who were accustomed to an eighteen months credit, had large fums of the public money in their hands. They repeated their recommendation of an efficient council of finances; and urged an annual publication of the accounts of government, in preference to a triennial one, which they professed to be apprehenfive would be found a nugatory measure.

Befide thefe confiderations immediately relative to the fubject of their meeting, a motion was about this time offered to one of the bureaux by the duke de Rochefoucault, tending to the melioration of the ftate of the French proteftants, and the reform of the fyftem of criminal law; but the motion was rejected. A propofition by the marquis de la Fayette to one of the other bureaux was more favourably received, they having refolved, at his inftigation, to requeft the king to grant a civil establishment to the proteftants of the kingdom.

The notables having now anfwer ed, as far as they could be induced to anfwer, the purposes for which they had been affembled by government, were diffolved by the fovereign on the twenty-fifth of May. In his fpeech upon this occafion, he commended their exertions, and particularly thanked them for having prepared the measure, which he fo ardently defired, of producing a level between the receipt and the expenditure. They had afcertained the existence and amount of the deficit, given authenticity to the propofed retrenchments and reforms, and recognised the neceffity of impofing fuch additional taxes as the circumftances might require.

The affembly was alfo addreffed by the keeper of the feals, and the archbishop of Toulouse, prefident of the council of finances. The latter

of thefe entered into a copious review of the tranfactions of the notables. Upon the fubject of provin cial affemblies, he condemned the levelling principles that had been introduced by Mr. de Calonne. He congratulated the affembly upon their magnanimous fuperiority to the idea of an intereft in particular orders feparate from the intereft of the whole. They had admitted that all exemptions in taxation were to be regarded as the mifchievous remains of feudality and villanage, and ought to be abolished. On the other hand, the king and the nation were far from wishing to annihilate the privileges and diftinctions of rank, and aiming at a vain equality that was incompatible with the monarchy. The three orders of the ftate ought undoubtedly to have their reprefentatives in the provincial affemblies, and precedency ought conftantly to be attributed to elevation of rank. The clergy and the nobleffe had generoufly confented to unite their interefts, and of confequence the third eftate would be allowed as many reprefentatives as the other two taken together. The king was refolved to give fubftance and efficiency to this provifion, by. directing that the voices fhould be collected not in feparate divifions, but as from the members of one general affembly. The greatest benefit might also be expected from the other meafures fanctioned by the notables, the abolition of the corvée, and the freedom of the commerce of grain. The removal of the barriers and internal taxation between province and province would be found a moft effential change. It had been thought that this could not be effected, confiftently with the prefervation, in any form, of the impoft of the gabelle. The fublime

Such were the tranfactions of this memorable and intereftingaffembly of notables, the firft affembly poffeffing even the pretence of representing the French nation that they had feen for more than one hundred and fifty ycars. If, while we enquire into the merits of their proceedings, we compare them with the purpofes for which they had been affembled by government, we fhall not beftow upon them confiderable applause. They indeed countenanced, and feemed to give stability, under certain reftrictions, to many beneficial projects. But these projects are fcarcely to be regarded as other than fubordinate, in the confideration of government, to the required level between the revenue and the expenditure. In the mean time, by the pertinacious refufal of the notables to give the fanction of their authority to what was reprefented by Mr. de Calonne as an indirect mode of increafing the revenue, and was treated by his fucceffors as avowed taxation, they rather increased than diminished the difficulties of adminiftration. Minifters expected. to overbear the ftubbornness of the parliaments by the authority of the notables. Inftead of this, the hefitation, the filence of the notables, an aflembly undoubtedly of infinitely greater dignity and weight than any of the courts of law, feemed to authorise their refiftance, while the familiar fpectacle of a fort of national affembly, however imperfect in its conftitution, gave to the people a fyftem of political feelings by no means favourable to the tranquillity of adminiftration,

If, on the other hand, in eftimate ing the merit of the notables of 1787, we recollect the benefits that have flowed in copious ftreams from their labours to the nation at large,

they will ever be remembered by us with the deepest veneration. The projects they adopted of provincial affemblies, the abolition of the corvée, a free corn trade, an unrestrained commerce between the provinces of the kingdom, are fraught with a thousand benefits of energy, profpe rity, and virtue. But the fpirit of citizenship that they diffufed through the kingdom was of ineftimable importance. It was in their affembly that the name of the states-general was first pronounced. It was there that Frenchmen conceived the prac ticability of becoming free. By their abfolute refufal to tax their fellow-citizens, they rendered the meeting of a general reprefentative affembly indifpenfible. The ideas that the intellectual heroes of France, a Rouffeau, an Helvetius, and a Raynal, had conceived, that at the moment they published them they defpaired to fee effectually adopted, and that feemed hitherto to have remained altogether barren, were fertilifed at once. From hence we are to date a long feries of years, in which France and the whole human race are to enter into poffeflion of their liberties, when the ideas of juftice and truth, of intellectual independence and everlafting improvement, are no longer to remain buried in the duft and obfcurity of the clo. fet, or to be brought forth at diftant intervals to be viewed with astonishment, indignation, and contempt, but to be univerfally received, familiar as the light of day, and general as the air we breathe.

It is however rather from the motives by which men are influenced, than from the confequences which they often unintentionally produce, that we are to estimate their merits. Upon this fyftem our judgment of the virtues of this aflembly will be

come

come moderate, neither wholly darkened with imbecility and vice, nor clevated to the dignity of heroifm. They feem entitled to the praife of diligence and induftry: they had a fincere intention to confer fome benefits upon their country; but they were too deeply anxious to perpetuate their privileges and exclufive diftinctions, to deferve, the name of patriots. It will probably be claffed among their imperfections by impartial posterity, that they perfecuted with fuch unrelenting vehemence Mr. de Calonne., Pofterity will judge between their hero, Mr. Necker, and the object of their bitter invectives. Mean-, while one half of their pertinacious oppofition to the plans fuggefted to: them, one half of the confequences, they produced in reducing the omnipotence of the monarchy, is to be afcribed to their perfonal averfion to the minifter. The conduct they purfucd upon the fubject of taxation, was perhaps the very happiest in its ultimate effects that they could have adopted; but it will fcarcely be fufpected to have been founded in any regular fyftem. What was the

object of their long conteft with anminiftration refpecting the production of documents, a conteft in which they finally proved victorious? If they had a juft claim to thefe documents, why refuse that decifion upon the taxes proposed, which feemed to be the inevitable confequence of their claim? If they were from the firft determined to refuse all active interference with the bufinefs of revenue, by what right did they call for the documents? Ta thefe confiderations it is to be added, that they evidently difplayed before their feparation that felf-interested efprit de corps, by which every comhination of men, feeks to perpetuate its own exiftence. They demanded to be permitted to fit till certain beneficial plans were adequately carried into execution. Could there be a greater folecifm to politics or ta right reafon, than for a body of men, who exprefsly difclaimed all deliberative and legislative authority, at the fame time to endeavour to conftitute themselves the overseers of government and fafeguards of the people?

TH

HE fituation in which the diffolution of the notables left the government, was in the higheft degree arduous. It is probable that, if that affembly had given an unanimous and unqualified approbation to the projects that were fubmitted

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to them, all refistance from any other quarter would have been overawed, and the monarchy would, for the prefent, have rather gained an acceffion of Arength, than been weakened by the difficulties it had been obliged to encounter. But the

event