portionately, still better provided. Imagine a small provincial town,
oftentimes not even a petty sub-prefecture of our times,--Conserans,
Mirepoix, Lavaur, Rieux, Lombez, Saint-Papoul, Comminges, Lucon,
Sarlat, Mende, Frejus, Lescar, Belley, Saint-Malo, Treguier, Embrun,
Saint-Claude,--and, in the neighborhood, less than two hundred, one
hundred, and sometimes even less than fifty parishes, and, as recompense
for this slight ecclesiastical surveillance, a prelate receiving from
25,000 to 70,000 livres, according to official statements; from 37,000
to 105,000 livres in actual receipts; and from 74,000 to 210,000 livres
in the money of to day. As to the abbeys, I count thirty-three of them
producing to the abbe from 25,000 to 120,000 livres, and twenty-seven
which bring from 20,000 to 100,000 livres to the abbess. Weigh these
sums taken from the Almanach, and bear in mind that they must be
doubled, and more, to obtain the real revenue, and be quadrupled,
and more, to obtain the actual value. It is evident, that, with such
revenues, coupled with the feudal rights, police, justiciary and
administrative, which accompany them, an ecclesiastic or lay grand
seignior is, in fact, a sort of prince in his district. He bears too
close a resemblance to the ancient sovereign to be entitled to live as
an ordinary individual. His private advantages impose on him a public
character. His rank, and his enormous profits, makes it incumbent on him
to perform proportionate services, and that, even under the sway of the
intendant, he owes to his vassals, to his tenants, to his feudatories
the support of his mediation, of his patronage and of his gains.

To do this he must be in residence, but, generally, he is an absentee.
For a hundred and fifty years a kind of all-powerful attraction diverts
the grandees from the provinces and impels them towards the capital.
The movement is irresistible, for it is the effect of two forces,
the greatest and most universal that influence mankind, one, a social
position, and the other the national character. A tree is not to
be severed from its roots with impunity. Appointed to govern, an
aristocracy frees itself from the land when it no longer rules.
It ceases to rule the moment when, through increasing and constant
encroachments, almost the entire justiciary, the entire administration,
the entire police, each detail of the local or general government, the
power of initiating, of collaboration, of control re