rtunity. Man cannot,
properly speaking, make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has
it in his power to improve them when they occur, and this was the case
in France.

M. Neckar was displaced in May, 1781; and by the ill-management of
the finances afterwards, and particularly during the extravagant
administration of M. Calonne, the revenue of France, which was nearly
twenty-four millions sterling per year, was become unequal to the
expenditure, not because the revenue had decreased, but because the
expenses had increased; and this was a circumstance which the nation
laid hold of to bring forward a Revolution. The English Minister, Mr.
Pitt, has frequently alluded to the state of the French finances in his
budgets, without understanding the subject. Had the French Parliaments
been as ready to register edicts for new taxes as an English Parliament
is to grant them, there had been no derangement in the finances, nor yet
any Revolution; but this will better explain itself as I proceed.

It will be necessary here to show how taxes were formerly raised in
France. The King, or rather the Court or Ministry acting under the use
of that name, framed the edicts for taxes at their own discretion,
and sent them to the Parliaments to be registered; for until they were
registered by the Parliaments they were not operative. Disputes had long
existed between the Court and the Parliaments with respect to the extent
of the Parliament's authority on this head. The Court insisted that the
authority of Parliaments went no farther than to remonstrate or show
reasons against the tax, reserving to itself the right of determining
whether the reasons were well or ill-founded; and in consequence
thereof, either to withdraw the edict as a matter of choice, or to order
it to be unregistered as a matter of authority. The Parliaments on their
part insisted that they had not only a right to remonstrate, but to
reject; and on this ground they were always supported by the nation.

But to return to the order of my narrative. M. Calonne wanted money: and
as he knew the sturdy disposition of the Parliaments with respect to new
taxes, he ingeniously sought either to approach them by a more gentle
means than that of direct authority, or to get over their heads by a
manoeuvre; and for this purpose he revived the project of assembling a
body of men from the several provinces, under the style of an "Assembly
of the Notables," or men of note, who met i