vol. iii., pp. 19,
20, ed. 1803.
[13] De Tocqueville considers the feudal system in France in many points
more oppressive than that of Germany.--_Ancien Regime_, p. 43.
[14] Silence des grenouilles. Arthur Young, "Travels in France during
1787, '88, '89," p. 537. It is singular proof how entirely research into
the condition of the country and the people of France had been neglected
both by its philosophers and its statesmen, that there does not seem to
have been any publication in the language which gave information on these
subjects. And this work of Mr. Young's is the one to which modern French
writers, such as M. Alexis de Tocqueville, chiefly refer.
[15] "The _lettres de cachet_ were carried to an excess hardly credible;
to the length of being sold, with blanks, to be filled up with names at
the pleasure of the purchaser, who was thus able, in the gratification of
private revenge, to tear a man from the bosom of his family, and bury him
in a dungeon, where he would exist forgotten and die unknown."--A. Young,
p. 532. And in a note he gives an instance of an Englishman, named Gordon,
who was imprisoned in the Bastile for thirty years without even knowing
the reason of his arrest.
[16] Arthur Young, writing January 10th, 1790, identifies Les Enrages with
the club afterward so infamous as the Jacobins. "The ardent democrats who
have the reputation of being so much republican in principle that they do
not admit any political necessity for having even the name of the king,
are called the Enrages. They have a meeting at the Jacobins', the
Revolution Club which assembles every night in the very room in which the
famous League was formed in the reign of Henry III." (p. 267).
[17] M. Droz asserts that a collector of such publications bought two
thousand five hundred in the last three months of 1788, and that his
collection was far from complete.--_Histoire de Louis XVI_., ii., p. 180.
[18] "Tout auteur s'erige en legislateur."--_Memorial of the Princes to
the King_, quoted in a note to the last chapter of Sismondi's History, p.
551, Brussels ed., 1849.
[19] In reality the numbers were even more in favor of the Commons: the
representatives of the clergy were three hundred and eight, and those of
the nobles two hundred and eighty-five, making only five hundred and
ninety-three of the two superior orders, while the deputies of the Tiers-
Etat were six hundred and twenty-one.--_Souvenirs de la Marquise de
Crequy_,
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