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thus given from < c Boterus , a famous historian . " It is said to contain the followin g particulars : ( i 12 Archbishopricks , 104 Rishopricks , 540 Arch-Priories , 1450 Abbies , 12 , 3 * 20 Priories , 567 Nunneries , 130 , 000 Parish Priests , 700 Convents of Friars , 259
Commendams of the Knights of Malta . Another historian , named the Cabinet du Roy , gives account that no less than three millions of people live upon the Church revenues of France ; that their revenues are 86 millions of crowns , ( which makes
20 millions sterling , ) besides their Baisemain , ^ Eastern-offering , ] which he reckons as much more , and that , over and above all this , they have incredible reserves of provisions , which are annually laid into their stores , besides their rents . " ( P . 22 . )
From considering the French noblesse y our traveller discovers , that " there may be noble peasants , and peasantly nobles , whilst many times a person meanly descended shall be
ennobled with the ornaments of virtue , temperance and courage ; and another derived , perhaps , from royal blood , shall have nothing * to boast of but his pedigree . " ( P . 49 . ) The 4 th chapter ,
" Of Tax-Gatherers , Court-Officers and the Army , " opens with the following tra ^ i-comedy :
" By this time we came to a village where were divers carts , loaden with lumber , and a miserable parcel of householdstuff of divers sorts , as if some hospital had been to be removed ; and we imagined the people had been about to transplant their habitations : but at length , perceiving amongst them some files of fuziliers ,
we then concluded that it was some seizure made for the King ' s gabete or taxes : and it was no otherwise . There were a parcel of old and decrepit people , and many children , making a dreadful clamour for the poor remainder of their goods . Some of the men had their sons
and the women their husbands in the army ; those that brought them in their daily bread , were either killed , or daily hazarding their lives in the King ' s service , and yet his tax-gatherers were come to strip these to be-pitied wretches of that little that remained . I heard divers
of them say , they had nothing left to make a little broth in for iheir children ; others , that they had not a bed to lie on , nor a blanket to cover them . This lamentable object moved us to compassion , and we could not but have some sensible impressions of the great hardship they laboured under ; but the soldiers and collectors , being accustomed to actions of cruelty , laughed , and mocked them ,
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a of the officers brougjit a ftddfe out of a certain houge , > and was followed by a lame fellow , wko used ina&y .- -ig . treaties , and made sad remonstrances of the pitiful coudition he should be in jf that were carried away : it was his wholp
estate , all he had to live upon in ^ world . The other wretches , though they saw almost all the ^ necessaries they had carrying away foenii thent ^ -yet * besought the o ^ cer nxoife in bebfclf trf > the fiddler than themselves $ « alleging , if 4 hat instrument were takeju * awayy they should then have nothing left ta divert and solace themselves . amidst their sorrews , but
must at once be stripped of all the comfort of their lives . Perceiving the profound stupidity and ignorance of those poor people , we joined our intercessions in behalf of the minstrel ; whereupon the officer , after some sage remarks on the necessity of paying the King ' s dues , consented , on condition that they Should give him three or four dances for his favour
The hduler , overjoyed with the re-possession of his tenement , tickled up hb minstrel to some tune , and the Monsieursand JVIadams danced like so many puppets acted by wires or springs . Some with their feet stuffed in wooden boxes with hav or straw : others shaked off
their timber-slippers , and tript it on their primitive trotters ; the old and youug , matron and infant , all moved as naturally to the notes of the fiddle , as Virginal Jacks caper to the motion of your fmger . Sometimes they were in a ring like fairies , then acting the haye , like furies in a play : but by the halting of some , hopping and shrugging of others ,
1 could not but think of our play of the Merry Beggars , and in ail my life never saw that dance so naturally acted ; sometimes casting a look at the carts , you would see the hands wrung , or the breast thumped , and a sigh or two uttered , but still the ( faiic ' e ' SVetit on , and all signs of sorrow were PdprWssed , as if it had been no less than treasoii'to groan in the hearing of their ¦¦ oj » pnt > 8 . * or 8 . " ( Pp . 6 * 1—& " > . )
44 Arrived at the £ reat Metropolis , who , though . she ljoasts to be as large as old Rome , ' hath neither the privileges nor the bravery of *' that heroic people , " ( p . 8 , i , Vonr traveller found
" the kitchen" of Hist tilh semimff forth " so powerfulIy *' th ; e bdour " onions and garlic , afl if / & hdd been m Egypt . " Pond of tills Tiaj > py allusion , Ik ; thus expatiates :
" For my share , 1 thought it resembled the house of bondage in so many respects , that if some of the old Israelites were to leave their sepulchres for a time , an take a tarn or two here , they w ouia
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202 Book-JVorm . No . XXVII .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1822, page 202, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2511/page/10/
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