levities of the court, and the imbecility and licentiousness of the clergy, corrupted the public mind, and diffused a general indifference to the duties of religion and the habits of morality. The theoretical soThe theoretical sophistries of the philosophers, co-operating with the practical conviction and experience of the people, contributed to confirm their scepticism, to give new confidence to their licentiousness, and to render more acute and more severe, their scrutiny of the conduct of their superiors. The effect of the rapid progress of public opinion was apparent immediately after the accession of Lewis XVI. It compelled him to restore the antient parliaments; the alleviation of the miseries of the people became the object of anxious attention on the part of the government; jurisprudence was rendered more mild by the abolition of the question by torture; the inferior clergy were inspired with courage to resist the encroachments of the superior; and the unfortunate protestants were animated by the hope of no longer enduring the rigour of intolerance. In return for the important privilege of exemption from taxation, the government of France frequently exacted from the clergy a contribution, which from a regard to the delicacy and dignity of the church, was denominated a free-gift. The mode of raising this free gift was extremely unequal, and the inferior clergy were compelled to furnish so large a proportion, that the burden of expense on the superior was comparatively trifling. The inferior clergy long sustained the oppression with patient endurance, and it was not till after the commencement of the reign of Lewis XVI. that they began to complain. Their complaints made a deep impression on the minds of the people: they were received by the bishops with all the rage and rancour of bigotry, but the curés were not discouraged; the conduct of their oppressors did not surprise them; and the popular approbation and support excited them to more vigorous exertions.

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The cures of the province of Dauphiny presented a powerful example to the other provinces. The disproportion between the revenues of the superior and inferior clergy

was greater in Dauphiny than in any other province: the latter therefore resolved to petition the king for an augmentation of their income. Yet cautious in their address, and respectful even towards their oppressors, they requested from the bishops permission to assemble. A rude refusal was returned. The parliament, however, granted its permission, and they drew up an eloquent and faithful representation of the miseries of their condition. The representation was conveyed to the king, whose answer was returned in the form of an order to the deputies to retire to their province. The parliament of Paris was also prevailed on to register an edict against the assemblies of the cures, without the permission of their diocesans. Yet amidst all these difficulties, amidst this indifference on the part of the monarch, and this oppression on the part of the bishops, the confederacy of the curés increased in number and in courage, and though the voice of their distresses did not reach the throne, it was heard with respectful attention by the people. The sentiments which they delivered from the pulpit took a complexion from their wrongs; and men who smarted beneath the scourge of a despotic government, felt little inclination to recommend the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance.

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In proportion to the gloom of ignorance, and the rancour of the prejudices which darkened the highest and lowest ranks of society, was the diffusion of information through the intermediate classes. France was not deficient in well-informed men, but information was confined to families of the first nobility, who were kept at a distance from the seat of folly and depravity, by a taste for independence and domestic life to a small portion of that secondary nobility who were excluded from court by the mediocrity of their fortune, and the etiquette of vanity; or, above all, to the numerous class of citizens in easy circumstances called the haut tiers etat, which in itself supplied more than three-fourths of the magistrates and clergy; and of which the individuals being unqualified to avail themselves of the equivocal merit of ancestry, had no

other means of recommending themselves than undisputed personal merit.

The great body of the army, hitherto the bulwark of the monarchy and the scourge of the people, participated in the general dissatisfaction. During the administration of the count de St. Germain, who had served many years abroad, Lewis XVI was persuaded to adopt the military punishments of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Since the days of Turenne and Conde, the French troops had been flattered into obedience, and the principle of honour substituted in the place of harshness and rigour. When it was unwisely attempted, therefore, to subdue the refined sense of delicacy, of which the French soldier had always boasted, and to overcome his vanity by subjecting him to the degrading discipline of the sabre, many preferred a voluntary death to such a degradation. The clamours of the people, the disorders of the court, the derangement of the finances, the tyranny 1788. of an arbitrary government, odious even to soldiers, and the hopes derived from the convocation of the statesgeneral, had awakened feelings responsive to those of the religious and civil orders of the community. They could not behold, without indignation, the selection of foreign troops as the peculiar objects of courtly favour. The individuals who had served in America, remembered the cause in which they had been already victorious, and those who resided in the capital had begun to adopt the manners and opinions of the inhabitants. Dazzled with gold, gratified with women, intoxicated with wine, inflamed by patriotism, it was impossible that they should resist so many allurements and the troops of the capital decided the fate of the most general conspiracy Europe had hitherto witnessed against the despotism of a throne, supported by a powerful clergy and nobility, surrounded by numerous armies, accustomed to implicit obedience, and strengthened and supported by the inveteracy of custom, and the prejudices of ages.

The burdens sustained by the people were great and numerous. A multitude of grievances existed: crimes of the greatest

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enormity had long been perpetrated with impunity, and the various abuses were so numerous as to extend to every depart. ment of the state, and every province of the empire. The Bastile and many subordinate prisons had always opened their dungeons at the voice of a resolute prince; a free press was still unknown, and lettres de cachet had been granted during the early part of the present reign with the, most shameless impunity. Nor were the grievances of the people confined to the injuries sustained from the exercise of the regal functions. The administration of justice was a source of continual censure and universal despair. The magistrates reimbursed themselves by fees and perquisites, and by the sale of their decisions; and females, distinguished by the appellation of Les soliciteuses, were employed to supplicate the favour and corrupt the integrity of the courts. The rigors of the feudal system still degraded the law and practice of the nation. The game-laws were enforced with barbarous and unrelenting oppression; the death of a partridge was not unfrequently expiated by slavery in the galleys; the right of free-warren was carried to such an extent, that the peasant beheld the rabbit and the pigeon devouring the fruits of his labour with impunity, while the scanty remnant of his harvest was to be ground at the mill of his lord alone, after being still farther diminished by ecclesiastical exactions.

While the bulk of the people were exhausted and distressed by the rigor of taxation, offices, conferring nobility, were the objects of public barter. The contributions of the clergy were voluntary, under the name of a benevolence; and the nobility were exempt from the operation of imposts. The occupations of the merchant and the farmer were viewed with contempt; the profession of arms was consecrated to the enjoyment of a particular race, and to command a regiment, or any vessel above the rate of a frigate, it was necessary to be a noble.

Exhausted by oppression, irritated by the continual presence of insulting tyranny and unblushing licentiousness, excited to

resentment of their wrongs, and instructed in the knowledge of their rights, by the diffusion of enthusiastic sentiments, in favour of religious scepticism and civil freedom, the people of France were, at length, awakened to one universal spirit of complaint and resistance. The cry of liberty resounded from the capital to the frontiers, and was reverberated to the Alps, the Pyrennees, the plains of Flanders, the borders of the Channel, and the shores of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Like all sudden and violent alterations in corrupt states,

the explosion was accompanied by evils and atrocities, before which the crimes and the miseries of the antient despotism faded into insignificance; yet the motives of the first agitators of the French revolution, were consistent with the noblest principles of patriotism and of virtue; nor can they justly be chargeable with subsequent actions and events, over which they retained no personal control, and which eluded the prospective sagacity of the most virtuous and able members of the European community.

T the close of the year 1788, France exhibited one melancholy scene of commercial embarrassment and domestic distress. The taxes, numerous as they were, and ruinous to the people, were totally unequal to the supply of the current expenses of the state, and to the discharge of the interest and annuities arising from the various funds. The whole amount of the revenues fell short, by several millions sterling, of the demand in each year. New funds could not be raised, but the exigencies of the state must be supplied, and no means appeared so well calculated to accomplish this purpose as withholding the payment of the annuities to the public creditors for a sum equivalent to the amount of the deficiency. A measure so ruinous, unjust, and arbitrary, could not fail to involve the people in the greatest distress and calamity; and to excite the most clamorous discontent at the undue preference supposed to be given to those individuals whose payments were not suspended.

In this disastrous state of public affairs while financier succeeded financier, and projects multiplied upon projects, each new minister attributed the public evils to the faults of his predecessor, and produced his own favourite scheme of arrangement. This occasioned a cessation of the murmurs or the people while the short sunshine of hope lasted; but only tended to redouble their grief and indignation, when c 2

they perceived that every attempt at elucidation only contributed to render obscurity more impervious, and that every hope of redress terminated in the aggravation of evil. The crown, with respect to all that lay within its own immediate cognizance and power, acted the noblest part during this state of public embarrassment and distress. Incapable of comprehending the complicated details and the perplexed situation of the national finances, the king endeavoured to alleviate the distresses of the people by curtailing the expenses of his court and household. But though these reductions were so extensive as to trench deeply upon the established splendor of the crown, and though the savings were considerable, yet they failed to answer the patriotic and generous purpose of the monarch. The free gifts granted by the clergy and other public bodies, produced as little permanent effect, and amidst the multitude of demands could scarcely afford relief to any pecuniary pressure of the government.

The clamor and discontent excited by these circumstances placed the crown in a situation extremely favourable to the wishes of a people, who began to burn with im patience for some opportunity of recovering their antient privileges. The monarch, wearied out by the repeated failure and disappointments which he had experienced from the promises and speculations of the

ninisters, and finding that his difficulties were becoming every day more dangerous and insupportable, determined to throw himself upon the wisdom and affection of the nation for succour and advice.

The disgrace of Neckar bereaved the state of a minister whose integrity acquired the confidence of the monied men, and Calonne, his rival and enemy, who affected a felicitous union of business and pleasure, succeeded to the administration of the finances. Bold, original, and daring, he projected gigantic plans which endangered the happiness of the people, while his pliant temper and subservient manners, rendered him the favourite of the noblesse. By his advice, amidst the wreck of public credit, Rambouillet and St. Cloud were purchased for the royal family, and the debts of the king's brothers were discharged. To accomplish these objects, some of the domains of the crown were mortgaged, loans were once more recurred to, a variety of taxes were devised; and such was the presumption of the new minister, that he pledged himself to pay off the whole national debt within the period of twenty years. But the plans of Calonne were as unsuccessful as they were enterprising; his imposts were regarded with abhorrence, his pecuniary schemes became inefficient; and the king, exhausted by difficulties and delays, at length determined that no new loans nor taxes should be demanded. The new financier, ever fertile in resources, determined therefore to have recourse to an expedient which had often been adopted during the reigns of Francis I. and Henry IV. Although so much time had elapsed since the convocation of the states-general, and these assemblies were almost obsolete, yet the French nation never entirely lost sight of that remnant of the antient constitution. Their wisest patriots, and the most spirited of their governors, often looked back to a measure which in former times had been attended with the most salutary effects. In that period of alternate insurrection, tyranny, and foreign glory, which distinguished the administration of cardinal Richelieu, the nation was never reduced to the necessity of deliberating in common,

nor qualified so to do by its temper and its intelligence. During the troubles which attended the minority of Lewis XIV. the queen regent frequently announced her intention of calling together the states-general. During the splendid vicissitudes and the final disasters of that reign, the power of the monarch was too absolute to permit even the apparent interference of any subordinate legislative body. The duke of Burgundy, the pupil of the author of Telemachus, to whom his grandfather had begun to delegate a portion of his authority, to whom the fondest hopes of the nation had been directed, and who promised to unite the qualities of the Christian, the philosopher, and the king, had formed a design among many other projects, for the advantage of the kingdom and the relief of his people, to convene the states. This amiable and intelligent prince dying immaturely, the sovereign power on the demise of Lewis XIV. devolved to feebler and polluted hands. It is not improbable that the veneration in which the character of this prince remained in the memory of the French, and particularly of his family, infused similar sentiments into the mind of the dauphin (son of Lewis XV. and father of Lewis XVI.) who formed himself on the model of the duke of Burgundy. The reverence, approaching to adoration, which Lewis XVI. entertained for the opinions and attachments of his father, were the ruling principles of his character and his conduct. It is therefore a curious and not improbable speculation to suppose, that the approximation to the body of the nation, and the partiality to public councils, which distinguished the present reign, derived their origin from these remote and successive causes.

It became, however, a question of difficulty, in what manner to obtain the sense or aid of the nation in the present exigence. The antient assemblies of the states of the kingdom had been so long disused, that not only their forms were forgotten, but the extent of their rights and power was so much unknown, that all information on the subject was to be sought amidst the rubbish of the antiquarian, or in the obscure