ng about the overturn of civil society."

This judicial opinion was an enunciation of the archaic law of caste as
opposed to the modern law of equality, and the cataclysm of the French
Revolution hinged upon the incapacity of the French aristocracy to
understand that the environment, which had once made caste a necessity,
had yielded to another which made caste an impossibility. In vain Turgot
and his contemporaries of the industrial type, represented in England
by Adam Smith or even by the younger Pitt, explained that unless taxes
were equalized and movement accelerated, insolvency must supervene, and
that a violent readjustment must follow upon insolvency. With their eyes
open to the consequences, the Nobility and Clergy elected to risk
revolt, because they did not believe that revolt could prevail against
them. Nothing is so impressive in the mighty convulsion which ensued as
the mental opacity of the privileged orders, which caused them to
increase their pressure in proportion as resistance increased, until
finally those who were destined to replace them reorganized the courts,
that they might have an instrument wherewith to slaughter a whole race
down to the women and children. No less drastic method would serve to
temper the rigidity of the aristocratic mind. The phenomenon well repays
an hour of study.

Insolvency came within a decade after Turgot's fall, as Turgot had
demonstrated that it must come, and an insolvency immediately
precipitated by the rapacity of the court which had most need of
caution. The future Louis XVIII, for example, who was then known as the
Comte de Provence, on one occasion, when the government had made a loan,
appropriated a quarter of it, laughingly observing, "When I see others
hold out their hands, I hold out my hat." In 1787 the need for money
became imperative, and, not daring to appeal to the nation, the King
convoked an assembly of "notables," that is to say of the privileged.
Calonne, the minister, proposed pretty much the measures of Turgot, and
some of these measures the "notables" accepted, but the Parliament of
Paris again intervened and declined to register the laws. The Provincial
Parliaments followed the Parliament of Paris. After this the King had no
alternative but to try the experiment of calling the States-General.
They met on May 4, 1789, and instantly an administrative system, which
no longer rested upon a social centre of gravity, crumbled, carrying the
judiciary w