pp.
532-536], attributes it especially to the influence of the states assembled at Tours, in 1484, at the beginning of the reign of Charles VIII.: "They employed," he says, "the greatest efforts to reduce the figure of the impost; they claimed the voting of subsidies, and took care not to allow them, save by way of gift and grant.

They did not hesitate to revise certain taxes, and when they were engaged upon the subject of collecting of them, they energetically stood out for the establishment of a unique, classified body of receivers-royal, and demanded the formation of all the provinces into districts of estates, voting and apportioning their imposts every year, as in the cases of Languedoc, Normandy, and Dauphiny.

The dangers of want of discipline in an ill-organized standing army and the evils caused to agriculture by roving bands drove the states back to reminiscences of Charles VII.'s armies; and they called for a mixed organization, in which gratuitous service, commingled in just proportion with that of paid troops, would prevent absorption of the national element.

To reform the abuses of the law, to suppress extraordinary commissions, to reduce to a powerful unity, with parliaments to crown all, that multitude of jurisdictions which were degenerate and corrupt products of the feudal system in its decay, such was the constant aim of the states-general of 1484.

They saw that a judicial hierarchy would be vain without fixity of laws; and they demanded a summarization of customs and a consolidation of ordinances in a collection placed within reach of all.