all--tried to be wiser than the
Almighty. Why not? They were not the first, nor will be the last, by
many who have made the same attempt. So this Council of State settled
arbitrarily, not only taxes, and militia, and roads, but anything and
everything. Its members meddled, with their whole hearts and minds. They
tried to teach agriculture by schools and pamphlets and prizes; they sent
out plans for every public work. A town could not establish an octroi,
levy a rate, mortgage, sell, sue, farm, or administer their property,
without an order in council. The Government ordered public rejoicings,
saw to the firing of salutes, and illuminating of houses--in one case
mentioned by M. de Tocqueville, they fined a member of the burgher guard
for absenting himself from a Te Deum. All self-government was gone. A
country parish was, says Turgot, nothing but "an assemblage of cabins,
and of inhabitants as passive as the cabins they dwelt in." Without an
order of council, the parish could not mend the steeple after a storm, or
repair the parsonage gable. If they grumbled at the intendant, he threw
some of the chief persons into prison, and made the parish pay the
expenses of the horse patrol, which formed the arbitrary police of
France. Everywhere was meddling. There were reports on
statistics--circumstantial, inaccurate, and useless--as statistics are
too often wont to be. Sometimes, when the people were starving, the
Government sent down charitable donations to certain parishes, on
condition that the inhabitants should raise a sum on their part. When
the sum offered was sufficient, the Comptroller-General wrote on the
margin, when he returned the report to the intendant, "Good--express
satisfaction." If it was more than sufficient, he wrote, "Good--express
satisfaction and sensibility." There is nothing new under the sun. In
1761, the Government, jealous enough of newspapers, determined to start
one for itself, and for that purpose took under its tutelage the _Gazette
de France_. So the public newsmongers were of course to be the
provincial intendants, and their sub-newsmongers, of course, the
sub-delegates.

But alas! the poor sub-delegates seem to have found either very little
news, or very little which it was politic to publish. One reports that a
smuggler of salt has been hung, and has displayed great courage; another
that a woman in his district has had three girls at a birth; another that
a dreadful storm