sums taken from the Almanach, and bear in mind that they must be
doubled, and more, to obtain the real revenue, and be quadrupled, and
more, to obtain the actual value. It is evident, that, with such
revenues, coupled with the feudal rights, police, justiciary and
administrative, which accompany them, an ecclesiastic or lay grand
seignior is, in fact, a sort of prince in his district. He bears too
close a resemblance to the ancient sovereign to be entitled to live as
an ordinary individual. His private advantages impose on him a public
character. His rank, and his enormous profits, makes it incumbent on
him to perform proportionate services, and that, even under the sway
of the intendant, he owes to his vassals, to his tenants, to his
feudatories the support of his mediation, of his patronage and of his
gains.

To do this he must be in residence, but, generally, he is an
absentee. For a hundred and fifty years a kind of all-powerful
attraction diverts the grandees from the provinces and impels them
towards the capital. The movement is irresistible, for it is the
effect of two forces, the greatest and most universal that influence
mankind, one, a social position, and the other the national character.
A tree is not to be severed from its roots with impunity. Appointed to
govern, an aristocracy frees itself from the land when it no longer
rules. It ceases to rule the moment when, through increasing and
constant encroachments, almost the entire justiciary, the entire
administration, the entire police, each detail of the local or general
government, the power of initiating, of collaboration, of control
regarding taxation, elections, roads, public works and charities,
passes over into the hands of the intendant or of the sub-delegate,
under the supreme direction of the comptroller-general or of the
king's council.[29] Civil servants, men "of the robe and the quill,"