fice of consulting
advocate; conversation has sufficed to propagate them, homely common
sense needing no philosophy to secure their recognition.

"The tax on property," said he, in 1750, "should be proportioned and
equally distributed among all the king's subjects and the members of the
government, in proportion to the property each really possesses in
the kingdom; in England, the lands of the nobility, the clergy and the
Third-Estate pay alike without distinction, and nothing is more just."

In the six years which follow the flood increases. People denounce the
government in the cafes, on their promenades, while the police dare not
arrest malcontents "because they would have to arrest everybody." The
disaffection goes on increasing up to the end of the reign. In 1744,
says the bookseller Hardy, during the king's illness at Metz, private
individuals cause six thousand masses to be said for his recovery and
pay for them at the sacristy of Notre Dame; in 1757, after Damiens's
attempt on the king's life, the number of masses demanded is only six
hundred; in 1774, during the malady which carries him off, the number
falls down to three. The complete discredit of the government, the
immense success of Rousseau, these two events, occurring
simultaneously, afford a date for the conversion of the Third-Estate
to philosophy[4325]. A traveler, at the beginning of the reign of Louis
XVI, who returns home after some years' absence, on being asked what
change he noticed in the nation, replied, "Nothing, except that
what used to be talked about in the drawing-rooms is repeated in the
streets."[4326] And that which is repeated in the streets is Rousseau's
doctrine, the Discourse on Inequality, the Social Contract amplified,
popularized and repeated by adherents in every possible way and in
all their forms. What could be more fascinating for the man of the
Third-Estate? Not only is this theory in vogue, and encountered by him
at the decisive moment when, for the first time, he turns his attention
to general principles, but again it provides him with arms against
social inequality and political absolutism, and much sharper than he
needs. To people disposed to put restraints on power and to abolish
privileges, what guide is more sympathetic than the writer of genius,
the powerful logician, the impassioned orator, who establishes natural
law, who repudiates historic law, who proclaims the equality of men, who
contends for the sovereignty