Under the state of things here described, France had retrograded in wealth and population. Intense misery prevailed amongst the working classes. Artisans were unable to live on their wages; farmers and small proprietors were constantly being reduced to beggary; ignorance grew more dense. The government, by its own frequent setting aside of laws, and by its intolerance and cruelty, helped to render the people lawless, superstitious, and ferocious. Protestants were subjected to persecuting laws. Thousands of them had been driven from the country, or shot down by troops. The penal code was barbarous, and the brutal breaking on the wheel was an ordinary mode of putting criminals to death. It was only by very rough usage that fiscal regulations were maintained, and the taxes gathered in. If the _taille_ and the _gabelle_ were not paid, the defaulter’s goods were sold over his head, and his house dismantled of roof and door. In all cases in which the administration was concerned, whatever justice peasant and artisan received was meted to them by administrative officials who were themselves parties in the cause. Famine was like a disease which counted its victims by hundreds. As a rule, the farmer was a poor and ignorant peasant, living from hand to mouth, miserably housed, clothed, and fed. An Englishman, Arthur Young, travelling in France in the years 1788–1789, reports how he passed over miles and miles of country once cultivated, but then covered with ling and broom; and how within a short distance of large towns no signs of wealth or comfort were visible. ‘There are no gentle transitions from ease to comfort, from comfort to wealth; you pass at once from beggary to profusion. The country deserted, or if a gentleman in it, you find him in some wretched hole, to save that money which is lavished with profusion in the luxuries of a capital.’ The same traveller tells us how, as he was walking up a hill in Champagne, he was joined by a poor woman who complained of the hardness of the times. ‘She said her husband had but a morsel of land, one cow and a poor little horse, yet he had a franchar (42 lbs.) of wheat and three chickens to pay as a quit rent to one seigneur, and four franchars of oats, one chicken, and one shilling to pay another, besides very heavy _tailles_ and other taxes. She had seven children, and the cow’s milk helped to make the soup. It was said, at present, that something was to be done by some great folks for such poor ones, but she did not know who nor how, but God send us better, “car les tailles et les droits nous écrasent.” This woman, at no great distance, might have been taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent and her face so furrowed and hardened by labour, but she said she was only twenty-eight.’