354 Travels in France 



tithes; to suppress the intendants; not only to vote but to 

 keep the public money; to alienate the king's domains and to 

 suppress his studs ; to abolish the capitaineries and destroy the 

 Bastile :— the assembly that is called upon to do all this is plainly 

 meant to be a body solely possessing the legislative authority: 

 it is evidently not meant to petition the king to do it, because they 

 . would have used, in this case, the form of expression so common 

 in other parts of the cahiers, that his majesty will have the good- 

 ness, etc. 



The result of the whole inquiry cannot but induce temperate 

 men to conclude that the abolition of tithe, of feudal services 

 and payments, of the gabelle or salt-tax, of that on tobacco, of 

 the entrees, of all excises on manufactures, and of all duties on 

 transit, of the infamous proceedings in the old courts of justice, 

 of the despotic practices of the old monarchy, of the militia regu- 

 lations, of the monasteries and nunneries, and of numberless 

 other abuses ; I say, that temperate men must conclude that the 

 advantages derived to the nation are of the very first importance, 

 and such as must inevitably secure to it, as long as they continue, 

 an uncommon degree of prosperity. The men who deny the 

 benefit of such events must have something sinister in their 

 views or muddy in their understandings. On the other hand, 

 the extensive and unnecessary ruin brought on so many thou- 

 sands of families, of all descriptions, by violence, plunder, terror, 

 and injustice, to an amount that is shown in the utter want of 

 the precious metals, the stagnation of industry, and the poverty 

 and misery found amongst many, is an evil of too great a magni- 

 tude to be palliated. The nourishment of the most pernicious 

 cancer in the state, public credit, the deluge of paper money; 

 the violent and frivolous extinction of rank ; ^ the new system 

 of taxation, apparently so hurtful to landed property; and a 

 restricted corn trade ; all these are great deductions from public 

 felicity, and weigh the heavier in the scale, because unnecessary 

 to effect the revolution. Of the nature and durableness of the 

 constitution established prudent men will not be eager to pro- 

 phesy : it is a new experiment,^ and cannot be tried or examined 



1 It is so because the inequality remains as great as if titles had remained, 

 but built on its worst basis, wealth. The nobility were bad, but not so 

 bad as Mr. Christie makes them; they did tioi wait till the Etats Generaux 

 before thev agreed to renounce their pecuniary privileges (Letters on the 

 Revolution of France, vol. i. p. 74). The first meeting of the states was 

 May 5, 1789; but the nobility assembled at the Louvre, December 20, 

 1788, addressed the king, declaring that intention. — Author's note. 



^ After all that has been said of late years on the subject of constitu- 

 tions and governments by various writers in England, but more especially 



