Never was an aristocracy more liberal, more humane, and
more thoroughly converted to useful reforms;[14] many of them remain
so under the knife of the guillotine. The magistrates of the
superior tribunals, in particular, traditionally and by virtue of
their institution, were the enemies of excessive expenditure and the
critics of arbitrary acts. As to the gentry of the provinces, "they
were so weary," says one of them,[15] "of the Court and the
Ministers that most of them were democrats." For many years, in the
Provincial Assemblies, the whole of the upper class, the clergy,
nobles, and Third-Estate, furnishes abundant evidence of its good
disposition, of its application to business, its capacity and even
generosity. Its mode of studying, discussing, and assigning the
local taxation indicates what it would have done with the general
budget had this been entrusted to it. It is evident that it would
have protected the general taxpayer as zealously as the taxpayer of
the province, and kept as close an eye upon the public purse at
Paris as on that of Bourges or of Montauban.
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