ABSTRACT
A study of comparative statistics makes it clear that in none of the decades immediately following the Revolution did French national prosperity make such rapid forward strides as in the two preceding it. That France could prosper and grow rich, given the inequality of taxation, the vagaries of local laws, internal customs barriers, feudal rights, the trade corporations, the sales of offices, and all the rest, may well seem hardly credible. Those parts of France in which the improvement in the standard of living was most pronounced were the chief centers of the revolutionary movement. In these parts the freedom and wealth of the peasants had long been better assured than in any other pays d’élection. At the height of its power, feudalism did not inspire so much hatred as it did on the eve of its eclipse. The brief imprisonment of Beaumarchais shocked Paris more than the dragonnades of 1685.
