Excerpt from Lectures on the History of France, Vol. 2 of 2

When, in June, 1787, Louis XVI. required the Parliament of Paris to register his edict for raising a revenue by stamps, that body, assisted by the Dukes and Peers of France, resolved, that the right of imposing taxes on the people belonged to the States General, and to them alone, and that the parliaments were not competent to sanction any fiscal ordinances. How then did it happen that the Power of the Purse, which the theory of the French constitution thus ascribed to the national representatives, never yielded, in that kingdom, its legitimate fruit of constitutional freedom? The present and the following lecture will be devoted to the investigation of that problem. I must, however, approach it by what, I fear, may seem a circuitous and a wearisome path.

The revenue of the kings of France may be considered as having been either ordinary or extraordinary.

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