  Although Rehberg's conservative views were formed before the Revolution, his early reaction to events in France was not hostile. He was sympathetic to the moderate French reformers in the National Assembly, and he was hostile to royalists who insisted that France return to the days of absolute rule.  Unlike Burke, he refused to whitewash the ancien régime, and he fully recognized that, before the Revolution, France had been in desperate need of social and political reform.  Its taxes fell heavily on the poor, its aristocrats had undeserved privileges, and its monarchs had ruled by whim.  Like all the Hannoverians, Rehberg's great hope was that France would evolve toward something like the British constitution, that it would become something like a Parliament along the Seine.  He knew that France and Britian were very different societies, having different languages, traditions and values, and that it was impossible for one country to adopt wholesale the constitution of another. Nevertheless, he still hoped that the Estates General could become something like the British parliament.  If only French aristocrats could be more like their British cousins, and if only Louis XVI could be persuaded to limits his powers like George III.  When, however, it became clear that the Constituent Assembly was bent on more radical democratic and egalitarian changes, Rehberg's sympathy transformed into antipathy.  His opposition became resolute, even passionate, when he saw that the French were ready to import these radical changes into Germany.  