II. Travels, iv. Monthion, CHAP. practically speaking, no appeal, and who frequently exercised their powers in an arbitrary manner. Royal 1 Marshall's commissions had been established to take cognisance of 332, 333. questions regarding the revenues, of which the decision. 155. Thiers, properly belonged to the ordinary tribunals; several De contributions were judged of by the king in council-a i. species of judicature in which justice, in a question between the crown and a subject, was not likely to be du Comité obtained.1 i. Stael, i. 152. Young, 332, 571, 575, 576, 598. Rap. des Imposit. Pièces Just, No. 1. XIII. When the weight of the taxes under which they groaned is considered, it will not appear surprising State of the that the cultivators of France were in the most miserable 77. labouring poor. state. Mr Young calculated, in 1789, that the rural labourer in France, taking into view the price of provisions, was seventy-six per cent poorer than in England ; that is, he had seventy-six per cent less of the necessaries and conveniences of life than fell to the lot of a similar class in this country. Rural labour being seventy-six per cent cheaper in France than in England, it follows. that all those classes which depend on that labour, and are the most numerous in society, were, in a similar proportion, less at their ease, worse fed, worse lodged, worse clothed, than their brethren on this side of the Channel. With a very few exceptions, accordingly, the peasantry were in the most indigent condition their houses dark, comfortless, and almost destitute of furniture their dress ragged and miserable-their food the coarsest and most humble fare. "It reminded me," says Mr Young, "of the miseries of Ireland!" Nor was the condition of the people more comfortable in those extensive districts of the country where small properties existed; on the contrary, these were uniformly distinguished by the most numerous and squalid popuYoung, i, lation. Nor is this surprising nothing can conduce so 447. Mar- much to a redundant population population as a minute division of iv. 101. landed property and an oppressive government ;2 the means of subsistence, without the means of enjoyment; 98,148,413, shall, i. 232, scope to the principle of increase, without any develop- CHAP. ment of its limitations. II. dent pro In addition to an indigent peasantry, France was 78. cursed with its usual attendant, a non-resident body of Non-resilanded proprietors. This was an evil of the very first prietors. magnitude, drawing after it, as is invariably the case, a discontented tenantry and a neglected country. The great proprietors all resorted to Paris in quest of amusement, of dissipation, or of advancement; and, excepting in La Vendée, where a totally different system of manners prevailed, the country was hardly ever visited by its landowners. The natural consequence of this was, that no kindly feelings, no common interest, united the landlord and his tenantry. The former regarded the cultivators in no other light than as beasts of burden, from whose labour the greatest proportion of profit was to be extracted; the latter considered their lords as tyrants, known only by the vexatious visits and endless demands of their bailiffs. From being neglected by their natural guardians, and experiencing no benefits or encouragement from them, the labouring classes every where imbibed a sour and discontented spirit, and were ready to join any incendiaries who promised them the pillage of the chateaus of their landlords, or the division of their estates. Nor was this all all those useful and beneficial undertakings, so common in England, which bind together the landed aristocracy and their tenantry, by the benefit they confer upon the estates of the former, and the employment they afford to the industry of the latter, were unknown in France. No improvements in agriculture, no advances of capital, were made by the proprietors of the soil; roads, harbours, canals, and bridges, were undertaken and Barante, managed exclusively by the government; and the influence de la Rochenaturally arising from the employment of industry, and p. 45, 46. the expenditure of capital, was wholly lost to the French poleon, 1.31. noblesse.1 In La Vendée alone, the landlords lived in 598. pristine simplicity, consuming in rustic profusion the 1 in Madame jacquelein, Scott's Na Young, i. II. CHAP. produce of their estates upon their own lands; and in La Vendée alone the tenantry supported them in the hour of trial, and waged a long doubtful and glorious war with the Republican forces. 79. Feudal services. 1 Young, i. 58. Mar shall, iv. 68. XIV. The local burdens and legal services due by the tenantry to their feudal superiors, were to the last degree vexatious and oppressive. The peasantry in France were almost all ignorant; not one in fifty could read, and in each province they were unaware of what was passing in the neighbouring one. At the distance of twenty leagues from Paris, they were unacquainted with what was going forward during the most interesting era of the Revolution. They rose at the instigation of the demagogues in the neighbouring towns to burn the chateaus of their landlords, but never carried their ideas beyond the little circle of their immediate observation.1 No public meetings were held, no periodical press was within their reach, to spread the flame of discontent; yet the spirit of resistance was universal from Calais to Bayonne. This affords decisive evidence of the existence of a serious mass of oppression or numerous local grievances, capable of producing discontent so general, and hatred so implacable. The feudal rights of the landed proprietors stood foremost in this list of grievances. The most important operations of agriculture were fettered or prevented by the gamelaws, and the restrictions intended for their support. Wild animals of the most destructive kind, such as boars and herds of deer, were permitted to go at large, through large districts called Capitaineries, without any enclosures to protect the crops. The damage they did to the farmers, in four parishes of Montceau alone, amounted 2 Cahier du to 184,000 francs, or £7500 £7500 a-year.2 Numerous edicts existed, which prohibited hoeing and weeding, lest the young partridges should be killed; mowing hay, lest the eggs should be destroyed; taking away the stubble, lest the birds should be deprived of shelter; manuring with night-soil, lest their flavour should be injured.3 Tiers Etat de Meaux, 49. 3 Young, i. 600. 1 II. species of Complaints for the infraction of these edicts were all CHAP. carried before the manorial courts, where every oppression, chicanery, and fraud was practised. can exceed the force of expression used in the the provincial bodies, in describing the severity of these nois, art. 43. feudal services.1 Rennes, art. 80. riety and character. 601. 3 Rennes, 159. Fines were imposed at every change of property in the direct and collateral line, and at every sale on purchasers; Their vathe people were bound to grind their corn at the land- oppressive lord's mill, to press their grapes at his press, and bake their bread at his oven ;2 corvées, or obligations to repair Young, i. the roads, founded on custom, decrees, and servitude, were enforced with the most rigorous severity ;3 in many places Tiers Etat, the use even of handmills was not free, and the seigneurs were invested with the power of selling to the peasantry the right of bruising buckwheat or barley between stones. Rennes, It is vain to attempt a description of the feudal services which pressed with so much severity upon industry in every part of France. Their names cannot find parallel words in the English language.* Long before the Revolution broke out, complaints were loudly heard over the whole country, of the baneful tendency of these feudal exactions. They became better understood by the 4 57. We should be at a loss to know what was meant by "Chevauches, Quintaines Soule, Saut de Poisson, Baiser de Mariés, Chansons, Transports d'Euf sur Charrette, Silence des Grenouilles, Corvée à Miséricorde, Melods, Lesde, Couponage, Cartilage, Barrage, Fouage, Maréchaussée, Ban Veu, Ban d'Août, Troussés, Gilinage, Civirage, Taillabillité, Vingtaine, Stertage, Bordelage, Meriage, Ban de Vendanges, Droit d'Accepté," if the universal voice of the 5 Résumé des French people, manifested in their cahiers, or official instructions to the Cahiers, iii. 316, 317. Deputies at the States-general from the electors, had not proclaimed that they signified real and oppressive burdens.-YOUNG's Travels in France, i. 206. + An old law, long obsolete, but characteristic of the state of the people in feudal ages, was mentioned in the debates in the Assembly on the feudal services, which declared it illegal for a seigneur in some provinces to put to death more than two serfs in order to warm his feet, by putting them in their entrails, when returning from hunting. This appears hardly credible; but the Mercheta Mulierum, or right of the seigneur to lie with his vassal's wife the first night of her marriage, before her husband, was common to France with other feudal countries, and was long claimed in some parts of the kingdom by the seigneurs.-See Histoire de la Révolution, par Deux Amis de la Liberté, ii. 212. 598. II. 6,7. Young, 81. tion on this But the CHAP. higher classes as it advanced, from the clamour which was raised by the nobility at their abolition. The corvées, or burdens imposed for the maintenance of the highways, annually ruined vast numbers of the farmers. In filling up one valley in Lorraine, no less than three hundred 1 Rennes, i. were reduced to beggary.1 The enrolments for the militia were also the subject of general complaint, and styled in Nob. Briey, the cahiers "an injustice without example."2 ii. 598. people soon found that they had made a grievous exchange in substituting for it the terrible conscription of Napoleon. Indeed, although these services were numerous and Exaggera- vexatious, they did not constitute so considerable a grievsubject. ance as the indignant feelings of the French provincial writers would lead us to imagine. "The people of Scotland," says Sir Walter Scott, "were in former times subject to numerous services which are now summed up in the emphatic word rent;" and this, in truth, was equally the case with the French tenantry. Their general condition was that of métayers; that is, they received their implements and stock from their landlords, and divided with him the gross produce after the tax-gatherer was satisfied. The numerous feudal services were just a payment of rent in kind; a species of liquidation universal and unavoidable in all rural districts in a certain state of civilisation, when a ready market for agricultural produce is, from the absence of great towns, or the want of internal communication, not to be found. The people expected, when feudal services and tithes were abolished during the Revolution, that their amount would form a clear addition to their gains; but they soon found that they only augmented the rent of their landlords, or were exchanged for an enormous land-tax rigorously collected by government, and that their own condition was in no degree ameliorated. Without doubt, the multitude of demands on the French tenantry was often in the highest degree vexatious; but it may be doubted whether their weight has been alleviated by their condensation into a single payment; and whether |