xpenditure over receipts in 1774 was
about fifty millions of livres: in 1787 it was one hundred and forty
millions, or according to a different computation even two hundred
millions. The material case was not at all desperate, if only the court
had been less infatuated, and the spirit of the privileged orders had
been less blind and less vile. The fatality of the situation lay in the
characters of a handful of men and women. For France was abundant in
resources, and even at this moment was far from unprosperous, in spite
of the incredible trammels of law and custom. An able financier, with
the support of a popular chamber and the assent of the sovereign, could
have had no difficulty in restoring the public credit. But the
conditions, simple as they might seem to a patriot or to posterity, were
unattainable so long as power remained with a caste that were anything
we please except patriots. An Assembly of Notables was brought together,
but it was only the empty phantasm of national representation. Yet the
situation was so serious that even this body, of arbitrary origin as it
was, still was willing to accept vital reforms. The privileged order,
who were then as their descendants are now, the worst conservative party
in Europe, immediately persuaded the magisterial corporation to resist
the Notables. The judicial corporation or Parlement of Paris had been
suppressed under Lewis the Fifteenth, and unfortunately revived again at
the accession of his grandson. By the inconvenient constitution of the
French government, the assent of that body was indispensable to fiscal
legislation, on the ground that such legislation was part of the general
police of the realm. The king's minister, now Lomenie de Brienne,
devised a new judicial constitution. But the churchmen, the nobles, and
the lawyers all united in protestations against such a blow. The common
people are not always the best judges of a remedy for the evils under
which they are the greatest sufferers, and they broke out in disorder
both in Paris and the provinces. They discerned an attack upon their
local independence. Nobody would accept office in the new courts, and
the administration of justice was at a standstill. A loan was thrown
upon the market, but the public could not be persuaded to take it up. It
was impossible to collect the taxes. The interest on the national debt
was unpaid, and the fundholder was dismayed and exasperated by an
announcement that only two-fifths