It cannot be doubted that the exhaustion of the kingdom under Louis XIV. began long before the reverses of that monarch. The first indication of it is to be perceived in the most glorious years of his reign. France was ruined long before she had ceased to conquer. Vauban left behind him an alarming essay on the administrative statistics of his time. The Intendants of the provinces, in the reports addressed by them to the Duke of Burgundy at the close of the seventeenth century, and before the disastrous War of the Spanish Succession had begun, all alluded to the gradual decline of the nation, and they speak of it not as a very recent occurrence: ‘The population has considerably decreased in this district,’ says one of them. ‘This town, formerly so rich and flourishing, is now without employment,’ says another. Or again: ‘There have been manufactures in this province, but they are now abandoned;’ or, ‘The farmers formerly raised much more from the soil than they do at present; agriculture was in a far better condition twenty years ago.’ ‘Population and production have diminished by about one-fifth in the last thirty years,’ said an Intendant of Orleans at the same period. The perusal of these reports might be recommended to those persons who are favourable to absolute government, and to those princes who are fond of war. As these hardships had their chief source in the evils of the constitution, the death of Louis XIV., and even the restoration of peace, did not restore the prosperity of the nation. It was the general opinion of all those who wrote on the art of government or on social economy in the first half of the eighteenth century, that the provinces were not recovering themselves; many even thought that their ruin was progressive. Paris alone, they said, grows in wealth and in extent. Intendants, ex-ministers, and men of business were of the same opinion on this point as men of letters. For myself, I confess that I do not believe in this continuous decline of France throughout the first half of the eighteenth century; but an opinion so generally entertained amongst persons so well informed, proves at least that the country was making at that time no visible progress. All the administrative records connected with this period of the history of France which have fallen under my observation denote, indeed, a sort of lethargy in the community. The government continued to revolve in the orbit of routine without inventing any new thing; the towns made scarcely an effort to render the condition of their inhabitants more comfortable or more wholesome; even in private life no considerable enterprise was set on foot.