'Handful of country clowns . . . not a greater number of traders': there were some seventy or eighty farmers and perhaps the same number of merchants. Of physicians instead of a "pretty considerable" number (l. 27) there were sixteen. Burke's slights on this profession remind us that his favourite French author was Moliere. And why should we look for "the natural landed interest of the country" in the Tiers État when it was so abundantly represented in the nobility.