governments, one the old
government, local and now absent, useless, inconvenient and humiliating,
and active only through annoyances, exemptions and taxes; and the other,
recent, centralized, everywhere present, which, taking upon itself all
functions, has vast needs, and makes my meager shoulders support its
enormous weight."

These, in precise terms, are the vague ideas beginning to ferment in
the popular brain and encountered on every page of the records of the
States-General.

"Would to God," says a Normandy village,[5274] "the monarch might take
into his own hands the defense of the miserable citizen pelted and
oppressed by clerks, seigniors, justiciary and clergy!"

"Sire," writes a village in Champagne,[5275] "the only message to us on
your part is a demand for money. We were led to believe that this might
cease, but every year the demand comes for more. We do not hold you
responsible for this because we love you, but those whom you employ, who
better know how to manage their own affairs than yours. We believed that
you were deceived by them and we, in our chagrin, said to ourselves,
If our good king only knew of this!. . . We are crushed down with every
species of taxation; thus far we have given you a part of our bread,
and, should this continue, we shall be in want. . . . Could you see the
miserable tenements in which we live, the poor food we eat, you would
feel for us; this would prove to you better than words that we can
support this no longer and that it must be lessened. . . . That which
grieves us is that those who possess the most, pay the least. We pay the
tailles and for our implements, while the ecclesiastics and nobles who
own the best land pay nothing. Why do the rich pay the least and the
poor the most? Should not each pay according to his ability? Sire, we
entreat that things may be so arranged, for that is just. . . . Did we
dare, we should undertake to plant the slopes with vines; but we are
so persecuted by the clerks of the excise we would rather pull up those
already planted; the wine that we could make would all go to them,
scarcely any of it remaining for ourselves. These exactions are a great
scourge and, to escape them, we would rather let the ground lie waste.
. . . Relieve us of all these extortions and of the excisemen; we are
great sufferers through all these devices; now is the time to change
them; never shall we be happy as long as these last. We entreat all
this of you, Sire, a