OF THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF GRIEVANCES IN FRANCE—THE NOBLES—THE MILITARY—THE CLERGY—THE FARMERS GENERAL. ELECTION OF DEPUTIES TO THE STATES-GENERAL. ARTS OF THE COURTIERS. ASSEMBLY OF THE STATES. RIOTS EXCITED AT PARIS. OPENING OF THE STATES-GENERAL. THE KING’S SPEECH. ANSWER TO IT BY THE KEEPER OF THE SEALS. SPEECH OF MR. NECKER. CONTEST RESPECTING THE MODE OF ASSEMBLING. TACIT ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. ATTEMPT OF THE COURT TO RESTRAIN IT. THE DEPUTIES DECLARE THEMSELVES A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
Before we enter on the grand business produced by the meeting of the states-general, it is necessary to take a retrospective glance over the oppressions of which frenchmen so loudly complained; and, whilst we trace their justness, the question will only be, why they did not sooner raise their shoulders to heave off the mighty load. To ascertain this truth, we need not enter into deep researches, though it may be difficult to collect all the parts of the feudal chain, which linked the despotism of sixty thousand nobles, who not only exercised all the tyranny that the system authorized, but countenanced the still more extensive depredations of their numerous dependents. What, indeed, could equal the slavery of the poor husbandman; not only pillaged by the tythe and game laws, but even obliged to let whole flocks of pigeons devour his grain, without daring to destroy them, because those pigeons belonged to the chateau; and afterwards forced to carry the scanty crop to be tolled at the mill of monseigneur, which, to follow a frenchman’s staff of life through all it’s stages of taxation, must then be baked at the privileged oven?
It would be captious, perhaps, to dwell on some of the abominable tenures of personal servitude, which, though grown obsolete, were not abrogated; especially as more specious, if not less grinding, not less debasing exactions were in force, to deprave every moral feeling of the two divisions of society; the governing, and governed.
When chased from the country, of which the chief charm is independence, by such worrying restraints, a man wished to pursue any occupation in a town, he must previously purchase a patent of some privileged person, to whom this tax had been sold by a farmer-general, or the parasite of a minister.
All lived by plunder; and it’s universality gave it a sanction, that took off the odium, though nothing could varnish the injustice. Yet, such was the insensibility of the great, the pleasures these extortions procured were not less grateful to the senses, because paid by the sweat of industry.—No; like Vespasian’s obnoxious tax, money was money; and who cared on what it was levied? Thus the rich necessarily became robbers, and the poor thieves. Talking of honour, honesty was overlooked; and, custom giving a soft name to different atrocities, few thought it a duty to investigate disregarded principles; or to relinquish their share of the plunder, to satisfy a romantic singularity of opinion, which excited ridicule rather than imitation.
The military, a pest in every country, were here also all noble, and leagued with a hundred thousand privileged persons, of different descriptions, to support their prerogative of receiving a revenue, which was a dead weight on agriculture; whilst they were not obliged, in a direct way, to advance any thing towards defraying the public expenditure.
The gabelle, the corvée, the obligation to supply horses to transport the troops from one part of the kingdom to another, even when most necessary at the farm; clogs on husbandry, equally unjust and vexatious; were riveted only on the ankles of labour. Activity then being continually damped by such various restrictions, instead of being braced by encouragement, an invincible impediment was thrown in the way of agricultural improvements; for each individual, insulated by oppression, lived, strictly speaking, from hand to mouth; not caring to store up comforts, at the expence of extraordinary toil, when the enjoyment depended on so many casualties. Yet, never beginning to be sensible of the effect, the people were not, probably, aware of the cause; and only exclaimed against new impositions, because they did not think sufficiently deep to detect the old.