_ 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[104] 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 2,200,000 _l._ sterling will not support a
confiscation to the amount of five millions. The imposition of 2,200,000
_l._ 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.
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. This is a great mistake. They
certainly did not contribute equally with each other, nor either of them
equally with the commons. They both, however, contributed largely.
Neither nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from the excise on
consumable commodities, from duties of custom, or from any of the other
numerous _indirect_ impositions, which in France, as well as here, make
so very large a proportion of all payments to the public.
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