ent
his authority. The financial difficulties went on getting worse; on
principle and from habit, the new comptroller-general, like M. de
Vergennes, was favorable to the traditional maxims and practices of the
old French administration; he was, however, dragged into the system of
loans by the necessities of the state, as well as by the ideas impressed
upon men's minds by M. Necker. To loans succeeded imposts; the dues and
taxes were increased uniformly, without regard for privileges and the
burdens of different provinces; the Parliament of Paris, in the body of
which the comptroller-general counted many relatives and friends, had
enregistered the new edicts without difficulty; the Parliament of
Besangon protested, and its resistance went so far as to place the
comptroller-general on his defence. "All that is done in my name is done
by my orders," replied Louis XVI. to the deputation from Franche-Comte.
The deputation required nothing less than the convocation of the
States-general. On all sides the nation was clamoring after this ancient
remedy for their woes; the most clear-sighted had hardly a glimmering of
the transformation which had taken place in ideas as well as manners;
none had guessed what, in the reign of Louis XVI., those States-general
would be which had remained dumb since the regency of Mary de Medici.

Still more vehement and more proud than the Parliamentarians, the states
of Brittany, cited to elect the deputies indicated by the governor, had
refused any subsidy. "Obey," said the king to the deputies; "my orders
have nothing in them contrary to the privileges which my predecessors
were graciously pleased to grant to my province of Brittany." Scarcely
had the Bretons returned to the states, when M. Amelot, who had charge of
the affairs of Brittany, received a letter which he did not dare to place
before the king's eyes. "Sir," said the states of Brittany, "we are
alarmed and troubled when we see our franchises and our liberties,
conditions essential to the contract which gives you Brittany, regarded
as mere privileges, founded upon a special concession. We cannot hide
from you, Sir, the direful consequences of expressions so opposed to the
constant principles of our national code. You are the father of your
people, and exercise no sway but that of the laws; they rule by you and
you by them. The conditions which secure to you our allegiance form a
part of the positive laws of your realm." Contr