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DESTRUCTION.
I .-- Two principal vices of the ancient regime.
Two principal reforms proposed by the King and the privileged classes .-- They suffice for actual needs .-- Impracticable if carried further.
In the structure of the old society there were two fundamental vices which called for two reforms of corresponding importance.[2201] In the first place, those who were privileged having ceased to render the services for which the advantages they enjoyed constituted their compensation and their privileges were no longer anything but a gratuitous charge imposed on one portion of the nation for the benefit of the other.

Hence the necessity for suppressing them.
In the second place, the Government, being absolute, made use of public resources as if they were its own private property, arbitrarily and wastefully;[2202] it was therefore necessary to impose upon it some effective and regular restraints.
To render all citizens equal before taxation, to put the purse of the tax-payers into the hands of their representatives, such was the twofold operation to be carried out in 1789; and the privileged class as well as the King willingly lent themselves to it.

Not only, in this respect, were the memorials of nobles and clergy in perfect harmony, but the monarch himself; in his declaration of the 23rd of June, 1789, decreed the two articles.

Henceforth, every tax or loan was to obtain the consent of the States-General; this consent was to be renewed at each new meeting of the States; the public estimates were to be annually published, discussed, specified, apportioned, voted on and verified by the States; there were to be no arbitrary assessments or use of public funds; allowances were to be specially assigned for all separate services, the household of the King included.