Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/384

 374 Reviews of Books disposal by the state of the property of the clergy and of the emigres. And it is the first volume of each of these two remarkable series which have now come to hand and demand our attention. It is noteworthy that the two volumes are neither of them printed at the National Printing Office at Paris, but each in the region with which it has to do. Moreover, while externally they exhibit a close family resemblance, they dififer in type and even in the size of the page, and are not given a number as members in a definite series. These are all indications of the decentralizing tendencies of the commission, which, in view of the now highly satisfactory organization of historical re- search throughout France, has probably wisely apportioned the labor connected with their vast undertakings among local committees, for which they have prepared careful directions. It is to be hoped, how- ever, that the volumes will be numbered and listed in such a way that librarians and students of the Revolution may be able to satisfy them- selves at any moment how far a particular set has 'progressed. The format, large octavo with a page somewhat shorter than that of this journal, is a convenient one. A great part of the cahiers of the bailiiagcs and scncchaussccs. that is, the final redactions prepared for the deputies to take with them to Ver- sailles, were, it will be recollected, published a good many years ago by the editors of the Archives Parlcmcntaircs. But their work was carelessly done, and the new commission headed by M. Jaures wisely determined to reprint the cahiers included in this and a number of scattered collec- tions along with the great mass of those 'which were as yet buried in the local archives. The magnitude of the enterprise may be judged from the fact that the cahiers of the single hailliagc of Orleans (although by no means all are preserved and a number may be omitted by reason of their practical identity with others) will fill two stout octavo volumes. M. Bloch's first volume, which includes the parish cahiers of the rural districts and of the towns of the bailUagc other than Orleans, is to be followed by a second devoted to the grievances of the gilds and other corporations and the cahiers of the secondary bailiiagcs (of which the primary cahiers, it may be observed, are not to be found). In seventy pages of introduction the editor discusses the important question, how far were the rural cahiers copied from one another or from models, and, where models were used, what were they? He shows that there was much imitation and that where several assemblies were presided over in turn by the same official he not unnaturally sub- mitted to each new parish the cahier adopted in the last, which might or might not be seriously modified. Yet it would be quite preposterous, as he urges, to assume that there was not a general and genuine ex- pression of popular opinion in these lists of grievances, even if their formulation in one parish was adopted verbatim by another. The second part of the editor's introduction attempts to give a picture of the economic conditions in the bailliagc of Orleans in the year 1789. He