338 



Travels in France 



erreurs : osons dire tout ce qui est vrai, tout ce qui est utile, 

 osons reclaimer les droits essentiels et primitifs de I'homnie: la, 

 raison, I'equite, I'opinion generale, la bienfaisance coniue de 

 notre auguste souverain tout concour a assurer le succ^s de nos 

 doleances." 



Having seen the propriety, or rather the necessity, of some 

 change in the government, let us next briefly inquire into the 

 effects of the revolution on the principal interests in the kingdom. 



In respect to all the honours, power, and profit derivsd to the 

 nobility from the feudal system, which was to an extent :n France 

 beyond anything known in England since the revolution, or long 

 parliament of 1640, al^ is laid in the dust, without a rag or 

 remnant being spared:^ the importance of these, both in influence 

 and revenue, was so great that the result is all but ruin to 

 numbers. However, as these properties were real tyrannies; 

 as they rendered the possession of one spot of land ruinous to all 

 round it — and equally subversive of agriculture, and the common 

 rights of mankind, the utter destruction brought on all this 

 species of propert)^, does not ill deserve the epithet they are so 

 fond of in France; it is a real regeneration of the people to the 

 privileges of human nature. No man of common feelings can 

 regret the fall of that abominable system, which made a whole 

 parish slaves to the lord of the manor. But the effects of 

 the revolution have gone much farther; and have been attended 

 with consequences not equally justifiable. The rents of land, 

 which are as legal under the new government as they were under 

 the old, are no longer paid with regularity. I have been lately 

 informed (August 1791), on authority not to be doubted, that 

 associations among tenantry, to a great amount and extent, 

 have been formed, even within fifty miles of Paris, for the non- 



' It is to be observed that the orders of knighthood were at first pre- 

 served; when the National Assembly, with a forbearance that did them 

 honour, refused to abolish those orders, because personal, of merit, and 

 not hereditary, they were guilty of one gross error. They ought im- 

 mediately to have addressed the king to institute a new order of knight- 

 hood — Knights of the Plough. There are doubtless little souls that will 

 smile at this and think a thistle, a garter, or an eagle more significant and 

 more honoural)le; I say nothing of orders that exceed common sense and 

 common chronology, such as St. Esprit, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, 

 leaving them to such as venerate most what they least understand. But 

 that prince who should first institute this order of rural merit will reap 

 no vulgar honour: Leopold, whose twenty years of steady and well earned 

 Tuscan fame gives him a good right to do it with propriety, might, as 

 emperor, institute it with most efiect. In him, such an action would have 

 in it nothing of affectation. But I had rather that the Plough had thus 

 been honoured by a free assembly. It would have been a trait that 

 marked the philosophy of a new age and a new system. — Author's note. 



