This same wealth, which is at all times treason and leze-nation to indigent and rapacious despotism, under all modes of polity, was your temptation to violate property, law, and religion, united in one object.  But was the state of France so wretched and undone, that no other resource but rapine remained to preserve its existence?  On this point I wish to receive some information.  When the States met, was the condition of the finances of France such, that, after economizing, on principles of justice and mercy, through all departments, no fair repartition of burdens upon all the orders could possibly restore them?  If such an equal imposition would have been sufficient, you well know it might easily have been made.  M. Necker, in the budget which he laid before the orders assembled at Versailles, made a detailed exposition of the state of the French nation.[103]

If we give credit to him, it was not necessary to have recourse to any new impositions whatsoever, to put the receipts of France on a balance with its expenses.  He stated the permanent charges of all descriptions, including the interest of a new loan of four hundred millions, at 531,444,000 livres; the fixed revenue at 475,294,000:  making the deficiency 56,150,000, or short of 2,200,000 l. sterling.  But to balance it, he brought forward savings and improvements of revenue (considered as entirely certain) to rather more than the amount of that deficiency; and he concludes with these emphatical words (p. 39):—­“Quel pays, Messieurs, que celui, ou, sans impots et avec de simples objets inapercus, on peut faire disparoitre un deficit qui a fait tant de bruit en Europe!” As to the reimbursement, the sinking of debt, and the other great objects of public credit and political arrangement indicated in Monsieur Necker’s speech, no doubt could be entertained but that a very moderate and proportioned assessment on the citizens without distinction would have provided for all of them to the fullest extent of their demand.

If this representation of M. Necker was false, then the Assembly are in the highest degree culpable for having forced the king to accept as his minister, and, since the king’s deposition, for having employed as their minister, a man who had been capable of abusing so notoriously the confidence of his master and their own:  in a matter, too, of the highest moment, and directly appertaining to his particular office.  But if the representation was exact, (as, having always, along with you, conceived a high degree of respect for M. Necker, I make no doubt it was,) then what can be said in favor of those who, instead of moderate, reasonable, and general contribution, have in cold blood, and impelled by no necessity, 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.