Twenty years later the state of things was changed. A vision of political freedom had visited the mind of France, and was every day becoming more attractive, as may be inferred from a variety of symptoms. The provinces began to conceive the desire to manage once more their own affairs. The notion that the whole people has a right to take part in the government diffused itself and took possession of the public. Recollections of the old States-General were revived. The nation, which detested its own history, recalled no other part of it with pleasure but this. This fresh current of opinion bore away the economists themselves, and compelled them to encumber their Unitarian system with some free institutions. When, in 1771, the Parliaments were destroyed, the same public, which had so often suffered from their prejudices, was deeply affected by their fall. It seemed as if with them fell the last barrier which could still restrain the arbitrary power of the Crown. This opposition astonished and irritated Voltaire. ‘Almost all the kingdom is in a state of effervescence and consternation,’ he wrote to one of his friends; ‘the ferment is as great in the provinces as at Paris itself. Yet this edict seems to be full of useful reforms. To abolish the sale of public offices, to render the administration of justice gratuitous, to prevent suitors from coming from all corners of the kingdom to Paris to ruin themselves there, to charge the Crown with the payment of the expenses of the seignorial jurisdictions--are not these great services rendered to the nation? These Parliaments, moreover, have they not been often barbarous and persecutors? I am really amazed at the out-of-the-way people who take the part of these insolent and indocile citizens. For my own part I think the King right; and since we must serve, I think it better to serve under a lion born of a good family, and who is by birth much stronger than I am, than under two hundred rats of my own condition.’ And he adds, by way of excuse, ‘Remember that I am bound to appreciate highly the favour the King has conferred on all the lords of manors, by undertaking to pay the expenses of their jurisdictions.’ Voltaire, who had long been absent from Paris, imagined that public opinion still remained at the point where he had left it. But he was mistaken. The French people no longer confined themselves to the desire that their affairs should be better conducted; they began to wish to conduct their affairs themselves, and it was manifest that the great Revolution, to which everything was contributing, would be brought about not only with the assent of the people, but by their hands.