbler stations in the church, in which a certain degree of information was indispensable to the obtaining even of the most inferior employment; and the higher could only be reached by intellectual cultivation of no ordinary kind. It had long been observed in France, accordingly, that the middle classes were, with some brilliant exceptions,

* If the birth and parentage of a large proportion of the persons who played an important part in the Revolution is examined, it will be found that they were the sons or grandsons of stewards of estates, bailiffs, and factors, or domestic servants and valets-de-chambre in the chateaus of the neighbouring proprietors, the descendants of whom had risen to the rank of advocates, physicians, attorneys, or surgeons in the provincial towns where they had been born.-BOUILLE, 55, note.

II.

not only better informed, but incomparably superior in CHAP. ability to the noblesse or the clergy; and the greater part of the literary men, or philosophers, who for half a century before the Revolution directed the public thought, had sprung from this class. In all countries, even the most free, intellectual vigour and ability, arising from the middle class, is in the general case inclined to the democratic side; for the very obvious reason that, sprung from its ranks, it sympathises with its feelings, and is identified with its real or supposed interests. If this tendency is clearly discernible in Great Britain, where the career of talent is open to all, and the son of a commoner is so frequently raised to the wool-sack or the archiepiscopal chair, it may be conceived with how much vehemence it must have operated in France, where a sullen line of demarcation prescribed a limit to the elevation even of the most transcendant abilities in the middle class; and

all elevated situations at the court, in the army, the 1 Bouille, magistracy, the church, and the diplomatic line, were 53, 55. rigorously confined to persons of higher birth, but inferior qualifications.1

Its inequa

XII. The taxation of France afforded a practical 74. grievance of the most serious kind, rendered yet more Taxation. galling by the inequality with which it was imposed. lities. The two privileged orders, the nobles and the clergy, were exempted from several of the most oppressive imposts a privilege grounded on the feudal fiction, that the former defended the state by their swords, while the latter interceded for it by their prayers. Such a ground of exemption was peculiarly untenable after a long period of peace, during which the nobility were exclusively occupied in the frivolities of the court, and many of the higher clergy were suspected, with too much reason, of sharing in its vices. The actual addition which the exemption of so large a proportion of the most opulent classes made to the burdens of the people, though by no means inconsiderable, was the least part of the evil: the bitterness lay in the

VOL. I.

N

CHAP.

II.

sense of its injustice. But much misrepresentation has taken place on this subject, and the freedom from taxation by the privileged orders has been generally described as much more extensive than it really was. They certainly did not contribute equally with each other, or with the commons; but they both paid largely to the public service. Neither the nobility nor the clergy enjoyed exemption from any of the indirect impositions which in France, as in other countries, constituted so large a proportion of the public revenue. The former paid the capitation tax and the twentieth penny or vingtième, which, together, sometimes amounted to four shillings in the pound. The clergy in the provinces annexed by conquest to France, comprehending about an eighth of the territory and a sixth of the wealth of the kingdom, also paid the capitation and the vingtième; and although the clergy in the old provinces did not pay the capitation, this was because they had redeemed it by payment of 24,000,000 of francs, or £1,000,000 sterling: they did not pay the vingtième, but they, in return, made free gifts and were subject to other charges, which amounted to nearly as much as their proportion of what was paid by the other orders. The real ground of complaint, and Works, v. it was a most substantial one, was the exemption of both the privileged orders from the taille a direct burden on 311. De the produce of land of the most odious and impolitic Monthion, kind, and the weight of which, being borne exclusively by 154. Thiers, the Tiers Etat, led to the general impression that the privileged orders were entirely freed from taxation of any sort.1

1 Burke's Considera

tions,

222, 223.

Duc de

Gaeta, ii.

Stael, i. 150.

i. 34.

The taxes of France were not only heavy, and liable to hateful exemptions, but they were unequally distributed even upon the classes who bore them, and were in an especial manner oppressive to the cultivators of the soil. The taille and the vingtième imposts, exclusively affecting agricultural labour, and rising in proportion to its profits,with other smaller burdens, amounted to no less than 171,000,000 francs, or £6,840,000 sterling, a sum at

II.

least equivalent to £15,000,000 on the land of England. CHAP. So excessive was the burden which this created upon agricultural labour, that it has been calculated, by a very competent observer, that in some districts where the valuation was rigorously taken, supposing the produce of an acre worth £3, 2s. 7d., the proportion which went to the king was £1, 18s. 4d.; that to the landlord, 18s. ; that to the actual cultivator, 5s. ; or, if the proprietor cultivated his own land, his share was only £1, 4s. 3d., while that of the king was £1, 18s. 4d. In other words, if the produce of an acre had been divided into twelve parts, nearly seven and a half went to the king, three and a half to the proprietor, and one to the farmer; whereas in England, at the same period, if the produce of an acre were £8, the land-tax and poor-rates would be 10s., the rent £1, 10s., and the share of the cultivator £6three-fourths of the produce, instead of one-twelfth, Young, i. as under the French monarchy. Nearly one-third of 575. Rap. France, at this period, was in the hands of small pro- des Impo prietors, upon whom these taxes fell with unusual severity; sit. Pièces Just. No. 1. and some of these, particularly in the Limousin, the Marshall's Cevennes, the lower Pyrenees, and Dauphine, had aban- 332, 333. doned cultivation altogether, from the weight of the 196. burdens to which they were subjected.1

1 Arthur

332, 574,

du Comité

Travels, iv.

Soulavie, i.

taxes.

76.

The taxes on consumption amounted to 260,000,000 francs, or £10,400,000, and the total revenue to Indirect 469,000,000 francs, or £18,750,000; but this immense burden was imposed without any regard to equality in the different provinces. Some had obtained commutations unreasonably favourable to themselves; others, from having evinced a refractory spirit, had been saddled with more than a just proportion of the public burdens. Those who had acquired no commutation, were liable to a progressive and most vexatious increase of their imposts. The fixing of the amount of these taxes affecting each individual was in the hands of the intendants of the provinces, from whose decision there was,