<P> The fundamental issue of poverty was aggravated by social inequality as all peasants were liable to pay taxes, from which the nobility could claim immunity, and feudal dues payable to a local seigneur or lord . Similarly, the destination of tithes which the peasants were obliged to pay to their local churches was a cause of grievance as it was known that the majority of parish priests were poor and the contribution was being paid to an aristocratic, and usually absentee, abbot . The clergy numbered about 100,000 and yet they owned 10% of the land . The Catholic Church maintained a rigid hierarchy as abbots and bishops were all members of the nobility and canons were all members of wealthy bourgeois families . As an institution, it was both rich and powerful . As with the nobility, it paid no taxes and merely contributed a grant to the state every five years, the amount of which was self - determined . The upper echelons of the clergy had considerable influence over government policy . </P> <P> Dislike of the nobility was especially intense . Successive French kings and their ministers had tried with limited success to suppress the power of the nobles but, in the last quarter of the 18th century, "the aristocracy were beginning once again to tighten their hold on the machinery of government". </P> <P> A growing number of the French citizenry had absorbed the ideas of "equality" and "freedom of the individual" as presented by Voltaire, Jean - Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot and other philosophers and social theorists of the Age of Enlightenment . The American Revolution demonstrated that it was plausible for Enlightenment ideas about how a government should be organized to actually be put into practice . Some American diplomats, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, had lived in Paris, where they consorted freely with members of the French intellectual class . Furthermore, contact between American revolutionaries and the French troops who served in North America helped spread revolutionary ideas to the French people . </P> <P> France in 1787, although it faced some difficulties, was one of the most economically capable nations of Europe . The French population exceeded 28 million; of Europe's 178 to 188 millions, only Imperial Russia had a greater population (37 to 41 million). France was also among the most urbanized countries of Europe, the population of Paris was second only to that of London (approximately 500,000 vs. 800,000), and six of Europe's 35 larger cities were French . </P>

Causes for the outbreak of the french revolution