"Luxury, Debauchary, and Lavish Expenditure"

Author Bio: The author was the Marquis de Ferrieres, who, despite being a conservative noble, was a severe critic of the monarchy, the nobility, and revolutionaries.

Context/Background: The division of land and wealth among the people was highly unequal. 3% of the population (clergy and nobles) owned 45% of the land while the 97% was crammed onto the remaining 55%. de Ferriers, though a noble, is pointing out these unfair divisions as well as the distribution of power under a sort of spoils system. Though critical of the monarchy, nobility, and revolutionaries alike, the Marquis de Ferriers is in this case more critical of the monarchy and nobility.

Summary: The Marquis de Ferrieres is essentially writing a criticism towards the monarchy and nobility's handling of wealth, position, and power. He says that the population under each parish and their subsequent donations to the church do not always correlate to the salary of the priests. In some cases, there is a significant population, but the priest earns a meager salary. In other cases, the priest has a very tiny population he serves, or does not perform his duties, but gains an exorbitant portion for his salary. de Ferriers attributes this to the corrupt "spoils system" of the monarchy. In many cases, these religious leaders take the people's money and spend it on luxuries and "sinful" activities or things. de Ferriers further criticizes the monarchy for putting these men into these positions of power. The priests/bishops are not assigned their positions based on their abilities as religious leaders, but rather based on the amount of influence they have. As such, the number of honest priests and religious leaders is at a minimum and the people are left abandoned. The bishops that were appointed to their positions were in it for the money and power, but they found their actually duties distasteful and neglected the needs of the people. The French people were left with only a few obscure priests to cater to their religious needs while the appointed religious leaders and nobles wasted away massive amounts of land and wealth.


Key Quotation: "while in their neighborhood were benefices of ten and twelve thousand livres income, possessed of ecclesiastics who performed no function in the cult and who, residing elsewhere, carried away the revenue of these benefices, dissipating it in luxury, debauchery, and lavish expenditure..."

"Inasmuch as the appointment of bishops had been concentrated in the hands of the king, or rather in the hands of the ministers, too often the choice fell, not upon him who possessed the most apostolic virtues, but upon him whose family enjoyed the greatest influence."