had recourse to a partial and cruel confiscation?

Was that contribution refused on a pretext of privilege, either on the
part of the clergy, or on that of the nobility? No, certainly. As to the
clergy, they even ran before the wishes of the third order. Previous to
the meeting of the States, they had in all their instructions expressly
directed their deputies to renounce every immunity which put them upon a
footing distinct from the condition of their fellow-subjects. In this
renunciation the clergy were even more explicit than the nobility.

But let us suppose that the deficiency had remained at the fifty-six
millions, (or 2,200,000 _l._ sterling,) as at first stated by M. Necker.
Let us allow that all the resources he opposed to that deficiency were
impudent and groundless fictions, and that the Assembly (or their lords
of articles[104] at the Jacobins) were from thence justified in laying
the whole burden of that deficiency on the clergy,--yet allowing all
this, a necessity of 2,200,000 _l._ sterling will not support a
confiscation to the amount of five millions. The imposition of 2,200,000
_l._ on the clergy, as partial, would have been oppressive and unjust,
but it would not have been altogether ruinous to those on whom it was
imposed; and therefore it would not have answered the real purpose of
the managers.

Perhaps persons unacquainted with the state of France, on hearing the
clergy and the noblesse were privileged in point of taxation, may be led
to imagine, that, previous to the Revolution, these bodies had
contributed nothing to the state. This is a great mistake. They
certainly did not contribute equally with each other, nor either of them
equally with the commons. They both, however, contributed largely.
Neither nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from the excise on
consumable commodities, from duties of custom, or from any of the other
numerous _indirect_ impositions, which in France, as well as here, make
so very large a proportion of all payments to the public. The noblesse
paid the capitation. They paid also a land-tax, called the twentieth
penny, to the height sometimes of three, sometimes of four shillings in
the pound: both of them _direct_ impositions, of no light nature, and no
trivial produce. The clergy of the provinces annexed by conquest to
France (which in extent make about an eighth part of the whole, but in
wealth a much larger proportion) paid likewise to the capitation and the
twe