as
ignoble minions, who were unworthy of a better destiny, and unfit to
enjoy those rights which God designed should be possessed by the whole
human race.

The privileges and pursuits of the aristocratic class, from the king
to a lieutenant in his army, were another cause of revolution.
Louis XV. squandered twenty million pounds sterling in pleasures too
ignominious to be even named in the public accounts, and enjoyed
almost absolute power. He could send any one in his dominions to rot
in an ignominious prison, without a hearing or a trial. The odious
_lettre de cachet_ could consign the most powerful noble to a dungeon,
and all were sent to prison who were offensive to government. The
king's mistresses sometimes had the power of sending their enemies to
prison without consulting the king. The lives and property of the
people were at his absolute disposal, and he did not scruple to
exercise his power with thoughtless, and sometimes inhuman cruelty.

[Sidenote: Derangement of Finances.]

But these evils would have ended only in disaffection, and hatred, and
unsuccessful resistance, had not the royal finances been deranged. So
long as the king and his ministers could obtain money, there was no
immediate danger of revolution. So long as he could pay the army, it
would, if decently treated, support an absolute throne.

But the king at last found it difficult to raise a sufficient revenue
for his pleasures and his wars. The annual deficit was one hundred and
ninety million of francs a year. The greater the deficit, the greater
was the taxation, which, of course, increased the popular discontent.

Such was the state of things when Louis XVI. ascended the throne of
Hugh Capet, (1774,) in his twentieth year, having married, four years
before, Marie Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa, empress of
Austria. He was grandson of Louis XV., who bequeathed to him a debt of
four thousand millions of livres.

The new king was amiable and moral, and would have ruled France in
peaceful times, but was unequal to a revolutionary crisis. "Of all the
monarchs," says Alison, "of the Capetian line, he was the least able
to stem, and yet the least likely to provoke, a revolution. The people
were tired of the arbitrary powers of their monarch, and he was
disposed to abandon them; they were provoked at the expensive
corruptions of the court, and he was both innocent in his manners, and
unexpensive in his habits; they demanded reformation i