"always be guilty of that crime, when his "will should stand in opposition to his in"terest." Cardinal de Richelieu reduced them to the lowest state of submission: but they revived in the troubles of the Fronde.

It is observable that neither the clergy nor the nobility recovered from the state of dependence to which they were reduced by Lewis the fourteenth; but the parliament soon rose with fresh vigour. Even in the life-time of that monarch they became so powerful, that it required much exertion and management to make them register his decree for legitimating his natural offspring; they set aside his will, and were constantly at variance with his successor during the last years of his reign. If we were to believe the Marquis de Bouillé, (Mem. p. 13, 18), so early as in the year 1767, the parliaments had formed the project of establishing an aristocracy in France, of which they were to participate: and had

united for that purpose, styling each other a division of the national parliament.

8. It must also be observed that, though the Clergy and the Nobility had been thus deprived of the whole of their territorial independence, they had been permitted to hold their rank among the orders of the state, the privileges annexed to it, and almost an exclusive title to the favours of the court. This gave them a superiority over the third order, which was severely felt by its members in every public and private

Occurrence.

In 1614, M. de Sineçey presented to Lewis the thirteenth an address from the order of nobility assembled at the states general, in which, after much pompous declamation on the services and rights of the nobility, he thus expresses himself:-" I "should never finish, were I to relate to "his majesty all that antiquity has taught "the nobility respecting the pre-eminence "which birth gives to their order;—an order

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so distinct from the rest of the people, "that they never can bear any kind of com

parison. The third estate is composed of "the people in the towns, and in hamlets: "almost all of them owe homage, and are

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subject to the courts of the other two "orders, either as citizens, burgesses, trades66 men, or mechanics, or in virtue of some "offices. These are they, who losing sight "of their proper conduct, unmindful of "their duty, and not acknowledged by those

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they represent, venture to compare them“selves to Us!—I am ashamed," continues the orator," to relate to your majesty the "expressions which have again offended "us. They compare your state to a family

consisting of three children. They say "the clerical order is the eldest, ours the

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puisne, and themselves the cadets. Into "what a miserable condition are we fallen "if this expression be true!-To what are "reduced so many services, rendered from "time immemorial!-so many honours and

1

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dignities transmitted hereditarily!—thus "to form, with the vulgar, the closest so"ciety among men." Such notions, too generally entertained, and too publicly avowed by the French nobility till the latest æra of their political existence, must at all times be offensive: after a general diffusion of knowledge and opulence, they must be insupportable. This was their effect in France: they contributed very much to produce that irritation of the public mind which was one of the causes of the late revolution.

Among the privileges which the nobility were permitted to retain, after the loss of their territorial independence, was their exemption from the Taille, and from some other burdens of the state. This greatly lessened the resources of government, and increased its financial embarrassments:-it was the proximate cause of that event from which the revolution is usually dated.

* SEE NOTE XIV.

II.

The event, which immediately led to the French revolution, was the discovery in the year 1787, that the annual produce of the French finances fell short of the annual expenditure by a sum, which has been variously calculated, but may be reasonably fixed at three millions two hundred thousand pounds of our money.

1. To raise a sum which would equalize the income with the expenditure, it was found necessary to subject the privileged orders to contribute more equally than they had done to the national burden. To effect