34/40 As a first step, the director-general of finance boldly demanded to be henceforth admitted to the council. hesitated, perplexed and buffeted between contrary influences and desires. He was grateful to M.Necker for the courageous suppressions he had accomplished, and for the useful reforms whereof the honor was to remain inseparable from his name; it was at M.Necker's advice that he had abolished mortmain in his dominions. A remnant of feudal serfdom still deprived certain of the rural classes, subject to the tenement law, of the right to marry or bequeath what they possessed to their children without permission of their lord. If they left the land which made them liable to this tyranny, their heritage reverted of right to the proprietor of the fief. |