Voltaire perceived the astonishing fact that in this country a man because he is a noble or a priest was not exempt from paying certain taxes, and that the Commons who regulated the taxes, though second to the Lords in rank, were above them in legislative influence.[48] His acute sight also revealed to him the importance of the mixture of ranks and classes in common pursuits, and he records with admiration instances of the younger sons of peers of the realm following trade. ‘Whoever arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote province with money to spend and a name in _ac_ or _ille_, can talk about a man like me, a man of my quality,’[49] and hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The merchant again so constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain that he is fool enough to blush for it; yet I am not sure which is the more useful to a state, a thickly-bepowdered lord who knows exactly what time the king rises and what time he goes to bed, and gives himself mighty airs of greatness while he plays the part of a slave in a minister’s ante-room; or the merchant who enriches his country, gives orders from his counting-house at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of the globe.[50] It is easy to conceive the fury which these contrasts drawn from English observation would excite among the personages in France who happened to get the worst side in them, and there was assuredly nothing surprising in the decree of the Parliament of Paris (1734), which condemned the Letters on the English to be publicly burnt, as scandalous and contrary alike to good manners and the respect due to principalities and powers.