AGRARIAN REVOLUTIONS OF THE PAST 33 



senteeism," says Helen Douglas Irvine, "strength- 

 ened not only the independence of the peasants but 

 also the class-feeling both of them and of their su- 

 periors. In the later eighteenth century there was 

 a tendency, on the part of some needy lords, to 

 greater strictness. Accumulated arrears of rents 

 were collected; rents in kind were fraudulently 

 measured; there were encroachments on the com- 

 mons and attempts to exact forced labour on the 

 scale of a past age. . . . But the peasants were far 

 removed from the meekness which accepts oppres- 

 sion dumbly, and down to the very eve of the Revo- 

 lution there were landlords, especially in Brittany 

 and Vendee, who maintained even affectionate re- 

 lations with them." 15 



The agrarian aspects of the French Revolution 

 were due to two causes the existence of privileges 

 and the financial policy of the central government. 

 We are told that at the time of the Revolution 

 275,000 Frenchmen possessed these privileges. 16 

 These nobles held feudal rights, which consisted of 

 money or produce in kind. They were themselves 

 exempted from taxation as a reward for some public 

 service and had assumed authority as proprietors of 

 great agricultural enterprises. These privileges con- 

 sisted of monopolies to sell farm products in local 

 markets, to charge tolls and to appropriate a por- 

 tion of the product as a rental for land. This situ- 



16 The Making of Rural Europe, Chap. V, pp. 74 and 75. 

 "Louis Madelin's The French Revolution (1923), Chap. I, p. 6. 



