f getting the benefit of the outlay. This,'
they add, 'is one of the principal means which the English Government
has employed in bringing agriculture to the state of perfection in which
we now see it in that monarchy.'

As the greater part of the _cahiers_ of grievances prepared by the
Tiers-Etat of Artois for the States-General of 1789 have been lost, this
_Avis_ is of great value, as setting before us the real objects of that
order in Artois. The _cahiers_ of the Artesian _noblesse_ and the clergy
for the States-General are all preserved, and in respect of the general
objects to be aimed at in the States-General, these _cahiers_ go much
farther than the _Avis_. They seem to show that in Artois, as throughout
the kingdom, the _noblesse_ and the clergy were much more enamoured of
what are now called the 'principles of 1789' than were the body of the
agricultural population.

The _noblesse_ and the clergy of Artois wished to see the States-General
called at regular intervals, like the English Parliament. They wished
the Provincial Estates to be maintained and to be convened annually, and
they wished a provincial administration to be established under a system
which should give the Tiers-Etat a representation equal to that of both
the other orders united, and in which decisions should be reached not by
a vote of the orders collectively, but by the members of the whole body
voting individually, so that a measure as to which all the members for
the Tiers-Etat should be of one mind, might at any time be carried if
they could secure the adhesion of even a small number of the members
from either of the other orders. Clearly it was not necessary, in the
case of Artois, that the Tiers-Etat should be declared to be
'everything,' in order that justice might there be done to the wishes
and the interests of the Tiers-Etat! And if not in the case of Artois,
why in the case of any other French province?

The _Avis_ shows that in Artois before 1789 the representatives of the
Tiers-Etat had confidence in the liberality and the common sense of the
_noblesse_ and of the clergy, and that they were disposed to consider
all the abuses there needing reformation in the spirit of practical
compromise which had presided over and made possible the development of
liberty and of progress in Holland and in England, but of which no
traces are to be found in the chaotic history of the 'National Assembly'
of 1789. The authors of the _Avis_, for exam