the fashion.  There is nothing feudal in their characters; they are “sensible” people, mild, very courteous, tolerably cultivated, fond of generalities, and easily and quickly roused, and very much in earnest.  For instance like that amiable logician the Marquis de Ferrières, an old light-horseman, deputy from Saumur in the National Assembly, author of an article on Theism, a moral romance and genial memoirs of no great importance; nothing could be more remote from the ancient harsh and despotic temperament.  They would be glad to relieve the people, and they try to favor them as much as they can.[12] They are found detrimental, but they are not wicked; the evil is in their situation and not in their character.  It is their situation, in fact, which, allowing them rights without exacting services, debars them from the public offices, the beneficial influence, the effective patronage by which they might justify their advantages and attach the peasantry to them.

But on this ground the central government has taken their place.  For a long time now have they been rather feeble against the intendant, unable to protect their parish.  Twenty gentlemen cannot not assemble and deliberate without the king’s special permission.[13] If those of Franche-Comté happen to dine together and hear a mass once a year, it is through tolerance, and even then this harmless group may assemble only in the presence of the intendant.  Separated from his equals, the seignior, again, is further away from his inferiors.  The administration of the village is of no concern to him; he is not even tasked with its supervision.  The apportionment of taxes, the militia contingent, the repairs of the church, the summoning and presiding over a parish assembly, the making of roads, the establishment of charity workshops, all this is the intendant’s business or that of the communal officers whom the intendant appoints or directs.[14] Except through his justiciary rights, so much curtailed, the seignior is an idler in public matters.[15] If, by chance, he should desire to act in an official capacity, to make some reclamation for the community, the bureaus of administration would soon make him shut up.  Since Louis XIV, the higher officials have things their own way; all legislation and the entire administrative system operate against the local seignior to deprive him of his functional efficiency and to confine him to his naked title.  Through this separation of functions and title his pride increases, as he becomes less useful.  His vanity deprived of its broad pasture-ground, falls back on a small one; henceforth he seeks distinctions and not influence.  He thinks only of precedence and not of government.[16] In short, the local government, in the hands of peasants commanded by bureaucrats, has become a common, offensive lot of red tape.  “His pride would be wounded if he were asked to attend to it.  Raising taxes, levying the militia, regulating the corvées, are servile acts,