Why should the Third-Estate alone pay for roads on which the nobles and the clergy drive in their carriages?  Why are the poor alone subject to militia draft?  Why does “the subdelegate cause only the defenseless and the unprotected to be drafted?” Why does it suffice to be the servant of a privileged person to escape this service?  Destroy those dove-cotes, formerly only small pigeon-pens and which now contain as many as 5,000 pairs.  Abolish the barbarous rights of “motte, quevaise and domaine congéable[77] under which more than 500,000 persons still suffer in Lower Brittany.”  “You have in your armies, Sire, more than 30,000 Franche-Comté serfs;” should one of these become an officer and be pensioned out of the service he would be obliged to return to and live in the hut in which he was born, otherwise; at his death, the seignior will take his pittance.  Let there be no more absentee prelates, nor abbés-commendatory.  “The present deficit is not to be paid by us but by the bishops and beneficiaries; deprive the princes of the church of two-thirds of their revenues.”  “Let feudalism be abolished.  Man, the peasant especially, is tyrannically bowed down to the impoverished ground on which he lies exhausted. . . .  There is no freedom, no prosperity, no happiness where the soil is enthralled. . . .  Let the lord’s dues, and other odious taxes not feudal, be abolished, a thousand times returned to the privileged.  Let feudalism content itself with its iron scepter without adding the poniard of the revenue speculator."[78]

Here, and for some time before this, it is not the Countryman who speaks but the procureur, the lawyer, who places professional metaphors and theories at his service.  But the lawyer has simply translated the countryman’s sentiments into literary dialect.

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Notes: 

[1]"Collection des économistes,” II. 832.  See a tabular statement by Beaudan.

[2] “Ephémérides du citoyen,” IX. 15; an article by M. de Butré, 1767.

[3] “Collection des économistes,” I. 551, 562.

[4] “Procès-verbaux de l’assemblée provinciale de Champagne” (1787), p. 240.

[5] Cf., “Notice historique sur la Révolution dans le département de l’Eure,” by Boivin-Champeaux, p. 37. — A register of grievances of the parish of Epreville; on 100 francs income the Treasury takes 22 for the taille, 16 for collaterals, 15 for the poll-tax, 11 for the vingtièmes, total 67 livres.

[6] “Procès-verbaux de l’assemblée provinciale de Ile-de-France (1787), p. 131.

[7] “Procèx-verbaux de l’ass. prov de la Haute-Guyenne” (1784), II. 17, 40, 47.

[8] “Procès-verbaux de l’ass. prov. d’Auvergne” (1787), p. 253. — Doléances, by Gautier de Biauzat, member of the council elected by the provincial assembly of Auvergne. (1788), p.3.

[9] See note 5 at the end of the volume.