So much easy grace and adroitness succeeding the austere stiffness of M. Necker had been powerless to relieve the disorder of the finances; it was great and of ancient date.  “A deficit has been existing in France for centuries,” the comptroller-general asserted.  It at last touched the figure of a hundred millions a year.  “What is left for filling up so frightful a void and for reaching the desired level?” exclaimed M. de Calonne:  “abuses!  Yes, gentlemen, it is in abuses themselves that there is to be found a mine of wealth which the state has a right to reclaim and which must serve to restore order.  Abuses have for their defenders interests, influence, fortune, and some antiquated prejudices which time seems to have respected.  But of what force is such a vain confederation against the public welfare and the necessity of the state?  Let others recall this maxim of our monarchy:  ’As willeth the king, so willeth the law;’ his Majesty’s maxim is:  ’As willeth the happiness of the people, so willeth the king.’”

Audaciously certain of the success of his project, M. de Calonne had not taken the trouble to disguise the vast consequences of it; he had not thought any the more about pre-securing a majority in the assembly.  The members were divided into seven committees presided over by the princes; each committee disposed of one single vote; the comptroller-general had not taken exception to the selections designated by his adversaries.  “I have made it a point of conscience,” he said, “to give suitable nominations according to the morality, and talent, and importance of individuals.”  He had burned his ships, and without a care for the defective composition of the assembly, he set forth, one after the other, projects calculated to alarm the privileged orders.  “More will be paid,” he said in the preamble printed at the head of his notes and circulated in profusion over the whole of France, “undoubtedly more will be paid, but by whom? . . .  By those only who do not pay enough; they will pay what they ought, according to a just proportionment, and nobody will be aggrieved.  Privileges will be sacrificed!  Yes!  Justice wills it, necessity requires it!  Would it be better to surcharge the non-privileged, the people?”

The struggle was about to begin, with all the ardor of personal interest; the principle of provincial assemblies had been favorably received by the notables; the committees (bureaux) had even granted to the third estate a representation therein equal to that of the two upper orders, on condition that the presidents of the delegates should be chosen from the nobility or the clergy.  The recognition of a civil status for Protestants did not seem likely to encounter any difficulty.  For more than twenty years past the parliaments, especially the parliament of Toulouse, had established the ruling of the inadmissibility of any one who disputed the legitimacy of children issue of Protestant marriages.  In 1778, the parliament of Paris had deliberated as to presenting to the king a resolution in favor of authentic verification of non-Catholic marriages, births, and deaths; after a long interval, on, the 2d of February, 1787, this resolution had been formally, promulgated.