The abuses attending the levy of taxes were heavy and universal. The kingdom was parceled into generalities, with an intendant at the head of each, into whose hands the whole power of the crown was delegated for everything except the military authority; but particularly for all affairs of finance. The generalities were subdivided into elections, at the head of which was a sub-delegue appointed by the intendant. The rolls of the taille, capitation, vingtiemes, and other taxes were distributed among districts, parishes, and individuals, at the pleasure of the intendant, who could exempt, change, add, or diminish at pleasure. Such an enormous power, constantly acting, and from which no man was free, must, in the nature of things, degenerate in many cases into absolute tyranny. It must be obvious that the friends, acquaintances, and dependents of the intendant, and of all his sub-delegues, and the friends of these friends, to a long chain of dependence, might be favored in taxation at the expense of their miserable neighbors; and that noblemen in favour at court, to whose protection the intendant would naturally look up, could find little difficulty in throwing much of the weight of their taxes on others, without a similar support. Instances, even of gross ones, have been reported to me in many parts of the kingdom, that make me shudder at the oppression to which numbers must have been condemned, by the undue favours granted to such crooked influence. But, without recurring to such cases, what must have been the state of the poor people paying heavy taxes, from which the nobility and clergy were exempted?... The corvees [taxes paid in labor, usually road building], or police of the roads, were annually the ruin of many hundreds of farmers; more than 300 were reduced to beggary in filling up one vale in Lorraine: all these oppressions fell on the Third Estate only; the nobility and clergy having been equally exempted from tailles, militia and corvees.... The exclusive hunting rights of the nobility were a dreadful scourge on all occupiers of land.... In speaking of the preservation of game in the capitanieries, it must be observed that by game must be understood whole droves of wild boars, and herds of deer not confined by and wall or pale, but wandering at pleasure over the whole country, to the destruction of crops; and to the peopling of the galleys by the wretched peasants, who presumed to kill them in order to save that food which was to support their helpless children.... Now an English reader will scarcely understand it without being told, that there were numerous edicts for preserving the game which prohibited weeding and hoeing, lest the young partridges should be disturbed;...manuring with night soil, lest the flavour of the partridges should be injured by feeding on the corn so produced; mowing hay, etc., before a certain time, so late as to spoil many crops; and taking away the stubble, which would deprive the birds of shelter. The tyranny exercised in these capitanieries, which extended over 400 leagues of the country, was so great than many cahiers [list of grievances] demanded the utter suppression of them. Such were the exertions of arbitrary power which the lower orders felt directly from the royal authority; but, heavy as they were, it is a question whether the [abuses] suffered [indirectly'] through the nobility and the clergy, were not yet more oppressive. Nothing can exceed the complaints made in the cahiers under this head. They speak of the dispensation of justice in the manorial courts, as comprising every species of despotisms; the districts indeterminate--appeals endless--irreconcilable to liberty and prosperity--and irrevocably [condemned] in the opinion of the public.... The judges, completely ignore pretenders, who hold their courts in cabarets, and are absolutely dependent on the lords. Nothing can exceed the force of expression used in painting the oppressions of the lords, in consequence of the feudal powers.... The countryma is tyrannically enslaved by it.... In passing through many of the French provinces, I was struck with the various and heavy complaints of the farmers and little proprietors of the feudal grievances, with the weight of which their industry was [burdened]; but I could not then conceive the multiplicity of the shackles which kept them poor and depressed. I understood it better afterwards.