In 1720, though the population of the whole realm was only fourteen or fifteen millions, that of Paris had reached no less a figure than a million and a half.

After the explosion of the System, its artificial expansion naturally came to an end.

By the middle of the century the highest estimate of the population does not make it much more than eight hundred thousand.[44] This, unlike the socially unwholesome and monstrous agglomerations of Paris or London in our own time, was a population over which police supervision might be made tolerably effective.

It was more like a very large provincial town.
Again, the inhabitants were marked off into groups or worlds with a definiteness that is now no longer possible.

One-fifth of the population, for instance, consisted of domestic servants.[45] There were between twenty-eight and thirty thousand professional beggars.[46] The legal circle was large, and was deeply engrossed by its own interests and troubles.