But if this sort of ill-regulated and morbid liberty prepared the French to overflow despotism, perhaps it likewise rendered them less fit than any other people to establish in lieu of that despotism the free and peaceful empire of constitutional law. FOOTNOTES: [50] See Note XLIII. [51] See Note XLIV., Instructions of the Order of Nobility at the States-General of 1789. [52] See Note XLV., Religious Administration of an Ecclesiastical Province in the Eighteenth Century. [53] See Note XLVI., Spirit of the Clergy. [54] See Note XLVII. [55] See Note XLVIII. [56] See Note XLIX., Example of the Language of the Courts of Justice. [57] See Note L. [58] See Note LI., Of the Reasons which frequently put a restraint on Absolute Government under the Monarchy. CHAPTER XII. SHOWING THAT THE CONDITION OF THE FRENCH PEASANTRY, NOTWITHSTANDING THE PROGRESS OF CIVILISATION, WAS SOMETIMES WORSE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THAN IT HAD BEEN IN THE THIRTEENTH. In the eighteenth century the French peasantry could no longer be preyed upon by petty feudal despots; they were seldom the object of violence on the part of the Government; they enjoyed civil liberty, and were owners of a portion of the soil; but all the other classes of society stood aloof from this class, and perhaps in no other part of the world had the peasantry ever lived so entirely alone. The effects of this novel and singular kind of oppression deserve a very attentive separate consideration. As early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, Henry IV. complained, as we learn from Péréfix, that the nobles were quitting the rural districts. In the middle of the eighteenth century this desertion had become almost general; all the records of the time indicate and deplore the fact, economists in their writings, the Intendants in their reports, agricultural societies in their proceedings. A more authentic proof of the same fact is to be found in the registers of the capitation tax. The capitation tax was levied at the actual place of residence, and it was paid by the whole of the great nobility and by a portion of the landed gentry at Paris. In the rural districts none remained but such of the gentry as their limited means compelled to stay there. These persons must have found themselves placed in a position with reference to the peasants, his neighbours, such as no rich proprietor can be conceived to have occupied before.[59] Being no longer in the position of a chief, they had not the same interest as of old to attend to, or assist, or direct the village population; and, on the other hand, not being subject to the same burdens, they could neither feel much sympathy with poverty which they did not share, nor with grievances to which they were not exposed. The peasantry were no longer the subjects of the gentry; the gentry were not yet the fellow-citizens of the peasantry--a state of things unparalleled in history.