Meeting of the Estates-General, 1789. III 
them of their agreement to consider the renunciation of pecuniary 
privileges in this session. A vote, taken upon the matter, 
showed that the plurality favored the following opinions: (1) The 
clergy consented that all ecclesiastical property should bear 
taxes in proportion to income; (2) they were in favor of thanking 
the king for the abolition of the names of taille, mainmorte, 
franc-fief, and corvée; (3) the clergy would formally announce 
its desire to see the national debt consolidated as soon as it 
should have been recognized by the estates-general; (4) a decree 
embodying the sentiments and wishes of the clergy upon these 
matters would be drafted at once and presented to the chamber 
at the opening of the session the next day.!° 
In so far, the clergy were in practical harmony with the king’s 
financial policy, probably hoping, as already suggested, to 
commit him fully to the support of their political ideals, which 
he seemed to have approved in the royal session. In this matter 
of finances, the clergy went further than the nobility, whose 
reference to the matter in the decree of June 25 showed that 
they insisted upon the realization of their political aims before 
the matter of finances was considered. But both clergy and 
nobles were in direct opposition in this, as in every other matter, 
to the policy which the third estate was upholding in the face 
of apparent odds. 
XIII 
Although the national assembly must have recognized, by 
June 26, that circumstances were slowly playing into their hands, 
they had no knowledge that these circumstances were about to 
modify the attitude of the government, decidedly to their 
advantage. On the other hand, the king and court themselves 
seem to have been unconscious that these circumstances, over 
which they had no control, would oblige them suddenly to reverse 
their tactics and to bring pressure to bear, not on the revolution- 
ary national assembly, but on the conservatives of the upper 
orders, who, to a certain degree, were their own allies. 
Without doubt, during the days from June 23 to June 26, the 
court cabal and the Barentin party of the ministry confidently 
10 Barmond, Récit, 276-277; Coster, Récit, 343. 
225 
