Alpha Book

The most trivial affairs were regulated by
overbearing and exacting royal officials. Everything depended upon the
honesty and industry or upon the meanness and caprice of these
officials. Each petty officer transmitted long reports to his superior;
but the general public was kept in the dark about official matters, and
was left to guess, as best it could, the reasons for the seemingly
unreasonable acts of the government. If an intendant increased the
taxes on a village, the ignorant inhabitants blamed it upon official
"graft" or favoritism. Or, if hard times prevailed, or if a shaky
bridge broke down, the villagers were prone in any case to find fault
with the government, for the more mysterious and powerful the
government was, the more likely was it to bear the blame for all ills.
Confusion in administrative offices was not the only confusion in
eighteenth-century France. There was no uniformity or simplicity in
standards of weight and measure, in coinage, in tolls, in internal
customs-duties.


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