ey farmed the imperial taxes of the
province themselves, to avoid the exactions of the farmers-general.
They allowed the _noblesse_ none of the exemptions so unfairly enjoyed
by them elsewhere. The _taille_, which was a personal tax in other
parts of the kingdom, was in Languedoc an equitable land tax, assessed
according to a valuation periodically revised. There was not a
poorhouse in the whole province, and such was its prosperity and
excellent administration that it enjoyed better credit in the market
than the Central Government, and the king used sometimes, in order to
get more favourable terms, to borrow on the security of the States of
Languedoc instead of his own.[152]

Under those circumstances it is not surprising that one of the
favourite remedies for the political situation in France was the
revival of the provincial assemblies and the suppression of the
intendants--"Grattan's Parliament and the abolition of the Castle."
Turgot, among others, favoured this solution, though he was an
intendant himself. Necker had just put it into execution when the
Revolution came and swept everything away. Smith himself has expressed
the strongest opinion in favour of the administration of provincial
affairs by a local body instead of by an intendant, and he must have
witnessed with no ordinary interest the proceedings of this remarkable
little assembly at Montpellier, with its 23 prelates on the right, its
23 barons on the left, and the third estate--representatives of 23
chief towns and 23 dioceses--in the centre, and on a dais in front of
all, the President, the Archbishop of Narbonne. The Archbishop, to
whom, it will be remembered, Smith asked, and no doubt received, a
letter of introduction from Lord Hertford, was a countryman of his
own, Cardinal Dillon, a prince of prelates, afterwards Minister of
France; a strong champion of the rights of the States against the
pretensions of the Crown, and, if we may judge from the speech with
which Miss Knight heard him open the States of Languedoc in 1776, a
very thorough free-trader.

With all these excursions, Smith was now evidently realising in some
reasonable measure the "gayetty and amusement" he told Hume he
anticipated to enjoy during the rest of his stay in the South of
France. His command of the language, too, grew easier, though it never
became perfect, and he not only went more into society, but was able
to enjoy it better. Among those he saw most of in Toulouse were,