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After having momentarily provided for the necessities of the treasury, the assembly, although now become sovereign, consulted, by examining the cahiers, the wishes of its constituents. It then proceeded to form its institutions with a method, a liberal and extensive spirit of discussion, which was to procure for France a constitution conformable with justice and suited to its necessities.
His other plan was that the King should make himself master of the revolution before its complete explosion; he advised his Majesty to go to the Assembly, and there, in person, to demand the cahiers, and to make the greatest sacrifices to satisfy the legitimate wishes of the people, and not to give the factious time to enlist them in aid of their criminal designs.
Bachelors, T., Rennes, A. P., v. 544, Section 115. Vicheray, A. P., vi. 24, Section 30. Cities, T., Albret, A. P., i. 706, Section 38. Theoretical attacks on luxury are common in all ages, and not very significant. Far more so are proposals for progressive taxation. These are of occasional occurrence in the cahiers.
Thus the cahiers do not attack the right of property in the abstract; on the contrary, they maintain it. But they shake its foundations by blows aimed at vested rights and at prescription. The question of taxation is postponed in the cahiers to that of constitutional rights. But financial necessities were the very cause of the existence of the Estates General, the opportunity for all reforms.
We already hear the murmur of the cahiers of five-and-twenty years later in the account of the transports of joy with which the citizens of Lisieux saw the taille proportionelle established , and how numerous other cities sent up prayers that the same blessing might be conferred on them.
This work relates to monuments and inscriptions, of which it gives an accurate account. Voyage Géographique et Pittoresque des Départements de la France. Paris, 1794-97, 11 vols. fol. Voyage dans les Départements de la France. Par La Vallée, pour le Texte; Brun père, pour la Partie Géographique; Brun fils, pour celle de Dessein. Paris, 1790 1800. 100 cahiers, 8vo.
The most advanced merely asked that taxes should be imposed only with the consent of the States General and paid by all alike. The same cahiers sometimes expressed a wish that the power of the king should be limited by a Constitution defining his rights and those of the nation.
To be sure, these documents, called cahiers, were not revolutionary in wording: with wonderful uniformity they expressed loyalty to the monarchy and fidelity to the king: in not a single one out of the thousand cahiers was there a threat of violent change. But in spirit the cahiers were eloquent.
The budgets usually showed deficits, and the imposts of all kinds were raised by tyrannical farmers-general. At the very moment of the Revolution this condition of the finances became the cause of universal discontent, which is expressed in the cahiers of the States General.
Dinners and balls were given to the voters; promises were made. The badges of an order of canonesses, which the duke proposed to found, were distributed among the ladies. Some of the cahiers were entirely of home manufacture, drawn up by the lawyer or the priest of the village. The people of Essy-les-Nancy, in Lorraine, describe the process.
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