Members of the parliaments, the noblemen, bishops, capitalists, were the men amongst whom, and through whom, the philosophy of the eighteenth century was propagated. Never was an aristocracy more liberal, more humane, and more thoroughly converted to useful reforms;[2214] many of them remain so under the knife of the guillotine. The magistrates of the superior tribunals, in particular, traditionally and by virtue of their institution, were the enemies of excessive expenditure and the critics of arbitrary acts. As to the gentry of the provinces, "they were so weary," says one of them,[2215] "of the Court and the Ministers that most of them were democrats." For many years, in the Provincial Assemblies, the whole of the upper class, the clergy, nobles, and Third-Estate, furnishes abundant evidence of its good disposition, of its application to business, its capacity and even generosity. Its mode of studying, discussing, and assigning the local taxation indicates what it would have done with the general budget had this been entrusted to it. It is evident that it would have protected the general taxpayer as zealously as the taxpayer of the province, and kept as close an eye upon the public purse at Paris as on that of Bourges or of Montauban.--Thus were the materials of a good chamber ready at hand, and the only thing that had to be done was to convene them. On having the facts presented to them, its members would have passed without difficulty from a hazardous theory to common-sense practice, and the aristocracy which had enthusiastically given an impetus to reform in its saloons would, in all probability, have carried it out effectively and with moderation in the Parliament.