The Parliaments burst out into remonstrances.
"Every owner of property has the right to grant subsidies by himself or by his representatives," said the Parliament of Paris; "if he do not exercise this right as a member of a national body, it must be reverted to indirectly, otherwise he is no longer master of his own, he is no longer undisturbed owner." Confidence in personal declarations, then, is the only indemnity for the right, which the nation has not exercised but has not lost, of itself granting and assessing the twentieths.

A bold principle, even in a free state, and one on which the income-tax rests in England, but an untenable principle, without absolute equality on the part of all citizens and a common right to have their consent asked to the imposts laid upon them.
M.Necker did not belong to the court; he had never lived there, he did not set foot therein when he became minister.

A while ago Colbert and Louvois had founded families and taken rank among the great lords who were jealous of their power and their wealth.

Under Louis XVI., the court itself was divided, and one of the queen's particular friends, Baron do Besenval, said, without mincing the matter, in his Memoires: "I grant that the depredations of the great lords who are at the head of the king's household are enormous, revolting.

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