The people of the thirteen American colonies that became the United States had always had more liberty than the people of France. Most of the colonies had been settled by men who had left Europe and gone to America in order that they might enjoy civil or religious independence. They largely made their own laws, and by the time of the Revolution had become so well educated in self-government that they were able to draw up a Constitution and live by its terms with extremely little friction or unrest. The success that followed the forming of the republic of the West was a marvel to Europe; that success was mainly due to the lessons of self-restraint and the real appreciation of what liberty meant that had come to the colonists before the Revolution. Progress that is to be real progress must begin right, and Washington and Jefferson and Franklin were far-sighted and clear-headed builders. The people of France had been putting up with wrongs a thousandfold worse than those the Americans had borne, but they had never been educated in self-government, and so when they tried to win liberty they plunged headlong into turmoil. France was still governed very much as it had been in the Middle Ages. The peasants were reduced to the very lowest form of living, starvation and ignorance were common through the country. The business classes were hampered by unjust laws. The nobility were idle, corrupt, and grossly extravagant. Almost all power lay in the King, and Louis XVI., amiable though he was, followed the lines of his Bourbon ancestors, Louis XIV. and Louis XV., the former of whom had said, “The State, it is I,” and had ruled by that principle. Unhappily for Louis XVI., however, the world had progressed from the view-point of the Middle Ages, and men were beginning to talk of constitutions and of the duties that sovereigns owed their people. He shut his ears to such talk as well as he could, and his courtiers helped him to ignore the protests. The court continued to spend money on entertainments as if it was water, while the peasants starved. Then it was found that the expense of aiding the United States in the war had added enough to the nation’s debt to make it impossible to pay the interest and to find means to carry on the government. Either the court’s expenses must be lessened or new taxes must be levied. The nobles furiously resisted the first alternative, and the people resisted the second. Toward the end of 1786 Calonne, the Minister of Finance, had to admit that the treasury was bankrupt and advise the King to call a meeting of the Assembly of Notables to find some way out of the difficulty.