BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Next to the king stood at the head of the social order the clergy and the nobility. They formed the privileged classes and were in the main exempt from public burdens,[1] though they owned two fifths of all the land in France. In fact, if we exclude the public domain from the estimate, their possessions amounted to "one half of the Kingdom."[2] The clergy and the nobles numbered but a thirtieth part of the twenty-six millions in France, but they enjoyed an enormous proportion of the income of the nation. Not only did the clergy hold vast estates, but they also exacted tithes, as was their right, and received, moreover, a considerable annual income from voluntary offerings and bequests. Without question, the Church of France in the eighteenth century was, all in all, an institution of incalculable beneficence as well as of great splendor. But luxury had deadened the zeal of earlier days, and too often the Church served as a convenient means of providing well-paid sinecures for the younger sons of noble families.
In many parts of France the Church had estranged its natural adherents and even embittered its own servants. Although it possessed vast estates and enabled the great dignitaries to live like princes, the minor clergy were sadly underpaid, and in many cases lived little better than the impoverished and starving people that they served. In eighteenth-century England there was, before the great religious awakening of the middle of the century, a prevailing indifference to spiritual things. But there was no such popular hostility to the clergy as was common in France; for, particularly after the great religious revival, the English clergy took a genuine interest in the welfare of the poor; whereas in France the higher clergy appeared chiefly concerned to exact their tithes and to turn over their routine duties to ill-paid curates.
As for the French nobility, they had long since lost most of the political power they once possessed as a natural right in their own districts; and unless kept at home by poverty, they had, with few exceptions, given up living upon their estates for the greater part of the year and
12
- ↑ Taine, The Ancient Regime, I, 17.
- ↑ Ibid., I, 14.
