The Aristocratic Resurgence 339
sent the Third Estate, and they included over forty of the very parlementaires that
Calonne was trying to outflank.
The meetings of the Notables were highly acrimonious. Calonne informed them
of the deficit. They were incredulous, as well they might be, for no one supposed
the grandest monarchy in Europe to be so deplorably embarrassed—it may be re-
membered that Dutch bankers, no mean judges, had for several years been shifting
investments from England into France. Calonne insisted on the urgent need of
more revenue. The Assembly replied that economy would serve the purpose better.
Calonne denounced “privilege.” The Assembly countered with allegations of “des-
potism.” Persuaded finally of the reality of the crisis, the Notables announced their
acceptance in principle of equal liability to taxation. They refused, however, to en-
dorse the tax proposed by Calonne, or to agree to elected assemblies in which the
difference between noble and commoner should have no place. Such assemblies,
they warned, would become “democratic or despotic.” They declared that they had
no powers to bind anyone to any program. Their aim was to throw the whole mat-
ter back into the hands of the parlements. Some, including Lafayette, even talked
of the Estates General.
I have observed on an earlier page that the failure of the Bourbon monarchy was
in part a failure of public relations, that it had shrouded its most justifiable policies
in an administrative secrecy, and exhibited its most objectionable features to the
world. Calonne now broke the tradition of government secrecy. He appealed to the
public, inundating the country with free copies of an Avertissement in which his
case was stated. He told the country that its fiscal system was unjust. He said that
it favored the rich against the poor. He openly denounced privilege, and it was in
fact Calonne, speaking in the King’s name, who more than anyone gave this word
its revolutionary significance. He also broke the tradition of absolutism, or of abso-
lutist methods of reform, by offering to consult with the country, or at least with
the taxpayers, through the experiment of elected assemblies. He was not trusted.
The government could not so easily live down its reputation for being arbitrary,
devious, and extravagant. The court at Versailles was widely detested, by nobles and
non- nobles alike. Its worst features were dramatized by the Queen, Marie Antoi-
nette, who was regarded as frivolous, petty, unthinking, capricious, intriguing, and
outrageously wasteful. The affair of the Diamond Necklace in 1785 seemed to
prove the worst that could be believed. The best churchmen, the soundest provin-
cial nobility, the parlements, and the enlightened bourgeoisie all suspected any
minister or program that emanated from the court.
Calonne was driven from office, and was replaced by the Archbishop of Tou-
louse, Loménie de Brienne, who attempted to carry Calonne’s program in a modi-
fied form through the parlements. Brienne battled the magistrates for a year, using
all the weapons at the King’s disposal, exil, lettres de cachet, lits de justice. The parle-
ments became the upholders of political liberty. They denounced arbitrary taxation
and arbitrary arrest; they laid down as fundamental to the laws of France the prin-
ciple of consent to taxation, the liberties of the provinces, and the inamovibilité des
magistrats, that is their own inalienable right to office. The Frenchman, they said,
loves his King, “but what he pays to the King he really owes only to the State.” The