344 Travels in France 



something which the old government assuredly did not give? 

 The revenue of the clergy may be called the revenue of the public: 

 —those to whom the difference between the present payment of 

 140,000,000 and the old tithes are a reduction of all revenue 

 are beyond doubt in great distress; but what say the farmers 

 throughout the kingdom from whom the detestable burthen of 

 those taxes was extorted? Do not they find their culture 

 lightened, their industry freed, their products their own? Go 

 to the aristocratical politician at Paris or at London, and you 

 hear only of the ruin of France— go to the cottage of the metayer 

 or the house of the farmer and demand of him what the result 

 has been — there will be but one voice from Calais to Bayonne. 

 If tithes were to be at one stroke abolished in England/ no doubt 

 the clergy would suffer, but would not the agriculture of the 

 kingdom, with every man dependent on it, rise with a vigour 

 never before experienced. 



FUTURE EFFECTS 



It would betray no inconsiderable presumption to attempt to 

 predict what will be the event of the revolution now passing in 

 France; I am not so imprudent. But there are considerations 

 that may be offered to the attention of those who love to 

 speculate on future events better than I do. There are three 

 apparent benefits in an aristocracy forming the part of a constitu- 

 tion: first, the fixed, consolidated, and hereditar^^ importance 

 of the great nobility is, for the most part, a bar to the dangerous 

 pretensions and illegal views of a victorious and highly popular 

 king, president, or leader. Assemblies so elected as to be 

 swayed absolutely by the opinion of the people would frequently, 

 under such a prince, be ready to grant him much more than a 

 well constituted aristocratic senate. Secondly, such popular 

 assemblies as I have just described are sometimes led to adopt 

 decisions too hastily and too imprudently; and particularly in 

 the case of wars with neighbouring nations; in the free countries, 



1 It is an error in France to suppose that the revenue of the church is 

 small in England. The Royal Society of Agriculture at Paris states that 

 revenue at £210,000; it cannot be stated at less than five millions sterling 

 (Mem. presents par la S. R. d'Ag. d I'Assemblee Nationale, 1789, p. 52). 

 One of the greatest and wisest men we have in England persists in assert- 

 ing it to be much less than two millions. From very numerous inquiries, 

 which I am still pursuing, I have reason to believe this opinion to be 

 founded on insufficient data. — Author's note. 



