[Footnote 1314: De Tocqueville, ibid. pp. 39, 56, 75, 119, 184. He has developed this point with admirable force and insight.] [Footnote 1315: De Tocqueville, ibid. p.376. Complaints of the provincial assembly of Haute-Guyenne. "People complain daily that there is no police in the rural districts. How could there be one? The nobles takes no interest in anything, excepting a few just and benevolent seigniors who take advantage of their influence with vassals to prevent affrays."] [Footnote 1316: Records of the States-General of 1789. Many of the registers of the noblesse consist of the requests by nobles, men and women, of some honorary distinctive mark, for instance a cross or a ribbon which will make them recognizable.] [Footnote 1317: De Boullé, "Mémoires," p.50.--De Toqueville, ibid.. pp. 118, 119.--De Loménie, "Les Mirabeau," p. 132. A letter of the bailiff of Mirabeau, 1760.--De Châteaubriand, Mémoires," I. 14, 15, 29, 76, 80, 125.--Lucas de Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau," I. 160.--Reports of the Société du Berry. "Bourges en 1753 et 1754," according to a diary (in the national archives), written by one of the exiled parliamentarians, p. 273.] [Footnote 1318: "La vie de mon père," by Rétif de la Bretonne, I. 146.] [Footnote 1319: The rule is analogous with the other coutumes (common-law rules), of other places and especially in Paris. (Renauldon, ibid.. p. 134.)] [Footnote 1320: A sort of dower right. TR.] [Footnote 1321: Mme. d'Oberkirk, "Mémoires," I. 395.] [Footnote 1322: De Bouillé, "Mémoires," p. 50. According to him, "all the noble old families, excepting two or three hundred, were ruined. A larger portion of the great titled estates had become the appanage of financiers, merchants and their descendants. The fiefs, for the most part, were in the hands of the bourgeoisie of the towns."--Léonce de Lavergne, "Economie rurale en France," p. 26. "The greatest number vegetated in poverty in small country fiefs often not worth more than 2,000 or 3,000 francs a year."--In the apportionment of the indemnity in 1825, many received less than 1,000 francs. The greater number of indemnities do not exceed 50,000 francs.--"The throne," says Mirabeau, "is surrounded only by ruined nobles."] [Footnote 1323: De Bouillé, "Memoires," p. 50.--Cherin, "Abrégé chronologique des édits" (1788). "Of this innumerable multitude composing the privileged order scarcely a twentieth part of it can really pretend to nobility of an immemorial and ancient date."--4,070 financial, administrative, and judicial offices conferred nobility.--Turgot, "Collection des Economistes," II. 276. "Through the facilities for acquiring nobility by means of money there is no rich man who does not at once become noble."--D'Argenson, "Mémoires," III. 402.] [Footnote 1324: Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," II. 271. Legrand, "L'Intendance de Hainaut," pp. 104, 118, 152, 412.]