by these agents of the central administration or under their all-powerful control. The militia was the forerunner of the conscription, and is of itself a sign of the difference between the political history of Great Britain and France.

From time to time the young men in the country were made to draw lots and from among them were taken a certain number of soldiers, who were formed into militia regiments, in which they served for six years. As the militia was a comparatively modern institution, none of the ancient feudal powers meddled with it; the whole business was intrusted to the agents of the central government alone. The Council fixed the general amount of men and the share of each province. The Intendant regulated the number of men to be raised in each parish, his sub-delegate superintended the drawing of the lots, decided all cases of exemption, designated those militiamen who were allowed to remain with their families, and those who were to join the regiment, and finally delivered over the latter to the military authorities. There was no appeal except to the Intendant or the Council.1

It may be said with equal accuracy that, except in the pays d'état, all public works, highways, bridges, and public buildings were decided upon and managed by the agents of the central power alone. The central government alone also undertook with the help of its agents to maintain public order in the provinces. The mounted police was dispersed in small detachments over the whole surface of the kingdom, and was everywhere placed under the control of the Intendants. It was by the help of these soldiers, and if necessary of regular troops, that the Intendant warded off any sudden danger, arrested vagabonds, repressed mendicity, and put down the riots which were continually arising from the price of corn. It never happened, as had been formerly the case, that the subjects of the Crown were called upon to aid the government in this task, except, indeed, in the towns, where there was generally a town-guard, the soldiers of which were chosen and the officers appointed by the Intendant.

Under the ancient feudal society it was the duty of the lord of the soil to succor the indigent in the interior of his domains. The last trace of this old European legislation is to be found in the Prussian code of 1795, which says, "The lord of the soil must see that the indigent peasants receive an education. It is his duty to provide means of subsistence to those of his vassals who possess no land, so far as he is able. If any of them fall into want, he must come to their assistance." But no law of the kind had existed in France for a long time. The lord when deprived of his former power considered himself liberated from his former obligations, and no local authority, no council,

1 De Tocqueville, op. cit., Book II., Chap. II.

no provincial or parochial association had taken his place. No single being was any longer compelled by law to take care of the poor in the rural districts, and the central government had boldly undertaken to provide for their wants by its own resources.

Every year the Council assigned to each province certain funds from the general produce of the taxes, which the Intendant distributed for the relief of the poor in the different parishes. It was to him that the indigent laborer had to apply, and in times of scarcity it was he who caused corn or rice to be distributed among the people. The Council annually issued ordinances for the establishment of charitable workshops, where the poorer among the peasantry were enabled to find work at low wages, and the Council took it upon itself to determine the places where these were necessary. It may easily be supposed that alms thus bestowed from a distance were indiscriminate, capricious, and always very inadequate. The central government, moreover, did not confine itself to relieving the peasantry in time of distress; it also undertook to teach them the art of enriching themselves, encouraged them in this task, and forced them to it if necessary. For this purpose from time to time it caused distributions of small pamphlets upon the science of agriculture to be made by its Intendants, founded schools of agriculture, offered prizes, and kept up at great expense nursery grounds, of which it distributed the produce. Sometimes the Council insisted upon compelling individuals to prosper, whether they would or no. The ordinances constraining artisans to use certain methods and to manufacture certain articles are innumerable. Some of the decrees of the Council even prohibited the cultivation of certain crops, which the Council did not consider proper for the purpose; whilst others ordered the destruction of such vines as had been, according to its opinion, planted in an unfavorable soil.1

All classes looked to the Intendant as the dispenser of favors.

Even the nobles were often very importunate solicitants: the only mark of their condition is the lofty tone in which they begged. Their quota of the tax of twentieths was fixed every year by the Council upon the report of the Intendant, and to him they addressed themselves in order to obtain delays and remissions. I have read a host of petitions of this nature made by nobles, nearly all men of title, and often of very high rank. Sometimes pride and poverty were drolly mixed in these petitions. One of the nobles wrote to the Intendant, "Your feeling heart will never consent to see the father of a family of my rank strictly taxed by twentieths, like a father of the lower classes." 2

Not only had the nobility as a class lost political power,1 but for several centuries they had grown gradually poorer and poorer.

Spite of its privileges the nobility is ruined and wasted day by day, and the middle classes get possession of the large fortunes," wrote a nobleman in a melancholy strain in 1755. "In this district," says an Intendant at the beginning of the century, "the number of noble families still amounts to several thousands, but there are not fifteen amongst them who have twenty thousand livres a year." I find in some minutes addressed by another Intendant (of Franche-Comté) to his successor in 1750: "The nobility of this part of the country is pretty good but extremely poor, and as proud as it is poor. It is greatly humbled compared to what it used to be. It is not bad policy to keep the nobles in this state of poverty in order to compel them to serve, and to stand in need of our assistance.2

All those nobles who could afford it were either hangerson of the Court in Paris or Versailles, or sought posts abroad in diplomacy or military service.

A few words must be said as to the relations of Church and State. The sixteenth century was the time of the greatest impulse of the Reformation, in which it made greater conquests than it has ever made since. In England it took the form of a schism, in which the king renounced the supremacy of the Pope and made himself the head of the Church. In appearance this greatly increased the power of the Crown, but in fact it was not so. In his conflict with the Pope, who wielded the still terrible weapon of excommunication, Henry VIII. needed the support of his subjects and was in no condition to be too strict with them. Moreover, although he broke up and confiscated the property of the monasteries, he was compelled to distribute this largely among his nobles and followers, thereby greatly increasing their power and tenacity of resistance to the royal will.

1 No ten noblemen could meet to deliberate together on any matter without the express permission of the king. - De Tocqueville, Book II., Chap. XI. 2 Ibid., Chap. VIII.

During the short reign of Mary the papal religion was completely reëstablished, probably with the entire approval of a large portion, if not a majority, of the nation, for whom the progress of the Reformation doctrines had been too precipitate. All the laws made against the supremacy of the see of Rome since the twentieth year of Henry VIII. were formally repealed; but it was found impossible to restore the ecclesiastical property in the hands of subjects.1

In the long reign of Elizabeth Protestantism became so firmly established that the Stuarts were powerless against it, and in the struggles against Charles I., Charles II. and James II. religious liberty lent its powerful aid to political. The breaking up of the monasteries removed a foreign and corporate influence outside of the nation, upon which followed the discontinuance of enforced celibacy through the attitude of the new head of the Church. And thus was established the parish system, which is the basis of English local government to-day.

In its early beginning the Reformation probably made as much progress in France as in any other country, and the Calvinist doctrines spread with great rapidity. But the other circumstances, which increased the power of the Crown and depressed all other classes, lent their aid to, and were aided by, the authority of the Church. After a fierce contest, culminating in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Huguenots obtained from Henry IV., in 1598, the Edict of Nantes, which made an approach to placing the churches on a footing of equality; but it is significant that that monarch found himself obliged to renounce his own religion and embrace the Roman Catholic. His well-known saying that "Paris vaut bien une messe," was merely a concrete statement of the fact that the royal and papal supremacy were inextricably bound up together. The tide began at once to set against the Protestants. Richelieu was enough of a statesman not to crush out entirely so available a power, but the climax 1 Taswell-Langmead, op. cit., p. 438.

K

came under Louis XIV. When the king began to feel the approach of age, and the failure at once of his ambitious schemes and of his passions turned his mind towards devotion, he undertook to atone for his own sins by punishing those of other people, and under the sinister influence of Madame de Maintenon attempted to crush out the last sparks of religious liberty. The mention of the dragonnades is enough to characterize the proceedings of the close of his reign, and the Reign of Terror, a hundred years later, finds ample explanation, if not justification, in the Revocation, in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes. The number of Huguenots, the flower of the nation, who left the country is estimated at three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand, and they formed a valuable addition, of which the traces still exist, to the population of the Palatinate, Brandenburg, Switzerland, Holland, and England. The remainder of the nation was handed over to the intellectual despotism, to speak mildly, of the Romish Church, the higher ecclesiastics, like the nobles, being separated from the masses of the people by exemption from taxation.1

We have now reached the brink of that tremendous vortex which was to sweep away for a time nearly all the institutions of old France, and many of them permanently. Perhaps the most general feeling throughout the

1 In all the history of France there is no more important or more interesting period than that comprised in the last twenty years of the reign of Louis XIV. and the eight years of the regency which followed it. For it was during those years that the Revolution was prepared for and rendered inevitable. During those years the bark of the State was gliding down the current, ever approaching more and more rapidly the fated Niagara in front. During these years - —or at all events during the earlier portion of them-it might have been possible for human wisdom and worth to have directed the onward course of French society to other issues. After the close of that period it was too late. The reign of Louis XV. was but a doomed rush onwards to the raging cataract. T. A. TROLLOPE, "Sketches from French History," p. 402.