The Revolution 329 



into generalities, with an intendant at the head of each, into 

 whose hands the whole power of the crown was delegated for 

 everything except the military authority; but particularly for all 

 affairs of finance . The generalities were subdivided into elections, 

 at the head of which was a.sub-delegue,Sippointedhythe intendant. 

 The rolls of the faille, capitation, vingtiemes, and other taxes, were 

 distributed among districts, parishes, and individuals, at the 

 pleasure of the intendant, who could exempt, change, add, or 

 diminish, at pleasure. Such an enormous power, constantly 

 acting, and from which no man was free, must in the nature of 

 things degenerate in many cases into absolute tyranny. • It 

 must be obvious that the friends, acquaintances, and dependents 

 of the intendant and of all his siibdelegnes , and the friends of these 

 friends, to a long chain of dependence, might be favoured in 

 taxation at the expense of their miserable neighbours ; and that 

 noblemen, in favour at court, to whose protection the intendant 

 himself would naturally look up, could find little difficulty in 

 throwing much of the weight of their taxes on others without a 

 similar support. Instances, and even gross ones, have been 

 reported to me in many parts of the kingdom that made me 

 shudder at the oppression to which numbers must have been 

 condemned by the undue favours granted to such crooked influ- 

 ence. But, without recurring to such cases, what must have 

 been the state of the poor people paying heavy taxes, from which 

 the nobility and clergy were exempted ? A cruel aggravation of 

 their misery, to see those who could best afford to pay exempted 

 because able ! — The enrolments for the militia, which the cahiers 

 call an iyijiistice without example} were another dreadful scourge 

 on the peasantry; and, as married men were exempted from it, 

 occasioned in some degree that mischievous population which 

 brought beings into the world in order for little else than to be 

 starved. The corvees, or police of the roads, were annually the 

 ruin of many hundreds of farmers ; more than 300 were reduced to 

 beggary in filling up one vale in Loraine : all these oppressions 

 fell on the tiers etat only, the nobility and clergy having been 

 equally exempted from tailles, militia, and corvees. The penal 

 code of finance makes one shudder at the horrors of punishment 

 inadequate to the crime.- A few features will sufficiently char- 

 acterise the old government of France. 



* Noh. Briey, p. 6, etc., etc. — Author's note. 



* It is calculated by a writer (Recherches et Confid. par M. le Baron de 

 CormerS, torn. ii. p. 187) very well informed on every subject of finance, 

 that upon an average there were annually taken up and sent to prison or 

 the galleys: Men, 2340; women, 896; children, 201. Total, 3437. 300 



