About thirty or forty years before the Revolution broke out the scene began to change. It seemed as if a sort of inward perturbation, not remarked before, thrilled through the social frame. At first none but a most attentive eye could discern it; but gradually this movement became more characterised and more distinct. Year by year it gained in rapidity and in extent; the nation stirs, and seems about to rise once more. But, beware! It is not the old life of France which re-animates her. The breath of a new life pervades the mighty body, but pervades it only to complete its dissolution. Restless and agitated in their own condition, all classes are straining for something else; to better that condition is the universal desire, but this desire is so feverish and wayward that it leads men to curse the past, and to conceive a state of society altogether the reverse of that which lies before them.

Nor was it long before the same spirit penetrated to the heart of the Government. The Government was thus internally transformed without any external, alteration; the laws of the kingdom were unchanged, but they were differently applied.

I have elsewhere remarked that the Comptrollers-General and the Intendants of 1760 had no resemblance to the same officers in 1780. The correspondence of the public offices demonstrates this fact in detail. Yet the Intendant of 1780 had the same powers, the same agents, the same arbitrary authority as his predecessor, but not the same purposes; the only care of the former was to keep his province in a state of obedience, to raise the militia, above all to collect the taxes; the latter has very different views, his head is full of a thousand schemes for the augmentation of the wealth of the nation. Roads, canals, manufactures, commerce, are the chief objects of his thoughts; agriculture more particularly attracts his notice. Sully came into fashion amongst the administrators of that age.

Then it was that they began to form the agricultural societies, which I have already mentioned; they established exhibitions, they distributed prizes. Some of the circulars of the Comptrollers-General were more like treatises on husbandry than official correspondence.

In the collection of all the taxes the change which had come over the mind of the governing body was especially perceptible. The existing law was still unfair, arbitrary and harsh, as it had long been, but all its defects were mitigated in the application of it.

‘When I began to study our fiscal laws,’ says M. Mollien,[72] in his Memoirs, ‘I was terrified by what I found there: fines, imprisonment, corporal punishment, were placed at the disposal of exceptional courts for mere oversights; the clerks of the revenue farms had almost all property and persons in their power, subject to the discretion of their oaths. Fortunately I did not confine myself to the mere perusal of this code, and I soon had occasion to find out that between the text of the law and its application there was the same difference as between the manners of the old and the new race of financiers.’

‘The collection of taxes may undoubtedly give rise to infinite abuses and annoyances,’ said the Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy in 1787; ‘we must, however, do justice to the gentleness and consideration with which these powers have been exercised for some years past.’

The examination of public records fully bears out this assertion. They frequently show a genuine respect for the life and liberty of man, and more especially a sincere commiseration for the sufferings of the poor, which before would have been sought for in vain. Acts of violence committed by the fiscal officers on paupers had become rare; remissions of taxation were more frequent, relief more abundant. The King augmented all the funds intended to establish workshops of charity in the rural districts, or to assist the indigent, and he often founded new ones. Thus more than 80,000 livres were distributed by the State in this manner in the district of Upper Guienne alone in 1779; 40,000 in 1784 in that of Tours; 48,000 in that of Normandy in 1787. Louis XVI. did not leave this portion of the duties of government to his Ministers only; he sometimes took it upon himself. When in 1776, an edict of the Crown fixed the compensation due to the peasantry whose fields were devastated by the King’s game in the neighbourhood of the Royal seats, and established a simple and certain method of enforcing the payment of it, the King himself drew the preamble of the decree. Turgot relates that this virtuous and unfortunate Prince handed the paper to him with these words: ‘You see that I too have been at work.’ If we were to pourtray the Government of the old French monarchy such as it was in the last years of its existence, the image would be too highly flattered and too unlike the reality.

As these changes were brought about in the minds of the governing class and of the governed, the prosperity of the nation expanded with a rapidity heretofore unknown. It was announced by numerous symptoms: the population largely augmented; the wealth of the country augmented more largely still. The American War did not arrest this movement; the State was embarrassed by it, but the community continued to enrich itself by becoming more industrious, more enterprising, more inventive.

‘Since 1774,’ says one of the members of the administration of that time, ‘different kinds of industry have by their extension enlarged the area of taxation on all commodities. ‘If we compare the terms of arrangement agreed upon at different periods of the reign of Louis XVI. between the State and the financial companies which farmed the public revenue, the rate of payment will be found to have risen at each renewal with increasing rapidity. The farm of 1786 produced fourteen millions more than that of 1780. ‘It may be reckoned that the produce of duties on consumption is increasing at the rate of two millions per annum,’ said Necker, in his Report of 1781.