The word _burgher_ had a general and a restricted sense; it was used to designate those belonging to the middle class, and also to specify a certain number of persons included within that class. ‘The burghers are those whose birth and fortune enable them to live decently, without the exercise of any gainful pursuit,’ says one of the reports produced on occasion of the inquiry in 1764. We see by the rest of the report that the word burgher was not to be used to designate those who belonged either to the companies or the industrial corporations; but it is more difficult to define exactly to whom it should be applied. ‘For,’ the report goes on to say, ‘amongst those who arrogate to themselves the title of burgher, there are many persons who have no other claim to it but their idleness, who have no fortune, and lead an obscure and uncultivated life. The burghers ought properly to be distinguished by fortune, birth, talent, morality, and a handsome way of living. The artisans, who compose the _communautés_, have never been admitted to the rank of _notables_.’ After the burghers, the mercantile men formed a second class, which belong to no company or corporation; but the limits of this small class were hard to define. ‘Are,’ says the report, ‘the petty tradesmen of low birth to be confounded with the great wholesale dealers?’ In order to resolve these difficulties, the report proposes to have a list of the _notable_ tradesmen drawn up by the _échevins_, and given to their head or syndic, in order that he may summon to the deliberations at the Hôtel de Ville none but those set down in it. In this list none were to be inscribed who had been servants, porters, drivers, or who had filled any other mean offices. Note (XX.)--Page 39, line 33. One of the most salient characteristics of the eighteenth century, as regards the administration of the towns, was not so much the abolition of all representation and intervention of the public in their affairs as the extreme variation of the rules by which the administration was guided, rights were incessantly granted, recalled, restored, increased, diminished, and modified in a thousand different ways. Nothing more fully shows into what contempt these local liberties had fallen as this continual change in their laws, which seemed to excite no attention. This variation alone would have been sufficient to destroy beforehand all peculiar ideas, all love of old recollections, all local patriotism in those very institutions which afford the greatest scope for them. This it was which prepared the way for the great destruction of the past, which the Revolution was about to effect. Note (XXI.)--Page 41, line 6. ADMINISTRATION OF A VILLAGE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. FROM THE PAPERS OF THE INTENDANCY OF THE ÎLE-DE-FRANCE.