from top to bottom,” and not alone the magistrates, the lawyers, the professors, the best among the bourgeoisie, “but again the mass of the Parisians, men, women and children, all upholding that doctrine, without comprehending it, or understanding any of its distinctions and interpretations, out of hatred to Rome and the Jesuits.  Women, the silliest, and even chambermaids, would be hacked to pieces for it. . . " This party is increased by the honest folks of the kingdom who detest persecutions and injustice.  Accordingly, when the various chambers of magistrates, in conjunction with the lawyers, tender their resignations and file out of the palace “amidst a countless multitude, the crowd exclaims:  Behold the true Romans, the fathers of the country! and as the two counselors Pucelle and Menguy pass along they fling them crowns.”  The quarrel between the Parliament and the Court, constantly revived, is one of the sparks which provokes the grand final explosion, while the Jansenist embers, smoldering in the ashes, are to be of use in 1791 when the ecclesiastical edifice comes to be attacked.  But, within this old chimney-corner only warm embers are now found, firebrands covered up, sometimes scattering sparks and flames, but in themselves and by themselves, not incendiary; the flame is kept within bounds by its nature, and its supplies limit its heat.  The Jansenist is too good a Christian not to respect powers inaugurated from above.  The parliamentarian, conservative through his profession, would be horrified at overthrowing the established order of things.  Both combat for tradition and against innovation; hence, after having defended the past against arbitrary power they are to defend it against revolutionary violence, and to fall, the one into impotency and the other into oblivion.

   II.  Change in the condition of the bourgeois.

Change in the condition of the bourgeois. — He becomes wealthy. - He makes loans to the State. — The danger of his creditorship. — He interests himself in public matters.

The uprising is, however, late to catch on among the middle class, and, before it can take hold, the resistant material must gradually be made inflammable. —­ In the eighteenth century a great change takes place in the condition of the Third-Estate .  The bourgeois has worked, manufactured, traded, earned and saved money, and has daily become richer and richer.[3] This great expansion of enterprises, of trade, of speculation and of fortunes dates from Law;[4] arrested by war it reappears with more vigor and more animation at each interval of peace after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, and that of Paris in 1763, and especially after the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI.  The exports of France which amounted to

   106 millions in 1720

   124 millions in 1735

   192 millions in 1748

   257 millions in 1755

   309 millions in 1776