While these traditions show that there was no lack of energy and force among the 'downtrodden' Picard peasantry before the Revolution of 1789, the local history of the province also proves that the liberal ideas which are commonly supposed to have been introduced into France by the Revolution were at work in Picardy among the _noblesse_ and the clergy long before. The _corvée_, for example, of which we hear so much in many so-called histories of the French Revolution, was abolished under Louis XVI. in Picardy, before the States-General of 1789 were convened.
That the _corvée_, in itself, cannot have been the absolutely intolerable thing it is commonly supposed to have been may be inferred, I think, from the fact that, under the name of _prestation en nature_, it still exists in many parts of the French Republic. It figures in all the schedules of departmental taxation which I have seen down to the year 1889; and, for that matter, it existed in New England down to a very recent date, if it does not now exist there. It was obviously liable to abuse, and doubtless was abused, and the Intendant of Picardy, M. d'Aguay, made a striking speech, on the benefits to be expected from its abolition, to the Provincial Parliament in 1787. From this speech we learn that the money value of the _corvée_ in hand had been computed at 900,000 livres, but that the Intendant working out the details of the abolition of the system, with the help of a number of the local landholders (commonly supposed to have been the tyrants who profited by the abuse), had reduced this estimate to 300,000 livres, at which sum the tax had been converted into a money payment for the maintenance of the roads, the province being thus relieved of two-thirds of the burden borne by it. It is instructive to learn that attempts to bring about similar results elsewhere in France were resented and resisted, not by the great landholders, but by the corvéable peasants themselves! What they really wanted, it would seem, was not so much to be relieved of the obligation of forced labour by a payment of money, as to have their roads made for them at the expense of the State, under the impression, ineradicable down to our own day, and elsewhere than in France, that what everybody pays nobody pays, an impression which is the trusty shield and weapon at once of the Socialists and of the Protectionists all over the world.