FRANCE. (BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.) 



277 



tlng towards defraying the expenses of the state. 

 Besides the tithe, established under Francis I. (called, 

 from the first commissioner, the decime Paschaline), 

 which, however, bore no proportion to the real 

 amount of the income, the clergy made certain grants 

 every five years, called the dons gratuits ordinaires, 

 of from 15,000,000 to 18,000,000, with occasional 

 grants (dons gratuits extraordinaires) , when required 

 by the government, in the shape of loans, on long 

 credit, and not bearing interest. Government used 

 to anticipate these grants by loans. In 1789, it had 

 contracted, in this way, a debt of 136,000,000, the 

 interest and gradual redemption of which were pro- 

 vided for by taxes on the holders of the property of 

 the church. The foreign clergy, so called, in some 

 provinces, paid the regular taxes. The total amount 

 of taxes annually paid by the whole clergy, is stated 

 by Necker, in his Administration des Finances, I., 

 127, to be 11,000,000. This sum, however, did not 

 go into the royal treasury, but was employed to pay 

 the interest of the debt above mentioned, and to sink 

 the debt itself. Besides the amount paid by the 

 foreign clergy, the clergy did not contribute more 

 than 3,500,000, annually, to the treasury. Long 

 before the revolution, the respect for the clergy, 

 among the lower classes of the people, had consider- 

 ably decreased. The number of monks had sunk, 

 within fifty years, from 80,000 to 20,000, and the 

 higher clergy had fallen into disrepute in consequence 

 of their prodigality and dissoluteness. 



The signification of the word noblesse was very 

 different according as it was employed to comprehend 

 all those who had a claim to the privileges of nobility 

 by law, or only those who were really descended 

 from the old hereditary nobility. As there were 

 about 4000 offices in the kingdom, which conferred 

 on their holders, either immediately or after twenty 

 years' service, the privileges of nobility (generally 

 hereditary), and as letters of nobility were frequently 

 granted, the number of the nobles was much increased 

 every year. Not only the offices of minister, coun- 

 sellor of state, counsellor of the parliament of Paris, 

 and of some other parliaments, of the court of 

 accounts, or of the court of taxes, of high-bailiffs, but 

 even the office of counsellor, in some cities, the title 

 of royal secretary, and the post of first huissier of the 

 parliament of Paris, conferred the privileges of nobility. 

 These places were bought, and, after oeing held for 

 the requisite period, were sold again. But the old 

 nobility did not treat these novi homines as their 

 equals. The noblesse de robe was not acknowledged 

 in society. Notwithstanding the laws, says Montlosier, 

 Tout cela resta dans la roture. He who could prove 

 a noble descent of two or three centuries was some- 

 thing; those only, the origin of . whose nobility 

 could not be traced, or was merely legendary, 

 were considered perfect ; as was the case with the 

 premiers barons de chretiente, the Montmorencys. 

 The old nobility only had the right, by birth, of 

 being presented at court ; and, as late as the reign 

 of Louis XVI., a royal ordinance provided that no 

 person should be appointed to the office of sub-lieu- 

 tenant, who could not prove a noble descent of at 

 least four generations. The post of colonel en se- 

 cond was created in every regiment, for the higher 

 nobility, so that young men of this class began their 

 career at a point where the others could only arrive 

 after long service. Only a few years before the 

 revolution, it was also asserted, that ecclesiastical 

 benefices (those of parish priests only excepted) 

 could be bestowed only on noblemen. 



The titles of nobility were duke, count, marquis, 

 viscount, baron ; but the four last, which were prin- 

 cipally derived from estates, did not designate any 

 real difference of rank. The ducal title alone con- 



ferred some privileges at court, as, for instance, tbe 

 duchesses were allowed to sit on stools in the pre- 

 sence of the queen. There were three kinds of 

 dukes ; dues et pairs, dues hereditaires non pairs 

 (fifteen in 1789), and dues a brevets et brevets d'hon- 

 neur, some of which latter possessed the ducal privi- 

 leges without the title. But the privileges attached 

 to every class of nobility, even to the new and offi- 

 cial nobility, were important. They consisted in an 

 exemption from the principal burdens of the state, 

 particularly the common land-tax (taillc), military 

 service, the corvees, the quartering of soldiers, &c. 

 The nobles were indeed subject to a tax on personal 

 property, but this was altogether disproportionate 

 to tiiat on real estate, and was very unequally as- 

 sessed. The nobility, with the clergy and some 

 orders (the Maltese knights, the order of St Lazarus, 

 &c.), held, by far, the greater portion of the soil, 

 and exercised over the peasants, attached to their 

 estates, the usual seigneurial rights of jurisdiction, 

 and enjoyed exclusively the right of hunting, &c. 

 These exclusive rights, extending even to very 

 small things, as the keeping of pigeons, owning of 

 rabbit-warrens, &c., had become intolerably oppres- 

 sive to the peasants. In some parts of the country, 

 villenage, which was abolished on all the crown 

 lands in 1779, still existed. It is difficult to deter- 

 mine the revenue of the nobility before the revolu- 

 tion. Necker estimated the whole income from the 

 landed property (with the exception of the crown 

 lands, and the possessions of the knights of Malta and 

 the clergy) at about 400,000,000, to which is to be 

 added the tithe of the clergy. How considerable a 

 part of this belonged to the nobility may be inferred 

 from the fact, that, during the revolution, after all 

 tithes and feudal dues had been abolished without 

 any indemnification, and after (from May, 1790, to 

 1801) the national domains had been sold to the 

 amount of 2,609,000,000. there still remained, in 

 the old French provinces, domains of the value of 

 340,000,000 (in the conquered provinces, their value 

 was 160,000,000), and 200,000,000 in woods, al- 

 though the sales had been made at very low prices. 

 The proportion of the nobility to the rest of the 

 population, if we may believe the old estimate of 

 Moheau, was as 1 to 250 ; but this proportion 

 varied in different provinces. But although the 

 nobility, as owners of the soil, and as members of the 

 clergy, or officers of the government, absorbed the 

 greatest part of the national income, and hardly left 

 the peasant and the artisan the common necessaries 

 of life, still they refused to bear their proportion of 

 the expenses of the state, and opposed all the plans 

 of reform, not only those of Necker, whom they 

 hated, but also those of Calonne, a minister entirely 

 devoted to the court and the aristocracy. Besides 

 this, the embarrassments of government were chiefly 

 occasioned by the never-ending claims of the nobi- 

 lity, together with the prodigality of the court of 

 Louis XV. and the disorders in the administration, 

 which were themselves effects of the aristocratic 

 spirit that had infected every department of the 

 state. 



The third estate consisted of the rest of the nation, 

 after deducting the clergy and the nobility, and com- 

 prised more than twenty-nine thirtieths of the na- 

 tion. Sieyes, therefore, in his work Qu'est ce que 

 le Tiers-Etat f published 1789 (one of those works 

 which have acquired importance in history), could 

 justly introduce the following series of questions and 

 answers: 1. Qu'est ce que le tiers-etat ? Tout I 2. 

 Qu'a-t-il etejusqu'd present dans I'ordre politique ? 

 Rien! 3. Que demande-t-il? Etre quelque chose t 

 These few phrases contain the whole secret of the 

 revolution of 1789, and of the struggles of parties 



