Nay, more, those parts of France which were about to become the chief centres of this revolution were precisely the parts of the territory where the work of improvement was most perceptible. An examination of what remains of the archives of the ancient circumscription of the Ile de France readily shows that the abuses of the monarchy had been soonest and most effectually reformed in the immediate vicinity of Paris.[75] There, the liberty and property of the peasants were already better secured than in any other of what were termed the _pays d’élection_. Personal forced service had disappeared long before 1789. The _taille_ was levied with greater regularity, moderation, and fairness than in any other part of France. The ordinance made in 1772 for the amelioration of this tax in this district is a striking proof of what an Intendant could do for the advantage or for the misery of a whole province. As seen through this document, the aspect of the tax was already changed. Government commissioners were to proceed every year to each parish; the community was to assemble before them; the value of the taxable property was to be publicly established, and the resources of every tax-payer to be ascertained in his presence; in short, the _taille_ was assessed with the assent of all those who had to pay it. The arbitrary powers of the village syndic, the unprofitable violence of the fiscal officers, were at an end. The _taille_ no doubt retained its inherent defects under any system of collection: it lighted upon but one class of taxpayers, and lay as heavy on industry as upon property; but in all other respects it widely differed from that which still bore the same name in the neighbouring divisions of the territory. Nowhere, on the contrary, were the institutions of the whole monarchy less changed than on the banks of the Loire, near the mouths of that river, in the marshes of Poitou and the heaths of Brittany. Yet there it was that the fire of civil war was kindled and kept alive, and that the fiercest and longest resistance was opposed to the Revolution; so that it might be said that the French found their position the more intolerable the better it became. Surprising as this fact is, history is full of such contradictions.