Separated from the peasantry by the difference of residence, and still more by the manner of life, the middle classes were also for the most part divided from them by interest. The privileges of the nobles with respect to taxation were justly complained of, but what then can be said of those enjoyed by the middle class? The offices which exempted them wholly or in part from public burdens were counted by thousands: one exempted them from the militia, another from the _corvée_, a third from the _taille_. ‘Is there a parish,’ says a writer of the time, ‘that does not contain, independently of the nobles and ecclesiastics, a number of inhabitants who have purchased for themselves, by dint of places or commissions, some sort of exemption from taxation?’ One of the reasons why a certain number of offices destined for the middle classes were, from time to time, abolished is the diminution of the receipts caused by the exemption of so large a number of persons from the _taille_. I have no doubt that the number of those exempted among the middle class was as great as, and often greater than, among the nobility. These miserable privileges filled those who were deprived of them with envy, and those who enjoyed them with the most selfish pride. Nothing is more striking throughout the eighteenth century than the hostility of the citizen of the towns towards the surrounding peasantry, and the jealousy felt by the peasants of the townspeople. ‘Every single town,’ says Turgot, ‘absorbed by its own separate interests, is ready to sacrifice to them the country and the villages of its district.’ ‘You have often been obliged,’ said he, elsewhere, in addressing his Sub-delegates, ‘to repress the constant tendency to usurpation and encroachment which characterises the conduct of the towns towards the country people and the villages of their district.’ Even the common people who dwelt within the walls of the towns with the middle classes became estranged from and almost hostile to them. Most of the local burdens which they imposed were so contrived as to press most heavily on the lower classes. More than once I have had occasion to ascertain the truth of what Turgot also says in another part of his works, namely, that the middle classes of the towns had found means to regulate the _octrois_ in such a manner that the burden did not fall on themselves. What is most obvious in every act of the French middle classes, was their dread of being confounded with the common people, and their passionate desire to escape by every means in their power from popular control. ‘If it were his Majesty’s pleasure,’ said the burgesses of a town, in a memorial addressed to the Comptroller-General, ‘that the office of mayor should become elective, it would be proper to oblige the electors to choose him only from the chief notables, and even from the corporation.’