r zealots. The chief personages of the provinces
in the provincial assemblies,[4253] the bishops, archbishops, abbes,
dukes, counts, and marquises, with the wealthiest and best informed of
the notables in the Third-Estate, in all about a thousand persons, in
short the social elect, the entire upper class convoked by the
king, organize the budget, defend the tax-payer against the fiscal
authorities, arrange the land-registry, equalize the taille, provide
a substitute for the corvee, provide public roads, multiply charitable
asylums, educate agriculturists, proposing, encouraging and directing
every species of reformatory movement. I have read through the
twenty volumes of their proces-verbaux: no better citizens, no more
conscientious men, no more devoted administrators can be found, none
gratuitously taking so much trouble on themselves with no object but the
public welfare. Never was an aristocracy so deserving of power at the
moment of losing it; the privileged class, aroused from their indolence,
were again becoming public men, and, restored to their functions, were
returning to their duties. In 1778, in the first assembly of Berry,
the Abbe de Seguiran, the reporter, has the courage to state that "the
distribution of the taxes should be a fraternal partition of public
obligations."[4254] In 1780 the abbes, priors and chapters of the same
province contribute 60,000 livres of their funds, and a few gentlemen,
in less than twenty-four hours, contribute 17,000 livres. In 1787,
in the assembly of Alencon the nobility and the clergy tax themselves
30,000 livres to relieve the indigent in each parish subject to
taxation[4255]. in the month of April, 1787, the king, in an assembly
of the notables, speaks of "the eagerness with which archbishops and
bishops come forward claiming no exemption in their contributions to
the public revenue." In the month of March, 1789, on the opening of the
bailiwick assemblies, the entire clergy, nearly all the nobility, in
short, the whole body of the privileged class voluntarily renounce their
privileges in relation to taxation. The sacrifice is voted unanimously;
they themselves offer it to the Third-Estate, and it is worth while
to see their generous and sympathetic tone in the manuscript
proces-verbaux.

"The nobility of the bailiwick of Tours," says the Marquis de
Lusignan,[4256] "considering that they are men and citizens before being
nobles, can make amends in no way more in conformity