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.