As
to the clergy, they even ran before the wishes of the third order.
Previous to the meeting of the states, they had in all their
instructions expressly directed their deputies to renounce every
immunity which put them upon a footing distinct from the condition
of their fellow subjects. In this renunciation the clergy were even
more explicit than the nobility.
But let us suppose that the deficiency had remained at the
fifty-six millions (or L2,200,000 sterling), as at first stated by
M. Necker. Let us allow that all the resources he opposed to that
deficiency were impudent and groundless fictions, and that the
Assembly (or their lords of articles* at the Jacobins) were from
thence justified in laying the whole burden of that deficiency on
the clergy- yet allowing all this, a necessity of L2,200,000
sterling will not support a confiscation to the amount of five
millions. The imposition of L2,200,000 on the clergy, as partial,
would have been oppressive and unjust, but it would not have been
altogether ruinous to those on whom it was imposed, and therefore it
would not have answered the real purpose of the managers.
* In the constitution of Scotland, during the Stuart reigns, a
committee sat for preparing bills; and none could pass but those
previously approved by them. The committee was called "Lords of
Articles".
Perhaps persons unacquainted with the state of France, on
hearing the clergy and the noblesse were privileged in point of
taxation, may be led to imagine that, previous to the Revolution,
these bodies had contributed nothing to the state.
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