Lastly they made a claim, which they were as qualified to make as they were intelligent in making, for the removal of the commercial barriers which divided the provinces and prevented the free transport of merchandise.

They pointed out the repairing of the roads and the placing of them in good condition as the first means of increasing the general prosperity.

Not a single branch of the administration of the kingdom escaped their conscientious scrutiny: law, finance, and commerce by turns engaged their attention; and in all these different matters they sought to ameliorate institutions, but never to usurp power.

They did not come forward like the shrievalty of the University of Paris in 1413, with a new system of administration; the reign of Louis XI.

had left nothing that was important or possible, in that way, to conceive; there was nothing more to be done than to glean after him, to relax those appliances of government which he had stretched at all points, and to demand the accomplishment of such of his projects as were left in arrear and the cure of the evils he had caused by the frenzy and the aberrations of his absolute will." We do not care to question the merits of the states-general of 1484; we have but lately striven to bring them to light, and we doubt not but that the enduring influence of their example and their sufferings counted for much in the progress of good government during the reign of Louis XII.
It is an honor to France to have always resumed and pursued from crisis to crisis, through a course of many sufferings, mistakes, and tedious gaps, the work of her political enfranchisement and the foundation of a regimen of freedom and legality in the midst of the sole monarchy which so powerfully contributed to her strength and her greatness.