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Title: The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 - And the Causes Which Led to That Event
Author: Tocqueville, Alexis de
Language: English
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THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION OF 1789
And the Causes Which Led to That Event
by
ALEXIS de TOCQUEVILLE
Member of the French Academy
Translated by Henry Reeve, D.C.L.
Third Edition
London
John Murray, Albemarle Street
1888
Printed by
Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square
London
CONTENTS.
PAGE
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION [5]
PRELIMINARY NOTICE [9]
_BOOK I._
CHAPTER
I. Opposing Judgments passed on the French Revolution at its
II. The Fundamental and Final Object of the Revolution was not,
as has been supposed, the destruction of Religious
Authority and the weakening of Political Power 5
III. Showing that the French Revolution was a Political
Revolution which followed the course of Religious
Revolutions, and for what Reasons 9
IV. Showing that nearly the whole of Europe had had precisely
the same Institutions, and that these Institutions were
everywhere falling to pieces 12
V. What was the peculiar scope of the French Revolution 16
_BOOK II._
I. Why Feudal Rights had become more odious to the People in
France than in any other country 19
II. Showing that Administrative Centralisation is an
Institution anterior in France to the Revolution of 1789,
and not the product of the Revolution or of the Empire,
as is commonly said 28
III. Showing that what is now called Administrative Tutelage was
an Institution in France anterior to the Revolution 36
IV. Administrative Jurisdiction and the Immunity of Public
Officers are Institutions of France anterior to the
Revolution 45
V. Showing how Centralisation had been able to introduce
itself among the ancient Institutions of France, and to
supplant without destroying them 50
VI. The Administrative Habits of France before the Revolution 54
VII. Of all European Nations France was already that in which
the Metropolis had acquired the greatest preponderance
over the Provinces, and had most completely absorbed the
whole Empire 63
VIII. France was the Country in which Men had become the most
alike 67
IX. Showing how Men thus similar were more divided than ever
into small Groups, estranged from and indifferent to each
other 71
X. The Destruction of Political Liberty and the Estrangement
of Classes were the causes of almost all the disorders
which led to the Dissolution of the Old Society of France 84
XI. Of the Species of Liberty which existed under the Old
Monarchy, and of the Influence of that Liberty on the
Revolution 94
XII. Showing that the Condition of the French Peasantry,
notwithstanding the progress of Civilisation, was
sometimes worse in the Eighteenth Century than it had
been in the Thirteenth 105
XIII. Showing that towards the Middle of the Eighteenth Century
Men of Letters became the leading Political Men of
France, and of the effects of this occurrence 119
XIV. Showing how Irreligion had become a general and dominant
passion amongst the French of the Eighteenth Century, and
what influence this fact had on the character of the
Revolution 128
XV. That the French aimed at Reform before Liberty 136
XVI. Showing that the Reign of Louis XVI. was the most
prosperous epoch of the old French Monarchy, and how this
very prosperity accelerated the Revolution 146
XVII. Showing that the French People were excited to revolt by
the means taken to relieve them 155
XVIII. Concerning some practices by which the Government completed
the Revolutionary Education of the People of France 162
XIX. Showing that a great Administrative Revolution had preceded
the Political Revolution, and what were the consequences
it produced 166
XX. Showing that the Revolution proceeded naturally from the
existing State of France 175
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
On the Pays d’États, and especially on the Constitutions of
Languedoc 182
_BOOK III._
I. Of the violent and undefined Agitation of the Human Mind at
the moment when the French Revolution broke out 192
II. How this vague perturbation of the Human Mind suddenly
became in France a positive passion, and what form this
passion at first assumed 201
III. How the Parliaments of France, following precedent,
overthrew the Monarchy 205
IV. The Parliaments discover that they have lost all Authority,
just when they thought themselves masters of the Kingdom 224
V. Absolute Power being subdued, the true spirit of the
Revolution forthwith became manifest 229
VI. The preparation of the instructions to the Members of the
States-General drove the conception of a Radical
Revolution home to the mind of the People 240
VII. How, on the Eve of the Convocation of the National
Assembly, the mind of the Nation was more enlarged, and
its spirit raised 243
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 247
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION.
An interval of about seventeen years has elapsed since the first
publication of this book in France, and of the translation of it, which
appeared simultaneously, in England. The English version has not been
republished, and has long been out of print. But the work itself has
retained a lasting place in the political literature of Europe.
The historical events which have occurred since the date of its first
publication have again riveted the attention of every thinking man on
the astonishing phenomena of the French Revolution, which has resumed
in these later days its mysterious and destructive course; and a deeper
interest than ever seems to attach itself to the first causes of this
long series of political and social convulsions, which appear to be as
far as ever from their termination.
Nor is this interest confined to the state of France alone; for at each
succeeding period of our contemporary annals the operation and effects
of the same causes may be traced in other countries, and the principles
which the author of this book discerned with unerring sagacity derive
fresh illustrations every day from the course of events both abroad and
at home.
For this reason, mainly, this translation is republished at the present
time, in the hope that it may be read by men of the younger generation,
who were not in being when it first appeared, and that some of those
who read it before may be led by the light of passing events to read
it again. For I venture to say that in no other work on the French
Revolution has the art of scientific analysis been applied with equal
skill to the genesis of these great changes: no other writer has so
skilfully traced the continuous operation of the causes, long anterior
to the Revolution itself, which have gradually reduced one of the
greatest monarchies of Europe to its present condition.
Are we to learn from this stern lesson of experience that the hopes
of progress are closely united to the germs of dissolution, and that
the great transformation hailed with so much enthusiasm eighty-four
years ago was but the prelude of a final catastrophe; that the nation
which was the first to plunge into this new order of things, by
the destruction of all that it once loved and revered, is also the
first to make manifest its fatal results; and that the last results
of civilisation are no preservative against the decline of empires?
These pages may suggest such reflections, for if the vices and abuses
of political society in France before the Revolution were, in some
measure, peculiar to herself, the elements of destruction which the
Revolution let loose upon the world are common to all civilised nations.
In the present edition, moreover, it appeared to be desirable to make
a considerable addition to the volume published in 1856. At the time
of his death in the spring of 1859, M. de Tocqueville had made some
progress in the continuation of his work, though his labour advanced
very slowly, from the minute and conscientious care with which he
conducted his researches and elaborated his thoughts. Seven chapters
of the new volume were, however, found among his papers by his friend
and literary executor, M. Gustave de Beaumont, in a state approaching
to completeness; and these posthumous chapters were published in the
seventh volume of the collected edition of M. de Tocqueville’s works.
They have not before been translated, and they are, I believe, but
little known in this country.
These chapters are not inferior, I think, to any of the works of their
author in originality and interest; and they have the merit of bringing
down his Survey of the State of France before the Revolution to the
very moment which preceded the convocation of the States-General.
I have therefore included these posthumous chapters in the present
edition, and they form a Third Book, in addition to the two books of
the original volume.
HENRY REEVE.
_April 1873._
PRELIMINARY NOTICE
The book I now publish is not a history of the French Revolution; that
history has been written with too much success for me to attempt to
write it again. This volume is a study on the Revolution.
The French people made, in 1789, the greatest effort which was ever
attempted by any nation to cut, so to speak, their destiny in halves,
and to separate by an abyss that which they had heretofore been from
that which they sought to become hereafter. For this purpose they took
all sorts of precautions to carry nothing of their past with them into
their new condition; they submitted to every species of constraint in
order to fashion themselves otherwise than their fathers were; they
neglected nothing which could efface their identity.
I have always thought that they had succeeded in this singular attempt
much less than was supposed abroad, and less than they had at first
supposed themselves. I was convinced that they had unconsciously
retained from the former state of society most of the sentiments, the
habits, and even the opinions, by means of which they had effected the
destruction of that state of things; and that, without intending it,
they had used its remains to rebuild the edifice of modern society,
insomuch that, fully to understand the Revolution and its work, we must
forget for an instant that France which we see before us, and examine
in her sepulchre that France which is no more. This is what I have
endeavoured to do; but I have had more difficulty than I could have
supposed in accomplishing this task.
The first ages of the French Monarchy, the Middle Ages, and the Revival
of Letters have each given rise to vast researches and profound
disquisitions which have revealed to us not only the events of those
periods of history, but the laws, the customs, and the spirit of the
Government and the nation in those eras. But no one has yet taken the
trouble to investigate the eighteenth century in the same manner and
with the same minuteness. We suppose that we are thoroughly conversant
with the French society of that date, because we clearly distinguish
whatever glittered on its surface; we possess in detail the lives
of the most eminent persons of that day, and the ingenuity or the
eloquence of criticism has familiarised us with the compositions of the
great writers who adorned it. But as for the manner in which public
affairs were carried on, the practical working of institutions, the
exact relation in which the different classes of society stood to each
other, the condition and the feelings of those classes which were as
yet neither seen nor heard beneath the prevailing opinions and manners
of the country,--all our ideas are confused and often inaccurate.
I have undertaken to reach the core of this state of society under
the old monarchy of France, which is still so near us in the lapse of
years, but concealed from us by the Revolution.
For this purpose I have not only read over again the celebrated books
which the eighteenth century produced, I have also studied a multitude
of works less known and less worthy to be known, but which, from the
negligence of their composition, disclose, perhaps, even better than
more finished productions, the real instincts of the time. I have
applied myself to investigate thoroughly all the public documents by
which the French may, at the approach of the Revolution, have shown
their opinions and their tastes. The regular reports of the meetings
of the States, and subsequently of the Provincial Assemblies, have
supplied me with a large quantity of evidence. I have especially
made great use of the Instructions drawn up by the Three Orders in
1789. These Instructions, which form in the original a long series of
manuscript volumes, will remain as the testament of the old society of
France, the supreme record of its wishes, the authentic declaration of
its last intentions. Such a document is unique in history. Yet this
alone has not satisfied me.
In countries in which the Administrative Government is already
powerful, there are few opinions, desires, or sorrows--there are few
interests or passions--which are not sooner or later stripped bare
before it. In the archives of such a Government, not only an exact
notion of its procedure may be acquired, but the whole country is
exhibited. Any stranger who should have access to all the confidential
correspondence of the Home Department and the Prefectures of France
would soon know more about the French than they know themselves. In the
eighteenth century the administration of the country, as will be seen
from this book, was highly centralised, very powerful, prodigiously
active. It was incessantly aiding, preventing, permitting. It had much
to promise--much to give. Its influence was already felt in a thousand
ways, not only on the general conduct of affairs, but on the condition
of families and the private life of every individual. Moreover, as this
administration was without publicity, men were not afraid to lay bare
before its eyes even their most secret infirmities. I have spent a
great deal of time in studying what remains of its proceedings, both at
Paris and in several provinces.[1]
There, as I expected, I have found the whole structure of the old
monarchy still in existence, with its opinions, its passions, its
prejudices, and its usages. There every man spoke his mind and
disclosed his innermost thoughts. I have thus succeeded in acquiring
information on the former state of society, which those who lived in it
did not possess, for I had before me that which had never been exposed
to them.
As I advanced in these researches I was surprised perpetually to find
again in the France of that time many of the characteristic features of
the France of our own. I met with a multitude of feelings which I had
supposed to be the offspring of the Revolution--a multitude of ideas
which I had believed to originate there--a multitude of habits which
are attributed to the Revolution alone. Everywhere I found the roots
of the existing state of French society deeply imbedded in the old
soil. The nearer I came to 1789, the more distinctly I discerned the
spirit which had presided over the formation, the birth, and the growth
of the Revolution; I gradually saw the whole aspect of the Revolution
uncovered before me; already it announced its temperament--its
genius--itself. There, too, I found not only the reason of what it
was about to perform in its first effort, but still more, perhaps, an
intimation of what it was eventually to leave behind it. For the French
Revolution has had two totally distinct phases: the first, during which
the French seemed eager to abolish everything in the past; the second,
when they sought to resume a portion of what they had relinquished.
Many of the laws and political practices of the old monarchy thus
suddenly disappeared in 1789, but they occur again some years later, as
some rivers are lost in the earth to burst forth again lower down, and
bear the same waters to other shores.
The peculiar object of the work I now submit to the public is to
explain why this great Revolution, which was in preparation at the same
time over almost the whole continent of Europe, broke out in France
sooner than elsewhere; why it sprang spontaneously from the society it
was about to destroy; and, lastly, how the old French Monarchy came to
fall so completely and so abruptly.
It is not my intention that the work I have commenced should stop
short at this point. I hope, if time and my own powers permit it, to
follow, through the vicissitudes of this long Revolution, these same
Frenchmen with whom I have lived so familiarly under the old monarchy,
and whom that state of society had formed--to see them modified and
transformed by the course of events, but without changing their nature,
and constantly appearing before us with features somewhat different,
but ever to be recognised.
With them I shall proceed to review that first epoch of 1789, when
the love of equality and that of freedom shared their hearts--when
they sought to found not only the institutions of democracy, but
the institutions of freedom--not only to destroy privileges, but to
acknowledge and to sanction rights: a time of youth, of enthusiasm, of
pride, of generous and sincere passion, which, in spite of its errors,
will live for ever in the memory of men, and which will still long
continue to disturb the slumbers of those who seek to corrupt or to
enslave them.
Thus rapidly following the track of this same Revolution, I shall
attempt to show by what events, by what faults, by what miscarriages,
this same French people was led at last to relinquish its first aim,
and, forgetful of freedom, to aspire only to become the equal servants
of the World’s Master--how a Government, stronger and far more absolute
than that which the Revolution had overthrown, grasped and concentrated
all the powers of the nation, suppressed the liberties which had
been so dearly bought, putting in their place the counterfeit of
freedom--calling ‘sovereignty of the people’ the suffrages of electors
who can neither inform themselves nor concert their operations, nor,
in fact, choose--calling ‘vote of taxes’ the assent of mute and
enslaved assemblies; and while thus robbing the nation of the right of
self-government, of the great securities of law, of freedom of thought,
of speech, and of the pen--that is, of all the most precious and the
most noble conquests of 1789--still daring to assume that mighty name.
I shall pause at the moment when the Revolution appears to me to have
nearly accomplished its work and given birth to the modern society
of France. That society will then fall under my observation: I shall
endeavour to point out in what it resembles the society which preceded
it, in what it differs, what we have lost in this immense displacement
of our institutions, what we have gained by it, and, lastly, what may
be our future.
A portion of this second work is sketched out, though still unworthy to
be offered to the public. Will it be given me to complete it? Who can
say? The destiny of men is far more obscure than that of nations.
I hope I have written this book without prejudice, but I do not profess
to have written it without passion. No Frenchman should speak of his
country and think of this time unmoved. I acknowledge that in studying
the old society of France in each of its parts I have never entirely
lost sight of the society of more recent times. I have sought not only
to discover the disease of which the patient died, but also the means
by which life might have been preserved. I have imitated that medical
analysis which seeks in each expiring organ to catch the laws of life.
My object has been to draw a picture strictly accurate, and at the
same time instructive. Whenever I have met amongst our progenitors
with any of those masculine virtues which we most want and which we
least possess--such as a true spirit of independence, a taste for
great things, faith in ourselves and in a cause--I have placed them in
relief: so, too, when I have found in the laws, the opinions, and the
manners of that time traces of some of those vices which after having
consumed the former society of France still infest us, I have carefully
brought them to the light, in order that, seeing the evil they have
done us, it might better be understood what evils they may still
engender. To accomplish this object I confess I have not feared to
wound either persons, or classes, or opinions, or recollections of the
past, however worthy of respect they may be. I have done so often with
regret, but always without remorse. May those whom I have thus perhaps
offended forgive me in consideration of the honest and disinterested
object which I pursue.
Many will perhaps accuse me of showing in this book a very unseasonable
love of freedom--a thing for which it is said that no one any longer
cares in France.
I shall only beg those who may address to me this reproach to consider
that this is no recent inclination of my mind. More than twenty years
ago, speaking of another community, I wrote almost textually the
following observations.
Amidst the darkness of the future three truths may be clearly
discovered. The first is, that all the men of our time are impelled
by an unknown force which they may hope to regulate and to check, but
not to conquer--a force which sometimes gently moves them, sometimes
hurries them along, to the destruction of aristocracy. The second is,
that of all the communities in the world those which will always be
least able permanently to escape from absolute government are precisely
the communities in which aristocracy has ceased to exist, and can never
exist again. Lastly, the third is, that despotism nowhere produces
more pernicious effects than in these same communities, for more than
any other form of government despotism favours the growth of all the
vices to which such societies are specially liable, and thus throws an
additional weight on that side to which, by their natural inclination,
they were already prone.
Men in such countries, being no longer connected together by any
ties of caste, of class, of corporation, of family, are but too
easily inclined to think of nothing but their private interests,
ever too ready to consider themselves only, and to sink into the
narrow precincts of self, in which all public virtue is extinguished.
Despotism, instead of combating this tendency, renders it irresistible,
for it deprives its subjects of every common passion, of every mutual
want, of all necessity of combining together, of all occasions of
acting together. It immures them in private life: they already tended
to separation; despotism isolates them: they were already chilled in
their mutual regard; despotism reduces them to ice.
In such societies, in which nothing is stable, every man is incessantly
stimulated by the fear of falling and by eagerness to rise; and as
money, while it has become the principal mark by which men are classed
and distinguished, has acquired an extraordinary mobility, passing
without cessation from hand to hand, transforming the condition of
persons, raising or lowering that of families, there is scarcely a
man who is not compelled to make desperate and continual efforts to
retain or to acquire it. The desire to be rich at any cost, the love of
business, the passion of lucre, the pursuit of comfort and of material
pleasures, are therefore in such communities the prevalent passions.
They are easily diffused through all classes, they penetrate even to
those classes which had hitherto been most free from them, and would
soon enervate and degrade them all, if nothing checked their influence.
But it is of the very essence of despotism to favour and extend that
influence. These debilitating passions assist its work: they divert and
engross the imaginations of men away from public affairs, and cause
them to tremble at the bare idea of a revolution. Despotism alone can
lend them the secrecy and the shade which put cupidity at its ease, and
enable men to make dishonourable gains whilst they brave dishonour.
Without despotic government such passions would be strong: with it they
are sovereign.
Freedom alone, on the contrary, can effectually counteract in
communities of this kind the vices which are natural to them, and
restrain them on the declivity along which they glide. For freedom
alone can withdraw the members of such a community from the isolation
in which the very independence of their condition places them by
compelling them to act together. Freedom alone can warm and unite them
day by day by the necessity of mutual agreement, of mutual persuasion,
and mutual complaisance in the transaction of their common affairs.
Freedom alone can tear them from the worship of money, and the petty
squabbles of their private interests, to remind them and make them
feel that they have a Country above them and about them. Freedom alone
can sometimes supersede the love of comfort by more energetic and more
exalted passions--can supply ambition with larger objects than the
acquisition of riches--can create the light which enables us to see and
to judge the vices and the virtues of mankind.
Democratic communities which are not free may be rich, refined,
adorned, magnificent, powerful by the weight of their uniform mass;
they may contain many private merits--good fathers of families, honest
traders, estimable men of property; nay, many good Christians will be
found there, for their country is not of this world, and the glory of
their faith is to produce such men amidst the greatest depravity of
manners and under the worst government. The Roman Empire in its extreme
decay was full of such men. But that which, I am confident, will never
be found in such societies is a great citizen, or, above all, a great
people; nay, I do not hesitate to affirm that the common level of the
heart and the intellect will never cease to sink as long as equality of
conditions and despotic power are combined there.
Thus I thought and thus I wrote twenty years ago. I confess that since
that time nothing has occurred in the world to induce me to think or to
write otherwise. Having expressed the good opinion I had of Freedom at
a time when Freedom was in favour, I may be allowed to persist in that
opinion though she be forsaken.
Let it also be considered that even in this I am less at variance with
most of my antagonists than perhaps they themselves suppose. Where
is the man who, by nature, should have so mean a soul as to prefer
dependence on the caprices of one of his fellow-creatures to obedience
to laws which he has himself contributed to establish, provided that
his nation appear to him to possess the virtues necessary to use
freedom aright? There is no such man. Despots themselves do not deny
the excellence of freedom, but they wish to keep it all to themselves,
and maintain that all other men are utterly unworthy of it. Thus it
is not on the opinion which may be entertained of freedom that this
difference subsists, but on the greater or the less esteem we may have
for mankind; and it may be said with strict accuracy that the taste
a man may show for absolute government bears an exact ratio to the
contempt he may profess for his countrymen. I pause before I can be
converted to that opinion.
I may add, I think, without undue pretensions, that the volume now
published is the product of very extended labours. Sometimes a short
chapter has cost me more than a year of researches. I might have
surcharged my pages with notes, but I have preferred to insert them
in a limited number at the end of the volume, with a reference to the
pages of the text to which they relate. In these notes the reader will
find some illustrations and proofs of what I have advanced. I could
largely augment the quantity of them if this book should appear to
require it.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I have more especially used the archives of some of the great
Intendancies, particularly that of Tours, which are very complete and
relate to a very extensive district placed in the centre of France, and
peopled by a million of inhabitants. My thanks are due to the young
and able keeper of these records, M. Grandmaison. Other districts,
amongst them that of the Île-de-France, have shown me that business was
transacted in the same manner in the greater part of the kingdom.
STATE OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE
BEFORE THE
REVOLUTION OF 1789.
_BOOK I._
CHAPTER I.
OPPOSING JUDGMENTS PASSED ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AT ITS ORIGIN.
Nothing is better fitted to give a lesson in modesty to philosophers
and statesmen than the history of the French Revolution; for never were
there events more important, longer in ripening, more fully prepared,
or less foreseen.
The great Frederick himself, with all his genius, failed to perceive
what was coming, and was almost in contact with the event without
seeing it. Nay, more, he even acted in the spirit of the Revolution
beforehand, and was in some sort its precursor, and already its
agent; yet he did not recognise its approach, and when at length
it made its appearance, the new and extraordinary features which
were to distinguish its aspect, amidst the countless crowd of human
revolutions, still passed unheeded.
The curiosity of all other countries was on the stretch. Everywhere
an indistinct conception arose amongst the nations that a new period
was at hand, and vague hopes were excited of great changes and
reforms; but no one as yet had any suspicion of what the Revolution
was really to become. Princes and their ministers lacked even the
confused presentiment by which the masses were agitated; they beheld
in the Revolution only one of those periodical disorders to which the
constitutions of all nations are subject, and of which the only result
is to open fresh paths for the policy of their neighbours. Even when
they did chance to express a true opinion on the events before them,
they did so unconsciously. Thus the principal sovereigns of Germany
assembled at Pillnitz in 1791, proclaimed indeed that the danger which
threatened royalty in France was common to all the established powers
of Europe, and that all were threatened by the same peril; but in fact
they believed nothing of the kind. The secret records of the period
prove that they held this language only as a specious pretext to cover
their real designs, or at least to colour them in the eyes of the
multitude.
As for themselves, they were convinced that the French Revolution was
an accident merely local and temporary, which they had only to turn to
good account. With this notion they laid plans, made preparations, and
contracted secret alliances; they quarrelled among themselves for the
division of their anticipated spoils; split into factions, entered into
combinations, and were prepared for almost every event, except that
which was impending.
The English indeed, taught by their own history and enlightened by
the long practice of political freedom, perceived dimly, as through a
thick veil, the approaching spectre of a great revolution; but they
were unable to distinguish its real shape, and the influence it was so
soon to exercise upon the destinies of the world and upon their own
was unforeseen. Arthur Young, who travelled over France just as the
Revolution was on the point of breaking out, and who regarded it as
imminent, so entirely mistook its real character, that he thought it
was a question whether it would not increase existing privileges. ‘As
for the nobility and clergy,’ says he, ‘if this Revolution were to make
them still more preponderant, I think it would do more harm than good.’
Burke, whose genius was illuminated by the hatred with which the
Revolution inspired him from its birth, Burke himself hesitated, for a
moment uncertain, at the sight. His first prediction was that France
would be enervated, and almost annihilated by it. ‘France is, at
this time, in a political light, to be considered as expunged out of
the system of Europe; whether she could ever appear in it again as a
leading power, was not easy to determine; but at present he considered
France as not politically existing; and, most assuredly, it would take
up much time to restore her to her former active existence. _Gallos
quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus_, might possibly be the language
of the rising generation.’[2]
The judgment of those on the spot was not less erroneous than that
of distant observers. On the eve of the outbreak of the Revolution,
men in France had no distinct notion of what it would do. Amidst the
numerous instructions to the delegates of the States General I have
found but two which manifest some degree of apprehension of the people.
The fears expressed all relate to the preponderance likely to be
retained by royalty, or the Court, as it was still called. The weakness
and the short duration of the States General were a source of anxiety,
and fears were entertained that they might be subjected to violence.
The nobility were especially agitated by these fears. Several of their
instructions provide, ‘The Swiss troops shall take an oath never to
bear arms against the citizens, not even in case of riot or revolt.’
Only let the States General be free, and all abuses would easily be
destroyed; the reform to be made was immense, but easy.
Meanwhile the Revolution pursued its course. By degrees the head
of the monster became visible, its strange and terrible aspect was
disclosed; after destroying political institutions it abolished civil
institutions also; after changing the laws it changed the manners, the
customs, and even the language of France; after overthrowing the fabric
of government it shook the foundations of society, and rose against
the Almighty himself. The Revolution soon overflowed the boundaries
of France with a vehemence hitherto unknown, with new tactics, with
sanguinary doctrines, with _armed opinions_--to use the words of
Pitt--with an inconceivable force which struck down the barriers of
empires, shattered the crowns of Europe, trampled on its people,
though, strange to say, it won them to its cause; and, as all these
things came to pass, the judgment of the world changed. That which at
first had seemed to the princes and statesmen of Europe to be one of
the accidents common in the life of a nation, now appeared to them an
event so unprecedented, so contrary to all that had ever happened in
the world, and, at the same time, so wide-spread, so monstrous, and
so incomprehensible, that the human mind was lost in amazement at the
spectacle. Some believed that this unknown power, which nothing seemed
to foster or to destroy, which no one was able to check, and which
could not check itself, must drive all human society to its final and
complete dissolution. Many looked upon it as the visible action of the
devil upon earth. ‘The French Revolution has a Satanic character,’ says
M. de Maistre, as early as 1797. Others, on the contrary, perceived
in it a beneficent design of Providence to change the face not only
of France but of the world, and to create, as it were, a new era of
mankind. In many writers of that time may be seen somewhat of the
religious terror which Salvian felt at the incursion of the Barbarians.
Burke, reverting to his first impressions, exclaimed, ‘Deprived of
the old government, deprived in a manner of all government, France,
fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators, might have appeared more
likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition
of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them
all; but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen
a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise
than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued
the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end unappalled by
peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common
means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it
was possible she could at all exist,’ etc.[3]
And was the event really as extraordinary as it appeared to those
who lived at the time when it took place? Was it so unprecedented,
so utterly subversive, so pregnant with new forms and ideas as they
imagined it to be? What was the real meaning, the real character--what
have been the permanent effects of this strange and terrible
Revolution? What did it, in reality, destroy, and what has it created?
The proper moment for examining and deciding these questions seems now
to have arrived, and we are now standing at the precise point whence
this vast phenomenon may best be viewed and judged. We are far enough
removed from the Revolution to be but slightly touched by the passions
which blinded those who brought it about, and we are near enough to it
to enter into the spirit which caused these things to happen. Ere long
this will have become more difficult; for as all great revolutions,
when successful, sweep away the causes which engendered them, their
very success serves to render them unintelligible to later generations.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Burke’s speech on the Army estimates, 1790.
[3] Letters on a Regicide Peace.
CHAPTER II.
THE FUNDAMENTAL AND FINAL OBJECT OF THE REVOLUTION WAS NOT, AS HAS
BEEN SUPPOSED, THE DESTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AND THE
WEAKENING OF POLITICAL POWER.
One of the first acts of the French Revolution was to attack the
Church; and amongst all the passions born of the Revolution the first
to be excited and the last to be allayed were the passions hostile
to religion. Even when the enthusiasm for liberty had vanished, and
tranquillity had been purchased at the price of servitude, the nation
still revolted against religious authority. Napoleon, who had succeeded
in subduing the liberal spirit of the French Revolution, made vain
efforts to restrain its antichristian spirit; and even in our own time
we have seen men who thought to atone for their servility towards the
meanest agents of political power by insolence towards God, and who
whilst they abandoned all that was most free, most noble, and most
lofty in the doctrines of the Revolution, flattered themselves that
they still remained true to its spirit by remaining irreligious.
Nevertheless it is easy now to convince ourselves that the war waged
against religions was but one incident of this great Revolution, a
feature striking indeed but transient in its aspect, a passing result
of the ideas, the passions, and special events which preceded and
prepared it, and not an integral part of its genius.
The philosophy of the eighteenth century has rightly been looked upon
as one of the chief causes of the Revolution, and it is quite true that
this philosophy was profoundly irreligious. But we must be careful to
observe that it contains two distinct and separable parts.
One of these relates to all the new or newly revived opinions
concerning the condition of society, and the principles of civil
and political laws, such, for instance, as the natural equality of
mankind, and the abolition of all privileges of caste, of class, of
profession, which is the consequence of that equality; the sovereignty
of the people, the omnipotence of social power, the uniformity of laws.
All these doctrines were not only causes of the French Revolution,
they were its very substance: of all its effects they are the most
fundamental, the most lasting, and the most true, as far as time is
concerned.
In the other part of their doctrines the philosophers of the eighteenth
century attacked the Church with the utmost fury; they fell foul of
her clergy, her hierarchy, her institutions, her dogmas; and, in order
more surely to overthrow them, they endeavoured to tear up the very
foundations of Christianity. But as this part of the philosophy of the
eighteenth century arose out of the very abuses which the Revolution
destroyed, it necessarily disappeared together with them, and was as
it were buried beneath its own triumph. I will add but one word to
make myself more fully understood, as I shall return hereafter to this
important subject: it was in the character of a political institution,
far more than in that of a religious doctrine, that Christianity had
inspired such fierce hatreds; it was not so much because the priests
assumed authority over the concerns of the next world, as because they
were landowners, landlords, tithe-owners, and administrators in this
world; not because the Church was unable to find a place in the new
society which was about to be constituted, but because she filled the
strongest and most privileged place in the old state of society which
was doomed to destruction.
Observe how the progress of time has made and still makes this
truth more and more palpable day by day. In the same measure that
the political effects of the Revolution have become more firmly
established, its irreligious results have been annihilated; in the same
measure that all the old political institutions which the Revolution
attacked have been entirely destroyed--that the powers, the influences,
and the classes which were the objects of its especial hostility have
been irrevocably crushed, until even the hatred they inspired has begun
to lose its intensity--in the same measure, in short, as the clergy has
separated itself more and more from all that formerly fell with it, we
have seen the power of the Church gradually regain and re-establish its
ascendency over the minds of men.
Neither must it be supposed that this phenomenon is peculiar to France;
there is hardly any Christian church in Europe that has not recovered
vitality since the French Revolution.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the democratic state of society
is necessarily hostile to religion: nothing in Christianity, or even
in Catholicism, is absolutely opposed to the spirit of this form of
society, and many things in democracy are extremely favourable to it.
Moreover, the experience of all ages has shown that the most living
root of religious belief has ever been planted in the heart of the
people. All the religions which have perished lingered longest in that
abode, and it would be strange indeed if institutions which tend to
give power to the ideas and passions of the people were, as a permanent
and inevitable result, to lead the minds of men towards impiety.
What has just been said of religious, may be predicated even more
strongly of social, authority.
When the Revolution overthrew at once all the institutions and all
the customs which up to that time had maintained certain gradations
in society, and kept men within certain bounds, it seemed as if the
result would be the total destruction not only of one particular
order of society, but of all order: not only of this or that form of
government, but of all social authority; and its nature was judged to
be essentially anarchical. Nevertheless, I maintain that this too was
true only in appearance.
Within a year from the beginning of the revolution, Mirabeau wrote
secretly to the King: ‘Compare the new state of things with the old
rule; there is the ground for comfort and hope. One part of the acts
of the National Assembly, and that the more considerable part, is
evidently favourable to monarchical government. Is it nothing to be
without parliaments? without the _pays d’état_? without a body of
clergy? without a privileged class? without a nobility? The idea
of forming a single class of all the citizens would have pleased
Richelieu; this equality of the surface facilitates the exercise of
power. Several successive reigns of an absolute monarchy would not have
done as much for the royal authority as this one year of revolution.’
Such was the view of the Revolution taken by a man capable of guiding
it.
As the object of the French Revolution was not only to change an
ancient form of government, but also to abolish an ancient state of
society, it had to attack at once every established authority, to
destroy every recognised influence, to efface all traditions, to create
new manners and customs, and, as it were, to purge the human mind of
all the ideas upon which respect and obedience had hitherto been based.
Thence arose its singularly anarchical character.
But, clear away the ruins, and you behold an immense central power,
which has attracted and absorbed into unity all the fractions of
authority and influence which had formerly been dispersed amongst a
host of secondary powers, orders, classes, professions, families and
individuals, and which were disseminated throughout the whole fabric
of society. The world had not seen such a power since the fall of the
Roman Empire. This power was created by the Revolution, or rather it
arose spontaneously out of the ruins which the Revolution had left.
The governments which it founded are more perishable, it is true, but
a hundred times more powerful than any of those which it overthrew; we
shall see hereafter that their fragility and their power were owing to
the same causes.
It was this simple, regular, and imposing form of power which Mirabeau
perceived through the dust and rubbish of ancient, half-demolished
institutions. This object, in spite of its greatness, was still
invisible to the eyes of the many, but time has gradually unveiled
it to all eyes. At the present moment it especially attracts the
attention of rulers: it is looked upon with admiration and envy not
only by those whom the Revolution has created, but by those who are
the most alien and the most hostile to it; all endeavour, within their
own dominions, to destroy immunities and to abolish privileges. They
confound ranks, they equalise classes, they supersede the aristocracy
by public functionaries, local franchises by uniform enactments, and
the diversities of authority by the unity of a Central Government.
They labour at this revolutionary task with unwearied industry, and
when they meet with occasional obstacles, they do not scruple to copy
the measures as well as the maxims of the Revolution. They have even
stirred up the poor against the rich, the middle classes against
the nobility, the peasants against their feudal lords. The French
Revolution has been at once their curse and their instructor.
CHAPTER III.
SHOWING THAT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION WAS A POLITICAL REVOLUTION WHICH
FOLLOWED THE COURSE OF RELIGIOUS REVOLUTIONS, AND FOR WHAT REASONS.
All mere civil and political revolutions have had some country for
their birth-place, and have remained circumscribed within its limits.
The French Revolution, however, had no territorial boundary--far from
it; one of its effects has been to efface as it were all ancient
frontiers from the map of Europe. It united or it divided mankind
in spite of laws, traditions, characters, and languages, turning
fellow-countrymen into enemies, and foreigners into brothers; or
rather, it formed an intellectual country common to men of every
nation, but independent of all separate nationalities.
We should search all the annals of history in vain for a political
revolution of the same character; that character is only to be found in
certain religious revolutions. And accordingly it is to them that the
French Revolution must be compared, if any light is to be thrown upon
it by analogy.
Schiller remarks, with truth, in his ‘History of the Thirty Years’
War,’ that the great Reformation of the sixteenth century had the
effect of bringing together nations which scarcely knew each other, and
of closely uniting them by new sympathies. Thus it was that Frenchmen
warred against Frenchmen, while Englishmen came to their assistance;
men born on the most distant shores of the Baltic penetrated into the
very heart of Germany in order to defend Germans of whose existence
they had never heard until then. International wars assumed something
of the character of civil wars, whilst in every civil war foreigners
were engaged. The former interests of every nation were forgotten
in behalf of new interests; territorial questions were succeeded
by questions of principle. The rules of diplomacy were involved in
inextricable confusion, greatly to the horror and amazement of the
politicians of the time. The very same thing happened in Europe after
1789.
The French Revolution was then a political revolution, which in its
operation and its aspect resembled a religious one. It had every
peculiar and characteristic feature of a religious movement; it
not only spread to foreign countries, but it was carried thither
by preaching and by propaganda. It is impossible to conceive a
stranger spectacle than that of a political revolution which inspires
proselytism, which its adherents preach to foreigners with as much
ardour and passion as they have shown in enacting it at home. Of
all the new and strange things displayed to the world by the French
Revolution, this assuredly is the newest. On penetrating deeper into
this matter, we shall most likely discover that this similarity of
effects must be produced by a latent similarity of causes.
The general character of most religions is, that they deal with man
by himself, without taking into consideration whatever the laws, the
traditions, and the customs of each country may have added to his
original nature. Their principal aim is to regulate the relations of
man towards God, and the rights and duties of men towards each other,
independently of the various forms of society. The rules of conduct
which they inculcate apply less to the man of any particular country
or period than to man as a son, a father, a servant, a master, or a
neighbour. Being thus based on human nature itself, they are applicable
to all men, and at all times, and in all places. It is owing to this
cause that religious revolutions have so often spread over such vast
spheres of action, and have seldom been confined, like political
revolutions, to the territory of a single nation, or even of a single
race. If we investigate this subject still more closely, we shall find
that the more any religion has possessed the abstract and general
character to which I refer, the wider has it spread, in spite of all
differences of laws, of climate, and of races.
The pagan religions of antiquity, which were all more or less bound up
with the political constitution or the social condition of each nation,
and which displayed even in their dogmas a certain national, and even
municipal, character, seldom spread beyond their own territorial
limits. They sometimes engendered intolerance and persecution, but
proselytism was to them unknown. Accordingly there were no great
religious revolutions in Western Europe previous to the introduction
of Christianity, which easily broke through barriers that had been
insurmountable to the pagan religions, and rapidly conquered a large
portion of the human race. It is no disrespect to this holy religion to
say, that it partly owed its triumph to the fact that it was more free
than any other faith from everything peculiar to any one nation, form
of government, social condition, period, or race.
The French Revolution proceeded, as far as this world is concerned,
in precisely the same manner that religious revolutions proceed with
regard to the next; it looked upon the citizen in the abstract,
irrespective of any particular society, just as most religions look
upon man in general independently of time or country. It did not
endeavour merely to define what were the especial rights of a French
citizen, but what were the universal duties and rights of all men in
political matters. It was by thus recurring to that which was least
peculiar and, we might almost say, most _natural_ in the principles
of society and of government that the French Revolution was rendered
intelligible to all men, and could be imitated in a hundred different
places.
As it affected to tend more towards the regeneration of mankind than
even towards the reform of France, it roused passions such as the most
violent political revolutions had never before excited. It inspired a
spirit of proselytism and created the propaganda. This gave to it that
aspect of a religious revolution which so terrified its contemporaries,
or rather, we should say, it became a kind of new religion in itself--a
religion, imperfect it is true, without a God, without a worship,
without a future life, but which nevertheless, like Islam, poured forth
its soldiers, its apostles, and its martyrs over the face of the earth.
It must not, however, be imagined that the mode of operation pursued
by the French Revolution was altogether without precedent, or that all
the ideas which it developed were entirely new. In every age, even in
the depths of the Middle Ages, there had been agitators who invoked the
universal laws of human society in order to subvert particular customs,
and who have attempted to oppose the constitutions of their own
countries with weapons borrowed from the natural rights of mankind. But
all these attempts had failed; the firebrand which ignited Europe in
the eighteenth century had been easily extinguished in the fifteenth.
Revolutions are not to be produced by arguments of this nature until
certain changes have already been effected in the condition, the
habits, and the manners of a nation, by which the minds of men are
prepared to undergo a change.
There are periods in which men differ so completely from each other,
that the notion of a single law applicable to all is entirely
incomprehensible to them. There are others in which it is sufficient to
show to them from afar off the indistinct image of such a law in order
to make them recognise it at once, and hasten to adopt it.
The most extraordinary phenomenon is not so much that the French
Revolution should have pursued the course it did, and have developed
the ideas to which it gave rise, but that so many nations should have
reached a point at which such a course could be effectually employed
and such maxims be readily admitted.
CHAPTER IV.
SHOWING THAT NEARLY THE WHOLE OF EUROPE HAD HAD PRECISELY THE SAME
INSTITUTIONS, AND THAT THESE INSTITUTIONS WERE EVERYWHERE FALLING TO
PIECES.
The tribes which overthrew the Roman Empire, and which in the end
formed all the modern nations of Europe, differed among each other in
race, in country, and in language; they only resembled each other in
barbarism. Once established in the dominions of the empire they engaged
in a long and fierce struggle, and when at length they had gained a
firm footing they found themselves divided by the very ruins they had
made. Civilisation was almost extinct, public order at an end, the
relations between man and man had become difficult and dangerous, and
the great body of European society was broken up into thousands of
small distinct and hostile societies, each of which lived apart from
the rest. Nevertheless certain uniform laws arose all at once out of
the midst of this incoherent mass.
These institutions were not copied from the Roman legislation;[4]
indeed they were so much opposed to it that recourse was had to the
Roman law to alter and abolish them. They have certain original
characteristics which distinguish them from all other laws invented by
mankind. They corresponded to each other in all their parts, and, taken
together, they formed a body of law so compact that the articles of
our modern codes are not more perfectly coherent; they were skilfully
framed laws intended for a half-savage state of society.
It is not my purpose to inquire how such a system of legislation could
have arisen, spread, and become general throughout Europe. But it
is certain that in the Middle Ages it existed more or less in every
European nation, and that in many it prevailed to the exclusion of
every other.
I have had occasion to study the political institutions of the Middle
Ages in France, in England, and in Germany, and the further I proceeded
in my labours the more was I astonished at the prodigious similarity
which existed amongst all these various sets of laws; and the more did
I wonder how nations so different, and having so little intercourse,
could have contrived laws so much alike. Not but they continually and
almost immeasurably differ in their details and in different countries,
but the basis is invariably the same. If I discovered a political
institution, a law, a fixed authority, in the ancient Germanic
legislation, I was sure, on searching further, to find something
exactly analogous to it in France and in England. Each of these three
nations helped me more fully to understand the others.
In all three the government was carried on according to the same
maxims, political assemblies were formed out of the same elements, and
invested with the same powers. Society was divided in the same manner,
and the same gradation of classes subsisted in each; in all three the
position of the nobles, their privileges, their characteristics, and
their disposition were identical; as men they were not distinguishable,
but rather, properly speaking, the same men in every place.
The municipal constitutions were alike; the rural districts were
governed in the same manner. The condition of the peasantry differed
but little; the land was owned, occupied, and tilled after the same
fashion, and the cultivators were subjected to the same burthens.
From the confines of Poland to the Irish Channel, the Lord’s estate,
the manorial courts, the fiefs, the quit-rents, feudal service,
feudal rights, and the corporations or trading guilds, were all
alike. Sometimes the very names were the same; and what is still
more remarkable, the same spirit breathes in all these analogous
institutions. I think I may venture to affirm, that in the fourteenth
century the social, political, administrative, judicial, economical,
and literary institutions of Europe were more nearly akin to each other
than they are at the present time, when civilisation appears to have
opened all the channels of communication, and to have levelled every
obstacle.
It is no part of my scheme to relate how this ancient constitution of
Europe gradually became wasted and decayed; it is sufficient to remark
that in the eighteenth century it was everywhere falling into ruin.[5]
On the whole, its decline was less marked in the east than in the west
of the continent; but on all sides old age and decrepitude were visible.
The progress of this gradual decay of the institutions of the Middle
Ages may be followed in the archives of the different nations. It
is well known that each manor kept rolls called _terriers_, in
which from century to century were recorded the limits of fiefs
and the quit-rents, the dues, the services to be rendered, and the
local customs. I have seen rolls of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries which are masterpieces of method, perspicuity, concision,
and acuteness. The further we advance towards modern times the more
obscure, ill-digested, defective, and confused do they become, in spite
of the general progress of enlightenment. It seems as if political
society became barbarous, while civil society advances towards
civilisation.
Even in Germany, where the ancient constitution of Europe had preserved
many more of its primitive features than in France, some of the
institutions which it had created were already completely destroyed.
But we shall not be so well able to appreciate the ravages of time when
we take into account what was gone, as when we examine the condition of
what was left.
The municipal institutions which in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries had raised the chief towns of Germany into rich and
enlightened small republics, still existed in the eighteenth; but they
were a mere semblance of the past. Their ancient traditions seemed to
continue in force; the magistrates appointed by them bore the same
titles and seemed to perform the same functions; but the activity, the
energy, the municipal patriotism, the manly and prolific virtues which
they formerly inspired, had disappeared. These ancient institutions
appeared to have collapsed without losing the form that distinguished
them.[6]
All the powers of the Middle Ages which where still in existence
seemed to be affected by the same disease; all showed symptoms of
the same languor and decay. Nay more, whatever was mixed up with
the constitution of that time, and had retained a strong impression
of it, even without absolutely belonging to those institutions, at
once lost its vitality. Thus it was that the aristocracy was seized
with senile debility; even political freedom, which had filled the
preceding centuries with its achievements, seemed stricken with
impotency wherever it preserved the peculiar characteristics impressed
upon it by the Middle Ages. Wherever the Provincial Assemblies had
maintained their ancient constitution unchanged, they checked instead
of furthering the progress of civilisation; they seemed insensible and
impervious to the new spirit of the times. Accordingly the hearts of
the people turned from them towards their sovereigns. The antiquity
of these institutions had not made them venerable: on the contrary,
the older they grew the more they fell into discredit; and, strangely
enough, they inspired more and more hatred in proportion as their
decay rendered them less capable of mischief. ‘The actual state of
things,’ said a German writer, who was a friend and contemporary of
the period anterior to the French Revolution, ‘seems to have become
generally offensive to all, and sometimes contemptible. It is strange
to see with what disfavour men now look upon all that is old. New
impressions creep into the bosom of our families and disturb their
peace. Our very housewives will no longer endure their ancient
furniture.’ Nevertheless, at this time Germany, as well as France,
enjoyed a high state of social activity and constantly increasing
prosperity. But it must be borne in mind that all the elements of life,
activity and production, were new, and not only new, but antagonistic
to the past.
Royalty no longer had anything in common with the royalty of the Middle
Ages, it enjoyed other prerogatives, occupied a different place, was
imbued with a different spirit, and inspired different sentiments; the
administration of the State spread in all directions upon the ruins of
local authorities; the organised array of public officers superseded
more and more the government of the nobles. All these new powers
employed methods and followed maxims which the men of the Middle Ages
had either not known or had condemned; and, indeed, they belong to a
state of society of which those men could have formed no idea.
In England, where, at the first glance, the ancient constitution of
Europe might still seem in full vigour, the case is the same. Setting
aside the ancient names and the old forms, in England the feudal system
was substantially abolished in the seventeenth century; all classes of
society began to intermingle, the pretensions of birth were effaced,
the aristocracy was thrown open, wealth was becoming power, equality
was established before the law, public employments were open to all,
the press became free, the debates of Parliament public; every one of
them new principles, unknown to the society of the Middle Ages. It is
precisely these new elements, gradually and skilfully incorporated
with the ancient constitution of England, which have revived without
endangering it, and filled it with new life and vigour without
destroying the ancient forms. In the seventeenth century England was
already quite a modern nation, which had still preserved, and, as it
were, embalmed some of the relics of the Middle Ages.
This rapid view of the state of things beyond the boundaries of France
was essential to the comprehension of what is about to follow; for
no one who has seen and studied France only, can ever--I venture to
affirm--understand anything of the French Revolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] See Note I., on the Power of the Roman Law in Germany.
[5] See Note II., on the passage from Feudal to Democratic Monarchy.
[6] See Note III., on the Decay of the Free Towns of Germany.
CHAPTER V.
WHAT WAS THE PECULIAR SCOPE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
The preceding pages have had no other purpose than to throw some light
on the subject in hand, and to facilitate the solution of the questions
which I laid down in the beginning, namely, what was the real object
of the Revolution? What was its peculiar character? For what precise
reason it was made, and what did it effect?
The Revolution was not made, as some have supposed, in order to destroy
the authority of religious belief. In spite of appearances, it was
essentially a social and political Revolution; and within the circle
of social and political institutions it did not tend to perpetuate
and give stability to disorder, or (as one of its chief adversaries
had said) to methodise anarchy; but rather to increase the power
and the rights of public authority. It was not destined (as others
have believed) to change the whole character which civilisation had
previously assumed, to check its progress, or even essentially to
alter any of the fundamental laws upon which human society in Western
Europe is based. If we divest it of all the accidental circumstances
which altered its aspect in different countries and at various times,
and consider only the Revolution itself, we shall clearly perceive
that its only effect has been to abolish those political institutions
which during several centuries had been in force among the greater part
of the European nations, and which are usually designated as feudal
institutions, in order to substitute a more uniform and simple state of
society and politics, based upon an equality of social condition.
This was quite sufficient to constitute an immense revolution, for
not only were these ancient institutions mixed up and interwoven with
almost all the religious and political laws of Europe, but they had
also given rise to a crowd of ideas, sentiments, habits, and manners
which clung around them. Nothing less than a frightful convulsion could
suddenly destroy and expel from the social body a part to which all its
organs adhered. This made the Revolution appear even greater than it
really was; it seemed to destroy everything, for what it did destroy
was bound up with, and formed, as it were, one flesh with everything in
the social body.
However radical the Revolution may have been, its innovations were,
in fact, much less than has been commonly supposed, as I shall show
hereafter. What may truly be said is, that it entirely destroyed, or is
still destroying (for it is not at an end), every part of the ancient
state of society that owed its origin to aristocratic and feudal
institutions--everything in any way connected with those institutions,
or in any degree, however slight, imbued with their spirit. It spared
no part of the old world, save such as had always been foreign to
those institutions, or could exist apart from them. Least of all was
the Revolution a fortuitous event. It took the world by surprise, it
is true, but it was not the less the completion of a long process,
the sudden and violent termination of a work which had successively
passed before the eyes of ten generations. If it had not taken place,
the old social structure would equally have fallen sooner in one place
and later in another--only it would have crumbled away by degrees
instead of falling with a crash. The Revolution effected on a sudden
and by a violent and convulsive effort, without any transition, without
forethought, without mercy, that which would have happened little by
little if left to itself. This was its work.
It is surprising that this view of the subject, which now seems so
easy to discern, should have been so obscured and confused even to the
clearest perceptions.
‘Instead of redressing their grievances,’ says Burke of the
representatives of the French nation, ‘and improving the fabric of
their state, to which they were called by their monarch and sent by
their country, they were made to take a very different course. They
first destroyed all the balances and counterpoises which serve to
fix the State and to give it a steady direction, and which furnish
sure correctives to any violent spirit which may prevail in any of
the orders. These balances existed in the oldest constitution and in
the constitution of all the countries in Europe. These they rashly
destroyed, and then they melted down the whole into one incongruous,
ill-connected mass.’[7]
Burke did not perceive that he had before his eyes the very Revolution
which was to abolish the ancient common law of Europe; he could not
discern that this and no other was the very question at issue.
But why, we may ask, did this Revolution, which was imminent throughout
Europe, break out in France rather than elsewhere, and why did it there
display certain characteristics which have appeared nowhere else, or
at least have appeared only in part? This second question is well
worthy of consideration, and the inquiry will form the subject of the
following book.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] Burke’s speech on the Army Estimates, 1790.
_BOOK II._
CHAPTER I.
WHY FEUDAL RIGHTS HAD BECOME MORE ODIOUS TO THE PEOPLE IN FRANCE THAN
IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.
It must at first sight excite surprise that the Revolution, whose
peculiar object it was, as we have seen, everywhere to abolish
the remnant of the institutions of the Middle Ages, did not break
out in the countries in which these institutions, still in better
preservation, caused the people most to feel their constraint and their
rigour, but, on the contrary, in the countries where their effects were
least felt; so that the burden seemed most intolerable where it was in
reality least heavy.
In no part of Germany, at the close of the eighteenth century, was
serfdom as yet completely abolished,[8] and in the greater part of
Germany the people were still literally _adscripti glebæ_, as in the
Middle Ages. Almost all the soldiers who fought in the armies of
Frederic II. and of Maria Theresa were in reality serfs.[9] In most
of the German States, as late as 1788, a peasant could not quit his
domain, and if he quitted it he might be pursued in all places wherever
he could be found, and brought back by force. In that domain he lived
subject to the seignorial jurisdiction which controlled his domestic
life and punished his intemperance or his sloth. He could neither
improve his condition, nor change his calling, nor marry without the
good pleasure of his master. To the service of that master a large
portion of his time was due. Labour rents (_corvées_) existed to their
full extent, and absorbed in some of these countries three days in the
week. The peasant rebuilt and repaired the mansion of the lord, carted
his produce to market, drove his carriage, and went on his errands.
Several years of the peasant’s early life were spent in the domestic
service of the manor-house. The serf might, however, become the owner
of land, but his property always remained very incomplete. He was
obliged to till his field in a certain manner under the eye of the
master, and he could neither dispose of it nor mortgage it at will.
In some cases he was compelled to sell its produce; in others he was
restrained from selling it; his obligation to cultivate the ground was
absolute. Even his inheritance did not descend without deduction to his
offspring; a fine was commonly subtracted by the lord.
I am not seeking out these provisions in obsolete laws. They are to be
met with even in the Code framed by Frederic the Great and promulgated
by his successor at the very time of the outbreak of the French
Revolution.[10]
Nothing of the kind had existed in France for a long period of time.
The peasant came, and went, and bought, and sold, and dealt, and
laboured, as he pleased. The last traces of serfdom could only be
detected in one or two of the eastern provinces annexed to France by
conquest; everywhere else the institution had disappeared; and indeed
its abolition had occurred so long before that even the date of it was
forgotten. The researches of archæologists of our own day have proved
that as early as the thirteenth century serfdom was no longer to be met
with in Normandy.
But in the condition of the people in France another and a still
greater revolution had taken place. The French peasant had not only
ceased to be a serf; he had become an Owner of Land. This fact is still
at the present time so imperfectly established, and its consequences,
as will presently be seen, have been so remarkable, that I must be
permitted to pause for a moment to examine it.
It has long been believed that the subdivision of landed property in
France dates from the Revolution of 1789, and was only the result of
that Revolution. The contrary is demonstrable by every species of
evidence.
Twenty years at least before that Revolution, Agricultural Societies
were in existence which already deplored the excessive subdivision of
the soil. ‘The division of inheritances,’ said M. de Turgot, about the
same time, ‘is such that what sufficed for a single family is shared
among five or six children. These children and their families can
therefore no longer subsist exclusively by the land.’ Necker said a
few years later that there was in France an _immensity_ of small rural
properties.
I have met the following expressions in a secret Report made
to one of the provincial Intendants a few years before the
Revolution:--‘Inheritances are divided in an equal and alarming
manner, and as every one wishes to have something of everything, and
everywhere, the plots of land are infinitely divided and perpetually
subdivided.’ Might not this sentence have been written in our days?
I have myself taken the infinite pains to reconstruct, as it were,
the survey of landed property as it existed in France before the
Revolution, and I have in some cases effected my object. In pursuance
of the law of 1790, which established the land-tax, each parish had
to frame a return of the landed properties then existing within
its boundaries. These returns have for the most part disappeared;
nevertheless I have found them in a few villages, and by comparing
them with the rolls of the present holders, I have found that, in
these villages, the number of landed proprietors at that time amounted
to one-half, frequently to two-thirds, of their present number: a
fact which is the more remarkable if it be remembered that the total
population of France has augmented by more than one-fourth since that
period.
Already, as at the present time, the love of the peasant for property
in land was intense, and all the passions which the possession of the
soil has engendered in his nature were already inflamed. ‘Land is
always sold above its value,’ said an excellent contemporary observer;
‘which arises from the passion of all the inhabitants to become owners
of the soil. All the savings of the lower orders which elsewhere are
placed out at private interest, or in the public securities, are
intended in France for the purchase of land.’
Amongst the novelties which Arthur Young observed in France, when he
visited that country for the first time, none struck him more than the
great division of the soil among the peasantry. He averred that half
the soil of France belonged to them in fee. ‘I had no idea,’ he often
says, ‘of such a state of things;’ and it is true that such a state of
things existed at that time nowhere but in France, or in the immediate
neighbourhood of France.
In England there had been peasant landowners, but the number of them
had already considerably decreased. In Germany there had been at all
times and in all parts of the country a certain number of peasant
freeholders, who held portions of the soil in fee. The peculiar and
often eccentric laws which regulated the property of these peasants are
to be met with in the oldest of the Germanic customs; but this species
of property was always of an exceptional character, and the number of
these small proprietors was very limited.[11]
The districts of Germany in which, at the close of the eighteenth
century, the peasants were possessed of land and lived almost as
freely as in France, lay on the banks of the Rhine.[12] In those same
districts the revolutionary passions of France spread with the utmost
velocity, and have always been most intense. The tracts of Germany
which remained, on the contrary, for the longest time inaccessible to
these passions, are those where no such tenures of land had yet been
introduced. The observation deserves to be made.
It is, then, a vulgar error to suppose that the subdivision of landed
property in France dates from the Revolution. This state of things is
far older. The Revolution, it is true, caused the lands of the Church
and a great portion of the lands of the nobility to be sold; but if any
one will take the trouble, as I have sometimes done, to refer to the
actual returns and entries of these sales, it will be seen that most
of these lands were purchased by persons who already held other lands;
so that though the property changed hands, the number of proprietors
increased far less than is supposed. There was already an _immensity_
of these persons, to borrow the somewhat ambitious but, in this case,
not inaccurate expression of M. Necker.
The effect of the Revolution was not to divide the soil, but to
liberate it for a moment. All these small landowners were, in reality,
ill at ease in the cultivation of their property, and had to bear many
charges or easements on the land which they could not shake off.
These charges were no doubt onerous.[13] But the cause which made
them appear insupportable was precisely that which might have seemed
calculated to diminish the burden of them. The peasants of France
had been released, more than in any other part of Europe, from the
government of their lords, by a revolution not less momentous than that
which had made them owners of the soil.
Although what is termed in France the Ancien Régime is still very near
to us, since we live in daily intercourse with men born under its
laws, that period seems already lost in the night of time. The radical
revolution which separates us from it has produced the effect of ages:
it has obliterated all that it has not destroyed. Few persons therefore
can now give an accurate answer to the simple question--How were the
rural districts of France administered before 1789? And indeed no
answer can be given to that question with precision and minuteness,
without having studied, not books, but the administrative records of
that period.
It is often said that the French nobility, which had long ceased to
take part in the government of the State, preserved to the last the
administration of the rural districts--the Seigneurs governed the
peasantry. This again is very like a mistake.
In the eighteenth century all the affairs of the parish were managed by
a certain number of parochial officers, who were no longer the agents
of the manor or domain, and whom the Lord no longer selected. Some of
these persons were nominated by the Intendant of the province, others
were elected by the peasants themselves. The duty of these authorities
was to assess the taxes, to repair the church, to build schools,
to convoke and preside over the vestry or parochial meeting. They
attended to the property of the parish and determined the application
of it--they sued and were sued in its name. Not only the lord of the
domain no longer conducted the administration of these small local
affairs, but he did not even superintend it. All the parish officers
were under the government or the control of the central power, as we
shall show in a subsequent chapter. Nay, more, the Seigneur had almost
ceased to act as the representative of the Crown in the parish, or as
the channel of communication between the King and his subjects. He
was no longer expected to apply in the parish the general laws of the
realm, to call out the militia, to collect the taxes, to promulgate the
mandates of the sovereign, or to distribute the bounty of the Crown.
All these duties and all these rights belonged to others. The Seigneur
was in fact no longer anything but an inhabitant of the parish,
separated by his own immunities and privileges from all the other
inhabitants. His rank was different, not his power. _The Seigneur is
only the principal inhabitant_ was the instruction constantly given by
the Provincial Intendants to their Sub-delegates.
If we quit the parish, and examine the constitution of the larger
rural districts, we shall find the same state of things. Nowhere did
the nobles conduct public business either in their collective or their
individual capacity. This was peculiar to France. Everywhere else
the characteristic features of the old feudal society were partially
preserved: the possession of the soil and the government of those who
dwelt on the soil were still commingled.
England was administered as well as governed by the chief owners of the
soil. Even in those parts of Germany, as in Prussia and in Austria,
in which the reigning princes had been most successful in shaking
off the control of the nobles in the general affairs of the state,
they had left to that class, to a great degree, the administration of
rural affairs, and though the landed proprietor was, in some places,
controlled by the Government, his authority had nowhere been superseded.
To say the truth, the French nobility had long since lost all hold on
the administration of public affairs, except on one single-point, that
namely of justice. The principal nobles still retained the right of
having judges who decided certain suits in their name, and occasionally
established police regulations within the limits of their domain; but
the power of the Crown had gradually cut down, limited, and subdued
this seignorial jurisdiction to such a degree that the nobles who still
exercised it regarded it less as a source of authority than as a source
of income.
Such had been the fate of all the peculiar rights of the French
nobility. The political element had disappeared; the pecuniary element
alone remained, and in some instances had been largely increased.
I speak at this moment of that portion of the beneficial privileges of
the aristocracy, which were especially called by the name of feudal
rights, since they were the privileges which peculiarly touched the
people.
It is not easy to ascertain in what these rights did precisely still
consist in 1789, for the number of them had been great, their diversity
amazing, and many of these rights had already vanished or undergone a
transformation; so that the meaning of the terms by which they were
designated was perplexing even to contemporaries, and is become obscure
to us. Nevertheless by consulting the works of the domanial jurists
of the eighteenth century, and from attentive researches into local
customs, it will be found that all the rights still in existence at
that time may be reduced to a small number of leading heads; all the
others still subsisted, it is true, but only in isolated cases.
The traces of seignorial labour-rents (_corvées_) may almost everywhere
be detected, but they were already half extinguished. Most of the tolls
on roads had been reduced or abolished; yet there were few provinces
in which some such tolls were not still to be met with. Everywhere too
Seigneurs levied dues on fairs and markets. Throughout France they
had the exclusive right of sporting. Generally they alone could keep
dovecotes and pigeons; almost everywhere the peasant was compelled
to grind at the seignorial mill, and to crush his grapes in the
seignorial wine-press. A very universal and onerous seignorial right
was that of the fine called _lods et ventes_, paid to the lord every
time lands were bought or sold within the boundaries of his manor. All
over the country the land was burdened with quit-rents, rent-charges,
or dues in money or in kind, due to the lord from the copyholder,
and not redeemable by the latter. Under all these differences one
common feature may be traced. All these rights were more or less
connected with the soil or with its produce; they all bore upon him who
cultivates it.[14]
The spiritual lords of the soil enjoyed the same advantages; for
the Church, which had a different origin, a different purpose, and
a different nature from the feudal system, had nevertheless at last
intimately mingled itself with that system; and though never completely
incorporated with that foreign substance, it had struck so deeply into
it as to be incrusted there.[15]
Bishops, canons, and incumbents held fiefs or charges on the land in
virtue of their ecclesiastical functions. A convent had generally the
lordship of the village in which it stood. The Church held serfs in
the only part of France in which they still existed: it levied its
labour-rents, its due on fairs and markets; it had the common oven, the
common mill, the common wine-press, and the common bull. Moreover, the
clergy still enjoyed in France, as in all the rest of Christendom, the
right of tithe.[16]
But what I am here concerned to remark is, that throughout Europe at
that time the same feudal rights--_identically the same_--existed, and
that in most of the continental states they were far more onerous than
in France. I may quote the single instance of the seignorial claim for
labour: in France this right was unfrequent and mild; in Germany it was
still universal and harsh.
Nay more, many of the rights of feudal origin which were held in the
utmost abhorrence by the last generation of Frenchmen, and which they
considered as contrary not only to justice but to civilisation--such
as tithes, inalienable rent-charges or perpetual dues, fines or
heriots, and what were termed, in the somewhat pompous language of
the eighteenth century, _the servitude of the soil_, might all be met
with at that time, to a certain extent, in England, and many of them
exist in England to this day. Yet they do not prevent the husbandry
of England from being the most perfect and the most productive in the
world, and the English people is scarcely conscious of their existence.
How comes it then that these same feudal rights excited in the hearts
of the people of France so intense a hatred that this passion has
survived its object, and seems therefore to be unextinguishable? The
cause of this phenomenon is, that, on the one hand, the French peasant
had become an owner of the soil; and that, on the other, he had
entirely escaped from the government of the great landlords. Many other
causes might doubtless be indicated, but I believe these two to be the
most important.
If the peasant had not been an owner of the soil, he would have been
insensible to many of the burdens which the feudal system had cast upon
landed property. What matters tithe to a tenant farmer? He deducts it
from his rent. What matters a rent-charge to a man who is not the owner
of the ground? What matter even the impediments to free cultivation to
a man who cultivates for another?
On the other hand, if the French peasant had still lived under the
administration of his landlord, these feudal rights would have appeared
far less insupportable, because he would have regarded them as a
natural consequence of the constitution of the country.
When an aristocracy possesses not only privileges but powers, when
it governs and administers the country, its private rights may be at
once more extensive and less perceptible. In the feudal times, the
nobility were regarded pretty much as the government is regarded in
our own; the burdens they imposed were endured in consideration of the
security they afforded. The nobles had many irksome privileges; they
possessed many onerous rights; but they maintained public order, they
administered justice, they caused the law to be executed, they came to
the relief of the weak, they conducted the business of the community.
In proportion as the nobility ceased to do these things, the burden of
their privileges appeared more oppressive, and their existence became
an anomaly.
Picture to yourself a French peasant of the eighteenth century, or,
I might rather say, the peasant now before your eyes, for the man is
the same; his condition is altered, but not his character. Take him
as he is described in the documents I have quoted--so passionately
enamoured of the soil, that he will spend all his savings to purchase
it, and to purchase it at any price. To complete this purchase he must
first pay a tax, not to the government, but to other landowners of the
neighbourhood, as unconnected as himself with the administration of
public affairs, and hardly more influential than he is. He possesses it
at last; his heart is buried in it with the seed he sows. This little
nook of ground, which is his own in this vast universe, fills him with
pride and independence. But again these neighbours call him from his
furrow, and compel him to come to work for them without wages. He tries
to defend his young crops from their game; again they prevent him. As
he crosses the river they wait for his passage to levy a toll. He finds
them at the market, where they sell him the right of selling his own
produce; and when, on his return home, he wants to use the remainder
of his wheat for his own sustenance--of that wheat which was planted
by his hands, and has grown under his eyes--he cannot touch it till he
has ground it at the mill and baked it at the bakehouse of these same
men. A portion of the income of his little property is paid away in
quit-rents to them also, and these dues can neither be extinguished nor
redeemed.
Whatever he does, these troublesome neighbours are everywhere on his
path, to disturb his happiness, to interfere with his labour, to
consume his profits; and when these are dismissed, others in the black
garb of the Church present themselves to carry off the clearest profit
of his harvest. Picture to yourself the condition, the wants, the
character, the passions of this man, and compute, if you are able, the
stores of hatred and of envy which are accumulated in his heart.[17]
Feudalism still remained the greatest of all the civil institutions of
France, though it had ceased to be a political institution. Reduced
to these proportions, the hatred it excited was greater than ever;
and it may be said with truth that the destruction of a part of the
institutions of the Middle Ages rendered a hundred times more odious
that portion which still survived.[18]
FOOTNOTES:
[8] See Note IV., Date of Abolition of Serfdom in Germany.
[9] See Note V.
[10] See Note VI.
[11] See Note VII., Peasant Lands in Germany.
[12] See Note VIII., Nobility and Lands on the Rhine.
[13] See Note IX., Effect of Usury Laws on Land.
[14] See Note X., Abuse of Feudal Rights.
[15] See Note XI., Ecclesiastical Feudal Rights.
[16] See Note XII., Rights of the Abbey of Cherbourg.
[17] See Note XIII., Irritation caused to the Peasantry by Feudal
Rights, and especially by the Feudal Rights of the Clergy.
[18] See Note XIV., Effect of Feudalism on state of Real Property.
CHAPTER II.
SHOWING THAT ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRALISATION IS AN INSTITUTION ANTERIOR
IN FRANCE TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1789, AND NOT THE PRODUCT OF THE
REVOLUTION OR OF THE EMPIRE, AS IS COMMONLY SAID.
At a period when political assemblies still existed in France, I once
heard an orator, in speaking of administrative centralisation, call
it, ‘that admirable achievement of the Revolution which Europe envies
us.’ I will concede the fact that centralisation is an admirable
achievement; I will admit that Europe envies us its possession, but
I maintain that it is not an achievement of the Revolution. On the
contrary, it is a product of the former institutions of France, and, I
may add, the only portion of the political constitution of the monarchy
which survived the Revolution, inasmuch as it was the only one that
could be made to adapt itself to the new social condition brought about
by that Revolution. The reader who has the patience to read the present
chapter with attention will find that I have proved to demonstration
this proposition.
I must first beg to be allowed to put out of the question what were
called _les pays d’état_, that is to say, the provinces that managed
their own affairs, or rather had the appearance, in part, of managing
them. These provinces, placed at the extremities of the kingdom, did
not contain more than a quarter of the total population of France; and
there were only two among them in which provincial liberty possessed
any real vitality. I shall revert to them hereafter, and show to what
an extent the central power had subjected these very states to the
common mould.[19] But for the present I desire to give my principal
attention to what was called in the administrative language of the day,
_les pays d’élection_, although, in truth, there were fewer elections
in them than anywhere else. These districts encompassed Paris on every
side, they were contiguous, and formed the heart and the better part of
the territory of France.
To any one who may cast a glance over the ancient administration of
the kingdom, the first impression conveyed is that of a diversity
of regulations and authorities, and the entangled complication of
the different powers. France was covered with administrative bodies
and distinct officers, who had no connection with one another, but
who took part in the government in virtue of a right which they had
purchased, and which could not be taken from them; but their duties
were frequently so intermingled and so nearly contiguous as to press
and clash together within the range of the same transactions.
The courts of justice took an indirect part in the legislative
power, and possessed the right of framing administrative regulations
which became obligatory within the limits of their own jurisdiction.
Sometimes they maintained an opposition to the administration, properly
so called, loudly blamed its measures and proscribed its agents.
Police ordinances were promulgated by simple justices in the towns and
boroughs where they resided.
The towns had a great diversity of constitutions, and their magistrates
bore different designations--sometimes as mayors, sometimes as consuls,
or again as syndics, and derived their powers from different sources.
Some were chosen by the king, others by the lord of the soil or by the
prince holding the fief; some again were elected for a year by their
fellow-citizens, whilst others purchased the right of governing them
permanently.
These different powers were the last remains of the ancient system;
but something comparatively new or greatly modified had by degrees
established itself among them, and this I have yet to describe.
In the centre of the kingdom, and close to the throne, there had been
gradually formed an administrative body of extraordinary authority, in
the grasp of which every power was united after a new fashion: this
was the King’s Council. Its origin was ancient, but the greater part
of its functions were of recent date. It was at once a supreme court
of justice, inasmuch as it had the right to quash the judgments of all
the ordinary courts, and a superior administrative tribunal, inasmuch
as every special jurisdiction was dependent on it in the last resort.
It possessed, moreover, as a Council of State, subject to the pleasure
of the King, a legislative power, for it discussed and proposed the
greater part of the laws, and fixed and assessed the taxes. As the
superior administrative board, it had to frame the general regulations
which were to direct the agents of the Government. Within its walls all
important affairs were decided and all secondary powers controlled.
Everything finally came home to it; from that centre was derived the
movement which set everything in motion. Yet it possessed no inherent
jurisdiction of its own. The King alone decided, even when the Council
appeared to advise, and even when it seemed to administer justice, it
consisted of no more than simple ‘givers of advice’--an expression used
by the Parliament in one of its remonstrances.
This Council was not composed of men of rank, but of personages of
middling or even low extraction, former Intendants or other men of that
class thoroughly versed in the management of business, all of whom were
liable to dismissal by the Crown. It generally proceeded in its course
quietly and discreetly, displaying less pretension than real power;
and thus it had but little lustre of its own, or, rather, it was lost
in the splendour of the throne to which it stood so near; at once so
powerful that everything came within its scope, and so obscure that it
has scarcely been remarked by history.
As the whole administration of the country was directed by a single
body, so nearly the entire management of home affairs was entrusted to
the care of one single agent--the Comptroller-General. On opening an
almanack of France before the Revolution, it will be found that each
province had its special minister; but on studying the administration
itself in the legal records of the time, it will soon be seen that the
minister of the province had but few occasions of any importance for
exercising his authority. The common course of business was directed
by the Comptroller-General, who gradually took upon himself all the
affairs that had anything to do with money, that is to say, almost the
whole public administration; and who thus performed successively the
duties of minister of finance, minister of the interior, minister of
public works, and minister of trade.
As, in truth, the central administration had but one agent in Paris,
so it had likewise but a single agent in each province. Nobles were
still to be found in the eighteenth century bearing the titles of
governors of provinces; they were the ancient and often the hereditary
representatives of feudal royalty. Honours were still bestowed upon
them, but they no longer had any power. The Intendant was in possession
of the whole reality of government.
This Intendant was a man of humble extraction, always a stranger to
the province, and a young man who had his fortune to make. He never
exercised his functions by any right of election, birth, or purchase
of office; he was chosen by the government among the inferior members
of the Council of State, and was always subject to dismissal. He
represented the body from which he was thus severed, and, for that
reason, was called, in the administrative language of the time,
a Detached Commissioner. All the powers which the Council itself
possessed were accumulated in his hands, and he exercised them all in
the first instance. Like the Council, he was at once administrator and
judge. He corresponded with all the ministers, and in the province was
the sole agent of all the measures of the government.
In each canton was placed below him an officer nominated by himself,
and removable at will, called the Sub-delegate. The Intendant was very
commonly a newly-created noble; the Sub-delegate was always a plebeian.
He nevertheless represented the entire Government in the small,
circumscribed space assigned to him as much as the Intendant did in the
whole; and he was amenable to the Intendant as the Intendant was to the
minister.
The Marquis d’Argenson relates in his ‘Memoirs,’ that one day Law
said to him, ‘“I never could have believed what I saw, when I was
Comptroller of Finance. Do you know that this kingdom of France
is governed by thirty _Intendants_? You have neither parliament,
nor estates, nor governors. It is upon thirty Masters of Requests,
despatched into the provinces, that their evil or their good, their
fertility or their sterility, entirely depends.”’
These powerful officers of the Government were, however, completely
eclipsed by the remnants of the ancient aristocracy, and lost in the
brilliancy which that body still shed around it. So that, even in their
own time, they were scarcely seen, although their finger was already on
everything. In society the nobles had over such men the advantages of
rank, wealth, and the consideration always attached to what is ancient.
In the Government the nobility were immediately about the person
of the Prince, and formed his Court, commanded the fleets, led the
armies, and, in short, did all that most attracts the observation of
contemporaries, and too often absorbs the attention of posterity. A man
of high rank would have been insulted by the proposal to appoint him
an Intendant. The poorest man of family would generally have disdained
the offer. In his eyes the Intendants were the representatives of an
upstart power, new men appointed to govern the middle classes and the
peasantry, and, as for the rest, very sorry company. Yet, as Law said,
and as we shall see, these were the men who governed France.
To commence with the right of taxation, which includes, as it were, all
other rights. It is well known a part of the taxes were farmed. In
these cases the King’s Council negotiated with the financial companies,
fixed the terms of the contract, and regulated the mode of collection.
All the other taxes, such as the _taille_, the capitation-tax, and
the _vingtièmes_ were fixed and levied by the agents of the central
administration or under their all-powerful control.
The Council, every year, by a secret decision, fixed the amount of the
_taille_ and its numerous accessories, and likewise its distribution
among the provinces. The _taille_ had thus increased from year to year,
though public attention was never called to the fact, no noise being
made about it.
As the _taille_ was an ancient tax, its assessment and collection had
been formerly confided to local agents, who were all, more or less,
independent of the Government by right of birth or election, or by
purchase of office; they were the lords of the soil, the parochial
collectors, the treasurers of France, or officers termed the _élus_.
These authorities still existed in the eighteenth century, but some had
altogether ceased to busy themselves about the _taille_, whilst others
only did so in a very secondary and entirely subordinate manner. Even
here the entire power was in the hands of the Intendant and his agents;
he alone, in truth, assessed the _taille_ in the different parishes,
directed and controlled the collectors, and granted delays of payments
or exemptions.
As the other taxes, such as the capitation tax, were of recent date,
the Government was no longer embarrassed in respect to them by the
remnants of former powers, but dealt with them without any intervention
of the parties governed. The Comptroller-General, the Intendant, and
the Council fixed the amount of each quota.
Let us leave the question of money for that of men.
It is sometimes a matter of astonishment how the French can have so
patiently borne the yoke of the military conscription at the time of
the Revolution and ever since; but it must be borne in mind that they
had been already broken in to bear it for a long period of time. The
conscription had been preceded by the militia, which was a heavier
burden, although the amount of men required was less. From time to time
the young men in the country were made to draw lots, and from among
them were taken a certain number of soldiers, who were formed into
militia regiments, in which they served for six years.
As the militia was a comparatively modern institution, none of
the ancient feudal powers meddled with it; the whole business was
intrusted to the agents of the Central Government alone. The Council
fixed the general amount of men and the share of each province. The
Intendant regulated the number of men to be raised in each parish;
his Sub-delegate superintended the drawing of the lots, decided all
cases of exemption, designated those militia-men who were allowed to
remain with their families and those who were to join the regiment, and
finally delivered over the latter to the military authorities. There
was no appeal except to the Intendant or the Council.
It may be said with equal accuracy that, except in the _pays d’état_,
all the public works, even those that had a very special destination,
were decided upon and managed by the agents of the central power alone.
There certainly existed local and independent authorities, who, like
the seigneur, the boards of finance, and the _grands voyers_ (surveyors
of public roads), had the power of taking a part in such matters of
public administration. But all these ancient authorities, as may be
seen by the slightest examination of the administrative documents of
the time, bestirred themselves but little, or bestirred themselves no
longer. All the great roads, and even the cross-roads leading from
one town to another, were made and kept up at the cost of the public
revenue. The Council decided the plan and contracted for its execution.
The Intendant directed the engineering works, and the Sub-delegate got
together the compulsory labourers who were to execute them. The care
of the by-roads was alone left to the old local authorities, and they
became impassable.
As in our days, the body of the _Ponts et Chaussées_ was the great
agent of the Central Government in relation to public works, and, in
spite of the difference of the times, a very remarkable resemblance is
to be found in their constitution now and then. The administration of
the _Ponts et Chaussées_ had a council and a school, inspectors who
annually travelled over the whole of France, and engineers who resided
on the spot and who were appointed to direct the works under the orders
of the Intendant. A far greater number of the institutions of the old
monarchy than is commonly supposed have been handed down to the modern
state of French society, but in their transmission they have generally
lost their names, even though they still preserve the same forms. As a
rare exception, the _Ponts et Chaussées_ have preserved both one and
the other.
The Central Government alone undertook, with the help of its agents, to
maintain public order in the provinces. The _maréchaussée_, or mounted
police, was dispersed in small detachments over the whole surface
of the kingdom, and was everywhere placed under the control of the
Intendants. It was by the help of these soldiers, and, if necessary,
of regular troops, that the Intendant warded off any sudden danger,
arrested vagabonds, repressed mendicity, and put down the riots, which
were continually arising from the price of corn. It never happened, as
had been formerly the case, that the subjects of the Crown were called
upon to aid the Government in this task, except indeed in the towns,
where there was generally a town-guard, the soldiers of which were
chosen and the officers appointed by the Intendant.
The judicial bodies had preserved the right of making police
regulations, and frequently exercised it; but these regulations were
only applicable to a part of the territory, and, more generally, to one
spot only. The Council had the power of annulling them, and frequently
did annul them in cases of subordinate jurisdiction. But the Council
was perpetually making general regulations applicable to all parts of
the kingdom, either relative to subjects different from those which the
tribunals had already settled, or applicable to those which they had
settled in another manner. The number of these regulations, or _arrêts
du Conseil_, as they were then called, was immense; and they seem to
have constantly increased the nearer we approach the Revolution. There
is scarcely a single matter of social economy or political organisation
that was not reorganised by these _arrêts du Conseil_ during the forty
years preceding that event.
Under the ancient feudal state of society, the lord of the soil, if
he possessed important rights, had, at the same time, very heavy
obligations. It was his duty to succour the indigent in the interior
of his domains. The last trace of this old European legislation is to
be found in the Prussian Code of 1795, which says, ‘The lord of the
soil must see that the indigent peasants receive an education. It is
his duty to provide means of subsistence to those of his vassals who
possess no land, as far as he is able. If any of them fall into want,
he must come to their assistance.’
But no law of the kind had existed in France for a long time. The
lord, when deprived of his former power, considered himself liberated
from his former obligations; and no local authority, no council, no
provincial or parochial association, had taken his place. No single
being was any longer compelled by law to take care of the poor in the
rural districts, and the Central Government had boldly undertaken to
provide for their wants by its own resources.
Every year the Council assigned to each province certain funds derived
from the general produce of the taxes, which the Intendant distributed
for the relief of the poor in the different parishes. It was to him
that the indigent labourer had to apply, and, in times of scarcity,
it was he who caused corn or rice to be distributed among the people.
The Council annually issued ordinances for the establishment of
charitable workshops (_ateliers de charité_) where the poorer among
the peasantry were enabled to find work at low wages, and the Council
took upon itself to determine the places where these were necessary. It
may be easily supposed, that alms thus bestowed from a distance were
indiscriminate, capricious, and always very inadequate.[20]
The Central Government, moreover, did not confine itself to relieving
the peasantry in time of distress; it also undertook to teach them the
art of enriching themselves, encouraged them in this task, and forced
them to it, if necessary.[21] For this purpose, from time to time, it
caused distributions of small pamphlets upon the science of agriculture
to be made by its Intendants and their Sub-delegates, founded schools
of agriculture, offered prizes, and kept up, at a great expense,
nursery-grounds, of which it distributed the produce. It would seem
to have been more wise to have lightened the weight and modified the
inequality of the burdens which then oppressed the agriculture of the
country, but such an idea never seems to have occurred.
Sometimes the Council insisted upon compelling individuals to prosper,
whether they would or no. The ordinances constraining artisans to use
certain methods and manufacture certain articles are innumerable; and
as the Intendants had not time to superintend the application of all
these regulations, there were inspectors-general of manufactures, who
visited in the provinces to insist on their fulfilment. Some of the
_arrêts du Conseil_ even prohibited the cultivation of certain crops
which the Council did not consider proper for the purpose; whilst
others ordered the destruction of such vines as had been, according
to its opinion, planted in an unfavourable soil. So completely had
the Government already changed its duty as a sovereign into that of a
guardian.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] See the last chapter of this Book (xxi.) for a fuller account of
the local government of Languedoc.
[20] See Note XV., Public Relief, and Note XVI.
[21] See Note XVII., Powers of the Intendant for the Regulation of
Trade.
CHAPTER III.
SHOWING THAT WHAT IS NOW CALLED ADMINISTRATIVE TUTELAGE WAS AN
INSTITUTION IN FRANCE ANTERIOR TO THE REVOLUTION.
In France municipal freedom outlived the feudal system. Long after
the landlords were no longer the rulers of the country districts,
the towns still retained the right of self-government. Some of the
towns of France continued down to nearly the close of the seventeenth
century to form, as it were, small democratic commonwealths, in which
the magistrates were freely elected by the whole people and were
responsible to the people--in which municipal life was still public and
animated--in which the city was still proud of her rights and jealous
of her independence.
These elections were generally abolished for the first time in 1692.
The municipal offices were then what was called put up to sale (_mises
en offices_ was the technical expression), that is to say, the King
sold in each town to some of the inhabitants the right of perpetually
governing all their townsmen.
This measure cost the towns at once their freedom and their well-being;
for if the practice of the sale of commissions for a public employment
sometimes proved useful in its effects when applied to the courts
of justice--since the first condition of the good administration of
justice is the complete independence of the judge--this system never
failed to be extremely mischievous whenever it was applied to posts of
administrative duty, which demand, above all things, responsibility,
subordination, and zeal. The Government of the old French monarchy was
perfectly aware of the real effects of such a system. It took great
care not to adopt for itself the same mode of proceeding which it
applied to the towns, and scrupulously abstained from putting up to
sale the commissions of its own Intendants and Sub-delegates.
And it well deserves the whole scorn of history that this great
change was accomplished without any political motive. Louis XI. had
curtailed the municipal liberties of the towns, because he was alarmed
by their democratic character;[22] Louis XIV. destroyed them under
no such fears. The proof is that he restored these rights to all the
towns which were rich enough to buy them back again. In reality, his
object was not to abolish them, but to traffic in them; and if they
were actually abolished, it was, without meaning it, by a mere fiscal
expedient. The same thing was carried on for more than eighty years.
Seven times within that period the Crown resold to the towns the right
of electing their magistrates, and as soon as they had once more tasted
this blessing, it was snatched away to be sold to them once more. The
motive of the measure was always the same, and frequently avowed. ‘Our
financial necessities,’ says the preamble to an edict of 1722, ‘compel
us to have recourse to the most effectual means of relieving them.’
The mode was effectual, but it was ruinous to those who bore this
strange impost. ‘I am struck with the enormity of the sums which have
been paid at all times to purchase back the municipal offices,’ writes
an Intendant to the Comptroller-General in 1764. ‘The amount of these
sums spent in useful improvements would have turned to the advantage of
the town, which has, on the contrary, felt nothing but the weight of
authority and the privileges of these offices.’ I have not detected a
more shameful feature in the whole aspect of the government of France
before the Revolution.
It seems difficult to say with precision at the present time how the
towns of France were governed in the eighteenth century; for, besides
that the origin of the municipal authorities fluctuated incessantly,
as has just been stated, each town still preserved some fragments of
its former constitution and its peculiar customs. There were not,
perhaps, two towns in France in which everything was exactly similar;
but this apparent diversity is fallacious, and conceals a general
resemblance.[23]
In 1764 the Government proposed to make a general law on the
administration of the towns of France, and for this purpose it caused
reports to be sent in by the Intendants of the Crown on the existing
municipal government of the country. I have discovered a portion
of the results of this inquiry, and I have fully satisfied myself
by the perusal of it that the municipal affairs of all these towns
were conducted in much the same manner. The distinctions are merely
superficial and apparent--the groundwork is everywhere the same.
In most instances the government of the towns was vested in two
assemblies. All the great towns were thus governed, and some of the
small ones. The first of these assemblies was composed of municipal
officers, more or less numerous according to the place. These formed
the executive body of the community, the corporation or _corps de la
ville_, as it was then termed. The members of this body exercised
a temporary power, and were elected when the King had restored the
elective power, or when the town had been able to buy up its offices.
They held their offices permanently upon a certain payment to the
Crown, when the Crown had appropriated the patronage and succeeded
in disposing of it by sale, which was not always the case; for this
sort of commodity declined in value precisely in proportion to the
increasing subordination of the municipal authority to the central
power. These municipal officers never received any stipend, but they
were remunerated by exemptions from taxation and by privileges. No
regular gradation of authority seems to have been established among
them--their administration was collective. The mayor was the president
of the corporation, not the governor of the city.
The second assembly, which was termed the general assembly, or as we
should say in England the _livery_, elected the corporation, wherever
it was still subject to election, and always continued to take a part
in the principal concerns of the town.
In the fifteenth century this general assembly frequently consisted of
the whole population. ‘This custom,’ said one of the authors of these
Reports, ‘was consistent with the popular spirit of our forefathers.’
At that time the whole people elected their own municipal officers;
this body was sometimes consulted by the corporation, and to this body
the corporation was responsible. At the end of the seventeenth century
the same state of things might sometimes be met with.
In the eighteenth century the people acting as a body had ceased
to meet in this general assembly; it had by that time become
representative. But, it must be carefully remarked, that this body was
no longer anywhere elected by the bulk of the community, or impressed
with its spirit. It was invariably composed of _notables_, some of whom
sat there in virtue of a personal right; others were deputed by guilds
or companies, from which each of them received imperative instructions.
As this century rolled on, the number of these notables sitting in
virtue of their own right augmented in the popular assembly; the
delegates of the working guilds fell away or disappeared altogether.
They were superseded by the delegates of the great companies, or,
in other words, the assembly contained only burgesses and scarcely
any artisans. Then the citizens, who are not so easily imposed on
by the empty semblance of liberty as is sometimes supposed, ceased
everywhere to take an interest in the affairs of the town, and lived
like strangers within their own walls. In vain the civic magistrates
attempted from time to time to revive that civic patriotism which
had done so many wonders in the Middle Ages. The people remained
deaf. The greatest interests of the town no longer appeared to affect
the citizens. They were asked to give their suffrages when the vain
counterfeit of a free election had been retained; but they stood aloof.
Nothing is more frequent in history than such an occurrence. Almost
all the princes who have destroyed freedom have attempted at first to
preserve the forms of freedom, from Augustus to our own times; they
flattered themselves that they should thus combine the moral strength
which public assent always gives, with the conveniences which absolute
power can alone offer. But almost all of them have failed in this
endeavour, and have soon discovered that it is impossible to prolong
these false appearances where the reality has ceased to exist.
In the eighteenth century the municipal government of the towns of
France had thus everywhere degenerated into a contracted oligarchy.
A few families managed all the public business for their own private
purposes, removed from the eye of the public, and with no public
responsibility. Such was the morbid condition of this administration
throughout the whole of France. All the Intendants pointed it out; but
the only remedy they suggested was the increased subjection of the
local authorities to the Central Government.
In this respect, however, it was difficult for success to be more
complete. Besides the Royal edicts, which from time to time modified
the administration of all the towns in France, the local by-laws of
each town were frequently overruled by Orders in Council, which were
not registered--passed on the recommendation of the Intendants, without
any previous inquiry, and sometimes without the citizens of the towns
themselves knowing anything of the matter.[24]
‘This measure,’ said the inhabitants of a town which had been affected
by a decree of this nature, ‘has astonished all the orders of the city,
who expected nothing of the kind.’
The towns of France at this period could neither establish an octroi on
articles of consumption, nor levy a rate, nor mortgage, nor sell, nor
sue, nor farm their property, nor administer that property, nor even
employ their own surplus revenues, without the intervention of an Order
in Council, made on the report of the Intendant. All their public works
were executed in conformity to plans and estimates approved by the
Council. These works were adjudged to contractors before the Intendant
or his Sub-delegates, and were generally intrusted to the engineers or
architects of the State.
These facts will doubtless excite the surprise of those who suppose
that the whole present condition of France is a novelty.
But the Central Government interfered more directly in the municipal
administration of the towns than even these rules would seem to
indicate; its power was far more extended than its right to exercise it.
I meet with the following passage in a circular instruction, addressed
about the middle of the last century by a Comptroller-General to all
the Intendants of the Kingdom: ‘You will pay particular attention
to all that takes place in the municipal assemblies. You will take
care to have a most exact report of everything done there and of all
the resolutions taken, in order to transmit them to me forthwith,
accompanied with your own opinion on the subject.’
In fact it may be seen, from the correspondence of the Intendant with
his subordinate officers, that the Government had a finger in all
the concerns of every town, the least as well as the greatest. The
Government was always consulted--the Government had always a decided
opinion on every point. It even regulated the public festivities,
ordered public rejoicings, caused salutes to be fired, and houses to
be illuminated. On one occasion I observe that a member of the burgher
guard was fined twenty livres by the Intendant for having absented
himself from a _Te Deum_.
The officers of these municipal corporations had therefore arrived at a
becoming sense of their own insignificance. ‘We most humbly supplicate
you, Monseigneur’ (such was the style in which they addressed the
King’s Intendant), ‘to grant us your good-will and protection. We will
endeavour not to show ourselves unworthy of them by the submission we
are ready to show to all the commands of your Greatness.’ ‘We have
never resisted your will, Monseigneur,’ was the language of another
body of these persons, who still assumed the pompous title of Peers of
the City.
Such was the preparation of the middle classes for government, and of
the people for liberty.
If at least this close dependence of the towns on the State had
preserved their finances! but such was not the case. It is sometimes
argued that without centralisation the towns would ruin themselves. I
know not how that may be, but I know that in the eighteenth century
centralisation did not prevent their ruin. The whole administrative
history of that time is replete with their embarrassments.
If we turn from the towns to the villages, we meet with different
powers and different forms of government, but the same dependence.[25]
I find many indications of the fact, that in the Middle Ages the
inhabitants of every village formed a community distinct from the Lord
of the soil. He, no doubt, employed the community, superintended it,
governed it; but the village held in common certain property, which was
absolutely its own; it elected its own chiefs, and administered its
affairs democratically.
This ancient constitution of the parish may be traced in all the
nations in which the feudal system prevailed, and in all the countries
to which these nations have carried the remnants of their laws. These
vestiges occur at every turn in England, and the system was in full
vigour in Germany sixty years ago, as may be demonstrated by reading
the code of Frederic the Great. Even in France in the eighteenth
century, some traces of it were still in existence.
I remember that, when I proceeded, for the first time, to ascertain
from the archives of one of the old Intendancies of France, what was
meant by a _parish_ before the Revolution, I was surprised to find in
this community, so poor and so enslaved, several of the characteristics
which had struck me long ago in the rural townships of the United
States, and which I had then erroneously conceived to be a peculiarity
of society in the New World. Neither in the one nor in the other
of these communities is there any permanent representation or any
municipal body, in the strict sense of that term; both the one and
the other were administered by officers acting separately under the
direction of the whole population. In both, meetings were held from
time to time, at which all the inhabitants, assembled in one body,
elected their own magistrates and settled their principal affairs.
These two parishes, in short, are as much alike as that which is living
can be like that which is dead.
Different as have been the destinies of these two corporate beings,
their birth was in fact the same.
Transported at once to regions far removed from the feudal system, and
invested with unlimited authority over itself, the rural parish of the
Middle Ages in Europe is become the township of New England. Severed
from the lordship of the soil, but grasped in the powerful hand of
the State, the rural parishes of France assumed the form I am about to
describe.
In the eighteenth century the number and the name of the parochial
officers varied in the different provinces of France. The ancient
records show that these officers were more numerous when local life
was more active, and that they diminished in number as that life
declined. In most of the parishes they were, in the eighteenth century,
reduced to two persons--the one named the ‘Collector,’ the other most
commonly named the ‘Syndic.’ Generally, these parochial officers were
either elected, or supposed to be so; but they had everywhere become
the instruments of the State rather than the representatives of the
community. The Collector levied the _taille_, under the direct orders
of the Intendant. The Syndic, placed under the daily direction of
the Sub-delegate of the Intendant, represented that personage in all
matters relating to public order or affecting the Government. He became
the principal agent of the Government in relation to military service,
to the public works of the State, and to the execution of the general
laws of the kingdom.
The Seigneur, as we have already seen, stood aloof from all these
details of government; he had even ceased to superintend them, or to
assist in them; nay more, these duties, which had served in earlier
times to keep up his power, appeared unworthy of his attention in
proportion to the progressive decay of that power. It would at last
have been an offence to his pride to require him to attend to them. He
had ceased to govern; but his presence in the parish and his privileges
effectually prevented any good government from being established in the
parish in place of his own. A private person differing so entirely from
the other parishioners--so independent of them, and so favoured by the
laws--weakened or destroyed the authority of all rules.
The unavoidable contact with such a person in the country had driven
into the towns, as I shall subsequently have occasion to show, almost
all those inhabitants who had either a competency or education, so
that none remained about the Seigneur but a flock of ignorant and
uncultivated peasants, incapable of managing the administration of
their common interests. ‘A parish,’ as Turgot had justly observed, ‘is
an assemblage of cabins, and of inhabitants as passive as the cabins
they dwell in.’
The administrative records of the eighteenth century are full of
complaints of the incapacity, indolence, and ignorance of the parochial
collectors and syndics. Ministers, Intendants, Sub-delegates, and even
the country gentlemen, are for ever deploring these defects; but none
of them had traced these defects to their cause.
Down to the Revolution the rural parishes of France had preserved in
their government something of that democratic aspect which they had
acquired in the Middle Ages. If the parochial officers were to be
elected, or some matter of public interest to be discussed, the village
bell summoned the peasants to the church-porch, where the poor as well
as the rich were entitled to present themselves. In these meetings
there was not indeed any regular debate or any decisive mode of voting,
but every one was at liberty to speak his mind; and it was the duty
of the notary, sent for on purpose, and operating in the open air, to
collect these different opinions and enter them in a record of the
proceedings.
When these empty semblances of freedom are compared with the total
impotence which was connected with them, they afford an example, in
miniature, of the combination of the most absolute government with some
of the forms of extreme democracy; so that to oppression may be added
the absurdity of affecting to disguise it. This democratic assembly of
the parish could indeed express its desires, but it had no more power
to execute its will than the corporate bodies in the towns. It could
not speak until its mouth had been opened, for the meeting could not be
held without the express permission of the Intendant, and, to use the
expression of those times, which adapted their language to the fact,
‘_under his good pleasure_.’ Even if such a meeting were unanimous, it
could neither levy a rate, nor sell, nor buy, nor let, nor sue, without
the permission of the King’s Council. It was necessary to obtain a
minute of Council to repair the damage caused by the wind to the church
steeple, or to rebuild the falling gables of the parsonage. The rural
parishes most remote from Paris were just as much subject to this rule
as those nearest to the capital. I have found records of parochial
memorials to the Council for leave to spend twenty-five livres.
The inhabitants had indeed, commonly, retained the right of electing
their parochial magistrates by universal suffrage; but it frequently
happened that the Intendant designated to this small electoral body a
candidate who never failed to be returned by a unanimity of suffrages.
Sometimes, when the election had been made by the parishioners
themselves, he set it aside, named the collector and syndic of his
own authority, and adjourned indefinitely a fresh election. There are
thousands of such examples.
It is difficult to conceive a more cruel fate than that of these
parochial officers. The lowest agent of the Central Government, the
Sub-delegate, bent them to every caprice. Often they were fined,
sometimes imprisoned; for the securities which elsewhere defended the
citizens against arbitrary proceedings had ceased to exist for them: ‘I
have thrown into prison,’ said an Intendant in 1750, ‘some of the chief
persons in the villages who grumbled, and I have made these parishes
pay the expense of the horsemen of the patrol. By these means they have
been easily checkmated.’ The consequence was, that these parochial
functions were not considered as honours, but as burdens to be evaded
by every species of subterfuge.
Yet these last remnants of the ancient parochial government were still
dear to the peasantry of France; and even at the present day, of all
public liberties the only one they thoroughly comprehend is parochial
freedom. The only business of a public nature which really interests
them is to be found there. Men, who readily leave the government of the
whole nation in the hand of a master, revolt at the notion of not being
able to speak their mind in the administration of their own village. So
much weight is there yet in forms the most hollow.
What has been said of the towns and parishes of France may be extended
to almost all the corporate bodies which had any separate existence and
collective property.
Under the social condition of France anterior to the Revolution of
1789, as well as at the present day, there was no city, town, borough,
village, or hamlet in the kingdom--there was neither hospital, church
fabric, religious house, nor college, which could have an independent
will in the management of its private affairs, or which could
administer its own property according to its own choice. Then, as now,
the executive administration therefore held the whole French people
in tutelage; and if that insolent term had not yet been invented, the
thing itself already existed.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] See Note XVIII., Spirit of the Government of Louis XI.
[23] See Note XIX., Administration of a French Town in the Eighteenth
Century.
[24] See Note XX.
[25] See Note XXI., Administration of a Village in the Eighteenth
Century.
CHAPTER IV.
ADMINISTRATIVE JURISDICTION AND THE IMMUNITY OF PUBLIC OFFICERS ARE
INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE ANTERIOR TO THE REVOLUTION.[26]
In no country in Europe were the ordinary courts of justice less
dependent on the Government than in France; but in no country were
extraordinary courts of justice more extensively employed. These two
circumstances were more nearly connected than might be imagined. As the
King was almost entirely powerless in relation to the judges of the
land--as he could neither dismiss them, nor translate them, nor even,
for the most part, promote them--as, in short, he held them neither by
ambition nor by fear, their independence soon proved embarrassing to
the Crown. The result had been, in France, more than anywhere else, to
withdraw from their jurisdiction the suits in which the authority of
the Crown was directly interested, and to call into being, as it were
beside them, a species of tribunal more dependent on the sovereign,
which should present to the subjects of the Crown some semblance of
justice without any real cause for the Crown to dread its control.
In other countries, as, for instance, in some parts of Germany, where
the ordinary courts of justice had never been as independent of the
Government as those of France, no such precautions were taken, and no
administrative justice (as it was termed) existed. The sovereign was so
far master of the judges, that he needed no special commissions.
The edicts and declarations of the Kings of France, published
in the last century of the monarchy, and the Orders in Council
promulgated within the same period, almost all provided on behalf of
the Government, that the differences which any given measure might
occasion and the litigation which might ensue, should be exclusively
heard before the Intendants and before the Council. ‘It is moreover
ordered by his Majesty, that all the disputes which may arise upon
the execution of this order, with all the circumstances and incidents
thereunto belonging, shall be carried before the Intendant to be judged
by him, saving an appeal to the Council, and all courts of justice and
tribunals are forbidden to take cognisance of the same.’ Such was the
ordinary form of these decrees.
In matters which fell under laws or customs of an earlier date, when
this precaution had not been taken, the Council continually intervened,
by way of what was termed _evocation_, or the calling up to its own
superior jurisdiction from the hands of the ordinary officers of
justice suits in which the administration of the State had an interest.
The registers of the Council are full of minutes of _evocation_ of this
nature. By degrees the exception became the rule, and a theory was
invented to justify the fact.[27] It came to be regarded as a maxim of
state, not in the laws of France, but in the minds of those by whom
those laws were applied, that all suits in which a public interest was
involved, or which arose out of the construction to be put on any act
of the administration, were not within the competency of the ordinary
judges, whose only business it was to decide between private interests.
On this point we, in more recent times, have only added a mode of
expression; the idea had preceded the Revolution of 1789.
Already at that time most of the disputed questions which arose out of
the collection of the revenue were held to fall under the exclusive
jurisdiction of the Intendant and the King’s Council.[28] So, too,
with reference to the regulation of public waggons and stage-coaches,
drainage, the navigation of rivers, etc.; and in general all the suits
in which the public authorities were interested came to be disposed
of by administrative tribunals only. The Intendants took the greatest
care that this exceptional jurisdiction should be continually extended.
They urged on the Comptroller-General, and stimulated the Council. The
reason one of these officers assigned to induce the Council to call
up one of these suits deserves to be remembered. ‘An ordinary judge,’
said he, ‘is subject to fixed rules, which compel him to punish any
transgression of the law; but the Council can always set aside rules
for a useful purpose.’
On this principle, it often happened that the Intendant or the
Council called up to their own jurisdiction suits which had an almost
imperceptible connection with any subject of administrative interest,
or even which had no perceptible connection with such questions at all.
A country gentleman quarrels with his neighbour, and being dissatisfied
with the apparent disposition of his judges, he asks the Council to
_evoke_ his cause. The Intendant reports that, ‘although this is a case
solely affecting private rights, which fall under the cognisance of the
courts of justice, yet that his Majesty can always, when he pleases,
reserve to himself the decision of any suit whatever, without rendering
any account at all of his motives.’
It was generally before the Intendant or before the Provost of the
Maréchaussée that all the lower order of people were sent for trial,
by this process of evocation, when they had been guilty of public
disturbances. Most of the riots so frequently caused by the high price
of corn gave rise to transfers of jurisdiction of this nature. The
Intendant then summoned to his court a certain number of persons, who
formed a sort of local council, chosen by himself, and with their
assistance he proceeded to try criminals. I have found sentences
delivered in this manner, by which men were condemned to the galleys,
and even to death. Criminal trials decided by the Intendant were still
common at the close of the seventeenth century.
Modern jurists in discussing this subject of administrative
jurisdictions assert, that great progress has been made since
the Revolution. ‘Before that era,’ they say, ‘the judicial and
administrative powers were confounded; they have since been
distinguished and assigned to their respective places.’ To appreciate
correctly the progress here spoken of, it must never be forgotten,
that if on the one hand the judicial power under the old monarchy was
incessantly extending beyond the natural sphere of its authority,
yet on the other hand that sphere was never entirely filled by it.
To see one of these facts without the other is to form an incomplete
and inaccurate idea of the subject. Sometimes the courts of law were
allowed to enact regulations on matters of public administration,
which was manifestly beyond their jurisdiction; sometimes they were
restrained from judging regular suits, which was to exclude them from
the exercise of their proper functions. The modern law of France has
undoubtedly removed the administration of justice from those political
institutions into which it had very improperly been allowed to
penetrate before the Revolution; but at the same time, as has just been
shown, the Government continually invaded the proper sphere of the
judicial authorities, and this state of things is unchanged, as if the
confusion of these powers were not equally dangerous on the one side as
on the other, and even worse in the latter mode; for the intervention
of a judicial authority in administrative business is only injurious
to the transaction of affairs; but the intervention of administrative
power in judicial proceedings depraves mankind, and tends to render men
at once revolutionary and servile.
Amongst the nine or ten constitutions which have been established in
perpetuity in France within the last sixty years, there is one in which
it was expressly provided that no agent of the administration can be
prosecuted before the ordinary courts of law without having previously
obtained the assent of the Government to such a prosecution.[29] This
clause appeared to be so well devised that when the constitution to
which it belonged was destroyed, this provision was saved from the
wreck, and it has ever since been carefully preserved from the injuries
of revolutions. The administrative body still calls the privilege
secured to them by this article one of the great conquests of 1789; but
in this they are mistaken, for under the old monarchy the Government
was not less solicitous than it is in our own times to spare its
officers the unpleasantness of rendering an account in a court of law,
like any other private citizens. The only essential difference between
the two periods is this: before the Revolution the Government could
only shelter its agents by having recourse to illegal and arbitrary
measures; since the Revolution it can legally allow them to violate the
laws.
When the ordinary tribunals of the old monarchy allowed proceedings
to be instituted against any officer representing the central
authority of the Government, an Order in Council usually intervened
to withdraw the accused person from the jurisdiction of his judges,
and to arraign him before commissioners named by the Council; for,
as was said by a councillor of state of that time, a public officer
thus attacked would have had to encounter an adverse prepossession
in the minds of the ordinary judges, and the authority of the King
would have been compromised. This sort of interference occurred not
only at long intervals, but every day--not only with reference to
the chief agents of the Government, but to the least. The slightest
thread of a connection with the administration sufficed to relieve an
officer from all other control. A mounted overseer of the Board of
Public Works, whose business was to direct the forced labour of the
peasantry, was prosecuted by a peasant whom he had ill-treated. The
Council _evoked_ the cause, and the chief engineer of the district,
writing confidentially to the Intendant, said on this subject: ‘It is
quite true that the overseer is greatly to blame, but that is not a
reason for allowing the case to follow the ordinary jurisdiction; for
it is of the utmost importance to the Board of Works that the courts of
common law should not hear or decide on the complaints of the peasants
engaged in forced labour against the overseers of these works. If this
precedent were followed, those works would be disturbed by continual
litigation, arising out of the animosity of the public against the
officers of the Government.’
On another occasion the Intendant himself wrote to the
Comptroller-General with reference to a Government contractor, who
had taken his materials in a field which did not belong to him. ‘I
cannot sufficiently represent to you how injurious it would be to the
interests of the Administration if the contractors were abandoned to
the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, whose principles can never be
reconciled to those of the Government.’
These lines were written precisely a hundred years ago, but it appears
as if the administrators who wrote them were our own contemporaries.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] [_Que la justice administrative et la garantie des fonctionnaires
sont des institutions de l’Ancien Régime._ The difficulty of rendering
these terms into intelligible English arises from the fact that at
no time in the last two centuries of the history of England has the
executive administration assumed a peculiar jurisdiction to itself or
removed its officers from the jurisdiction of the courts of common law
in this country. It will be seen in this chapter that the ordinary
jurisdictions of France have always been liable to be superseded by
extraordinary judicial authorities when the interests of the Government
or the responsibility of its agents were at stake. The arbitrary
jurisdiction of all such irregular tribunals was, in fact, abolished in
England in 1641 by the Act under which fell the Court of Star Chamber
and the High Commission.]
[27] See Note XXII.
[28] See Note XXIII.
[29] [The article referred to is the 75th article of the Constitution
de l’An VIII., which provided that the agents of the executive
government, other than the ministers, could only be prosecuted for
their conduct in the discharge of their functions, in virtue of a
decision of the Council of State.]
CHAPTER V.
SHOWING HOW CENTRALISATION HAD BEEN ABLE TO INTRODUCE ITSELF AMONG THE
ANCIENT INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE, AND TO SUPPLANT WITHOUT DESTROYING
THEM.
Let us now briefly recapitulate what has been said in the three
preceding chapters. A single body or institution placed in the centre
of the kingdom regulated the public administration of the whole
country; the same Minister directed almost all the internal affairs of
the kingdom; in each province a single Government agent managed all the
details; no secondary administrative bodies existed, and none which
could act until they had been set in motion by the authority of the
State; courts of extraordinary jurisdiction judged the causes in which
the administration was interested, and sheltered all its agents. What
is this but the centralisation with which we are so well acquainted?
Its forms were less marked than they are at present; its course
was less regular, its existence more disturbed; but it is the same
being. It has not been necessary to add or to withdraw any essential
condition; the removal of all that once surrounded it at once exposed
it in the shape that now meets our eyes.
Most of the institutions which I have just described have been imitated
subsequently, and in a hundred different places;[30] but they were at
that time peculiar to France; and we shall shortly see how great was
the influence they had on the French Revolution and on its results.
But how came these institutions of modern date to be established in
France amidst the ruins of feudal society?
It was a work of patience, of address, and of time, rather than of
force or of absolute power. At the time when the Revolution occurred,
scarcely any part of the old administrative edifice of France had been
destroyed; but another structure had been, as it were, called into
existence beneath it.
There is nothing to show that the Government of the old French
monarchy followed any deliberately concerted plan to effect this
difficult operation. That Government merely obeyed the instinct which
leads all governments to aim at the exclusive management of affairs--an
instinct which ever remained the same in spite of the diversity of its
agents. The monarchy had left to the ancient powers of France their
venerable names and their honours, but it had gradually subtracted from
them their authority. They had not been expelled but enticed out of
their domains. By the indolence of one man, by the egotism of another,
the Government had found means to occupy their places. Availing itself
of all their vices, never attempting to correct but only to supersede
them, the Government at last found means to substitute for almost all
of them its own sole agent, the Intendant, whose very name was unknown
when those powers which he supplanted came into being.
The judicial institutions had alone impeded the Government in this
great enterprise; but even there the State had seized the substance
of power, leaving only the shadow of it to its adversaries. The
Parliaments of France had not been excluded from the sphere of the
administration, but the Government had extended itself gradually
in that direction so as to appropriate almost the whole of it. In
certain extraordinary and transient emergencies, in times of scarcity,
for instance, when the passions of the people lent a support to the
ambition of the magistrates, the Central Government allowed the
Parliaments to administer for a brief interval, and to leave a trace
upon the page of history; but the Government soon silently resumed its
place, and gently extended its grasp over every class of men and of
affairs.
In the struggles between the French Parliaments and the authority
of the Crown, it will be seen on attentive observation that these
encounters almost always took place on the field of politics, properly
so called, rather than on that of administration. These quarrels
generally arose from the introduction of a new tax; that is to say, it
was not administrative power which these rival authorities disputed,
but legislative power to which the one had as little rightful claim as
the other.
This became more and more the case as the Revolution approached. As
the passions of the people began to take fire, the Parliaments assumed
a more active part in politics; and as at the same time the central
power and its agents were becoming more expert and more adroit, the
Parliaments took a less active part in the administration of the
country. They acquired every day less of the administrator and more of
the tribune.
The course of events, moreover, incessantly opens new fields of action
to the executive Government, where judicial bodies have no aptitude to
follow; for these are new transactions not governed by precedent, and
alien to judicial routine. The great progress of society continually
gives birth to new wants, and each of these wants is a fresh source of
power to the Government, which is alone able to satisfy them. Whilst
the sphere of the administration of justice by the courts of law
remains unaltered, that of the executive Government is variable and
constantly expands with civilisation itself.[31]
The Revolution which was approaching, and which had already begun
to agitate the mind of the whole French people, suggested to them a
multitude of new ideas, which the central power of the Government
could alone realise. The Revolution developed that power before it
overthrew it, and the agents of the Government underwent the same
process of improvement as everything else. This fact becomes singularly
apparent from the study of the old administrative archives. The
Comptroller-General and the Intendant of 1780 no longer resemble the
Comptroller-General and the Intendant of 1740; the administration was
already transformed, the agents were the same, but they were impelled
by a different spirit. In proportion as it became more minute and more
comprehensive, it also became more regular and more scientific. It
became more temperate as its ascendency became universal; it oppressed
less, it directed more.
The first outbreak of the Revolution destroyed this grand institution
of the monarchy; but it was restored in 1800. It was not, as has
so often been said, the principles of 1789 which triumphed at that
time and ever since in the public administration of France, but, on
the contrary, the principles of the administration anterior to the
Revolution, which then resumed their authority and have since retained
it.
If I am asked how this fragment of the state of society anterior to the
Revolution could thus be transplanted in its entirety, and incorporated
into the new state of society which had sprung up, I answer that if the
principle of centralisation did not perish in the Revolution, it was
because that principle was itself the precursor and the commencement of
the Revolution; and I add that when a people has destroyed Aristocracy
in its social constitution, that people is sliding by its own weight
into centralisation. Much less exertion is then required to drive it
down that declivity than to hold it back. Amongst such a people all
powers tend naturally to unity, and it is only by great ingenuity
that they can still be kept separate. The democratic Revolution
which destroyed so many of the institutions of the French monarchy,
served therefore to consolidate the centralised administration, and
centralisation seemed so naturally to find its place in the society
which the Revolution had formed that it might easily be taken for its
offspring.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] See Note XXIV., Traces in Canada of Centralisation of the old
French Monarchy.
[31] See Note XXV., Example of the Intervention of the Council.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ADMINISTRATIVE HABITS OF FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.
It is impossible to read the letters addressed by an Intendant of one
of the provinces of France, under the old monarchy, to his superiors
and his subordinates, without admiring the similitude engendered by
similar institutions between the administrators of those times and the
administrators of our own. They seem to join hands across the abyss of
the Revolution which lies between them. The same may be said of the
people they govern. The power of legislation over the minds of men was
never more distinctly visible.
The Ministers of the Crown had already conceived the design of taking
actual cognisance of every detail of business and of regulating
everything by their own authority from Paris. As time advanced and
the administration became more perfect, this passion increased.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century not a charitable workshop
could be established in a distant province of France until the
Comptroller-General himself had fixed the cost, drawn up the scheme,
and chosen the site. If a poor-house was to be built the Minister must
be informed of the names of the beggars who frequent it--when they
arrive--when they depart. As early as the middle of the same century
(in 1733) M. d’Argenson wrote--‘The details of business thrown upon the
Ministers are immense. Nothing is done without them, nothing except by
them, and if their information is not as extensive as their powers,
they are obliged to leave everything to be done by clerks, who become
in reality the masters.’
The Comptroller-General not only called for reports on matters of
business, but even for minute particulars relating to individuals. To
procure these particulars the Intendant applied in his turn to his
Sub-delegates, and of course repeated precisely what they told him,
just as if he had himself been thoroughly acquainted with the subject.
In order to direct everything from Paris and to know everything there,
it was necessary to invent a thousand checks and means of control. The
mass of paper documents was already enormous, and such was the tedious
slowness of these administrative proceedings, that I have remarked
it always took at least a year before a parish could obtain leave to
repair a steeple or to rebuild a parsonage: more frequently two or
three years elapsed before the demand was granted.
The Council itself remarked in one of its minutes (March 29, 1773)
that ‘the administrative formalities lead to infinite delays, and too
frequently excite very well-grounded complaints; these formalities are,
however, all necessary,’ added the Council.
I used to believe that the taste for statistics belonged exclusively
to the administrators of the present day, but I was mistaken. At the
time immediately preceding the Revolution of 1789 small printed tables
were frequently sent to the Intendant, which he merely had to get
filled up by his Sub-delegates and by the Syndics of parishes. The
Comptroller-General required reports upon the nature of the soil, the
methods of cultivation, the quality and quantity of the produce, the
number of cattle, and the occupations and manners of the inhabitants.
The information thus obtained was neither less circumstantial nor more
accurate than that afforded under similar circumstances by Sub-prefects
and Mayors at the present day. The opinions recorded on these occasions
by the Sub-delegates, as to the character of those under their
authority, were for the most part far from favourable. They continually
repeated that ‘the peasants are naturally lazy, and would not work
unless forced to do so in order to live.’ This economical doctrine
seemed very prevalent amongst this class of administrators.
Even the official language of the two periods is strikingly alike. In
both the style is equally colourless, flowing, vague, and feeble; the
peculiar characteristics of each individual writer are effaced and
lost in a general mediocrity. It is much the same thing to read the
effusions of a modern Prefect or of an ancient Intendant.
Towards the end of a century, however, when the peculiar language
of Diderot and Rousseau had had time to spread and mingle with the
vulgar tongue, the false sensibility, with which the works of those
writers are filled, infected the administrators and reached even the
financiers. The official style, usually so dry in its texture, was
become more unctuous and even tender. A Sub-delegate laments to the
Intendant of Paris ‘that in the exercise of his functions he often
feels grief most poignant to a feeling heart.’
Then, as at the present time, the Government distributed certain
charitable donations among the various parishes, on condition that the
inhabitants should on their part give certain alms. When the sum thus
offered by them was sufficient, the Comptroller-General wrote on the
margin of the list of contributions, ‘Good; express satisfaction;’ but
if the sum was considerable, he wrote, ‘Good; express satisfaction and
sensibility.’
The administrative functionaries, nearly all belonging to the middle
ranks, already formed a class imbued with a spirit peculiar to itself,
and possessing traditions, virtues, an honour and a pride of its
own. This was, in fact, the aristocracy of the new order of society,
completely formed and ready to start into life; it only waited until
the Revolution had made room for it.
The administration of France was already characterised by the violent
hatred which it entertained indiscriminately towards all those not
within its own pale, whether belonging to the nobility or to the
middle classes, who attempted to take any part in public affairs. The
smallest independent body, which seemed likely to be formed without
its intervention, caused alarm; the smallest voluntary association,
whatever was its object, was considered troublesome; and none were
suffered to exist but those which it composed in an arbitrary manner,
and over which it presided. Even the great industrial companies
found little favour in the eyes of the administration; in a word, it
did not choose that the citizens should take any concern whatever
in the examination of their own affairs, and preferred sterility to
competition. But, as it has always been necessary to allow the French
people the indulgence of a little licence to console them for their
servitude, the Government suffered them to discuss with great freedom
all sorts of general and abstract theories of religion, philosophy,
morals, and even politics. It was ready enough to allow the fundamental
principles upon which society then rested to be attacked, and the
existence of God himself to be discussed, provided no comments were
made upon the very least of its own agents. Such speculations were
supposed to be altogether irrelevant to the State.
Although the newspapers of the eighteenth century, or as they were
then called the gazettes, contained more epigrams than polemics, the
administration looked upon this small power with a very jealous eye.
It was indulgent enough towards books, but already extremely harsh
towards newspapers; so, being unable altogether to suppress them,
it endeavoured to turn them to its own purposes. Under the date of
1761 I find a circular addressed to all the Intendants throughout the
kingdom, announcing that the King (Louis XV.) had directed that in
future the ‘Gazette de France’ should be drawn up under the inspection
of the Government; ‘his Majesty being desirous,’ says the circular, ‘to
render that journal interesting, and to ensure to it a superiority
over all others. In consequence whereof,’ adds the Minister, ‘you will
take care to send me a bulletin of everything that happens in your
district likely to engage the curiosity of the public, more especially
whatever relates to physical science, natural history, or remarkable
and interesting occurrences.’ This circular is accompanied by a
prospectus setting forth that the new Gazette, though appearing oftener
and containing more matter than the journal which it supersedes, will
cost the subscribers much less.
Furnished with these documents, the Intendant wrote to his
Sub-delegates and set them to work; but at first they replied that they
knew nothing. This called forth a second letter from the Minister,
complaining bitterly of the sterility of the province as to news. ‘His
Majesty commands me to tell you that it is his intention that you
should pay very serious attention to this matter, and that you should
give the most precise order to your agents.’ Hereupon the Sub-delegates
undertake the task. One of them reported that a smuggler of salt had
been hung, and had displayed great courage; another that a woman in his
district had been delivered of three girls at a birth; a third that a
dreadful storm had occurred, though without doing any mischief. One of
them declared that in spite of all his efforts he had been unable to
discover anything worth recording, but that he would subscribe himself
to so useful a journal, and would exhort all respectable persons to
follow his example. All these efforts seem, however, to have produced
but little effect, for a fresh letter informs us that ‘the King, who
has the goodness,’ as the Minister says, ‘himself to enter into the
whole detail of the measures for perfecting the Gazette, and who wishes
to give to this journal the superiority and celebrity it deserves, has
testified much dissatisfaction on seeing his views so ill carried out.’
History is a picture gallery, containing few originals and a great many
copies.
It must be admitted, however, that in France the Central Government
never imitated those Governments of the South of Europe which seem to
have taken possession of everything only in order to render everything
barren. The French Government frequently showed great intelligence as
to its functions, and always displayed prodigious activity. But its
activity was often unproductive and even mischievous, because at times
it endeavoured to do that which was beyond its power, or that which no
one could control.
It rarely attempted, or quickly abandoned, the most necessary
reforms, which could only be carried out by persevering energy; but
it constantly changed its by-laws and its regulations. Within the
sphere of its presence nothing remained in repose for a moment. New
regulations succeeded each other with such extraordinary rapidity that
the agents of Government, amidst the multiplicity of commands they
received, often found it difficult to discover how to obey them. Some
municipal officers complained to the Comptroller-General himself of the
extreme mobility of this subordinate legislation. ‘The variation of the
financial regulations alone,’ said they, ‘is such, that a municipal
officer, even were his appointment permanent, has no time for anything
but studying the new rules as fast as they come out, even to the extent
of being forced to neglect his own business.’
Even when the law itself was not altered its application varied every
day. Without seeing the working of the administration under the old
French Government in the secret documents which are still in existence,
it is impossible to imagine the contempt into which the law eventually
falls, even in the eyes of those charged with the application of it,
when there are no longer either political assemblies or public journals
to check the capricious activity, or to set bounds to the arbitrary and
changeable humour of the Ministers and their offices.
We hardly find a single Order in Council that does not recite some
anterior laws, often of very recent date, which had been enacted but
never executed. There was not an edict, a royal declaration, or any
solemnly registered letters-patent, that did not encounter a thousand
impediments in its application. The letters of the Comptrollers-General
and the Intendants show that the Government constantly permitted things
to be done, by exception, at variance with its own orders. It rarely
broke the law, but the law was perpetually made to bend slightly in all
directions to meet particular cases, and to facilitate the conduct of
affairs.
An Intendant writes to the minister with reference to a duty of
_octroi_ from which a contractor of public works wanted to be exempted:
‘It is certain that according to the strict letter of the edicts and
decrees which I have just quoted, no person throughout the kingdom is
exempted from these duties; but those who are versed in the knowledge
of affairs are well aware that these imperative enactments stand on the
same footing as to the penalties which they impose, and that although
they are to be found in almost every edict, declaration, and decree
for the imposition of taxes, they have never prevented exceptions from
being made.’
The whole essence of the then state of France is contained in this
passage: rigid rules and lax practice were its characteristics.
Any one who should attempt to judge the Government of that period by
the collection of its laws would fall into the most absurd mistakes.
Under the date 1757 I have found a royal declaration condemning to
death any one who shall compose or print writings contrary to religion
or established order. The bookseller who sells and the pedlar who hawks
them are to suffer the same punishment. Was this in the age of St.
Dominic? It was under the supremacy of Voltaire.
It is a common subject of complaint against the French that they
despise law; but when, alas! could they have learned to respect it? It
may be truly said that amongst the men of the period I am describing,
the place which should be filled in the human mind by the notion of
_law_ was empty. Every petitioner entreated that the established order
of things should be set aside in his favour with as much vehemence and
authority as if he were demanding that it should be properly enforced;
and indeed its authority was never alleged against him but as a means
of getting rid of his importunity. The submission of the people to the
existing powers was still complete, but their obedience was the effect
of custom rather than of will, and when by chance they were stirred
up, the slightest excitement led at once to violence, which again was
almost always repressed by counter-violence and arbitrary power, not by
the law.
In the eighteenth century the central authority in France had not
yet acquired that sound and vigorous constitution which it has since
exhibited; nevertheless, as it had already succeeded in destroying all
intermediate authorities, and had left only a vast blank between itself
and the individuals constituting the nation, it already appeared to
each of them from a distance as the only spring of the social machine,
the sole and indispensable agent of public life.
Nothing shows this more fully than the writings even of its detractors.
When the long period of uneasiness which preceded the Revolution
began to be felt, all sorts of new systems of society and government
were concocted. The ends which these various reformers had in view
were various, but the means they proposed were always the same. They
wanted to employ the power of the central authority in order to
destroy all existing institutions, and to reconstruct them according
to some new plan of their own device; no other power appeared to them
capable of accomplishing such a task. The power of the State ought,
they said, to be as unlimited as its rights; all that was required
was to force it to make a proper use of both. The elder Mirabeau, a
nobleman so imbued with the notion of the rights of his order that he
openly called the Intendants ‘intruders,’ and declared that if the
appointment of the magistrates was left altogether in the hands of
the Government, the courts of justice would soon be mere ‘bands of
commissioners,’--Mirabeau himself looked only to the action of the
central authority to realise his visionary schemes.
These ideas were not confined to books; they found entrance into men’s
minds, modified their customs, affected their habits, and penetrated
throughout society, even into every-day life.
No one imagined that any important affair could be properly carried
out without the intervention of the State. Even the agriculturists--a
class usually refractory to precept--were disposed to think that if
agriculture did not improve, it was the fault of the Government, which
did not give them sufficient advice and assistance. One of them writes
to an Intendant in a tone of irritation which foreshadows the coming
Revolution. ‘Why does not the Government appoint inspectors to go
once a year into the provinces to examine the state of cultivation,
to instruct the cultivators how to improve it--to tell them what to
do with their cattle, how to fatten, rear, and sell them, and where
to take them to market? These inspectors should be well paid; and the
farmers who exhibited proofs of the best system of husbandry should
receive some mark of honour.’
Agricultural inspectors and crosses of honour! Such means of
encouraging agriculture never would have entered into the head of a
Suffolk farmer.
In the eyes of the majority of the French the Government was alone
able to ensure public order; the people were afraid of nothing but the
patrols, and men of property had no confidence in anything else. Both
classes regarded the gendarme on his rounds not merely as the chief
defender of order, but as order itself. ‘No one,’ says the provincial
assembly of Guyenne, ‘can fail to observe that the sight of a patrol is
well calculated to restrain those most hostile to all subordination.’
Accordingly every one wanted to have a squadron of them at his own
door. The archives of an intendancy are full of requests of this
nature; no one seemed to suspect that under the guise of a protector a
master might be concealed.[32]
Nothing struck the émigrés so much on their arrival in England as the
absence of this military force. It filled them with surprise, and often
even with contempt, for the English. One of them, a man of ability,
but whose education had not prepared him for what he was to see, wrote
as follows:--‘It is perfectly true that an Englishman congratulates
himself on having been robbed, on the score that at any rate there
is no patrol in his country. A man may lament anything that disturbs
public tranquillity, but he will nevertheless comfort himself, when he
sees the turbulent restored to society, with the reflection that the
letter of the law is stronger than all other considerations. Such false
notions, however,’ he adds, ‘are not absolutely universal; there are
some wise people who think otherwise, and wisdom must prevail in the
end.’
But that these eccentricities of the English could have any connection
with their liberties never entered into the mind of this observer. He
chose rather to explain the phenomenon by more scientific reasons.
‘In a country,’ said he, ‘where the moisture of the climate, and the
want of elasticity in the air, give a sombre tinge to the temperament,
the people are disposed to give themselves up to serious objects. The
English people are naturally inclined to occupy themselves with the
affairs of government, to which the French are averse.’
The French Government having thus assumed the place of Providence, it
was natural that every one should invoke its aid in his individual
necessities. Accordingly we find an immense number of petitions which,
while affecting to relate to the public interest, really concern
only small individual interests.[33] The boxes containing them are
perhaps the only place in which all the classes composing that society
of France, which has long ceased to exist, are still mingled. It
is a melancholy task to read them: we find peasants praying to be
indemnified for the loss of their cattle or their horses; wealthy
landowners asking for assistance in rendering their estates more
productive; manufacturers soliciting from the Intendant privileges
by which they may be protected from a troublesome competition, and
very frequently confiding the embarrassed state of their affairs to
him, and begging him to obtain for them relief or a loan from the
Comptroller-General. It appears that some fund was set apart for this
purpose.
Even the nobles were often very importunate solicitants; the only mark
of their condition is the lofty tone in which they begged. The tax of
twentieths was to many of them the principal link in the chain of their
dependence.[2] Their quota of this tax was fixed every year by the
Council upon the report of the Intendant, and to him they addressed
themselves in order to obtain delays and remissions. I have read a host
of petitions of this nature made by nobles, nearly all men of title,
and often of very high rank, in consideration, as they stated, of the
insufficiency of their revenues, or the disordered state of their
affairs. The nobles usually addressed the Intendant as ‘Monsieur;’ but
I have observed that, under these circumstances, they invariably called
him ‘Monseigneur,’ as was usually done by men of the middle class.
Sometimes pride and poverty were drolly mixed in these petitions. One
of the nobles wrote to the Intendant: ‘Your feeling heart will never
consent to see the father of a family of my rank strictly taxed by
twentieths like a father of the lower classes.’ At the periods of
scarcity, which were so frequent during the eighteenth century, the
whole population of each district looked to the Intendant, and appeared
to expect to be fed by him alone. It is true that every man already
blamed the Government for all his sufferings. The most inevitable
privations were ascribed to it, and even the inclemency of the seasons
was made a subject of reproach to it.
We need not be astonished at the marvellous facility with which
centralisation was re-established in France at the beginning of this
century.[34] The men of 1789 had overthrown the edifice, but its
foundations remained deep in the very minds of the destroyers, and on
these foundations it was easy to build it up anew, and to make it more
stable than it had ever been before.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] See Note XXVI., Additional Patrols.
[33] See Note XXVII., Bureaux de Tabac.
[34] See Note XXVIII., Extinction of Loyal Activity.
CHAPTER VII.
OF ALL EUROPEAN NATIONS FRANCE WAS ALREADY THAT IN WHICH THE
METROPOLIS HAD ACQUIRED THE GREATEST PREPONDERANCE OVER THE
PROVINCES, AND HAD MOST COMPLETELY ABSORBED THE WHOLE EMPIRE.
The political preponderance of capital cities over the rest of the
empire is caused neither by their situation, their size, nor their
wealth, but by the nature of the government. London, which contains
the population of a kingdom, has never hitherto exercised a sovereign
influence over the destinies of Great Britain. No citizen of the United
States ever imagined that the inhabitants of New York could decide
the fate of the American Union. Nay more, no one even in the State of
New York conceives that the will of that city alone could direct the
affairs of the nation. Yet New York at this moment numbers as many
inhabitants as Paris contained when the Revolution broke out.
At the time of the wars of religion in France Paris was thickly peopled
in proportion to the rest of the kingdom as in 1789. Nevertheless, at
that time it had no decisive power. At the time of the Fronde Paris was
still no more than the largest city in France. In 1789 it was already
France itself.
As early as 1740 Montesquieu wrote to one of his friends, ‘Nothing is
left in France but Paris and the distant provinces, because Paris has
not yet had time to devour them.’ In 1750 the Marquis de Mirabeau, a
fanciful but sometimes deep thinker, said, in speaking of Paris without
naming it: ‘Capital cities are necessary; but if the head grows too
large, the body becomes apoplectic and the whole perishes. What then
will be the result, if by giving over the provinces to a sort of direct
dependence, and considering their inhabitants only as subjects of the
Crown of an inferior order, to whom no means of consideration are left
and no career for ambition is open, every man possessing any talent is
drawn towards the capital!’ He called this a kind of silent revolution
which must deprive the provinces of all their men of rank, business,
and talent.
The reader who has followed the preceding chapters attentively already
knows the causes of this phenomenon; it would be a needless tax on his
patience to enumerate them afresh in this place.
This revolution did not altogether escape the attention of the
Government, but chiefly by its physical effect on the growth of the
city. The Government saw the daily extension of Paris and was afraid
that it would become difficult to administer so large a city properly.
A great number of ordinances issued by the Kings of France, chiefly
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were destined to put a
stop to the growth of the capital. These sovereigns were concentrating
the whole public life of France more and more in Paris or at its gates,
and yet they wanted Paris to remain a small city. The erection of new
houses was forbidden, or else commands were issued that they should be
built in the most costly manner and in unattractive situations which
were fixed upon beforehand. Every one of these ordinances, it is true,
declares, that in spite of all preceding edicts Paris had continued to
spread. Six times during the course of his reign did Louis XIV., in the
height of his power, in vain attempt to check the increase of Paris;
the city grew continually in spite of all edicts. Its political and
social preponderance increased even faster than its walls, not so much
owing to what took place within them as to the events passing without.
During this period all local liberties gradually became extinct, the
symptoms of independent vitality disappeared. The distinctive features
of the various provinces became confused, and the last traces of the
ancient public life were effaced. Not that the nation was falling into
a state of languor; on the contrary, activity everywhere prevailed;
but the motive principle was no longer anywhere but in Paris. I will
cite but one example of this from amongst a thousand. In the reports
made to the Minister on the condition of the bookselling trade, I find
that in the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth,
many considerable printing offices existed in provincial towns which
are now without printers, or where the printers are without work. Yet
there can be no doubt that many more literary productions of all kinds
were published at the end of the eighteenth century than during the
sixteenth; but all mental activity now emanated from the centre alone;
Paris had totally absorbed the provinces. At the time when the French
Revolution broke out, this first revolution was fully accomplished.
The celebrated traveller Arthur Young left Paris soon after the
meeting of the States-General, and a few days before the taking of the
Bastille; the contrast between that which he had just seen in the city
and that which he found beyond its walls filled him with surprise. In
Paris all was noise and activity; every hour produced a fresh political
pamphlet; as many as ninety-two were published in a week. ‘Never,’
said he, ‘did I see such activity in publishing, even in London.’ Out
of Paris all seemed inert and silent; few pamphlets and no newspapers
were printed. Nevertheless, the provinces were agitated and ready for
action, but motionless; if the inhabitants assembled from time to time,
it was in order to hear the news which they expected from Paris. In
every town Young asked the inhabitants what they intended to do? ‘The
answer,’ he says, ‘was always the same: “Ours is but a provincial town;
we must wait to see what will be done at Paris.” These people,’ he
adds, ‘do not even venture to have an opinion until they know what is
thought at Paris.’
Nothing was more astonishing than the extraordinary ease with which
the Constituent Assembly destroyed at a single stroke all the ancient
French provinces, many of which were older than the monarchy, and then
divided the kingdom methodically into eighty-three distinct portions,
as though it had been the virgin soil of the New World. Europe was
surprised and alarmed by a spectacle for which it was so little
prepared. ‘This is the first time,’ said Burke, ‘that we have seen men
tear their native land in pieces in so barbarous a manner.’ No doubt
it appeared like tearing in pieces living bodies, but, in fact, the
provinces that were thus dismembered were only corpses.
While Paris was thus finally establishing its supremacy externally, a
change took place within its own walls equally deserving the notice
of history. After having been a city merely of exchange, of business,
of consumption, and of pleasure, Paris had now become a manufacturing
town; a second fact, which gave to the first a new and more formidable
character.
The origin of this change was very remote; it appears that even during
the Middle Ages Paris was already the most industrious as well as the
largest city of the kingdom. This becomes more manifest as we approach
modern times. In the same degree that the business of administration
was brought to Paris, industrial affairs found their way thither. As
Paris became more and more the arbiter of taste, the sole centre of
power and of the arts, and the chief focus of national activity, the
industrial life of the nation withdrew and concentrated itself there in
the same proportion.
Although the statistical documents anterior to the Revolution are, for
the most part, deserving of little confidence, I think it may safely
be affirmed that, during the sixty years which preceded the French
Revolution, the number of artisans in Paris was more than doubled;
whereas during the same period the general population of the city
scarcely increased one third.
Independently of the general causes which I have stated, there were
other very peculiar causes which attracted working men to Paris from
all parts of France, and agglomerated them by degrees in particular
quarters of the town, which they ended by occupying almost exclusively.
The restrictions imposed upon manufactures by the fiscal legislation
of the time were lighter at Paris than anywhere else in France;
it was nowhere so easy to escape from the tyranny of the guilds.
Certain faubourgs, such as the Faubourg St. Antoine, and of the
Temple specially, enjoyed great privileges of this nature. Louis XVI.
considerably enlarged these immunities of the Faubourg St. Antoine,
and did his best to gather together an immense working population
in that spot, ‘being desirous,’ said that unfortunate monarch, in
one of his edicts, ‘to bestow upon the artisans of the Faubourg St.
Antoine a further mark of our protection, and to relieve them from the
restrictions which are injurious to their interests as well as to the
freedom of trade.’
The number of workshops, manufactories, and foundries had increased
so greatly in Paris, towards the approach of the Revolution, that the
Government at length became alarmed at it. The sight of this progress
inspired it with many imaginary terrors. Amongst other things, we find
an Order in Council, in 1782, stating that ‘the King, apprehending
that the rapid increase of manufactures would cause a consumption of
wood likely to become prejudicial to the supply of the city, prohibits
for the future the creation of any establishment of this nature within
a circuit of fifteen leagues round Paris.’ The real danger likely to
arise from such an agglomeration gave no uneasiness to any one.
Thus then Paris had become the mistress of France, and the popular
army which was destined to make itself master of Paris was already
assembling.
It is pretty generally admitted, I believe, now, that administrative
centralisation and the omnipotence of Paris have had a great share
in the overthrow of all the various governments which have succeeded
one another during the last forty years. It will not be difficult to
show that the same state of things contributed largely to the sudden
and violent ruin of the old monarchy, and must be numbered among the
principal causes of that first Revolution which has produced all the
succeeding ones.
CHAPTER VIII.
FRANCE WAS THE COUNTRY IN WHICH MEN HAD BECOME THE MOST ALIKE.
If we carefully examine the state of society in France before the
Revolution we may see it under two very contrary aspects. It would seem
that the men of that time, especially those belonging to the middle
and upper ranks of society, who alone were at all conspicuous, were
all exactly alike. Nevertheless we find that this monotonous crowd
was divided into many different parts by a prodigious number of small
barriers, and that each of these small divisions formed a distinct
society, exclusively occupied with its own peculiar interests, and
taking no share in the life of the community at large.
When we consider this almost infinitesimal division, we shall perceive
that the citizens of no other nation were so ill prepared to act in
common, or to afford each other a mutual support during a crisis; and
that a society thus constituted might be utterly demolished in a moment
by a great revolution. Imagine all those small barriers thrown down by
an earthquake, and the result is at once a social body more compact and
more homogeneous than any perhaps that the world had ever seen.
I have shown that throughout nearly the whole kingdom the independent
life of the provinces had long been extinct; this had powerfully
contributed to render all Frenchmen very much alike. Through the
diversities which still subsisted the unity of the nation might already
be discerned; uniformity of legislation brought it to light. As the
eighteenth century advanced there was a great increase in the number
of edicts, royal declarations, and Orders in Council, applying the
same regulations in the same manner in every part of the empire. It
was not the governing body alone but the mass of those governed, who
conceived the idea of a legislation so general and so uniform, the same
everywhere and for all: this idea was apparent in all the plans of
reform which succeeded each other for thirty years before the outbreak
of the Revolution. Two centuries earlier the very materials for such
conceptions, if we may use such a phrase, would have been wanting.
Not only did the provinces become more and more alike, but in each
province men of various classes, those at least who were placed above
the common people, grew to resemble each other more and more, in spite
of differences of rank. Nothing displays this more clearly than the
perusal of the instructions to the several Orders of the States-General
of 1789. The interests of those who drew them up were widely different,
but in all else they were identical. In the proceedings of the earlier
States-General the state of things was totally different; the middle
classes and the nobility had then more common interests, more business
in common; they displayed far less reciprocal animosity; yet they
appeared to belong to two distinct races. Time, which had perpetuated,
and, in many respects, aggravated the privileges interposed between two
classes of men, had powerfully contributed to render them alike in all
other respects. For several centuries the French nobility had grown
gradually poorer and poorer. ‘Spite of its privileges the nobility is
ruined and wasted day by day, and the middle classes get possession of
the large fortunes,’ wrote a nobleman in a melancholy strain in 1755.
Yet the laws by which the estates of the nobility were protected still
remained the same, nothing appeared to be changed in their economical
condition. Nevertheless, the more they lost their power the poorer they
everywhere became, in exactly the same proportion.
It would seem as if, in all human institutions as in man himself, there
exists, independently of the organs which manifestly fulfil the various
functions of existence, some central and invisible force which is the
very principle of life. In vain do the organs appear to act as before;
when this vivifying flame is extinct the whole structure languishes and
dies. The French nobility still had entails (indeed Burke remarked,
that in his time entails were more frequent and more strict in France
than in England), the right of primogeniture, territorial and perpetual
dues, and whatever was called a beneficial interest in land. They had
been relieved from the heavy obligation of carrying on war at their own
charge, and at the same time had retained an increased exemption from
taxation; that is to say, they kept the compensation and got rid of the
burden. Moreover, they enjoyed several other pecuniary advantages which
their forefathers had never possessed; nevertheless they gradually
became impoverished in the same degree that they lost the exercise and
the spirit of government. Indeed it is to this gradual impoverishment
that the vast subdivision of landed property, which we have already
remarked, must be partly attributed. The nobles had sold their lands
piecemeal to the peasants, reserving to themselves only the seignorial
rights which gave them the appearance rather than the reality of
their former position. Several provinces of France, like the Limousin
mentioned by Turgot, were filled with a small poor nobility, owning
hardly any land, and living only on seignorial rights and rent-charges
on their former estates.[35]
‘In this district,’ says an Intendant at the beginning of the century,
‘the number of noble families still amounts to several thousands, but
there are not fifteen amongst them who have twenty thousand livres
a year.’ I find in some minutes addressed by another Intendant (of
Franche-Comté) to his successor, in 1750, ‘the nobility of this part
of the country is pretty good but extremely poor, and as proud as it
is poor. It is greatly humbled compared to what it used to be. It is
not bad policy to keep the nobles in this state of poverty in order
to compel them to serve, and to stand in need of our assistance. They
form,’ he adds, ‘a confraternity, into which those only are admitted
who can prove four quarterings. This confraternity is not patented
but only allowed; it meets only once a year, and in the presence of
the Intendant. After dining and hearing mass together, these noblemen
return, every man to his home, some on their rosinantes and the rest on
foot. You will see what a comical assemblage it is.’
This gradual impoverishment of the nobility was more or less apparent,
not only in France, but in all parts of the Continent, in which, as in
France, the feudal system was finally dying out without being replaced
by a new form of aristocracy. This decay was especially manifest and
excited great attention amongst the German States on the banks of the
Rhine. In England alone the contrary was the case. There the ancient
noble families which still existed had not only kept, but greatly
increased their fortunes; they were still first in riches as in power.
The new families which had risen beside them had only copied but had
not surpassed their wealth.
In France the non-noble classes alone seemed to inherit all the wealth
which the nobility had lost; they fattened, as it were, upon its
substance. Yet there were no laws to prevent the middle class from
ruining themselves, or to assist them in acquiring riches; nevertheless
they incessantly increased their wealth; in many instances they had
become as rich as, and often richer than the nobles. Nay, more, their
wealth was of the same kind, for, though dwelling in the town, they
were often landowners in the country, and sometimes they even bought
seignorial estates.
Education and habits of life had already created a thousand other
points of resemblance between these two classes of men. The middle
class man was as enlightened as the noble, and it deserves to be
remarked, his acquirements were derived from the very same source.
The same light shone upon both. Their education had been equally
theoretical and literary. Paris, which became more and more the sole
preceptor of France, had ended by giving to all minds one common form
and action.
At the end of the eighteenth century no doubt some difference was still
perceptible between the manners of the nobility and those of the middle
class, for nothing assimilates more slowly than that surface of society
which we call manners; at bottom, however, all men above the rank of
the common people were alike; they had the same ideas, the same habits,
the same tastes; they indulged in the same pleasures, read the same
books, and spoke the same language. The only difference left between
them was in their rights.
I much doubt whether this was the case in the same degree anywhere
else, even in England, where the different classes, though firmly
united by common interests, still differed in their habits and
feelings; for political liberty, which possesses the admirable power of
placing the citizens of a State in compulsory intercourse and mutual
dependence, does not on that account always make them similar; it is
the government of one man which, in the end, has the inevitable effect
of rendering all men alike, and all mutually indifferent to their
common fate.
FOOTNOTE:
[35] See Note XXIX., Seignorial Dues in different Provinces of France.
CHAPTER IX.
SHOWING HOW MEN THUS SIMILAR WERE MORE DIVIDED THAN EVER INTO SMALL
GROUPS, ESTRANGED FROM AND INDIFFERENT TO EACH OTHER.
Let us now look at the other side of the picture, and we shall see that
these same Frenchmen, who had so many points of resemblance amongst
themselves, were, nevertheless, more completely isolated from each
other than perhaps the inhabitants of any other country, or than had
ever been the case before in France.
It seems extremely probable that, at the time of the first
establishment of the feudal system in Europe, the class which was
subsequently called the nobility did not at once form a _caste_,
but was originally composed of the chief men of the nation, and was
therefore, in the beginning, merely an aristocracy. This, however, is
a question which I have no intention of discussing here; it will be
sufficient to remark that, during the Middle Ages, the nobility had
become a caste, that is to say, that its distinctive mark was birth.
It retained, indeed, one of the proper characteristics of an
aristocracy, that of being a governing body of citizens; but birth
alone decided who should be at the head of this body. Whoever was not
born noble was excluded from this close and particular class, and could
only fill a position more or less exalted but still subordinate in the
State.
Wherever on the continent of Europe the feudal system had been
established it ended in caste; in England alone it returned to
aristocracy.
It has always excited my surprise that a fact which distinguishes
England from all other modern nations, and which alone can throw
light upon the peculiarities of its laws, its spirit, and its
history, has not attracted to a still greater degree the attention of
philosophers and statesmen, and that habit has rendered it, as it were,
imperceptible to the English themselves. It has frequently been seen by
glimpses, and imperfectly described, but no complete and distinct view
has, I believe, ever been taken of it. Montesquieu, it is true, on
visiting Great Britain in 1739, wrote, ‘I am now in a country which has
little resemblance to the rest of Europe:’ but that is all.
It was indeed, not so much its parliament, its liberty, its publicity,
or its jury, which at that time rendered England so unlike the rest
of Europe; it was something far more peculiar and far more powerful.
England was the only country in which the system of caste had been
not only modified, but effectually destroyed. The nobility and the
middle classes in England followed the same business, embraced the same
professions, and, what is far more significant, intermarried with each
other. The daughter of the greatest nobleman could already without
disgrace marry a man of yesterday.
In order to ascertain whether caste, with the ideas, habits, and
barriers it creates amongst a nation, is definitely destroyed, look
at its marriages. They alone give the decisive feature which we seek.
At this very day, in France, after sixty years of democracy, we shall
generally seek it in vain. The old and the new families, between which
no distinction any longer appears to exist, avoid as much as possible
to intermingle with each other by marriage.
It has often been remarked that the English nobility has been more
prudent, more able, and less exclusive than any other. It would have
been much nearer the truth to say, that in England, for a very long
time past, no nobility, properly so called, has existed, if we take the
word in the ancient and limited sense it has everywhere else retained.
This singular revolution is lost in the night of ages, but a living
witness of it yet survives in the idiom of language. For several
centuries the word _gentleman_ has altogether changed its meaning in
England, and the word _roturier_ has ceased to exist. It would have
been impossible to translate literally into English the well-known line
from the ‘Tartuffe,’ even when Molière wrote it in 1664:--
Et tel qu’on le voit, il est bon gentilhomme.
If we make a further application of the science of languages to the
science of history, and pursue the fate of the word _gentleman_
through time and through space,--the offspring of the French word
_gentilhomme_,--we shall find its application extending in England
in the same proportion in which classes draw near one another and
amalgamate. In each succeeding century it is applied to persons placed
somewhat lower in the social scale. At length it travelled with the
English to America, where it is used to designate every citizen
indiscriminately. Its history is that of democracy itself.
In France the word _gentilhomme_ has always been strictly limited to
its original meaning; since the Revolution it has been almost disused,
but its application has never changed. The word which was used to
designate the members of the caste was kept intact, because the caste
itself was maintained as separate from all the rest as it had ever been.
I go even further, and assert that this caste had become far more
exclusive than it was when the word was first invented, and that in
France a change had taken place in the direction opposed to that which
had occurred in England.
Though the nobility and the middle class in France had become far more
alike, they were at the same time more isolated from each other--two
things which are so essentially distinct that the former, instead of
extenuating the latter, may frequently aggravate it.
During the Middle Ages, and whilst the feudal system was still in
force, all those who held land under a lord (and who were properly
called vassals, in feudal law) were constantly associated with the
lord, though many of them were not noble, in the government of the
Seignory; indeed this was the principal condition of their tenures. Not
only were they bound to follow the lord to war, but they were bound, in
virtue of their holdings, to spend a certain part of the year at his
court, that is in helping him to administer justice, and to govern the
inhabitants. The lord’s court was the mainspring of the feudal system
of government; it played a part in all the ancient laws of Europe,
and very distinct vestiges of it may still be found in many parts of
Germany. The learned feudalist, Edmé de Fréminville, who, thirty years
before the French Revolution, thought fit to write a thick volume on
feudal rights and on the renovation of manor rolls, informs us that
he had seen in ‘the titles of a number of manors, that the vassals
were obliged to appear every fortnight at the lord’s court, and that
being there assembled they judged conjointly with the lord and his
ordinary judge, the assizes and differences which had arisen between
the inhabitants.’ He adds, that he had found ‘there were sometimes
eighty, one hundred and fifty, and even as many as two hundred vassals
in one lordship, a great number of whom were _roturiers_.’ I have
quoted this, not as a proof, for a thousand others might be adduced,
but as an example of the manner in which at the beginning, and for
long afterwards, the rural classes were united with the nobility, and
mingled with them daily in the conduct of affairs. That which the
lord’s court did for the small rural proprietors, the Provincial
Estates, and subsequently the States-General, effected for the citizens
of the towns.
It is impossible to study the records of the States-General of the
fourteenth century, and above all of the Provincial Estates of the
same period, without being astonished at the importance of the place
which the _Tiers-Etat_ filled in those assemblies, and at the power it
wielded in them.
As a man the burgess of the fourteenth century was, doubtless, very
inferior to the burgess of the eighteenth; but the middle class, as a
body, filled a far higher and more secure place in political society.
Its right to a share in the government was uncontested; the part which
it played in political assemblies was always considerable and often
preponderating. The other classes of the community were forced to a
constant reckoning with the people.
But what strikes us most is, that the nobility and the _Tiers-Etat_
found it at that time so much easier to transact business together, or
to offer a common resistance, than they have ever found it since. This
is observable not only in the States-General of the fourteenth century,
many of which had an irregular and revolutionary character impressed
upon them by the disasters of the time, but in the Provincial Estates
of the same period, where nothing seems to have interrupted the regular
and habitual course of affairs. Thus, in Auvergne, we find that the
three Orders took the most important measures in common, and that the
execution of them was superintended by commissioners chosen equally
from all three. The same thing occurred at the same time in Champagne.
Every one knows the famous act by which, at the beginning of the same
century, the nobles and burgesses of a large number of towns combined
together to defend the franchises of the nation and the privileges of
their provinces against the encroachments of the Crown. During that
period of French history we find many such episodes, which appear as if
borrowed from the history of England. In the following centuries events
of this character altogether disappeared.[36]
The fact is, that as by degrees the government of the lordships
became disorganised, and the States-General grew rarer or ceased
altogether--that as the general liberties of the country were finally
destroyed, involving the local liberties in their ruin--the burgess and
the noble ceased to come into contact in public life. They no longer
felt the necessity of standing by one another, or of a mutual compact;
every day rendered them more independent of each other, but at the same
time estranged them more and more. In the eighteenth century this
revolution was fully accomplished; the two conditions of men never met
but by accident in private life. Thenceforth the two classes were not
merely rivals but enemies.[37]
One circumstance which seems very peculiar to France, was that at the
very time when the order of nobility was thus losing its political
powers, the nobles individually acquired several privileges which they
had never possessed before, or increased those which they already
enjoyed. It was as if the members enriched themselves with the spoil
of the body. The nobility had less and less right to command, but
the nobles had more and more the exclusive prerogative of being the
first servants of the master. It was more easy for a man of low birth
to become an officer under Louis XIV. than under Louis XVI.; this
frequently happened in Prussia at a time when there was no example of
such a thing in France. Every one of these privileges once obtained
adhered to the blood and was inseparable from it. The more the French
nobility ceased to be an aristocracy, the more did it become a caste.
Let us take the most invidious of all these privileges, that of
exemption from taxation.[38] It is easy to perceive that from the
fifteenth century until the French Revolution, this privilege was
continually increasing, and that it increased with the rapid progress
of the public burdens. When, as under Charles VII., only 1,200,000
livres were raised by the _taille_, the privilege of being exempted
from it was but small; but when, under Louis XVI., eighty millions
were raised by the same tax, the privilege of exemption became very
great. When the _taille_ was the only tax levied on the non-noble
classes, the exemption of the nobility was little felt; but when taxes
of this description were multiplied a thousandfold under various
names and shapes--when four other taxes had been assimilated with
the _taille_--when burdens unknown in the Middle Ages, such as the
application of forced labour by the Crown to all public works or
services, the militia, &c.--had been added to the _taille_ with its
accessories, and were distributed with the same inequality, then indeed
the exemption of birth appeared immense. The inequality, though great,
was indeed still more apparent than real, for the noble was often
reached through his farmer by the tax which he escaped in his own
person; but in such matters as this the inequality which is seen does
more harm than that which is felt.
Louis XIV., pressed by the financial difficulties which overwhelmed him
towards the end of his reign, had established two common taxes--the
capitation tax and the twentieths; but, as if the exemption from
taxation had been in itself a privilege so venerable that it was
necessary to respect it in the very act by which it was infringed, care
was taken to render the mode of collection different even when the tax
was common. For one class it remained harsh and degrading, for the
other indulgent and honourable.[39]
Although inequality under taxation prevailed throughout the whole
continent of Europe, there were very few countries in which it had
become so palpable or was so constantly felt as in France. Throughout
a great part of Germany most of the taxes were indirect; and even with
respect to the direct taxes, the privilege of the nobility frequently
consisted only in bearing a smaller share of the common burden.[40]
There were, moreover, certain taxes which fell only upon the nobles,
and which were intended to replace the gratuitous military service
which was no longer exacted.
Now of all means of distinguishing one man from another and of
marking the difference of classes, inequality of taxation is the most
pernicious and the most calculated to add isolation to inequality, and
in some sort to render both irremediable. Let us look at its effects.
When the noble and the middle classes are not liable to the same tax,
the assessment and collection of each year’s revenue draws afresh
with sharpness and precision the line of demarcation between them.
Every year each member of the privileged order feels an immediate and
pressing interest in not suffering himself to be confounded with the
mass, and makes a fresh effort to place himself apart from it.[41]
As there is scarcely any matter of public business that does not
either arise out of or result in a tax, it follows that as soon as
the two classes are not equally liable to it, they can no longer have
any reason for common deliberation, or any cause of common wants and
desires; no effort is needed to keep them asunder; the occasion and the
desire for common action have been removed.
In the highly-coloured description which Mr. Burke gave of the ancient
constitution of France, he urged in favour of the constitution of
the French nobility, the ease with which the middle classes could
be ennobled by acquiring an office: he fancied that this bore some
analogy to the open aristocracy of England. Louis XI. had, it is true,
multiplied the grants of nobility; with him it was a means of lowering
the aristocracy: his successors lavished them in order to obtain
money. Necker informs us, that in his time the number of offices which
conferred nobility amounted to four thousand. Nothing like this existed
in any other part of Europe, but the analogy which Burke sought to
establish between France and England on this score was all the more
false.
If the middle classes of England, instead of making war upon the
aristocracy, have remained so intimately connected with it, it is not
specially because the aristocracy is open to all, but rather, as has
been said, because its outline is indistinct and its limit unknown--not
so much because any man could be admitted into it as because it was
impossible to say with certainty when he took rank there--so that all
who approached it might look upon themselves as belonging to it, might
take part in its rule, and derive either lustre or profit from its
influence.
Whereas the barrier which divided the nobility of France from the other
classes, though easily enough passed, was always fixed and visible,
and manifested itself to those who remained without, by striking and
odious tokens. He who had once crossed it was separated from all those
whose ranks he had just quitted by privileges which were burdensome and
humiliating to them.
The system of creating new nobles, far from lessening the hatred of
the _roturier_ to the nobleman, increased it beyond measure; it was
envenomed by all the envy with which the new noble was looked upon
by his former equals. For this reason the _Tiers-Etat_, in all their
complaints, always displayed more irritation against the newly-ennobled
than against the old nobility; and far from demanding that the gate
which led out of their own condition should be made wider, they
continually required that it should be narrowed.
At no period of French history had it been so easy to acquire nobility
as in 1789, and never were the middle classes and the nobility so
completely separated. Not only did the nobles refuse to endure, in
their electoral colleges, any one who had the slightest taint of
middle-class blood, but the middle classes also as carefully excluded
all those who might in any degree be looked upon as noble. In some
provinces the newly-ennobled were rejected by one class because they
were not noble enough, and by the other because they were too much so.
This, it is said, was the case with the celebrated Lavoisier.
If, leaving the nobility out of the question, we turn our attention to
the middle classes, we shall find the same state of things: the man of
the middle classes living almost as far apart from the common people as
the noble was from the middle class.
Almost the whole of the middle class before the Revolution dwelt in the
towns. Two causes had principally led to this result--the privileges
of the nobles and the _taille_. The Seigneur who lived on his estates
usually treated his peasants with a certain good-natured familiarity,
but his arrogance towards his neighbours of the middle class was
unbounded. It had never ceased to augment as his political power had
diminished, and for that very reason; for on the one hand, as he
had ceased to govern, he no longer had any interest in conciliating
those who could assist him in that task; whilst, on the other, as has
frequently been observed, he tried to console himself for the loss
of real power by an immoderate display of his apparent rights. Even
his absence from his estates, instead of relieving his neighbours,
only served to increase their annoyance. Absenteeism had not even
that good effect, for privileges enforced by proxy were all the more
insupportable.
I am not sure, however, that the _taille_, and all the taxes which had
been assimilated to it, were not still more powerful causes.
I could show, I think, in very few words, why the _taille_ and its
accessories pressed much more heavily on the country than on the
towns; but the reader would probably think it superfluous. It will be
sufficient to point out that the middle classes, gathered together in
the towns, could find a thousand means of alleviating the weight of
the _taille_, and often indeed of avoiding it altogether, which not
one of them could have employed singly had he remained on the estate
to which he belonged. Above all, he thereby escaped the obligation of
collecting the _taille_, which he dreaded far more than that of paying
it, and not without reason; for there never was under the old French
Government, or, I believe, under any Government, a worse condition than
that of the parochial collector of the _taille_. I shall have occasion
to show this hereafter. Yet no one in a village except the nobles could
escape this office; and rather than subject himself to it, the rich man
of the middle class let his estates and withdrew to the neighbouring
town. Turgot coincides with all the secret documents which I have had
an opportunity of consulting, when he says, that ‘the collecting of
the _taille_ converts all the non-noble landowners of the country into
burgesses of the towns.’ Indeed this, to make a passing remark, was one
of the chief causes why France was fuller of towns, and especially of
small towns, than almost any other country in Europe.
Once ensconced within the walls of a town, a wealthy though low-born
member of the middle class soon lost the tastes and ideas of rural
life; he became totally estranged from the labours and the affairs of
those of his own class whom he had left behind. His whole life was now
devoted to one single object: he aspired to become a public officer in
his adopted town.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the passion for place, which
fills almost all Frenchmen of our time, more especially those belonging
to the middle ranks, has arisen since the Revolution; its birth dates
from several centuries back, and it has constantly increased in
strength, thanks to the variety of fresh food with which it has been
continually supplied.
Places under the old Government did not always resemble those of our
day, but I believe they were even more numerous; the number of petty
places was almost infinite. It has been reckoned that between the years
1693 and 1790 alone, forty thousand such places were created, almost
all within the reach of the lower middle class. I have counted that, in
1750, in a provincial town of moderate size, no less than one hundred
and nine persons were engaged in the administration of justice, and
one hundred and twenty-six in the execution of the judgments delivered
by them--all inhabitants of the town. The eagerness with which the
townspeople of the middle class sought to obtain these places was
really unparalleled. No sooner had one of them become possessed of a
small capital than, instead of investing it in business, he immediately
laid it out in the purchase of a place. This wretched ambition has done
more harm to the agriculture and the trade of France than the guilds or
even the _taille_. When the supply of places failed, the imagination
of place-hunters instantly fell to work to invent new ones. A certain
Sieur Lemberville published a memorial to prove that it was quite in
accordance with the interest of the public to create inspectors for a
particular branch of manufactures, and he concluded by offering himself
for the employment. Which of us has not known a Lemberville? A man
endowed with some education and small means, thought it not decorous to
die without having been a government officer. ‘Every man according to
his condition,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘wants to be something by
command of the King.’
The principal difference in this respect between the time of which I
have been speaking and the present is, that formerly the Government
sold the places; whereas now it gives them away. A man no longer pays
his money in order to purchase a place: he does more, he sells himself.
Separated from the peasantry by the difference of residence, and still
more by the manner of life, the middle classes were also for the most
part divided from them by interest. The privileges of the nobles with
respect to taxation were justly complained of, but what then can be
said of those enjoyed by the middle class? The offices which exempted
them wholly or in part from public burdens were counted by thousands:
one exempted them from the militia, another from the _corvée_, a third
from the _taille_. ‘Is there a parish,’ says a writer of the time,
‘that does not contain, independently of the nobles and ecclesiastics,
a number of inhabitants who have purchased for themselves, by dint of
places or commissions, some sort of exemption from taxation?’ One of
the reasons why a certain number of offices destined for the middle
classes were, from time to time, abolished is the diminution of the
receipts caused by the exemption of so large a number of persons from
the _taille_. I have no doubt that the number of those exempted among
the middle class was as great as, and often greater than, among the
nobility.
These miserable privileges filled those who were deprived of them with
envy, and those who enjoyed them with the most selfish pride. Nothing
is more striking throughout the eighteenth century than the hostility
of the citizen of the towns towards the surrounding peasantry, and
the jealousy felt by the peasants of the townspeople. ‘Every single
town,’ says Turgot, ‘absorbed by its own separate interests, is ready
to sacrifice to them the country and the villages of its district.’
‘You have often been obliged,’ said he, elsewhere, in addressing his
Sub-delegates, ‘to repress the constant tendency to usurpation and
encroachment which characterises the conduct of the towns towards the
country people and the villages of their district.’
Even the common people who dwelt within the walls of the towns with the
middle classes became estranged from and almost hostile to them. Most
of the local burdens which they imposed were so contrived as to press
most heavily on the lower classes. More than once I have had occasion
to ascertain the truth of what Turgot also says in another part of his
works, namely, that the middle classes of the towns had found means to
regulate the _octrois_ in such a manner that the burden did not fall on
themselves.
What is most obvious in every act of the French middle classes, was
their dread of being confounded with the common people, and their
passionate desire to escape by every means in their power from popular
control. ‘If it were his Majesty’s pleasure,’ said the burgesses of a
town, in a memorial addressed to the Comptroller-General, ‘that the
office of mayor should become elective, it would be proper to oblige
the electors to choose him only from the chief notables, and even from
the corporation.’
We have seen that it was a part of the policy of the Kings of France
successively to withdraw from the population of the towns the exercise
of their political rights. From Louis XI. to Louis XV. their whole
legislation betrays this intention; frequently the burgesses themselves
seconded that intention, sometimes they suggested it.
At the time of the municipal reform of 1764, an Intendant consulted
the municipal officers of a small town on the point of preserving
to the artisans and working-classes--_autre menu peuple_--the right
of electing their magistrates. These officers replied that it was
true that ‘the people had never abused this right, and that it would
doubtless be agreeable to preserve to them the consolation of choosing
their own masters; but that it would be still better, in the interest
of good order and the public tranquillity, to make over this duty
altogether to the Assembly of Notables.’ The Sub-delegate reported,
on his side, that he had held a secret meeting, at his own house, of
the ‘six best citizens of the town.’ These six best citizens were
unanimously of opinion that the wisest course would be to entrust
the election, not even to the Assembly of Notables, as the municipal
officers had proposed, but to a certain number of deputies chosen
from the different bodies of which that Assembly was composed. The
Sub-delegate, more favourable to the liberties of the people than these
burgesses themselves, reported their opinion, but added, as his own,
that ‘it was nevertheless very hard upon the working-classes to pay,
without any means of controlling the expenditure of the money, sums
imposed on them by such of their fellow-citizens who were probably, by
reason of the privileged exemptions from taxation, the least interested
in the question.’
Let us complete this survey. Let us now consider the middle classes as
distinguished from the people, just as we have previously considered
the nobility as distinguished from the middle classes.[42] We shall
discover in this small portion of the French nation, thus set apart
from the rest, infinite subdivisions. It seems as if the people of
France was like those pretended simple substances in which modern
chemistry perpetually detects new elements by the force of its
analysis. I have discovered not less than thirty-six distinct bodies
among the notables of one small town. These distinct bodies, though
already very diminutive, were constantly employed in reducing each
other to still narrower dimensions. They were perpetually throwing off
the heterogeneous particles they might still contain, so as to reduce
themselves to the most simple elements. Some of them were reduced
by this elaborate process to no more than three or four members,
but their personality only became more intense and their tempers
more contentious. All of them were separated from each other by some
diminutive privileges, the least honourable of which was still a mark
of honour. Between them raged incessant disputes for precedency.
The Intendant, and even the Courts of Justice, were distracted by
their quarrels. ‘It has just been decided that holy-water is to be
offered to the magistrates (_le présidial_) before it is offered to
the corporation. The Parliament hesitated, but the King has called
up the affair to his Council, and decided it himself. It was high
time; this question had thrown the whole town into a ferment.’ If
one of these bodies obtained precedency over another in the general
Assembly of Notables, the latter instantly withdrew, and preferred
abandoning altogether the public business of the community rather than
submit to an outrage on his dignity.--The body of periwig-makers of
the town of La Flèche decided ‘that it would express in this manner
its well-founded grief occasioned by the precedency which had been
granted to the bakers.’ A portion of the notables of another town
obstinately refused to perform their office, because, as the Intendant
reported, ‘some artisans have been introduced into the Assembly, with
whom the principal burgesses cannot bear to associate.’ ‘If the place
of sheriff,’ said the Intendant of another province, ‘be given to a
notary, the other notables will be disgusted, as the notaries are
here men of no birth, not being of the families of the notables, and
all of them having been clerks.’ The ‘six best citizens,’ whom I have
already mentioned, and who so readily decided that the people ought to
be deprived of their political rights, were singularly perplexed when
they had to determine who the notables were to be, and what order of
precedency was to be established amongst them. In such a strait they
presume only to express their doubts, fearing, as they said, ‘to cause
to some of their fellow-citizens too sensible a mortification.’
The natural vanity of the French was strengthened and stimulated by the
incessant collision of their pretensions in these small bodies, and the
legitimate pride of the citizens was forgotten. Most of these small
corporations, of which I have been speaking, already existed in the
sixteenth century; but at that time their members, after having settled
among themselves the business of their own fraternity, joined all the
other citizens to transact in common the public business of the city.
In the eighteenth century these bodies were almost entirely wrapped
up in themselves, for the concerns of their municipal life had become
scarce, and they were all managed by delegates. Each of these small
communities, therefore, lived only for itself, was occupied only with
itself, and had no affairs but its own interests.
Our forefathers had not yet acquired the term of _individuality_, which
we have coined for our own use, because in their times there was no
such thing as an individual not belonging to some group of persons,
and who could consider himself as absolutely alone; but each of the
thousand little groups, of which French society was then composed,
thought only of itself. It was, if I may so express myself, a state of
collective individuality, which prepared the French mind for that state
of positive individuality which is the characteristic of our own time.
But what is most strange is that all these men, who stood so much
aloof from one another, had become so extremely similar amongst
themselves that if their positions had been changed no distinction
could have been traced among them. Nay more, if any one could have
sounded their innermost convictions, he would have found that the
slight barriers which still divided persons in all other respects so
similar, appeared to themselves alike contrary to the public interest
and to common sense, and that in theory they already worshipped the
uniformity of society and the unity of power. Each of them clung to his
own particular condition, only because a particular condition was the
distinguishing mark of others; but all were ready to confound their own
condition in the same mass, provided no one retained any separate lot
or rose above the common level.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See Note XXX., Self-Government adverse to Spirit of Caste.
[37] See Note XXXI.
[38] See Note XXXII., Extent of Exemptions from Taxation.
[39] See Note XXXIII., Indirect Privileges under Taxation.
[40] See Notes XXXIV. and XXXV.
[41] See Note XXXVI., Nobles favoured in Collection of Taxes.
[42] [The use of the French term _bourgeois_, here and in some other
passages translated ‘middle classes,’ is a further proof of the
estimation of the power once exercised by that class in the community.
In English the corresponding term _burgess_ has remained inseparable
from the exercise of municipal rights; and we have no distinctive
appellation, irrespective of political rights, for the large class
which separates the nobility from the populace. That class is, in fact,
in this country, both socially and politically, _the people_.]
CHAPTER X.
THE DESTRUCTION OF POLITICAL LIBERTY AND THE ESTRANGEMENT OF CLASSES
WERE THE CAUSES OF ALMOST ALL THE DISORDERS WHICH LED TO THE
DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD SOCIETY OF FRANCE.
Of all the disorders which attacked the constitution of society in
France, as it existed before the Revolution, and led to the dissolution
of that society, that which I have just described was the most fatal.
But I must pursue the inquiry to the source of so dangerous and strange
an evil, and show how many other evils took their origin from the same
cause.
If the English had, from the period of the Middle Ages, altogether
lost, like the French, political freedom and all those local franchises
which cannot long exist without it, it is highly probable that each
of the different classes of which the English aristocracy is composed
would have seceded from the rest, as was the case in France and more or
less all over the continent, and that all those classes together would
have separated themselves from the people. But freedom compelled them
always to remain within reach of each other, so as to combine their
strength in time of need.
It is curious to observe how the British aristocracy, urged even by
its own ambition, has contrived, whenever it seemed necessary, to
mix familiarly with its inferiors, and to feign to consider them
as its equals. Arthur Young, whom I have already quoted, and whose
book is one of the most instructive works which exist on the former
state of society in France, relates that, happening to be one day
at the country-house of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, at La Roche
Guyon, he expressed a wish to converse with some of the best and most
wealthy farmers of the neighbourhood. ‘The Duke had the kindness to
order his steward to give me all the information I wanted relative
to the agriculture of the country, and to speak to such persons as
were necessary on points that he was in doubt about. At an English
nobleman’s house there would have been three or four farmers asked to
meet me, who would have dined with the family among ladies of the first
rank. I do not exaggerate when I say that I have had this at least
an hundred times in the first houses of our islands. It is, however,
a thing that in the present state of manners in France would not be
met with from Calais to Bayonne, except by chance in the house of some
great Lord, who had been much in England, and then not unless it were
asked for. I once knew it at the Duke de Liancourt’s.’[43]
Unquestionably the English aristocracy is of a haughtier nature than
that of France, and less disposed to mingle familiarly with those who
live in a humbler condition; but the obligations of its own rank have
imposed that duty upon it. It submitted that it might command. For
centuries no inequality of taxation has existed in England, except
such exemptions as have been successively introduced for the relief
of the indigent classes. Observe to what results different political
principles may lead nations so nearly contiguous! In the eighteenth
century, the poor man in England enjoyed the privilege of exemption
from taxation; the rich in France. In one country the aristocracy has
taken upon itself the heaviest public burdens, in order to retain the
government of the State; in the other the aristocracy retained to
the last exemption from taxation as a compensation for the loss of
political power.
In the fourteenth century the maxim ‘No tax without the consent of the
taxed’--_n’impose qui ne veut_--appeared to be as firmly established in
France as in England. It was frequently quoted; to contravene it always
seemed an act of tyranny; to conform to it was to revert to the law.
At that period, as I have already remarked, a multitude of analogies
may be traced between the political institutions of France and those
of England; but then the destinies of the two nations separated and
constantly became more unlike, as time advanced. They resemble two
lines starting from contiguous points at a slight angle, which diverge
indefinitely as they are prolonged.
I venture to affirm that when the French nation, exhausted by the
protracted disturbances which had accompanied the captivity of King
John and the madness of Charles VI., suffered the Crown to levy a
general tax without the consent of the people, and when the nobility
had the baseness to allow the middle and lower classes to be so
taxed on condition that its own exemption should be maintained, at
that very time was sown the seed of almost all the vices and almost
all the abuses which afflicted the ancient society of France during
the remainder of its existence, and ended by causing its violent
dissolution; and I admire the rare sagacity of Philippe de Comines
when he says, ‘Charles VII., who gained the point of laying on the
_taille_ at his pleasure, without the consent of the States of the
Realm, laid a heavy burden on his soul and on that of his successors,
and gave a wound to his kingdom which will not soon be closed.’
Observe how that wound widened with the course of years; follow step by
step that fact to its consequences.
Forbonnais says with truth in his learned ‘Researches on the Finances
of France,’ that in the Middle Ages the sovereigns generally lived on
the revenues of their domains; and ‘as the extraordinary wants of the
State,’ he adds, ‘were provided for by extraordinary subsidies, they
were levied equally on the clergy, the nobility, and the people.’
The greater part of the general subsidies voted by the three Orders in
the course of the fourteenth century were, in point of fact, so levied.
Almost all the taxes established at that time were _indirect_, that is,
they were paid indiscriminately by all classes of consumers. Sometimes
the tax was direct; but then it was assessed, not on property, but
on income. The nobles, the priests, and the burgesses were bound to
pay over to the King, for a year, a tenth, for instance, of all their
incomes. This remark as to the charges voted by the Estates of the
Realm applies equally to those which were imposed at the same period by
the different Provincial Estates within their own territories.[44]
It is true that already, at that time, the direct tax known by the name
of the _taille_ was never levied on the noble classes. The obligation
of gratuitous military service was the ground of their exemption; but
the _taille_ was at that time partially in force as a general impost,
belonging rather to the seignorial jurisdictions than to the kingdom.
When the King first undertook to levy taxes by his own authority,
he perceived that he must select a tax which did not appear to fall
directly on the nobles; for that class, formidable and dangerous to
the monarchy itself, would never have submitted to an innovation so
prejudicial to their own interests. The tax selected by the Crown was,
therefore, a tax from which the nobles were exempt, and that tax was
the _taille_.
Thus to all the private inequalities of condition which already
existed, another and more general inequality was added, which augmented
and perpetuated all the rest. From that time this tax spread and
ramified in proportion as the demands of the public Treasury increased
with the functions of the central authority; it was soon decupled, and
all the new taxes assumed the character of the _taille_. Every year,
therefore, inequality of taxation separated the classes of society
and isolated the individuals of whom they consisted more deeply than
before. Since the object of taxation was not to include those most able
to pay taxes, but those least able to defend themselves from paying,
the monstrous consequence was brought about that the rich were exempted
and the poor burdened. It is related that Cardinal Mazarin, being
in want of money, hit upon the expedient of levying a tax upon the
principal houses in Paris, but that having encountered some opposition
from the parties concerned, he contented himself with adding the five
millions he required to the general brevet of the _taille_. He meant
to tax the wealthiest of the King’s subjects; he did tax the most
indigent; but to the Treasury the result was the same.
The produce of taxes thus unjustly allotted had limits; but the demands
of the Crown had none. Yet the Kings of France would neither convoke
the States-General to obtain subsidies, nor would they provoke the
nobility to demand that measure by imposing taxes on them without it.
Hence arose that prodigious and mischievous fecundity of financial
expedients, which so peculiarly characterised the administration of
the public resources during the last three centuries of the old French
monarchy.
It is necessary to study the details of the administrative and
financial history of that period, to form a conception of the violent
and unwarrantable proceedings which the want of money may prescribe
even to a mild Government, but without publicity and without control,
when once time has sanctioned its power and delivered it from the dread
of revolution--that last safeguard of nations.
Every page in these annals tells of possessions of the Crown first sold
and then resumed as unsaleable; of contracts violated and of vested
interests ignored; of sacrifices wrung at every crisis from the public
creditor, and of incessant repudiations of public engagements.[45]
Privileges granted in perpetuity were perpetually resumed. If we could
bestow our compassion on the disappointments of a foolish vanity, the
fate of those luckless persons might deserve it who purchased letters
of nobility, but who were exposed during the whole of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries to buy over and over again the empty honours
or the unjust privileges which they had already paid for several times.
Thus Louis XIV. annulled all the titles of nobility acquired in the
preceding ninety-two years, though most of them had been conferred
by himself; but they could only be retained upon furnishing a fresh
subsidy, _all these titles having been obtained by surprise_, said the
edict. The same example was duly followed by Louis XV. eighty years
later.
The militia-man was forbidden to procure a substitute, for fear, it was
said, of raising the price of recruits to the State.
Towns, corporations, and hospitals were compelled to break their own
engagements in order that they might be able to lend money to the
Crown. Parishes were restrained from undertaking works of public
improvement, lest by such a diversion of their resources they should
pay their direct taxes with less punctuality.
It is related that M. Orry and M. Trudaine, of whom one was the
Comptroller-General and the other the Director-General of Public
Works, had formed a plan for substituting, for the forced labour of
the peasantry on the roads, a rate to be levied on the inhabitants of
each district for the repair of their thoroughfares. The reason which
led these able administrators to forego that plan is instructive: they
feared, it is said, that when a fund had been raised by such a rate
it would be impossible to prevent the Treasury from appropriating the
money to its own purposes, so that ere long the ratepayers would have
had to support both the new money payment and the old charge of forced
labour. I do not hesitate to say that no private person could have
escaped the grasp of the criminal law who should have managed his own
fortune as the Great Louis in all his glory managed the fortune of the
nation.
If you stumble upon any old establishment of the Middle Ages which
maintained itself with every aggravation of its original defects in
direct opposition to the spirit of the age, or upon any mischievous
innovation, search to the root of the evil--you will find it to be some
financial expedient perpetuated in the form of an institution. To meet
the pressure of the hour new powers were called into being which lasted
for centuries.
A peculiar tax, which was called the due of _franc-fief_, had been
levied from a distant period on the non-noble holders of noble lands.
This tax established between lands the same distinction which existed
between the classes of society, and the one constantly tended to
increase the other. Perhaps this due of _franc-fief_ contributed more
than any other cause to separate the _roturier_ and the noble, because
it prevented them from mingling together in that which most speedily
and most effectually assimilates men to each other--in the possession
of land. A chasm was thus opened between the noble landowner on the
one hand, and his neighbour, the non-noble landowner, on the other.
Nothing, on the contrary, contributed to hasten the cohesion of these
two classes in England more than the abolition, as early as the
sixteenth century, of all outward distinctions between the fiefs held
under the Crown and lands held in villenage.[46]
In the fourteenth century this feudal tax of _franc-fief_ was light,
and was only levied here and there; but in the eighteenth century, when
the feudal system was well-nigh abolished, it was rigorously exacted
in France every twenty years, and it amounted to one whole year’s
revenue. A son paid it on succeeding his father. ‘This tax,’ said the
Agricultural Society of Tours in 1761, ‘is extremely injurious to the
improvement of the art of husbandry. Of all the imposts borne by the
King’s subjects there is indisputably none so vexatious and so onerous
to the rural population.’ ‘This duty,’ said another contemporary
writer, ‘which was at first levied but once in a lifetime, is become
in course of time a very cruel burden.’ The nobles themselves would
have been glad that it should be abolished, for it prevented persons of
inferior condition from purchasing their lands; but the fiscal demands
of the State required that it should be maintained and increased.[47]
The Middle Ages are sometimes erroneously charged with all the evils
arising from the trading or industrial corporations. But at their
origin these guilds and companies served only as means to connect the
members of a given calling with each other, and to establish in each
trade a free government in miniature, whose business it was at once to
assist and to control the working classes. Such, and no more, seems to
have been the intention of St. Louis.
It was not till the commencement of the sixteenth century, in the midst
of that period which is termed the Revival of Arts and Letters, that it
was proposed for the first time to consider the right to labour in a
particular vocation as a privilege to be sold by the Crown. Then it was
that each Company became a small close aristocracy, and at last those
monopolies were established which were so prejudicial to the progress
of the arts and which so exasperated the last generation. From the
reign of Henry III., who generalised the evil, if he did not give birth
to it, down to Louis XVI., who extirpated it, it may be said that the
abuse of the system of guilds never ceased to augment and to spread at
the very time when the progress of society rendered those institutions
more insupportable, and when the common sense of the public was most
opposed to them. Year after year more professions were deprived of
their freedom; year after year the privileges of the incorporated
trades were increased. Never was the evil carried to greater lengths
than during what are commonly called the prosperous years of the reign
of Louis XIV., because at no former period had the want of money been
more imperious, or the resolution not to raise money with the assent of
the nation more firmly taken.
Letrone said with truth in 1775--‘The State has only established
the trading companies to furnish pecuniary resources, partly by the
patents which it sells, partly by the creation of new offices which
the Companies are forced to buy up. The Edict of 1673 carried the
principles of Henry III. to their furthest consequences by compelling
all the Companies to take out letters of confirmation upon payment for
the same; and all the workmen who were not yet incorporated in some one
of these bodies were compelled to enter them. This wretched expedient
brought in three hundred thousand livres.’
We have already seen how the whole municipal constitution of the towns
was overthrown, not by any political design, but in the hope of picking
up a pittance for the Treasury. This same want of money, combined with
the desire not to seek it from the States-General of the kingdom, gave
rise to the venality of public offices, which became at last a thing
so strange that its like had never been seen in the world. It was by
this institution, engendered by the fiscal spirit of the Government,
that the vanity of the middle classes was kept on the stretch for
three centuries and exclusively directed to the acquisition of public
employments, and thus was the universal passion for places made to
penetrate to the bowels of the nation, where it became the common
source of revolutions and of servitude.
As the financial embarrassments of the State increased, new offices
sprang up, all of which were remunerated by exemptions from taxation
and by privileges; and as these offices were produced by the wants of
the Treasury, not of the administration, the result was the creation
of an almost incredible number of employments which were altogether
superfluous or mischievous.[48] As early as 1664, upon an inquiry
instituted by Colbert, it was found that the capital invested in this
wretched property amounted to nearly five hundred millions of livres.
Richelieu had suppressed, it was said, a hundred thousand offices:
but they cropped out again under other names.[49] For a little money
the State renounced the right of directing, of controlling, and of
compelling its own agents. An administrative engine was thus gradually
built up so vast, so complicated, so clumsy, and so unproductive, that
it came at last to be left swinging on in space, whilst a more simple
and handy instrument of government was framed beside it, which really
performed the duties these innumerable public officers were supposed to
be doing.
It is clear that none of these pernicious institutions could have
subsisted for twenty years if they could have been brought under
discussion. None of them would have been established or aggravated if
the Estates had been consulted, or if their remonstrances had been
listened to when by chance they were still called together. Rarely as
the States-General were convoked in the last ages of the monarchy, they
never ceased to protest against these abuses. On several occasions
these assemblies pointed out as the origin of all these evils the power
of arbitrarily levying taxes which had been arrogated by the King,
or, to borrow the identical terms employed by the energetic language
of the fifteenth century, ‘the right of enriching himself from the
substance of the people without the consent and deliberation of the
Three Estates.’ Nor did they confine themselves to their own rights
alone; they demanded with energy, and frequently they obtained, greater
deference to the rights of the provinces and towns. In every session
some voices were raised in those bodies against the inequality of the
public burdens. They frequently demanded the abolition of the system of
close guilds; they attacked with increasing vigour in each successive
age the venality of public employments. ‘He who sells office sells
justice, which is infamous,’ was their language. When that venality was
established, they still complained of the abusive creation of offices.
They denounced so many useless places and dangerous privileges, but
always in vain. Three institutions had been previously established
against themselves; they had originated in the desire not to convoke
these assemblies, and in the necessity of disguising from the French
nation the taxation which it was unsafe to exhibit in its real aspect.
And it must be observed that the best kings were as prone to have
recourse to these practices as the worst. Louis XII. completed the
introduction of the venality of public offices; Henry IV. extended the
sale of them to reversions. The vices of the system were stronger than
the virtues of those who applied it.
The same desire of escaping from the control of the States-General
caused the Parliaments to be entrusted with most of their political
functions; the result was an intermixture of judicial and
administrative offices, which proved extremely injurious to the good
conduct of business. It was necessary to seem to afford some new
guarantees in place of those which were taken away; for though the
French support absolute power patiently enough, so long as it be not
oppressive, they never like the sight of it; and it is always prudent
to raise about it some appearance of barriers, which serve at least to
conceal what they do not arrest.
Lastly, it was this desire of preventing the nation, when asked for its
money, from asking back its freedom, which gave rise to an incessant
watchfulness in separating the classes of society, so that they should
never come together, or combine in a common resistance, and that the
Government should never have on its hands at once more than a very
small number of men separated from the rest of the nation. In the whole
course of this long history, in which have figured so many princes
remarkable for their ability, sometimes remarkable for their genius,
almost always remarkable for their courage, not one of them ever made
an effort to bring together the different classes of his people, or
to unite them otherwise than by subjecting them to a common yoke. One
exception there is, indeed, to this remark: one king of France there
was who not only desired this end, but applied himself with his whole
heart to attain it; that prince--for such are the inscrutable judgments
of Providence--was Louis XVI.
The separation of classes was the crime of the old French monarchy,
but it became its excuse; for when all those who constitute the rich
and enlightened portion of a nation can no longer agree and co-operate
in the work of government, a country can by no possibility administer
itself, and a master _must_ intervene.
‘The nation,’ said Turgot, with an air of melancholy, in a secret
report addressed to the King, ‘is a community, consisting of different
orders ill compacted together, and of a people whose members have very
few ties among themselves, so that every man is exclusively engrossed
by his personal interest. Nowhere is any common interest discernible.
The villages, the towns, have not any stronger mutual relations than
the districts to which they belong. They cannot even agree among
themselves to carry on the public works which they require. Amidst this
perpetual conflict of pretensions and of undertakings your Majesty
is compelled to decide everything in person or by your agents. Your
special injunctions are expected before men will contribute to the
public advantage, or respect the rights of others, or even sometimes
before they will exercise their own.’
It is no slight enterprise to bring more closely together
fellow-citizens who have thus been living for centuries as strangers
or as enemies to each other, and to teach them how to carry on their
affairs in common.
To divide them was a far easier task than it then becomes to reunite
them. Such has been the memorable example given by France to the world.
When the different classes which divided the ancient social system
of France came once more into contact sixty years ago, after having
been isolated so long, and by so many barriers, they encountered each
other on those points on which they felt most poignantly, and they
met in mutual hatred. Even in this our day their jealousies and their
animosities have survived them.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] See Note XXXVII., Arthur Young’s Tour.
[44] See Note XXXVIII.
[45] See Note XXXIX., Violation of Vested and Corporate Rights.
[46] [This remark must be taken with some qualification as to the fact.
These distinctions are not wholly eradicated at the present day in
England, but they are mere questions of property, not of personal rank
or political influence.]
[47] See Note XL.
[48] See Note XLI., Exemptions of Public Officers from Taxation.
[49] See Note XLII.
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE SPECIES OF LIBERTY WHICH EXISTED UNDER THE OLD MONARCHY, AND OF
THE INFLUENCE OF THAT LIBERTY ON THE REVOLUTION.
If the reader were here to interrupt the perusal of this book, he
would have but a very imperfect impression of the government of the
old French monarchy, and he would not understand the state of society
produced by the Revolution.
Since the citizens of France were thus divided and thus contracted
within themselves, since the power of the Crown was so extensive and
so great, it might be inferred that the spirit of independence had
disappeared with public liberty, and that the whole French people were
equally bent in subjection. Such was not the case; the Government
had long conducted absolutely and alone all the common affairs of
the nation; but it was as yet by no means master of every individual
existence.
Amidst many institutions already prepared for absolute power some
liberty survived; but it was a sort of strange liberty, which it is
not easy at the present day to conceive aright, and which must be very
closely scrutinised to comprehend the good and the evil resulting from
it.
Whilst the Central Government superseded all local powers, and filled
more and more the whole sphere of public authority, some institutions
which the Government had allowed to subsist, or which it had created,
some old customs, some ancient manners, some abuses even, served to
check its action, to keep alive in the hearts of a large number of
persons a spirit of resistance, and to preserve the consistency and the
independent outline of many characters.
Centralisation had already the same tendency, the same mode of
operation, the same aims as in our own time, but it had not yet the
same power. Government having, in its eagerness to turn everything
into money, put up to sale most of the public offices, had thus
deprived itself of the power of giving or withdrawing those offices
at pleasure. Thus one of its passions had considerably impaired the
success of another: its rapacity had balanced its ambition. The State
was therefore incessantly reduced to act through instruments which it
had not forged, and which it could not break. The consequence was that
its most absolute will was frequently paralysed in the execution of
it. This strange and vicious constitution of the public offices thus
stood in stead of a sort of political guarantee against the omnipotence
of the central power. It was a sort of irregular and ill-constructed
breakwater, which divided the action and checked the stroke of the
supreme power.
Nor did the Government of that day dispose as yet of that countless
multitude of favours, assistances, honours, and moneys which it has now
to distribute; it was therefore far less able to seduce as well as to
compel.
The Government moreover was imperfectly acquainted with the exact
limits of its power.[50] None of its rights were regularly acknowledged
or firmly established; its range of action was already immense, but
that action was still hesitating and uncertain, as one who gropes along
a dark and unknown track. This formidable obscurity, which at that time
concealed the limits of every power and enshrouded every right, though
it might be favourable to the designs of princes against the freedom of
their subjects, was frequently not less favourable to the defence of it.
The administrative power, conscious of the novelty of its origin
and of its low extraction, was ever timid in its action when any
obstacle crossed its path. It is striking to observe, in reading the
correspondence of the French Ministers and Intendants of the eighteenth
century, how this Government, which was so absolute and so encroaching
as long as its authority is not contested, stood aghast at the aspect
of the least resistance; agitated by the slightest criticism, alarmed
by the slightest noise, ready on all such occasions to stop, to
hesitate, to parley, to treat, and often to fall considerably below
the natural limits of its power. The nerveless egotism of Louis XV.,
and the mild benevolence of his successor, contributed to this state
of things. It never occurred to these sovereigns that they could be
dethroned. They had nothing of that harsh and restless temper which
fear has since often imparted to those who govern. They trampled on
none but those whom they did not see.
Several of the privileges, of the prejudices, of the false notions
most opposed to the establishment of a regular and salutary free
government, kept alive amongst many persons a spirit of independence,
and disposed them to hold their ground against the abuses of authority.
The Nobles despised the Administration, properly so called, though they
sometimes had occasion to apply to it. Even after they had abandoned
their former power, they retained something of that pride of their
forefathers which was alike adverse to servitude and to law. They cared
little for the general liberty of the community, and readily allowed
the hand of authority to lie heavy on all about them; but they did not
admit that it should lie heavy on themselves, and they were ready in
case of need to run all risks to prevent it. At the commencement of the
Revolution that nobility of France which was about to fall with the
throne, still held towards the King, and still more towards the King’s
agents, an attitude far higher, and language far more free, than the
middle class, which was so soon to overthrow the monarchy. Almost all
the guarantees against the abuse of power which France possessed during
the thirty-seven years of her representative government, were already
loudly demanded by the nobles. In reading the instructions of that
Order to the States-General, amidst its prejudices and its crotchets,
the spirit and some of the great qualities of an aristocracy may still
be felt.[51] It must ever be deplored that, instead of bending that
nobility to the discipline of law, it was uprooted and struck to the
earth. By that act the nation was deprived of a necessary portion
of its substance, and a wound was given to freedom which will never
be healed. A class which has marched for ages in the first rank has
acquired, in this long and uncontested exercise of greatness, a certain
loftiness of heart, a natural confidence in its strength, and a habit
of being looked up to, which makes it the most resisting element in
the frame of society. Not only is its own disposition manly, but its
example serves to augment the manliness of every other class. By
extirpating such an Order its very enemies are enervated. Nothing can
ever completely replace it; it can be born no more; it may recover the
titles and the estates, but not the soul of its progenitors.
The Clergy, who have since frequently shown themselves so servilely
submissive to the temporal sovereign in civil matters, whosoever
that temporal sovereign might be, and who become his most barefaced
flatterers on the slightest indication of favour to the Church, formed
at that time one of the most independent bodies in the nation, and the
only body whose peculiar liberties would have enforced respect.[52]
The provinces had lost their franchises; the rights of the towns were
reduced to a shadow. No ten noblemen could meet to deliberate together
on any matter without the express permission of the King. But the
Church of France retained to the last her periodical assemblies. Within
her bosom even ecclesiastical power was circumscribed by limits which
were respected.[53] The lower clergy enjoyed the protection of solid
guarantees against the tyranny of their superiors, and was not prepared
for passive obedience to the Sovereign by the uncontrolled despotism
of the bishop. I do not attempt to pass any judgment on this ancient
constitution of the Church; I merely assert that by this constitution
the spirit of the priesthood was not fashioned to political servility.
Many of the ecclesiastics were moreover gentlemen of birth, and they
brought with them into the Church the pride and indocility of their
condition. All of them had, moreover, an exalted rank in the State,
and certain privileges there. The exercise of those feudal rights,
which had proved so fatal to the moral power of the Church, gave to its
members, in their individual capacity, a spirit of independence towards
the civil authority.
But that which especially contributed to give the clergy the opinions,
the wants, the feelings, and often the passions of citizens, was the
ownership of land. I have had the patience to read most of the reports
and debates still remaining to us from the old Provincial Estates
of France, and particularly those of Languedoc, a province in which
the clergy participated even more than elsewhere in the details of
the public administration; I have also examined the journals of the
Provincial Assemblies which sat in 1779 and 1787. Bringing with me in
this inquiry the impressions of our own times, I have been surprised to
find bishops and priests, many of whom were equally eminent for their
piety and for their learning, drawing up reports on the construction
of a road or a canal, discussing with great science and skill the best
methods to augment the produce of agriculture, to ensure the well-being
of the inhabitants, and to encourage industry, these churchmen being
always equal, and often superior, to all the laymen engaged with them
in the transaction of the same affairs.
I maintain, in opposition to an opinion which is very generally and
very firmly established, that the nations which deprive the Roman
Catholic clergy of all participation in landed property, and convert
their incomes into salaries, do in fact only promote the interests of
the Papacy, and those of the temporal Ruler, whilst they renounce an
important element of freedom amongst themselves.
A man who, as far as the best portion of his nature is concerned, is
the subject of a foreign authority, and who in the country where he
dwells can have no family, will only be linked to the soil by one
durable tie--namely, landed property. Break that bond, and he belongs
to no place in particular. In the place where the accident of birth
may have cast him, he lives like an alien in the midst of a civil
community, scarcely any of whose civil interests can directly affect
him. His conscience binds him to the Pope; his maintenance to the
Sovereign. His only country is the Church. In every political event
he perceives little more than the advantage or the loss of his own
profession. Let but the Church be free and prosperous, what matters all
the rest? His most natural political state is that of indifference--an
excellent member of the Christian commonwealth, but elsewhere a
worthless citizen. Such sentiments and such opinions as these in a
body of men who are the directors of childhood, and the guardians of
morality, cannot fail to enervate the soul of the entire nation in
relation to public life.
A correct impression of the revolution which may be effected in the
human mind by a change wrought in social conditions, may be obtained
from a perusal of the Instructions given to the Delegates of the Clergy
at the States-General of 1789.[54]
The clergy in those documents frequently showed their intolerance,
and sometimes a tenacious attachment to several of their former
privileges; but, in other respects, not less hostile to despotism,
not less favourable to civil liberty, not less enamoured of political
liberty, than the middle classes or the nobility, this Order proclaimed
that personal liberty must be secured, not by promises alone, but by
a form of procedure analogous to the Habeas Corpus Act. They demanded
the destruction of the State prisons, the abolition of extraordinary
jurisdictions and of the practice of calling up causes to the Council
of State, publicity of procedure, the permanence of judicial officers,
the admissibility of all ranks to public employments, which should be
open to merit alone; a system of military recruiting less oppressive
and humiliating to the people, and from which none should be exempted;
the extinction by purchase of seignorial rights, which sprung from
the feudal system were, they said, contrary to freedom; unrestricted
freedom of labour; the suppression of internal custom-houses; the
multiplication of private schools, insomuch that one gratuitous school
should exist in every parish; lay charitable institutions in all the
rural districts, such as workhouses and workshops of charity; and every
kind of encouragement to agriculture.
In the sphere of politics, properly so called, the clergy proclaimed,
louder than any other class, that the nation had an indefeasible and
inalienable right to assemble to enact laws and to vote taxes. No
Frenchman, said the priests of that day, can be forced to pay a tax
which he has not voted in person or by his representative. The clergy
further demanded that States-General freely elected should annually
assemble; that they should in presence of the nation discuss all its
chief affairs; that they should make general laws paramount to all
usages or particular privileges; that the deputies should be inviolable
and the ministers of the Crown constantly responsible. The clergy
also desired that assemblies of States should be created in all the
provinces, and municipal corporations in all the towns. Of divine right
not a word.
Upon the whole, and notwithstanding the notorious vices of some of
its members, I question if there ever existed in the world a clergy
more remarkable than the Catholic clergy of France at the moment when
it was overtaken by the Revolution--a clergy more enlightened, more
national, less circumscribed within the bounds of private duty and
more alive to public obligations, and at the same time more zealous
for the faith:--persecution proved it. I entered on the study of
these forgotten institutions full of prejudices against the clergy of
that day: I conclude that study full of respect for them. They had in
truth no defects but those inherent in all corporate bodies, whether
political or religious, when they are strongly constituted and knit
together; such as a tendency to aggression, a certain intolerance of
disposition, and an instinctive--sometimes a blind--attachment to the
particular rights of their Order.
The Middle Classes of the time preceding the Revolution were also much
better prepared than those of the present day to show a spirit of
independence. Many even of the defects of their social constitution
contributed to this result. We have already seen that the public
employments occupied by these classes were even more numerous than
at present, and that the passion for obtaining these situations was
equally intense. But mark the difference of the age. Most of those
places being neither given nor taken away by the Government, increased
the importance of those who filled them without placing them at the
mercy of the ruler; hence, the very cause which now completes the
subjection of so many persons was precisely that which most powerfully
enabled them at that time to maintain their independence.
The immunities of all kinds which so unhappily separated the middle
from the lower classes, converted the former into a spurious
aristocracy, which often displayed the pride and the spirit of
resistance of the real aristocracy. In each of those small particular
associations which divided the middle classes into so many sections,
the general advantage was readily overlooked, but the interests and
the rights of each body were always kept in view. The common dignity,
the common privileges were to be defended.[55] No man could ever lose
himself in the crowd, or find a hiding-place for base subserviency.
Every man stood, as it were, on a stage, extremely contracted it is
true, but in a glare of light, and there he found himself in presence
of the same audience, ever ready to applaud or to condemn him.
The art of stifling every murmur of resistance was at that time far
less perfected than it is at present. France had not yet become that
dumb region in which we dwell: every sound on the contrary had an echo,
though political liberty was still unknown, and every voice that was
raised might be heard afar.
That which more especially in those times ensured to the oppressed the
means of being heard was the constitution of the Courts of Justice.
France had become a land of absolute government by her political
and administrative institutions, but her people were still free by
her institutions of justice. The judicial administration of the old
monarchy was complicated, troublesome, tedious, and expensive: these
were no doubt great faults, but servility towards the Government was
not to be met with there--that servility which is but another form
of venality, and the worst form. That capital vice, which not only
corrupts the judge, but soon infects the whole body of the people, was
altogether unknown to the elder magistracy. The judges could not be
removed, and they sought no promotion--two things alike necessary to
their independence; for what matters it that a judge cannot be coerced
if there are a thousand means of seduction?
It is true that the power of the Crown had succeeded in depriving the
Courts of ordinary jurisdiction of the cognisance of almost all the
suits in which the public authorities were interested; but though
they had been stripped, they still were feared. Though they might be
prevented from recording their judgments, the Government did not always
dare to prevent them from receiving complaints or from recording their
opinions; and as the language of the Courts still preserved the tone of
that old language of France which loved to call things by their right
names, the magistrates not unfrequently stigmatised the acts of the
Government as arbitrary and despotic.[56] The irregular intervention
of the Courts in the affairs of government, which often disturbed the
conduct of them, thus served occasionally to protect the liberties of
the subject. The evil was great, but it served to curb a greater evil.
In these judicial bodies and all around them the vigour of the ancient
manners of the nation was preserved in the midst of modern opinions.
The Parliaments of France doubtless thought more of themselves than
of the commonwealth; but it must be acknowledged that, in defence of
their own independence and honour, they always bore themselves with
intrepidity, and that they imparted their spirit to all that came near
them.
When in 1770 the Parliament of Paris was broken, the magistrates who
belonged to it submitted to the loss of their profession and their
power without a single instance of any individual yielding to the will
of the sovereign. Nay, more, some Courts of a different kind, such as
the Court of Aids, which were neither affected nor menaced, voluntarily
exposed themselves to the same harsh treatment, when that treatment had
become certain. Nor is this all: the leading advocates who practised
before the Parliament resolved of their own accord to share its
fortune; they renounced all that made their glory and their wealth, and
condemned themselves to silence rather than appear before dishonoured
judges. I know of nothing in the history of free nations grander than
what occurred on this occasion, and yet this happened in the eighteenth
century, hard by the court of Louis XV.
The habits of the French Courts of justice had become in many respects
the habits of the nation. The Courts of justice had given birth to the
notion that every question was open to discussion and every decision
subject to appeal, and likewise to the use of publicity, and to a taste
for forms of proceeding--things adverse to servitude: this was the
only part of the education of a free people which the institutions of
the old monarchy had given to France. The administration itself had
borrowed largely from the language and the practice of the Courts.
The King considered himself obliged to assign motives for his edicts,
and to state his reasons before he drew the conclusion; the Council
of State caused its orders to be preceded by long preambles; the
Intendants promulgated their ordinances in the forms of judicial
procedure. In all the administrative bodies of any antiquity, such,
for example, as the body of the Treasurers of France or that of the
_élus_ (who assessed the _taille_), the cases were publicly debated
and decided after argument at the bar. All these usages, all these
formalities, were so many barriers to the arbitrary power of the
sovereign.
The people alone, applying that term to the lower orders of society,
and especially the people of the rural districts, were almost always
unable to offer any resistance to oppression except by violence.
Most of the means of defence which I have here passed in review were,
in fact, beyond their reach; to employ those means, a place in society
where they could be seen, or a voice loud enough to make itself heard,
was requisite; But above the ranks of the lower orders there was not
a man in France who, if he had the courage, might not contest his
obedience and resist in giving way.
The King spoke as the chief of the nation rather than as its master.
‘We glory,’ said Louis XVI., at his accession, in the preamble of a
decree, ‘we glory to command a free and generous nation.’ One of his
ancestors had already expressed the same idea in older language, when,
thanking the States-General for the boldness of their remonstrances, he
said, ‘We like better to speak to freemen than to serfs.’
The men of the eighteenth century knew little of that sort of passion
for comfort which is the mother of servitude--a relaxing passion,
though it be tenacious and unalterable, which mingles and intertwines
itself with many private virtues, such as domestic affections,
regularity of life, respect for religion, and even with the lukewarm,
though assiduous, practice of public worship, which favours propriety
but proscribes heroism, and excels in making decent livers but base
citizens. The men of the eighteenth century were better and they were
worse.
The French of that age were addicted to joy and passionately fond
of amusement; they were perhaps more lax in their habits, and more
vehement in their passions and opinions than those of the present day,
but they were strangers to the temperate and decorous sensualism that
we see about us. In the upper classes men thought more of adorning life
than of rendering it comfortable; they sought to be illustrious rather
than to be rich. Even in the middle ranks the pursuit of comfort never
absorbed every faculty of the mind; that pursuit was often abandoned
for higher and more refined enjoyments; every man placed some object
beyond the love of money before his eyes. ‘I know my countrymen,’
said a contemporary writer, in language which, though eccentric, is
spirited, ‘apt to melt and dissipate the metals, they are not prone
to pay them habitual reverence, and they will not be slow to turn
again to their former idols, to valour, to glory, and, I will add, to
magnanimity.’
The baseness of mankind is, moreover, not to be estimated by the degree
of their subserviency to a sovereign power; that standard would be
an incorrect one. However submissive the French may have been before
the Revolution to the will of the King, one sort of obedience was
altogether unknown to them: they knew not what it was to bow before
an illegitimate and contested power--a power but little honoured,
frequently despised, but which is willingly endured because it may be
serviceable or because it may hurt. To this degrading form of servitude
they were ever strangers. The King inspired them with feelings which
none of the most absolute princes who have since appeared in the world
have been able to call forth, and which are become incomprehensible to
the present generation, so entirely has the Revolution extirpated them
from the hearts of the nation. They loved him with the affection due to
a father; they revered him with the respect due to God. In submitting
to the most arbitrary of his commands they yielded less to compulsion
than to loyalty, and thus they frequently preserved great freedom of
mind even in the most complete dependence. To them the greatest evil
of obedience was compulsion; to us it is the least: the worst is in
that servile sentiment which leads men to obey. We have no right to
despise our forefathers. Would to God that we could recover, with their
prejudices and their faults, something of their greatness!
It would then be a mistake to think that the state of society in France
before the Revolution was one of servility and dependence.[57] Much
more liberty existed in that society than in our own time; but it was a
species of irregular and intermittent liberty, always contracted within
the bounds of certain classes, linked to the notion of exemption and of
privilege, which rendered it almost as easy to defy the law as to defy
arbitrary power, and scarcely ever went far enough to furnish to all
classes of the community the most natural and necessary securities.[58]
Thus reduced, and thus deformed, liberty was still not unfruitful.
It was this liberty which, at the very time when centralisation was
tending more and more to equalise, to emasculate, and to dim the
character of the nation, still preserved amongst a large class of
private persons their native vigour, their colour, and their outline,
fostered self-respect in the heart, and often caused the love of glory
to predominate over every other taste. By this liberty were formed
those vigorous characters, those proud and daring spirits which were
about to appear, and were to make the French Revolution at once the
object of the admiration and the terror of succeeding generations. It
would have been so strange that virtues so masculine should have grown
on a soil where freedom was no more.
But if this sort of ill-regulated and morbid liberty prepared the
French to overflow despotism, perhaps it likewise rendered them less
fit than any other people to establish in lieu of that despotism the
free and peaceful empire of constitutional law.
FOOTNOTES:
[50] See Note XLIII.
[51] See Note XLIV., Instructions of the Order of Nobility at the
States-General of 1789.
[52] See Note XLV., Religious Administration of an Ecclesiastical
Province in the Eighteenth Century.
[53] See Note XLVI., Spirit of the Clergy.
[54] See Note XLVII.
[55] See Note XLVIII.
[56] See Note XLIX., Example of the Language of the Courts of Justice.
[57] See Note L.
[58] See Note LI., Of the Reasons which frequently put a restraint on
Absolute Government under the Monarchy.
CHAPTER XII.
SHOWING THAT THE CONDITION OF THE FRENCH PEASANTRY, NOTWITHSTANDING
THE PROGRESS OF CIVILISATION, WAS SOMETIMES WORSE IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY THAN IT HAD BEEN IN THE THIRTEENTH.
In the eighteenth century the French peasantry could no longer be
preyed upon by petty feudal despots; they were seldom the object of
violence on the part of the Government; they enjoyed civil liberty,
and were owners of a portion of the soil; but all the other classes of
society stood aloof from this class, and perhaps in no other part of
the world had the peasantry ever lived so entirely alone. The effects
of this novel and singular kind of oppression deserve a very attentive
separate consideration.
As early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, Henry IV.
complained, as we learn from Péréfix, that the nobles were quitting the
rural districts. In the middle of the eighteenth century this desertion
had become almost general; all the records of the time indicate and
deplore the fact, economists in their writings, the Intendants in
their reports, agricultural societies in their proceedings. A more
authentic proof of the same fact is to be found in the registers of the
capitation tax. The capitation tax was levied at the actual place of
residence, and it was paid by the whole of the great nobility and by a
portion of the landed gentry at Paris.
In the rural districts none remained but such of the gentry as their
limited means compelled to stay there. These persons must have found
themselves placed in a position with reference to the peasants, his
neighbours, such as no rich proprietor can be conceived to have
occupied before.[59] Being no longer in the position of a chief, they
had not the same interest as of old to attend to, or assist, or direct
the village population; and, on the other hand, not being subject to
the same burdens, they could neither feel much sympathy with poverty
which they did not share, nor with grievances to which they were not
exposed. The peasantry were no longer the subjects of the gentry; the
gentry were not yet the fellow-citizens of the peasantry--a state of
things unparalleled in history.
This gave rise to a sort of absenteeism of feeling, if I may so express
myself, even more frequent and more effectual than absenteeism properly
so called. Hence it arose that a gentleman residing on his estate
frequently displayed the views and sentiments which his steward would
have entertained in his absence; like his steward, he learned to look
upon his tenants as his debtors, and he rigorously exacted from them
all that he could claim by law or by custom, which sometimes rendered
the application of the last remnant of feudal rights more harsh than it
had been in the feudal times.
Often embarrassed, and always needy, the small gentry lived shabbily
in their country-houses, caring only to amass money enough to spend in
town during the winter. The people, who often find an expression which
hits the truth, had given to these small squires the name of the least
of the birds of prey, a _hobereau_, a sort of Squire Kite.
No doubt individual exceptions might be presented to these
observations: I speak of classes, which ought alone to detain the
attention of history. That there were in those times many rich
landowners who, without any necessary occasion and without a common
interest, attended to the welfare of the peasantry, who will deny? But
these were persons who struggled successfully against the law of their
new condition, which, in spite of themselves, was driving them into
indifference, as it was driving their former vassals into hatred.
This abandonment of a country life by the nobility has often been
attributed to the peculiar influence of certain ministers and certain
kings--by some to Richelieu, by others to Louis XIV. It was, no doubt,
an idea almost always pursued by the Kings of France, during the three
last centuries of the monarchy, to separate the gentry from the people,
and to attract the former to Court and to public employments. This was
especially the case in the seventeenth century, when the nobility were
still an object of fear to royalty. Amongst the questions addressed
to the Intendants, they were sometimes asked--‘Do the gentry of your
province like to stay at home, or to go abroad?’
A letter from an Intendant has been found giving his answer on this
subject: he laments that the gentry of his province like to remain with
their peasants, instead of fulfilling their duties about the King.
And let it here be well remarked, that the province of which this
Intendant was speaking was Anjou--that province which was afterwards
La Vendée. These country gentlemen who refused, as he said, to fulfil
their duties about the King, were the only country gentlemen who
defended with arms in their hands the monarchy in France, and died
there fighting for the Crown; they owed this glorious distinction
simply to the fact that they had found means to retain their hold over
the peasantry--that peasantry with whom they were blamed for wishing to
live.
Nevertheless the abandonment of the country by the class which then
formed the head of the French nation must not be mainly attributed to
the direct influence of some of the French kings. The principal and
permanent cause of this fact lay not so much in the will of certain men
as in the slow and incessant influence of institutions; and the proof
is, that when, in the eighteenth century, the Government endeavoured
to combat this evil, it could not even check the progress of it. In
proportion as the nobility completely lost its political rights without
acquiring others, and as local freedom disappeared, this emigration
of the nobles increased. It became unnecessary to entice them from
their homes; they cared not to remain there. Rural life had become
distasteful to them.
What I here say of the nobles applies in all countries to rich
landowners. In all centralised countries the rural districts lose
their wealthy and enlightened inhabitants. I might add that in all
centralised countries the art of cultivation remains imperfect and
unimproved--a commentary on the profound remark of Montesquieu, which
determines his meaning, when he says that ‘land produces less by reason
of its own fertility than of the freedom of its inhabitants.’ But I
will not transgress the limits of my subject.
We have seen elsewhere that the middle classes, equally ready to quit
the rural districts, sought refuge from all sides in the towns. On no
point are all the records of French society anterior to the Revolution
more agreed. They show that a second generation of rich peasants was a
thing almost unknown. No sooner had a farmer made a little money by his
industry than he took his son from the plough, sent him to the town,
and bought him a small appointment. From that period may be dated the
sort of strange aversion which the French husbandman often displays,
even in our own times, for the calling which has enriched him. The
effect has survived the cause.
To say the truth, the only man of education--or, as he would be called
in England, the only _gentleman_--who permanently resided amongst the
peasantry and in constant intercourse with them, was the parish priest.
The result was that the priest would have become the master of the
rural populations, in spite of Voltaire, if he had not been himself
so nearly and ostensibly linked to the political order of things; the
possession of several political privileges exposed him in some degree
to the hatred inspired by those political institutions.[60]
The peasant was thus almost entirely separated from the upper
classes; he was removed from those of his fellow-creatures who might
have assisted and directed him. In proportion as they attained to
enlightenment or competency, they turned their backs on him; he stood,
as it were, tabooed and set apart in the midst of the nation.
This state of things did not exist in an equal degree amongst any
of the other civilized nations of Europe, and even in France it was
comparatively recent. The peasantry of the fourteenth century were
at once more oppressed and more relieved. The aristocracy sometimes
tyrannised over them, but never forsook them.
In the eighteenth century, a French village was a community of persons,
all of whom were poor, ignorant, and coarse; its magistrates were as
rude and as contemned as the people; its syndic could not read; its
collector could not record in his own handwriting the accounts on which
the income of his neighbours and his own depended. Not only had the
former lord of the manor lost the right of governing this community,
but he had brought himself to consider it a sort of degradation to
take any part in the government of it. To assess the _taille_, to call
out the militia, to regulate the forced labour, were servile offices,
devolving on the syndic. The central power of the State alone took any
care of the matter, and as that power was very remote, and had as yet
nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the villages, the only care it
took of them was to extract revenue.
Let me show you what a forsaken class of society becomes which no one
desires to oppress, but which no one attempts to enlighten or to serve.
The heaviest burdens which the feudal system had imposed on the rural
population had without doubt been withdrawn and mitigated; but it
is not sufficiently known that for these burdens others had been
substituted, perhaps more onerous. The peasant had not to endure all
the evils endured by his forefathers, but he supported many hardships
which his forefathers had never known.
The _taille_ had been decupled, almost exclusively at the cost of the
peasantry, in the preceding two centuries. And here a word must be said
of the manner in which this tax was levied, to show what barbarous
laws may be founded and maintained in civilised ages, when the most
enlightened men in the nation have no personal interest in changing
them.
I find in a confidential letter, written by the Comptroller-General
himself, in 1772, to the Intendants, a description of this tax, which
is a model of brevity and accuracy. ‘The _taille_,’ said that minister,
‘arbitrarily assessed, collectively levied as a personal, not a real,
tax in the great part of France, is subject to continual variations
from all the changes which happen every year in the fortunes of the
taxpayers.’ The whole is in these three phrases. It is impossible to
depict more ably the evil by which the writer profited.
The whole sum to be paid by each parish was fixed every three years.
It perpetually varied, as the minister says, so that no farmer could
foresee a year beforehand what he would have to pay in the year
following. In the internal economy of each parish any one of the
peasants named by the collector was entrusted with the apportionment of
the tax on the rest.
I have said I would explain what was the condition of this collector.
Let us take this explanation in the language of the Assembly of the
Province of Berri in 1779, a body not liable to suspicion, for it was
entirely composed of privileged persons, who paid no _taille_, and
were chosen by the King. ‘As every one seeks to evade this office of
collector,’ said this Assembly, ‘each person must fill it in turn.
The levy of the _taille_ is therefore entrusted every year to a
fresh collector, without regard to his ability or his integrity; the
preparation of each roll of assessment bears marks, therefore, of the
personal character of the officer who makes it. The collector stamps
on it his own fears, or foibles, or vices. How, indeed, could he do
better? He is acting in darkness, for who can tell with precision the
wealth of his neighbour or the proportion of his wealth to that of
another? Nevertheless the opinion of the collector alone is to decide
these points, and he is responsible with all his property and even his
person for the receipts. He is commonly obliged for two whole years to
lose half his days in running after the taxpayers. Those who cannot
read are obliged to find a neighbour to perform the office for them.’
Turgot had already said of another province, a short time before, ‘This
office of collector drives to despair, and generally to ruin, those
on whom it is imposed; by this means all the wealthier families of a
village are successively reduced to poverty.’
This unhappy officer was, however, armed with the most arbitrary
powers;[61] he was almost as much a tyrant as a martyr. Whilst he
was discharging functions by which he ruined himself, he had it in
his power to ruin everybody else. ‘Preference for his relations,’ to
recur to the language of the Provincial Assembly, ‘or for his friends
and neighbours, hatred and revenge against his enemies, the want of a
patron, the fear of affronting a man of property who had work to give,
were at issue with every feeling of justice.’ Personal fear often
hardened the heart of the collector; there were parishes in which he
never went out but escorted by constables and bailiffs. ‘When he comes
without the constable,’ said an Intendant to a Minister, in 1764,
‘the persons liable to the tax will not pay.’ ‘In the district of
Villefranche alone,’ says the Provincial Assembly of Guienne, ‘there
were one hundred and six officers constantly out to serve writs and
levy distraints.’
To evade this violent and arbitrary taxation the French peasantry, in
the midst of the eighteenth century, acted like the Jews in the Middle
Ages. They were ostensibly paupers, even when by chance they were not
so in reality. They were afraid to be well off; and not without reason,
as may be seen from a document which I select, not from Guienne, but a
hundred leagues off. The Agricultural Society of Maine announced in its
Report of 1761, that it proposed to distribute cattle by way of prizes
and encouragements. ‘This plan was stopped,’ it adds, ‘on account of
the dangerous consequences to be apprehended by a low jealousy of the
winners of these prizes, which, by means of the arbitrary assessment of
the public taxes, would occasion them annoyance in the following year.’
Under this system of taxation each tax-payer had, in fact, a direct and
permanent interest to act as a spy on his neighbours, and to denounce
to the collector the progress of their fortunes. The whole population
was thus trained to delation and to hatred. Were not such things rather
to be expected in the domains of a rajah of Hindostan?
There were, however, at the same time in France certain districts in
which the taxes were raised with regularity and moderation; these
were called the _pays d’état_.[62] It is true that to these districts
the right of levying their own taxes had been left. In Languedoc,
for example, the _taille_ was assessed on real property, and did
not vary according to the means of the holder. Its fixed and known
basis was a survey which had been carefully made, and was renewed
every thirty years, and in which the lands were divided, according to
their fertility, into three classes. Every taxpayer knew beforehand
exactly what his proportion of the charge amounted to. If he failed
to pay, he alone, or rather his land alone, was liable. If he thought
the assessment unjust, he might always require that his share should
be compared with that of any other inhabitant of the parish, on the
principle of what is now termed in France an appeal to proportionate
equality.
These regulations are precisely those which are now followed in France;
they have not been improved since that time, but they have been
generalised: for it deserves observation, that although the form of
the public administration in France has been taken from the Government
anterior to the Revolution, nothing else has been copied from that
Government. The best of the administrative forms of proceeding in
modern France have been borrowed from the old Provincial Assemblies,
and not from the Government. The machine was adopted, but its produce
rejected.
The habitual poverty of the rural population had given birth to maxims
little calculated to put an end to it. ‘If nations were well off,’ said
Richelieu, in his Political Testament, ‘hardly would they keep within
the rules.’ In the eighteenth century this maxim was modified, but
it was still believed that the peasantry would not work without the
constant stimulus of necessity, and that want was the only security
against idleness. That is precisely the theory which is sometimes
professed with reference to the negro population of the colonies. It
was an opinion so generally diffused amongst those who governed that
almost all the economists thought themselves obliged to combat it at
length.
The primary object of the _taille_ was to enable the King to purchase
recruits so as to dispense the nobles and their vassals from military
service; but in the seventeenth century the obligation of military
service was again imposed, as we have seen, under the name of the
militia, and henceforth it weighed upon the common people only, and
almost exclusively on the peasantry.
The infinite number of police reports from the constables, which are
still to be found amongst the records of any intendancy, all relating
to the pursuit of refractory militia-men or deserters, suffice to prove
that this force was not raised without obstacles. It seems, indeed,
that no public burden was more insupportable to the peasantry than
this: to evade it they frequently fled into the woods, where they were
pursued by the armed authorities. This is the more singular, when we
see the facility with which the conscription works in France in the
present times.
This extreme repugnance of the peasantry of France before the
Revolution to the militia was attributable less to the principle of the
law than to the manner in which the law was executed; more especially
from the long period of uncertainty, during which it threatened those
liable to be drawn (they could be taken until forty years of age,
unless they were married)--from the arbitrary power of revision, which
rendered the advantage of a lucky number almost useless--from the
prohibition to hire a substitute--from disgust at a hard and perilous
profession, in which all hope of advancement was forbidden; but, above
all, from the feeling that this oppressive burden rested on themselves
alone, and on the most wretched amongst themselves, the ignominy of
this condition rendering its hardships more intolerable.
I have had means of referring to many of the returns of the draft for
the militia, as it was made in 1769 in a large number of parishes. In
all these returns there are some exemptions: this man is a gentleman’s
servant; that, the gamekeeper of an abbey; a third is only the
valet of a man of inferior birth, but who, at least, ‘lives like a
nobleman.’ Wealth alone afforded an exemption; when a farmer annually
figured amongst those who paid the largest sum in taxes, his sons
were dispensed from the militia; that was called encouragement of
agriculture. Even the economists, who, in all other points, were great
partisans of social equality, were not shocked by this privilege; they
only suggested that it should be extended, or, in other words, that the
burden of the poorest and most friendless of the peasants should become
more severe. ‘The low pay of the soldier,’ said one of these writers,
‘the manner in which he is lodged, dressed, and fed, and his entire
state of dependence, would render it too cruel to take any but a man of
the lowest orders.’
Down to the close of the reign of Louis XIV. the high roads were not
repaired, or were repaired at the cost of those who used them, namely,
the State and the adjacent landowners. But about that time the roads
began to be repaired by forced labour only, that is to say, exclusively
at the expense of the peasantry.[63] This expedient for making roads
without paying for them was thought so ingenious, that in 1737 a
circular of the Comptroller-General Orry established it throughout
France. The Intendants were armed with the right of imprisoning the
refractory at pleasure, or of sending constables after them.[64]
From that time, whenever trade augmented, so that more roads were
wanted or desired, the _corvée_ or forced labour extended to new lines,
and had more work to do. It appears from the Report made in 1779 to
the Provincial Assembly of Berri, that the works executed by forced
labour in that poor province were estimated in one year at 700,000
livres. In 1787 they were computed at about the same sum in Lower
Normandy. Nothing can better demonstrate the melancholy fate of the
rural population; the progress of society, which enriched all the other
classes, drove them to despair, and civilisation itself turned against
that class alone.
I find about the same time, in the correspondence of the Intendants,
that leave was to be refused to the peasants to do their forced labour
on the private roads of their own villages, since this labour was to be
reserved to the great high roads only, or, as they were then called,
‘the King’s highway.’ The strange notion that the cost of the roads
was to be defrayed by the poorest persons, and by those who were the
least likely to travel by them, though of recent date, took such root
in the minds of those who were to profit by it, that they soon imagined
that the thing could not be done differently.[65] In 1766 an attempt
was made to commute this forced labour into a local rate, but the same
inequality survived, and affected this new species of tax.
Though originally a seignorial right, the system of forced labour, by
becoming a royal right, was gradually extended to almost all public
works. In 1719 I find it was employed to build barracks. ‘Parishes are
to send their best workmen,’ said the Ordinance, ‘and all other works
are to give way to this.’ The same forced service was used to escort
convicts to the galleys and beggars to the workhouse;[66] it had to
cart the baggage of troops as often as they changed their quarters,
a burden which was very onerous at a time when each regiment carried
heavy baggage after it. Many carts and oxen had to be collected for the
purpose.[67] This sort of obligation, which signified little at its
origin, became one of the most burdensome when standing armies grew
more numerous. Sometimes the Government contractors loudly demanded the
assistance of forced labour to convey timber from the forests to the
naval arsenals. These peasants commonly received certain wages, but
they were arbitrarily fixed and low.[68] The burden of an impost so
ill-assessed sometimes became so heavy as to excite the uneasiness of
the receivers of the _taille_. ‘The outlay required of the peasants
on the roads,’ said one of these officers in 1751, ‘is such, that they
will soon be quite unable to pay the _taille_.’
Could all these new oppressions have been established if there had been
in the vicinity of these peasants any men of wealth and education,
disposed and able, if not to defend them, at least to intercede for
them, with that common master who already held in his grasp the
fortunes of the poor and of the rich?
I have read a letter of a great landowner, writing in 1774 to the
Intendant of his province, to induce him to open a road. This road,
he said, would cause the prosperity of the village, and for several
reasons; he then went on to recommend the establishment of a fair,
which would double, he thought, the price of produce. With excellent
motives, he added that with the assistance of a small contribution a
school might be established, which would furnish the King with more
industrious subjects. It was the first time that these necessary
ameliorations had occurred to him; he had only thought of them in
the preceding two years, which he had been compelled by a _lettre de
cachet_ to spend in his own house. ‘My exile for the last two years in
my estates,’ he candidly observed, ‘has convinced me of the extreme
utility of these things.’
It was more especially in times of scarcity that the relaxation or
total interruption of the ties of patronage and dependence, which
formerly connected the great rural proprietors and the peasantry, was
manifest. At such critical times the Central Government, alarmed by its
own isolation and weakness, sought to revive for the nonce the personal
influences or the political associations which the Government itself
had destroyed; they were summoned to its aid, but they were summoned
in vain, and the State was astonished to find that those persons were
defunct whom it had itself deprived of life.
In this extremity some of the Intendants--Turgot, for instance--in
the poorest provinces, issued illegal ordinances to compel the rich
landowners to feed their tenants till the next harvest. I have found,
under the date of 1770, letters from several parish priests, who
propose to the Intendants to tax the great landowners, both clerical
and lay, ‘who possess vast estates which they do not inhabit, and from
which they draw large revenues to be spent elsewhere.’
At all times the villages were infested with beggars; for, as Letronne
observes, the poor were relieved in the towns, but in the country,
during the winter, mendicity was their only resource.
Occasionally these poor wretches were treated with great violence. In
1767 the Duc de Choiseul, then Minister, resolved suddenly to suppress
mendicity in France. The correspondence of the Intendants still shows
with what rigour his measures were taken. The patrol was ordered at
once to take up all the beggars found in the kingdom; it is said that
more than 50,000 of them were seized. Able-bodied vagabonds were to be
sent to the galleys; as for the rest, more than forty workhouses were
opened to receive them. It would have been more to the purpose to have
opened the hearts of the rich.
This Government of the ancient French monarchy, which was, as I
have said, so mild, and sometimes so timid, so full of formalities,
of delays, and of scruples, when it had to do with those who were
placed above the common people, was always harsh and always prompt in
proceeding against the lower orders, especially against the peasantry.
Amongst the records which I have examined, I have not seen one relating
to the arrest of a man of the middle class by order of the Intendant;
but the peasants were arrested continually, some for forced labour,
some for begging, some for the militia, some by the police or for a
hundred other causes. The former class enjoyed independent courts of
justice, long trials, and a public procedure; the latter fell under the
control of the provost-marshal, summarily and without appeal.[69]
‘The immense distance which exists between the common people and all
the other classes of society,’ Necker wrote in 1785, ‘contributes
to avert our observation from the manner in which authority may be
handled in relation to all those persons lost in a crowd. Without the
gentleness and humanity which characterise the French and the spirit of
this age, this would be a continual subject of sorrow to those who can
feel for others under burdens from which they are themselves exempt.’
But this oppression was less apparent in the positive evil done to
those unhappy classes than in the impediments which prevented them from
improving their own condition. They were free and they were owners of
land, yet they remained almost as ignorant, and often more indigent,
than the serfs, their forefathers. They were still without industrial
employment, amidst all the wonderful creations of the modern arts; they
were still uncivilised in a world glittering with civilisation. If they
retained the peculiar intelligence and perspicacity of their race, they
had not been taught to use these qualities; they could not even succeed
in the cultivation of the soil, the only thing they had to do. ‘The
husbandry I see before me is that of the tenth century,’ was the remark
of a celebrated English agriculturist in France. They excelled in no
profession but in that of arms; there at least they came naturally and
necessarily into contact with the other classes.
In this depth of isolation and indigence the French peasantry lived;
they lived enclosed and inaccessible within it. I have been surprised
and almost shocked to perceive that less than twenty years before the
Catholic worship was abolished without resistance in France and the
churches desecrated, the means taken to ascertain the population of a
district were these: the parish priests reported the number of persons
who had attended at Easter at the Lord’s table--an estimate was added
for the probable number of children and of the sick; the result gave
the whole body of the population. Nevertheless the spirit of the age
had begun to penetrate by many ways into these untutored minds; it
penetrated by irregular and hidden channels, and assumed the strangest
shapes in their narrow and obscure capacities. Yet nothing seemed as
yet externally changed; the manners, the habits, the faith of the
peasant seemed to be the same; he was submissive, and was even merry.
There is something fallacious in the merriment which the French often
exhibit in the midst of the greatest calamities. It only proves that,
believing their ill fortune to be inevitable, they seek to throw it
off by not thinking of it, but not that they do not feel it. Open to
them a door of escape from the evil they seem to bear so lightly, and
they will rush towards it with such violence as to pass over your body
without so much as seeing you, if you are on their path.
These things are clear to us, from our point of observation; but they
were invisible to contemporary eyes. It is always with great difficulty
that men belonging to the upper classes succeed in discerning with
precision what is passing in the mind of the common people, and
especially of the peasantry. The education and the manner of life of
the peasantry give them certain views of their own, which remain shut
to all other classes. But when the poor and the rich have scarcely any
common interests, common grievances, or common business, the darkness
which conceals the mind of the one from the mind of the other becomes
impenetrable, and the two classes might live for ever side by side
without the slightest interpenetration. It is curious to observe in
what strange security all those who inhabited the upper or the middle
storeys of the social edifice were living at the very time when the
Revolution was beginning, and to mark how ingeniously they discoursed
on the virtues of the common people, on their gentleness, on their
attachment to themselves, on their innocent diversions; the absurd and
terrible contrast of ‘93 was already beneath their feet.
Let us here pause for a moment as we proceed to consider, amidst all
these minute particulars which I have been describing, one of the
greatest laws of Providence in the government of human societies.
The French nobility persisted in standing aloof from the other
classes; the landed gentry ended by obtaining exemptions from most of
the public burdens which rested upon them; they imagined that they
should preserve their rank whilst they evaded its duties, and for a
time this seemed to be so. But soon an internal and invisible malady
appeared to have infected their condition; it dwindled away though no
one touched it, and whilst their immunities increased their substance
declined. The middle classes, with which they had been so reluctant to
mingle, grew in wealth and in intelligence beside them, without them,
and against them; they had rejected the middle classes as associates
and as fellow-citizens; but they were about to find in those classes
their rivals, soon their enemies, at length their masters. A superior
power had relieved them from the care of directing, of protecting, of
assisting their vassals; but as that power had left them in the full
enjoyment of their pecuniary rights and their honorary privileges,
they conceived that nothing was lost to them. As they still marched
first, they still thought they were leading; and indeed they had still
about them men whom, in the language of the law, they named their
_subjects_--others were called their vassals, their tenants, their
farmers. But, in reality, none followed them; they were alone, and when
those very classes rose against them, flight was their only resource.
Although the destinies of the nobility and the middle classes have
differed materially from each other, they have had one point of
resemblance: the men of the middle classes had ended by living as much
apart from the common people as those of the upper classes. Far from
drawing nearer to the peasantry, they had withdrawn from all contact
with their hardships; instead of uniting themselves closely to the
lower orders, to struggle in common against a common inequality, they
only sought to establish fresh preferences in their own favour; and
they were as eager to obtain exemptions for themselves as the nobles
were to maintain their privileges. These peasants, from whom the
middle classes had sprung, were not only become strangers to their
descendants, but were literally unknown by them; and it was not until
arms had been placed by the middle classes in their hands that those
classes perceived what unknown passions they had kindled--passions
which they could neither guide nor control, and which ended by turning
the instigators of those passions into their victims.
In all future ages the ruins of that great House of France, which
had seemed destined to extend over the whole of Europe, will be the
wonder of mankind; but those who read its history with attention will
understand without difficulty its fall. Almost all the vices, almost
all the errors, almost all the fatal prejudices I have had occasion to
describe, owed either their origin, or their duration, or their extent
to the arts practised by most of the kings of France to divide their
subjects in order to govern them more absolutely.
But when the middle classes were thus thoroughly severed from the
nobility, and the peasantry from the nobility, as well as from the
middle classes--when, by the progress of the same influences within
each class, each of them was internally subdivided into minute bodies,
almost as isolated from each other as the classes to which they
belonged, the result was one homogeneous mass, the parts of which no
longer cohered. Nothing was any longer so organised as to thwart the
Government--nothing so as to assist it; insomuch that the whole fabric
of the grandeur of the monarchy might fall to pieces at once and in a
moment as soon as the society on which it rested was disturbed.
And the people, which alone seem to have learnt something from the
misconduct and the mistakes of all its masters, if indeed it escaped
their empire, failed to shake off the false notions, the vicious
habits, the evil tendencies which those masters had imparted to
it, or allowed it to assume. Sometimes that people has carried the
predilections of a slave into the enjoyment of its liberty, alike
incapable of self-government and hostile to those who would have
directed it.
I now resume my track; and, losing sight of the old and general
facts which have prepared the great Revolution I design to paint, I
proceed to the more particular and more recent incidents which finally
determined its occurrence, its origin, and its character.
FOOTNOTES:
[59] See Notes LII. and LIII.
[60] See Note LIV., Example of the Mischievous Effects of the Pecuniary
Rights of the Clergy.
[61] See Note LV.
[62] See Note LVI., Superiority of Method adopted in the _Pays d’État_.
[63] See Note LVII., Repair of Roads, how regarded.
[64] See Note LVIII., Commitments for Non-performance of Compulsory
Labour.
[65] See Note LIX.
[66] See Note LX., Escort of Galley-slaves.
[67] See Note LXI.
[68] See Note LXII.
[69] See Note LXIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
SHOWING THAT TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MEN OF
LETTERS BECAME THE LEADING POLITICAL MEN OF FRANCE, AND OF THE
EFFECTS OF THIS OCCURRENCE.
France had long been the most literary of all the nations of Europe;
although her literary men had never exhibited such intellectual powers
as they displayed about the middle of the eighteenth century, or
occupied such a position as that which they then assumed. Nothing of
the kind had ever been seen in France, or perhaps in any other country.
They were not constantly mixed up with public affairs as in England: at
no period, on the contrary, had they lived more apart from them. They
were invested with no authority whatever, and filled no public offices
in a society crowded with public officers; yet they did not, like the
greater part of their brethren in Germany, keep entirely aloof from
the arena of politics and retire into the regions of pure philosophy
and polite literature. They busied themselves incessantly with matters
appertaining to government, and this was, in truth, their special
occupation. Thus they were continually holding forth on the origin and
primitive forms of society, the primary rights of the citizen and of
government, the natural and artificial relations of men, the wrong or
right of customary laws, and the principles of legislation. While they
thus penetrated to the fundamental basis of the constitution of their
time, they examined its structure with minute care and criticised its
general plan. All, it is true, did not make a profound and special
study of these great problems: the greater part only touched upon them
cursorily, and as it were in sport: but they all dealt with them more
or less. This species of abstract and literary politics was scattered
in unequal proportions through all the works of the period; from the
ponderous treatise to the popular song, not one of them but contained
some grains of it.
As for the political systems of these writers, they varied so greatly
one from the other that any attempt to reconcile them, or to form any
one theory of government out of them, would be an impracticable task.
Nevertheless, by discarding matters of detail, so as to get at the
first leading ideas, it may be easily discovered that the authors of
these different systems agreed at least in one very general notion,
which all of them seem to have alike conceived, and which appears to
have pre-existed in their minds before all the notions peculiar to
themselves and to have been their common fountain-head. However widely
they may have diverged in the rest of their course, they all started
from this point. They all agreed that it was expedient to substitute
simple and elementary rules, deduced from reason and natural law, for
the complicated traditional customs which governed the society of their
time. Upon a strict scrutiny it may be seen that what might be called
the political philosophy of the eighteenth century consisted, properly
speaking, in this one notion.
These opinions were by no means novel; for three thousand years they
had unceasingly traversed the imaginations of mankind, though without
being able to stamp themselves there. How came they at last to take
possession of the minds of all the writers of this period? Why, instead
of progressing no farther than the heads of a few philosophers, as had
frequently been the case, had they at last reached the masses, and
assumed the strength and the fervour of a political passion to such a
degree, that general and abstract theories upon the nature of society
became daily topics of conversation, and even inflamed the imaginations
of women, and of the peasantry? How was it that literary men,
possessing neither rank, nor honours, nor fortune, nor responsibility,
nor power, became, in fact, the principal political men of the day, and
even the only political men, inasmuch as whilst others held the reins
of government, they alone grasped its authority?
A few words may suffice to show what an extraordinary and terrible
influence these circumstances, which apparently belong only to the
history of French literature, exercised upon the Revolution, and even
upon the present condition of France.
It was not by chance that the philosophers of the eighteenth century
thus coincided in entertaining notions so opposed to those which
still served as bases to the society of their time: these ideas had
been naturally suggested to them by the aspect of the society which
they had all before their eyes. The sight of so many unjust or absurd
privileges, the burden of which was more and more felt whilst their
cause was less and less understood, urged, or rather precipitated,
the minds of one and all towards the idea of the natural equality of
man’s condition. Whilst they looked upon so many strange and irregular
institutions, born of other times, which no one had attempted either
to bring into harmony with each other or to adapt to modern wants,
and which appeared likely to perpetuate their existence though they
had lost their worth, they learned to abhor what was ancient and
traditional, and naturally became desirous of re-constructing the
social edifice of their day upon an entirely new plan--a plan which
each one traced solely by the light of his reason.[70]
These writers were predisposed, by their own position, to relish
general and abstract theories upon the subject of government, and
to place in them the blindest confidence. The almost immeasurable
distance in which they lived from practical duties afforded them no
experience to moderate the ardour of their character; nothing warned
them of the obstacles which the actual state of things might oppose
to reforms, however desirable. They had no idea of the perils which
always accompany the most needful revolutions; they had not even a
presentiment of them, for the complete absence of all political liberty
had the effect of rendering the transaction of public affairs not only
unknown to them, but even invisible. They were neither employed in
those affairs themselves, nor could they see what those employed in
them were doing. They were consequently destitute of that superficial
instruction which the sight of a free community, and the tumult of
its discussions, bestow even upon those who are least mixed up with
government. Thus they became far more bold in innovation, more fond
of generalising and of systems, more disdainful of the wisdom of
antiquity, and still more confident in their individual reason, than is
commonly to be seen in authors who write speculative books on politics.
The same state of ignorance opened to them the ears and hearts of the
people. It may be confidently affirmed that if the French had still
taken part, as they formerly had done, in the States-General, or if
even they had found a daily occupation in the administration of the
affairs of the country in the assemblies of their several provinces,
they would not have allowed themselves to be inflamed as they were by
the ideas of the writers of the day, since they would have retained
certain habits of public business which would have preserved them from
the evils of pure theory.
Had they been able, like the English, gradually to modify the spirit of
their ancient institutions by practical experience without destroying
them, they would perhaps have been less inclined to invent new ones.
But there was not a man who did not daily feel himself injured in
his fortune, in his person, in his comfort, or his pride by some old
law, some ancient political custom, or some other remnant of former
authority, without perceiving at hand any remedy that he could himself
apply to his own particular hardship. It appeared that the whole
constitution of the country must either be endured or destroyed.
The French, however, had still preserved one liberty amidst the
ruin of every other: they were still free to philosophise almost
without restraint upon the origin of society, the essential nature of
governments, and the primordial rights of mankind.
All those who felt themselves aggrieved by the daily application of
existing laws were soon enamoured of these literary politics. The same
taste soon reached even those who by nature or by their condition
of life seemed the farthest removed from abstract speculations.
Every tax-payer wronged by the unequal distribution of the _taille_
was fired by the idea that all men ought to be equal; every little
landowner devoured by the rabbits of his noble neighbour was delighted
to be told that all privileges were, without distinction, contrary to
reason. Every public passion thus assumed the disguise of philosophy;
all political action was violently driven back into the domain of
literature; and the writers of the day, undertaking the guidance of
public opinion, found themselves at one time in that position which the
heads of parties commonly hold in free countries. No one in fact was
any longer in a condition to contend with them for the part they had
assumed.
An aristocracy in all its vigour not only carries on the affairs of
a country, but directs public opinion, gives a tone to literature,
and the stamp of authority to ideas; but the French nobility of the
eighteenth century had entirely lost this portion of its supremacy;
its influence had followed the fortunes of its power; and the position
it had occupied in the direction of the public mind had been entirely
abandoned to the writers of the day, to occupy as they pleased. Nay
more, this very aristocracy whose place they thus assumed, favoured
their undertaking. So completely had it forgotten the fact that general
theories, once admitted, inevitably transform themselves in time into
political passions and deeds, that doctrines the most adverse to the
peculiar rights, and even to the existence, of the nobility were looked
upon as ingenious exercises of the mind; the nobles even shared as
a pleasant pastime in these discussions, and quietly enjoyed their
immunities and privileges whilst they serenely discussed the absurdity
of all established customs.
Astonishment has frequently been expressed at the singular blindness
with which the higher classes under the old monarchy of France thus
contributed to their own ruin. But whence could they have become
more enlightened? Free institutions are not less necessary to show
the greater citizens their perils than to secure to the lesser their
rights. For more than a century since the last traces of public life
had disappeared in France, no shock, no rumour had ever warned those
most directly interested in the maintenance of the ancient constitution
that the old building was tottering to its fall. As nothing had changed
in its external aspect, they imagined that everything had remained
the same. Their minds were thus bounded by the same horizon at which
that of their fathers had stopped. In the public documents of the
year 1789 the nobility appears to have been as much preoccupied with
the idea of the encroachments of the royal power as it could possibly
have been in those of the fifteenth century. On the other hand, the
unfortunate Louis XVI. just before his own destruction by the incursion
of democracy, still continued (as has been justly remarked by Burke)
to look upon the aristocracy as the chief rival of the royal power,
and mistrusted it as much as if he was still living in the days of the
_Fronde_. The middle and lower classes on the contrary were in his
eyes, as in those of his forefathers, the surest support of the throne.
But that which must appear still more strange to men of the present
day--men who have the shattered fragments of so many revolutions
before their eyes--is the fact, that not the barest notion of a
violent revolution ever entered into the minds of the generation which
witnessed it. Such a notion was never discussed, for it was never
conceived. Those minor shocks which the exercise of political liberty
is continually imparting to the best constituted societies, serve
daily to call to mind the possibility of an earthquake, and to keep
public vigilance on the alert; but in the state of society of France
in the eighteenth century, on the brink of this abyss, nothing had yet
indicated that the fabric leaned.
On examining with attention the Instructions drawn up by the three
Orders before their convocation in 1789--by all the three, the nobility
and clergy, as well as the _Tiers-État_--noting _seriatim_ all the
demands made for the changes of laws or customs, it will be seen with
a sort of terror, on terminating this immense labour, and casting up
the sum total of all these particular requirements, that what was
required is no less than the simultaneous and systematic abolition of
every law and every usage current throughout the country; and that
what was impending must be one of the most extensive and dangerous
revolutions that ever appeared in the world. Yet the very men who were
so shortly to become its victims knew nothing of it. They fancied that
the total and sudden transformation of so ancient and complicated a
state of society was to be effected, without any concussion, by the
aid and efficacy of reason alone; and they fatally forgot that maxim
which their forefathers, four hundred years before, had expressed in
the simple and energetic language of their time: ‘_Par requierre de
trop grande franchise et libertés chet-on en trop grande servaige._’
(By requiring too great liberty and franchise, men fall into too great
servitude.)
It was not surprising that the nobility and middle classes, so long
excluded from all public action, should have displayed this strange
inexperience; but what astonishes far more is, that the very men who
had the conduct of public affairs, the ministers, the magistrates,
and the Intendants, should not have evinced more foresight. Many of
them, nevertheless, were very clever men in their profession, and were
thoroughly possessed of all the details of the public administration
of their time; but in that great science of government, which teaches
the comprehension of the general movement of society, the appreciation
of what is passing in the minds of the masses, and the foreknowledge
of the probable results--they were just as much novices as the people
itself. In truth, it is only the exercise of free institutions that can
teach the statesman this principal portion of his art.
This may easily be seen in the Memoir addressed by Turgot to the
King in 1775, in which, among other matters, he advised his Majesty
to summon a representative assembly, freely elected by the whole
nation, to meet every year, for six weeks, about his own person, but
to grant it no effective power. His proposal was, that this assembly
should take cognisance of administrative business, but never of the
government--should offer suggestions rather than express a will--and,
in fact, should be commissioned to discuss laws, but not to make them.
‘In this wise,’ said the Memoir, ‘the royal power would be enlightened,
but not thwarted, and public opinion contented without danger: for
these assemblies would have no authority to oppose any indispensable
operation; and if, which is most improbable, they should not lend
themselves to this duty, his Majesty would still be the master to do as
he pleases.’
It was impossible to show greater ignorance of the true bearing of
such a measure, and of the spirit of the times. It has frequently
happened, it is true, that towards the end of a revolutionary period,
such a proposal as that made by Turgot has been carried into effect
with impunity, and that a shadow of liberty has been granted without
the reality. Augustus made the experiment with success. A nation
fatigued by a prolonged struggle may willingly consent to be duped in
order to obtain repose; and history shows that enough may then be done
to satisfy it, by collecting from all parts of the country a certain
number of obscure or dependent individuals, and making them play
before it the part of a political assembly for the wages they receive.
There have been several examples of the kind. But at the commencement
of a revolution such experiments always fail; they inflame, without
satisfying the people. This truth, known to the humblest citizen of a
free country, was not known to Turgot, great administrator as he was.
If now it be taken into consideration that this same French nation, so
ignorant of its own public affairs, so utterly devoid of experience,
so hampered by its institutions, and so powerless to amend them, was
also in those days the most lettered and witty nation of the earth, it
may readily be understood how the writers of the time became a great
political power, and ended by being the first power in the country.
In England those who wrote on the subject of government were connected
with those who governed; the latter applied new ideas to practice--the
former corrected or controlled their theories by practical observation.
But in France the political world remained divided into two separate
provinces, with no mutual intercourse. One portion governed; the other
established abstract principles on which all government ought to be
founded. Here measures were taken in obedience to routine; there
general laws were propounded, without even a thought as to the means of
their application. These kept the direction of affairs; those guided
the intelligence of the nation.
Above the actual state of society--the constitution of which was still
traditional, confused, and irregular, and in which the laws remained
conflicting and contradictory, ranks sharply sundered, the conditions
of the different classes fixed whilst their burdens were unequal--an
imaginary state of society was thus springing up, in which everything
appeared simple and co-ordinate, uniform, equitable, and agreeable to
reason. The imagination of the people gradually deserted the former
state of things in order to seek refuge in the latter. Interest was
lost in what was, to foster dreams of what might be; and men thus dwelt
in fancy in this ideal city, which was the work of literary invention.
The French Revolution has been frequently attributed to that of
America. The American Revolution had certainly considerable influence
upon the French; but the latter owed less to what was actually done in
the United States than to what was thought at the same time in France.
Whilst to the rest of Europe the Revolution of America still only
appeared a novel and strange occurrence, in France it only rendered
more palpable and more striking that which was already supposed to
be known. Other countries it astonished; to France it brought more
complete conviction. The Americans seemed to have done no more than
execute what the literary genius of France had already conceived; they
gave the substance of reality to that which the French had excogitated.
It was as if Fénelon had suddenly found himself in Salentum.
This circumstance, so novel in history, of the whole political
education of a great people being formed by its literary men,
contributed more than anything perhaps to bestow upon the French
Revolution its peculiar stamp, and to cause those results which are
still perceptible.
The writers of the time not only imparted their ideas to the people
who effected the Revolution, but they gave them also their peculiar
temperament and disposition. The whole nation ended, after being so
long schooled by them, in the absence of all other leaders and in
profound ignorance of practical affairs, by catching up the instincts,
the turn of mind, the tastes, and even the humours of those who wrote;
so that, when the time for action came, it transported into the arena
of politics all the habits of literature.
A study of the history of the French Revolution will show that it
was carried on precisely in that same spirit which has caused so
many abstract books to be written on government. There was the same
attraction towards general theories, complete systems of legislation,
and exact symmetry in the laws--the same contempt of existing
facts--the same reliance upon theory--the same love of the original,
the ingenious, and the novel in institutions--the same desire to
reconstruct, all at once, the entire constitution by the rules of
logic, and upon a single plan, rather than seek to amend it in its
parts. The spectacle was an alarming one; for that which is a merit
in a writer is often a fault in a statesman: and the same things
which have often caused great books to be written, may lead to great
revolutions.
Even the political language of the time caught something of the tone in
which the authors spoke: it was full of general expressions, abstract
terms, pompous words, and literary turns. This style, aided by the
political passions which it expressed, penetrated through all classes,
and descended with singular facility even to the lowest. Considerably
before the Revolution, the edicts of Louis XVI. frequently spoke
of the law of nature and the rights of man; and I have found
instances of peasants who, in their memorials called their neighbours
‘fellow-citizens,’ their _Intendant_ ‘a respectable magistrate,’ their
parish-priest ‘the minister of the altar,’ and God ‘the Supreme Being,’
and who wanted nothing but spelling to become very indifferent authors.
These new qualities became so completely incorporated with the old
stock of the French character, that habits resulting only from this
singular education have frequently been attributed to the natural
disposition of the French. It has been asserted that the taste, or
rather the passion, which the French have displayed during the last
sixty years for general ideas and big words in political discussion,
arose from some characteristic peculiar to the French race, which has
been somewhat pedantically called ‘the genius of France,’ as if this
pretended characteristic could suddenly have displayed itself at the
end of the last century, after having remained concealed during the
whole history of the country.
It is singular that the French have preserved the habits which they had
derived from literature, whilst they have almost entirely lost their
ancient love of literature itself. I have been frequently astonished in
the course of my own public life, to see that men who had never read
the works of the eighteenth century, or of any other, and who had a
great contempt for authors, nevertheless so faithfully retain some of
the principal defects which were displayed before their birth by the
literary spirit of that day.
FOOTNOTE:
[70] See Note LXIV.
CHAPTER XIV.
SHOWING HOW IRRELIGION HAD BECOME A GENERAL AND DOMINANT PASSION
AMONGST THE FRENCH OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND WHAT INFLUENCE
THIS FACT HAD ON THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION.
From the time of the great Revolution of the sixteenth century, when
the spirit of free inquiry undertook to decide which were false and
which were true among the different traditions of Christianity, it had
never ceased to engender certain minds of a more curious or a bolder
stamp, who contested or rejected them all. The same spirit that, in
the days of Luther, had at once driven several millions of Catholics
out of the pale of Catholicism, continued to drive in individual cases
some few Christians out of the pale of Christianity itself. Heresy was
followed by unbelief.
It may be said generally that in the eighteenth century Christianity
had lost over the whole of the continent of Europe a great part of its
power; but in most countries it was rather neglected than violently
contested, and even those who forsook it did so with regret. Irreligion
was disseminated among the Courts and wits of the age; but it had not
yet penetrated into the hearts of the middle and lower classes. It was
still the caprice of some leading intellects, not the opinion of the
vulgar. ‘It is a prejudice commonly diffused throughout Germany,’ said
Mirabeau, in 1787, ‘that the Prussian provinces are full of atheists;
when, in truth, although some freethinkers are to be met with there,
the people of those parts are as much attached to religion as in the
most superstitious countries, and even a great number of fanatics are
to be found there.’ To this he added, that it was much to be regretted
that Frederick II. had not sanctioned the marriage of the Catholic
clergy, and, above all, had refused to leave those priests who married
in possession of the income of their ecclesiastical preferment; ‘a
measure,’ he continued, ‘which we should have ventured to consider
worthy of the great man.’ Nowhere but in France had irreligion become a
general passion, fervid, intolerant, and oppressive.
There the state of things was such as had never occurred before. In
other times, established religions had been attacked with violence;
but the ardour evinced against them had always taken rise in the zeal
inspired by a new faith. Even the false and detestable religions of
antiquity had not had either numerous or passionate adversaries until
Christianity arose to supplant them; till then they were quietly and
noiselessly dying out in doubt and indifference--dying, in fact, the
death of religions, by old age. But in France the Christian religion
was attacked with a sort of rage, without any attempt to substitute any
other belief. Continuous and vehement efforts having been made to expel
from the soul of man the faith that had filled it, the soul was left
empty. A mighty multitude wrought with ardour at this thankless task.
That absolute incredulity in matters of religion which is so contrary
to the natural instincts of man, and places his soul in so painful a
condition, appeared attractive to the masses. That which until then
had only produced the effect of a sickly languor, began to generate
fanaticism and a spirit of propagandism.
The occurrence of several great writers, all disposed to deny the
truths of the Christian religion, can hardly be accepted as a
sufficient explanation of so extraordinary an event. For how, it may
be asked, came all these writers, every one of them, to turn their
talents in this direction rather than any other? Why, among them all,
cannot one be found who took it into his head to support the other
side? and, finally, how was it that they found the ears of the masses
far more open to listen to them than any of their predecessors had
done, and men’s minds so inclined to believe them? The efforts of all
these writers, and above all their success, can only be explained by
causes altogether peculiar to their time and their country. The spirit
of Voltaire had already been long in the world: but Voltaire himself,
in truth, could never have attained his supremacy, except in the
eighteenth century and in France.
It must first be acknowledged that the Church was not more open to
attack in France than elsewhere. The corruptions and abuses which had
been allowed to creep into it were less, on the contrary, there than in
most other Catholic countries. The Church of France was infinitely more
tolerant than it had ever been previously and than the Church still was
in other nations. Consequently, the peculiar causes of this phenomenon
must be looked for less in the condition of religion itself than in
that of society.
For the thorough comprehension of this fact, what was said in the
preceding chapter must not be lost sight of--namely, that the whole
spirit of political opposition excited by the corruption of the
Government, not being able to find a vent in public affairs, had taken
refuge in literature, and that the writers of the day had become the
real leaders of the great party which tended to overthrow the social
and political institutions of the country.
This being well understood, the question is altered. We no longer ask
in what the Church of that day erred as a religious institution, but
how far it stood opposed to the political revolution which was at hand,
and how it was more especially irksome to the writers who were the
principal promoters of this revolution.
The Church, by the first principles of her ecclesiastical government,
was adverse to the principles which they were desirous of establishing
in civil government. The Church rested principally upon tradition; they
professed great contempt for all institutions based upon respect for
the past. The Church recognised an authority superior to individual
reason; they appealed to nothing but that reason. The Church was
founded upon a hierarchy: they aimed at an entire subversion of ranks.
To have come to a common understanding it would have been necessary
for both sides to have recognised the fact, that political society and
religious society, being by nature essentially different, cannot be
regulated by analogous laws. But at that time they were far enough from
any such conclusion; and it was fancied that, in order to attack the
institutions of the State, those of the Church must be destroyed which
served as their foundation and their model.
Moreover, the Church was itself the first of the political powers of
the time; and, although not the most oppressive, the most hated; for
she had contrived to mix herself up with those powers, without having
any claim to that position either by her nature or her vocation; she
often sanctioned in them the very defects she blamed elsewhere; she
covered them with her own sacred inviolability, and seemed desirous of
rendering them as immortal as herself. An attack upon the Church was
sure at once to chime in with the strong feeling of the public.
But, besides these general reasons, the literary men of France had more
special, and, so to say, personal reasons for attacking the Church
in the first instance. The Church represented precisely that portion
of the Government which stood nearest and most directly opposed to
themselves. The other powers of the State were only felt by them from
time to time; but the ecclesiastical authority being specially employed
in keeping watch over the progress of thought, and the censorship of
books, was a daily annoyance to them. By defending the common liberties
of the human mind against the Church, they were combating in their own
cause, and they began by bursting the shackles which pressed most
closely upon themselves.
Moreover, the Church appeared to them to be, and was, in fact, the most
open and the worst defended side of all the vast edifice which they
were assailing. Her strength had declined at the same time that the
temporal power of the Crown had increased. After having been first the
superior of the temporal powers, then their equal, she had come down
to be their client; and a sort of reciprocity had been established
between them. The temporal powers lent the Church their material force,
whilst the Church lent them her moral authority; they caused the Church
to be obeyed, the Church caused them to be respected--a dangerous
interchange of obligations in times of approaching revolution, and
always disadvantageous to a power founded not upon constraint but upon
faith.
Although the Kings of France still called themselves the eldest sons
of the Church, they fulfilled their obligations towards her most
negligently: they evinced far less ardour in her protection than in the
defence of their own government. They did not, it is true, permit any
direct attack upon her, but they suffered her to be transfixed from a
distance by a thousand shafts.
The sort of semi-constraint which was at that time imposed upon the
enemies of the Church, instead of diminishing their power, augmented
it. There are times when the restraint imposed on literature succeeds
in arresting the progress of opinions; there are others when it
accelerates their course: but a species of control similar to that
then exercised over the press, has invariably augmented its power a
hundredfold.
Authors were persecuted enough to excite compassion--not enough to
inspire them with terror. They suffered from that kind of annoyance
which irritates to opposition, not from the heavy yoke which crushes.
The prosecutions directed against them, which were almost always
dilatory, noisy, and vain, appeared less calculated to prevent their
writing than to excite them to the task. A complete liberty of the
press would have been less prejudicial to the Church.
‘You consider our intolerance more favourable to the progress of the
mind than your unlimited liberty,’ wrote Diderot to David Hume in 1768.
‘D’Holbach, Helvetius, Morelet, and Suard, are not of your opinion.’
Yet it was the Scotchman who was right; he possessed the experience of
the free country in which he lived. Diderot looked upon the matter as a
literary man--Hume, as a politician.
If the first American who might be met by chance, either in his own
country or abroad, were to be stopped and asked whether he considered
religion useful to the stability of the laws and the good order of
society, he would answer, without hesitation, that no civilised
society, but more especially none in a state of freedom, can exist
without religion. Respect for religion is, in his eyes, the greatest
guarantee of the stability of the State and of the safety of the
community. Those who are ignorant of the science of government know
that fact at least. Yet there is not a country in the world where
the boldest doctrines of the philosophers of the eighteenth century,
on political subjects, have been more adopted than in America: their
anti-religious doctrines alone have never been able to make way there,
even with the advantage of an unlimited liberty of the press.
As much may be said of the English.[71] French irreligious philosophy
had been preached to them even before the greater part of the French
philosophers were born. It was Bolingbroke who set up Voltaire.
Throughout the eighteenth century infidelity had celebrated champions
in England. Able writers and profound thinkers espoused that cause, but
they were never able to render it triumphant as in France; inasmuch as
all those who had anything to fear from revolutions eagerly came to the
rescue of the established faith. Even those who were the most mixed
up with the French society of the day, and who did not look upon the
doctrines of French philosophy as false, rejected them as dangerous.
Great political parties, as is always the case in free countries,
were interested in attaching their cause to that of the Church; and
Bolingbroke himself became the ally of the bishops. The clergy,
animated by these examples, and never finding itself deserted, combated
manfully in its own cause. The Church of England, in spite of the
defects of its constitution, and the abuses of every kind that swarmed
within it, supported the shock victoriously. Authors and orators
rose within it, and applied themselves with ardour to the defence of
Christianity. The theories hostile to that religion, after having been
discussed and refuted, were finally rejected by the action of society
itself, and without any interference on the part of the Government.
It is not necessary, however, to seek examples beyond France itself.
What Frenchman would ever think in our times of writing such books as
those of Diderot or Helvetius? Who would read them now? and, it may
almost be said, who even knows their titles? The imperfect experience
of public life which France has acquired during the last sixty
years has been sufficient to disgust the French with this dangerous
literature. It is only necessary to see how much the respect for
religion has gradually resumed its sway among the different classes
of the nation, according as each of them acquired that experience in
the rude school of Revolution. The old nobility, which was the most
irreligious class before 1789, became the most fervent after 1793: it
was the first infected, and the first cured. When the _bourgeoisie_
felt itself struck down in its triumph, it began also, in its turn,
gradually to revert to religious faith. Little by little, respect for
religion penetrated to all the classes in which men had anything to
lose by popular disturbances; and infidelity disappeared, or at least
hid its head more and more, as the fear of revolutions arose.
But this was by no means the case at the time immediately preceding the
Revolution of 1789. The French had so completely lost all practical
experience in the great affairs of mankind, and were so thoroughly
ignorant of the part held by religion in the government of empires,
that infidelity first established itself in the minds of the very men
who had the greatest and most pressing personal interest in keeping
the State in order and the people in obedience. Not only did they
themselves embrace it, but in their blindness they disseminated it
below them. They made impiety the pastime of their vacant existence.
The Church of France, so prolific down to that period in great orators,
when she found herself deserted by all those who ought to have rallied
by a common interest to her cause, became mute. It seemed at one time
that, provided she retained her wealth and her rank, she was ready to
renounce her faith.
As those who denied the truths of Christianity spoke aloud, and those
who still believed held their peace, a state of things was the result
which has since frequently occurred again in France, not only on the
question of religion, but in very different matters. Those who still
preserved their ancient belief, fearing to be the only men who still
remained faithful to it, and more afraid of isolation than of error,
followed the crowd without partaking its opinions. Thus, that which was
still only the feeling of a portion of the nation, appeared to be the
opinion of all, and, from that very fact, seemed irresistible even to
those who had themselves given it this false appearance.
The universal discredit into which every form of religious belief had
fallen, at the end of the last century, exercised without any doubt the
greatest influence upon the whole of the French Revolution: it stamped
its character. Nothing contributed more to give its features that
terrible expression which they wore.
In seeking to distinguish between the different effects which
irreligion at that time produced in France, it may be seen that it was
rather by disturbing men’s minds than by degrading their hearts, or
even corrupting their morals, that it disposed the men of that day to
go to such strange excesses.
When religion thus deserted the souls of men, it did not leave them, as
is frequently the case, empty and debilitated. They were filled for the
time with sentiments and ideas that occupied its place, and did not, at
first, allow them to be utterly prostrate.
If the French who effected the Revolution were more incredulous than
those of the present day in matters of religion, at least they had one
admirable faith which the present generation has not. They had faith
in themselves. They never doubted of the perfectibility and power of
man: they were burning with enthusiasm for his glory: they believed
in his worth. They placed that proud confidence in their own strength
which so often leads to error, but without which a people is only
capable of servitude: they never doubted of their call to transform
the face of society and regenerate the human race. These sentiments
and passions became like a sort of new religion to them, which, as it
produced some of those great effects which religions produce, kept them
from individual selfishness, urged them on even to self-sacrifice and
heroism, and frequently rendered them insensible to all those petty
objects which possess the men of the present day.
After a profound study of history we may still venture to affirm that
there never was a revolution, in which, at the commencement, more
sincere patriotism, more disinterestedness, more true greatness, were
displayed by so great a number of men. The nation then exhibited the
principal defect, but, at the same time, the principal ornament, which
youth possesses, or rather did possess, namely, inexperience and
generosity.
Yet irreligion had produced an enormous public evil. In most of the
great political revolutions, which, up to that period, had appeared in
the world, those who had attacked the established laws had respected
the creeds of the country; and, in the greater part of the religious
revolutions, those who attacked religion made no attempt to change, at
one blow, the nature and order of all the established authorities, and
to raze to the ground the ancient constitution of the government. In
the greatest convulsions of society one point, at least, had remained
unshaken.
But in the French Revolution, the religious laws having been abolished
at the same time that the civil laws were overthrown, the minds
of men were entirely upset: they no longer knew either to what to
cling, or where to stop; and thus arose a hitherto unknown species of
revolutionists, who carried their boldness to a pitch of madness, who
were surprised by no novelty and arrested by no scruple, and who never
hesitated to put any design whatever into execution. Nor must it be
supposed that these new beings have been the isolated and ephemeral
creation of a moment, and destined to pass away as that moment passed.
They have since formed a race of beings which has perpetuated itself,
and spread into all the civilised parts of the world, everywhere
preserving the same physiognomy, the same passions, the same character.
The present generation found it in the world at its birth: it still
remains before our eyes.
FOOTNOTE:
[71] See Note LXV., Infidelity in England.
CHAPTER XV.
THAT THE FRENCH AIMED AT REFORM BEFORE LIBERTY.
It is worthy of observation that amongst all the ideas and all the
feelings which led to the French Revolution, the idea and the taste
for political liberty, properly so called, were the last to manifest
themselves and the first to disappear.
For some time past the ancient fabric of the Government had begun to
be shaken; it tottered already, but liberty was not yet thought of.
Even Voltaire had scarcely thought about it; three years’ residence
in England had shown him what that liberty is, but without attaching
him to it. The sceptical philosophy which was then in vogue in England
enchanted him; the political laws of England hardly attracted his
attention; he was more struck by their defects than by their merits. In
his letters on England, which are one of his best pieces, Parliament
is hardly mentioned; the fact was that he envied the English their
literary freedom without caring for their political freedom, as if the
former could ever long exist without the latter.
Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, a certain number of
writers began to appear who devoted themselves especially to questions
of public administration, and who were designated, in consequence of
several principles which they held in common, by the general name of
political economists or _physiocrates_. These economists have left less
conspicuous traces in history than the French philosophers; perhaps
they contributed less to the approach of the Revolution; yet I think
that the true character of the Revolution may best be studied in their
works. The French philosophers confined themselves for the most part to
very general and very abstract opinions on government; the economists,
without abandoning theory, clung more closely to facts. The former said
what might be thought; the latter sometimes pointed out what might be
done. All the institutions which the Revolution was about to annihilate
for ever were the peculiar objects of their attacks; none found favour
in their sight. All the institutions, on the contrary, which may be
regarded as the product of the Revolution, were announced beforehand
by these economical writers, and ardently recommended; there is hardly
one of these institutions of which the germ may not be discovered in
some of their writings; and those writings may be said to contain all
that is most substantial in the Revolution itself.
Nay, more, their books already bore the stamp of that revolutionary
and democratic temper which we know so well: they breathe not only the
hatred of certain privileges, but even diversity was odious to them;
they would adore equality, even in servitude. All that thwarts their
designs is to be crushed. They care little for plighted faith, nothing
for private rights--or rather, to speak accurately, private rights have
already ceased in their eyes to exist--public utility is everything.
Yet these were men, for the most part, of gentle and peaceful lives,
worthy persons, upright magistrates, able administrators; but the
peculiar spirit of their task bore them onwards.
The past was to these economists a subject of endless contempt. ‘This
nation has been governed for centuries on false principles,’ said
Letronne, ‘everything seems to have been done by haphazard.’ Starting
from this notion, they set to work; no institution was so ancient or so
well-established in the history of France that they hesitated to demand
its suppression from the moment that it incommoded them or deranged the
symmetry of their plans. One of these writers proposed to obliterate
at once all the ancient territorial divisions of the kingdom, and
to change all the names of the provinces, forty years before the
Constituent Assembly executed this scheme.
They had already conceived the idea of all the social and
administrative reforms which the Revolution has accomplished before
the idea of free institutions had begun to cross their minds. They
were, indeed, extremely favourable to the free exchange of produce,
and to the doctrine of _laissez faire et laissez passer_, the basis of
free trade and free labour; but as for political liberties, properly
so called, these did not occur to their minds, or, if perchance they
did occur to their imaginations, such ideas were at once rejected.
Most of them began to display considerable hostility to deliberative
assemblies, to local or secondary powers, and, in general, to all
the checks which have been established, at different times, in all
free nations, to balance the central power of the Government. ‘The
system of checks,’ said Quesnay, ‘is a fatal idea in government.’
‘The speculations on which a system of checks has been devised are
chimerical,’ said a friend of the same writer.
The sole guarantee invented by them against the abuse of power was
public education; for, as Quesnay elsewhere observes, ‘despotism is
impossible when the nation is enlightened.’ ‘Struck by the evils
arising from abuses of authority,’ said another of his disciples,
‘men have invented a thousand totally useless means of resistance,
whilst they have neglected the only means which are truly efficacious,
namely, public, general, and continual instruction in the principles
of essential justice and natural order.’ This literary nonsense was,
according to these thinkers, to supply the place of all political
securities.
Letronne, who so bitterly deplored the forlorn condition in which the
Government had left the rural districts, who described them as without
roads, without employment, and without information, never conceived
that their concerns might be more successfully carried on if the
inhabitants themselves were entrusted with the management of them.
Turgot himself, who deserves to rank far above all the rest for the
elevation of his character and the singular merits of his genius, had
not much more taste than the other economists for political liberty,
or, at least, that taste came to him later, and when it was forced
upon him by public opinion. To him, as well as to all the others,
the chief political security seemed to be a certain kind of public
instruction, given by the State, on a particular system and with a
particular tendency. His confidence in this sort of intellectual drug,
or, as one of his contemporaries expressed it, ‘in the mechanism of an
education regulated by principles,’ was boundless. ‘I venture to assure
your Majesty,’ said he, in a report to the King, proposing a plan of
this nature, ‘that in ten years your people will have changed out of
knowledge; and that by their attainments, by their morality, and by
their enlightened zeal for your service and for that of the country,
France will be raised far above all other nations. Children who are
now ten years of age will then have grown up as men prepared for the
public service, attached to their country, submissive, not through fear
but through reason, to authority, humane to their fellow-citizens,
accustomed to recognise and to respect the administration of justice.’
Political freedom had been so long destroyed in France that men had
almost entirely forgotten what are its conditions and its effects.
Nay, more, the shapeless ruins of freedom which still remained, and
the institutions which seem to have been formed to supply its place,
rendered it an object of suspicion and of prejudice. Most of the
Provincial Assemblies which were still in existence retained the spirit
of the Middle Ages as well as their obsolete formalities, and they
checked rather than advanced the progress of society. The Parliaments,
which alone stood in lieu of political bodies, had no power to prevent
the evil which the Government did, and frequently prevented the good
which the Government attempted to do.
To accomplish the revolution which they contemplated by means of all
these antiquated instruments appeared impracticable to the school of
economists. To confide the execution of their plans to the nation,
mistress of herself, was not more agreeable to them; for how was it
possible to cause a whole people to adopt and follow a system of reform
so extensive and so closely connected in all its parts? It seemed to
them more easy and more proper to make the administrative power of the
Crown itself the instrument of their designs.
That new administrative power had not sprung from the institutions of
the Middle Ages, nor did it bear the mark of that period; in spite
of its errors they discovered in it some beneficial tendencies. Like
themselves it was naturally favourable to equality of conditions and
to uniformity of rules; as much as themselves it cordially detested
all the ancient powers which were born of feudalism or tended to
aristocracy. In all Europe no machine of government existed so well
organised, so vast, or so strong. To find such a government ready to
their hands seemed to them a most fortunate circumstance; they would
have called it providential, if it had been the fashion then, as it now
is, to cause Providence to intervene on all occasions. ‘The state of
France,’ said Letronne, ‘is infinitely better than that of England, for
here reforms can be accomplished which will change the whole condition
of the country in a moment; whilst among the English such reforms may
always be thwarted by political parties.’
The point was, then, not to destroy this absolute power, but to convert
it. ‘The State must govern according to the rules of essential order,’
said Mercier de la Rivière, ‘and when this is the case it ought to be
all powerful.’ ‘Let the State thoroughly understand its duty, and then
let it be altogether free.’ From Quesnay to the Abbé Bodeau they were
all of the same mind. They not only relied on the royal administration
to reform the social condition of their own age, but they partially
borrowed from it the idea of the future government they hoped to found.
The latter was framed in the image of the former.
These economists held that it is the business of the State not only
to command the nation, but to fashion it in a certain manner, to form
the character of the population upon a certain preconceived model, to
inspire the mind with such opinions and the heart with such sentiments
as it may deem necessary. In fact, they set no limits to the rights
of the State, nor to what it could effect. The State was not only to
reform men, but to transform them--perhaps if it chose, to make others!
‘The State can make men what it pleases,’ said Bodeau. That proposition
includes all their theories.
This unlimited social power which the French economists had conceived
was not only greater than any power they ever beheld, but it differed
from every other power by its origin and its nature. It did not flow
directly from the Deity, it did not rest on tradition; it was an
impersonal power; it was not called the King, but the State; it was not
the inheritance of a family, but the product and the representative of
all. It entitled them to bend the right of every man to the will of the
rest.
That peculiar form of tyranny which is called Democratic Despotism, and
which was utterly unknown to the Middle Ages, was already familiar to
these writers. No gradations in society, no distinctions of classes, no
fixed ranks--a people composed of individuals nearly alike and entirely
equal--this confused mass being recognised as the only legitimate
sovereign, but carefully deprived of all the faculties which could
enable it either to direct or even to superintend its own government.
Above this mass a single officer, charged to do everything in its
name without consulting it. To control this officer, public opinion,
deprived of its organs; to arrest him, revolutions, but no laws. In
principle, a subordinate agent; in fact, a master.
As nothing was as yet to be found about them which came up to this
ideal, they sought it in the depths of Asia. I affirm, without
exaggeration, that there is not one of these writers who has not, in
some of his productions, passed an emphatic eulogy on China. That, at
least, is always to be found in their books; and, as China was still
very imperfectly known, there is no trash they have not written about
that empire. That stupid and barbarous government, which a handful of
Europeans can overpower when they please, appeared to them the most
perfect model to be copied by all the nations of the earth. China was
to them what England, and subsequently the United States, became for
all Frenchmen. They expressed their emotion and enchantment at the
aspect of a country, whose sovereign, absolute but unprejudiced, drives
a furrow once a year with his own hands in honour of the useful arts;
where all public employments are obtained by competitive examination,
and which has a system of philosophy for its religion, and men of
letters for its aristocracy.
It is supposed that the destructive theories which are designated
in our times by the name of _socialism_ are of recent origin: this,
again, is a mistake; these theories are contemporary with the first
French school of economists. Whilst they were intent on employing the
all-powerful government they had conceived in order to change the form
of society, other writers grasped in imagination the same power to
subvert its foundations.
In the _Code de la Nature_, by Morelly, will be found, side by side
with the doctrines of the economists on the omnipotence and unlimited
rights of the State, several of the political theories which have most
alarmed the French nation in these later times, and which are supposed
to have been born before our eyes--community of goods, the right to
labour, absolute equality of conditions, uniformity in all things, a
mechanical regularity in all the movements of individuals, a tyranny to
regulate every action of daily life, and the complete absorption of the
personality of each member of the community into the whole social body.
‘Nothing in society shall belong in singular property to any one,’
says the first article of this code. ‘Property is detestable, and
whosoever shall attempt to re-establish it, shall be shut up for life,
as a maniac or an enemy of mankind. Every citizen is to be supported,
maintained, and employed at the public expense,’ says Article II. ‘All
productions are to be stored in public magazines, to be distributed to
the citizens and to supply their daily wants. Towns will be erected on
the same plan; all private dwellings or buildings will be alike; at
five years of age all children will be taken from their parents and
brought up in common at the cost of the State and in a uniform manner.’
Such a book might have been written yesterday: it is a hundred years
old. It appeared in 1755, at the very time when Quesnay founded his
school. So true it is that centralisation and socialism are products of
the same soil; they are to each other what the grafted tree is to the
wild stock.
Of all the men of their time, these economists are those who would
appear most at home in our own; their passion for equality is so
strong, and their taste for freedom is so questionable, that one might
fancy they are our contemporaries. In reading the speeches and the
books of the men who figured in the Revolution of 1789, we are suddenly
transported into a place and a state of society quite unknown to us;
but in perusing the books of this school of economists one may fancy
we have been living with these people, and have just been talking with
them.
About the year 1750 the whole French nation would not have been
disposed to exact a larger amount of political freedom than the
economists themselves. The taste and even the notion of freedom had
perished with the use of it. The nation desired reform rather than
rights; and if there had been at that time on the throne of France a
sovereign of the energy and the character of Frederick the Great, I
doubt not that he would have accomplished in society and in government
many of the great changes which have been brought about by the
Revolution, and this not only without the loss of his crown, but with
a considerable augmentation of his power. It is said that one of the
ablest ministers of Louis XV., M. de Machault, had a glimpse of this
idea, and imparted it to his master; but such undertakings are not the
result of advice: to be able to perform them a man must have been able
to conceive them.
Twenty years later the state of things was changed. A vision of
political freedom had visited the mind of France, and was every
day becoming more attractive, as may be inferred from a variety of
symptoms. The provinces began to conceive the desire to manage once
more their own affairs. The notion that the whole people has a right
to take part in the government diffused itself and took possession of
the public. Recollections of the old States-General were revived. The
nation, which detested its own history, recalled no other part of it
with pleasure but this. This fresh current of opinion bore away the
economists themselves, and compelled them to encumber their Unitarian
system with some free institutions.
When, in 1771, the Parliaments were destroyed, the same public, which
had so often suffered from their prejudices, was deeply affected by
their fall. It seemed as if with them fell the last barrier which could
still restrain the arbitrary power of the Crown.
This opposition astonished and irritated Voltaire. ‘Almost all the
kingdom is in a state of effervescence and consternation,’ he wrote to
one of his friends; ‘the ferment is as great in the provinces as at
Paris itself. Yet this edict seems to be full of useful reforms. To
abolish the sale of public offices, to render the administration of
justice gratuitous, to prevent suitors from coming from all corners
of the kingdom to Paris to ruin themselves there, to charge the Crown
with the payment of the expenses of the seignorial jurisdictions--are
not these great services rendered to the nation? These Parliaments,
moreover, have they not been often barbarous and persecutors? I am
really amazed at the out-of-the-way people who take the part of these
insolent and indocile citizens. For my own part I think the King right;
and since we must serve, I think it better to serve under a lion born
of a good family, and who is by birth much stronger than I am, than
under two hundred rats of my own condition.’ And he adds, by way of
excuse, ‘Remember that I am bound to appreciate highly the favour the
King has conferred on all the lords of manors, by undertaking to pay
the expenses of their jurisdictions.’
Voltaire, who had long been absent from Paris, imagined that public
opinion still remained at the point where he had left it. But he was
mistaken. The French people no longer confined themselves to the desire
that their affairs should be better conducted; they began to wish to
conduct their affairs themselves, and it was manifest that the great
Revolution, to which everything was contributing, would be brought
about not only with the assent of the people, but by their hands.
From that moment, I believe that this radical Revolution, which was to
confound in common ruin all that was worst and all that was best in
the institutions and condition of France, became inevitable. A people
so ill-prepared to act for themselves could not undertake a universal
and simultaneous reform without a universal destruction. An absolute
sovereign would have been a less dangerous innovator. For myself,
when I reflect that this same Revolution, which destroyed so many
institutions, opinions, and habits adverse to freedom, also destroyed
so many of those things without which freedom can hardly exist, I
incline to the belief that had it been wrought by a despot it would
perhaps have left the French nation less unfit one day to become a free
people, than wrought as it was by the sovereignty of the people and by
the people themselves.
What has here been said must never be lost sight of by those who would
understand the history of the French Revolution.
When the love of the French for political freedom was awakened, they
had already conceived a certain number of notions on matters of
government, which not only did not readily ally themselves with the
existence of free institutions, but which were almost contrary to them.
They had accepted as the ideal of society a people having no
aristocracy but that of its public officers, a single and all-powerful
administration, directing the affairs of State, protecting those of
private persons. Meaning to be free, they by no means meant to deviate
from this first conception: only they attempted to reconcile it with
that of freedom.
They, therefore, undertook to combine an unlimited administrative
centralisation with a preponderating legislative body--the
administration of a bureaucracy with the government of electors. The
nation as a whole had all the rights of sovereignty; each citizen
taken singly was thrust into the strictest dependence; the former
was expected to display the experience and the virtues of a free
people--the latter the qualities of a faithful servant.
This desire of introducing political freedom in the midst of
institutions and opinions essentially alien or adverse to it, but which
were already established in the habits or sanctioned by the taste of
the French themselves, is the main cause of the abortive attempts at
free government which have succeeded each other in France for more
than sixty years; and which have been followed by such disastrous
revolutions, that, wearied by so many efforts, disgusted by so,
laborious and so sterile a work, abandoning their second intentions for
their original aim, many Frenchmen have arrived at the conclusion that
to live as equals under a master is after all not without some charm.
Thus it is that the French of the present day are infinitely more
similar to the Economists of 1750 than to their fathers in 1789.
I have often asked myself what is the source of that passion for
political freedom which in all ages has been the fruitful mother of the
greatest things which mankind have achieved--and in what feelings that
passion strikes root and finds its nourishment.
It is evident that when nations are ill directed they soon conceive the
wish to govern themselves; but this love of independence, which only
springs up under the influence of certain transient evils produced by
despotism, is never lasting: it passes away with the accident that gave
rise to it; and what seemed to be the love of freedom was no more than
the hatred of a master. That which nations made to be free really hate
is the curse of dependence.
Nor do I believe that the true love of freedom is ever born of the
mere aspect of its material advantages; for this aspect may frequently
happen to be overcast. It is very true that in the long run freedom
ever brings, to those who know how to keep it, ease, comfort, and often
wealth; but there are times at which it disturbs for a season the
possession of these blessings; there are other times when despotism
alone can confer the ephemeral enjoyment of them. The men who prize
freedom only for such things as these are not men who ever long
preserved it.
That which at all times has so strongly attached the affection of
certain men is the attraction of freedom itself, its native charms
independent of its gifts--the pleasure of speaking, acting, and
breathing without restraint, under no master but God and the law. He
who seeks in freedom aught but herself is fit only to serve.
There are nations which have indefatigably pursued her through every
sort of peril and hardship. They loved her not for her material gifts;
they regard herself as a gift so precious and so necessary that no
other could console them for the loss of that which consoles them for
the loss of everything else. Others grow weary of freedom in the midst
of their prosperities; they allow her to be snatched without resistance
from their hands, lest they should sacrifice by an effort that
well-being which she had bestowed upon them. For them to remain free,
nothing was wanting but a taste for freedom. I attempt no analysis of
that lofty sentiment to those who feel it not. It enters of its own
accord into the large hearts God has prepared to receive it; it fills
them, it enraptures them; but to the meaner minds which have never felt
it, it is past finding out.
CHAPTER XVI.
SHOWING THAT THE REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. WAS THE MOST PROSPEROUS EPOCH OF
THE OLD FRENCH MONARCHY, AND HOW THIS VERY PROSPERITY ACCELERATED
THE REVOLUTION.
It cannot be doubted that the exhaustion of the kingdom under Louis
XIV. began long before the reverses of that monarch. The first
indication of it is to be perceived in the most glorious years of his
reign. France was ruined long before she had ceased to conquer. Vauban
left behind him an alarming essay on the administrative statistics of
his time. The Intendants of the provinces, in the reports addressed by
them to the Duke of Burgundy at the close of the seventeenth century,
and before the disastrous War of the Spanish Succession had begun, all
alluded to the gradual decline of the nation, and they speak of it not
as a very recent occurrence: ‘The population has considerably decreased
in this district,’ says one of them. ‘This town, formerly so rich and
flourishing, is now without employment,’ says another. Or again: ‘There
have been manufactures in this province, but they are now abandoned;’
or, ‘The farmers formerly raised much more from the soil than they do
at present; agriculture was in a far better condition twenty years
ago.’ ‘Population and production have diminished by about one-fifth
in the last thirty years,’ said an Intendant of Orleans at the same
period. The perusal of these reports might be recommended to those
persons who are favourable to absolute government, and to those princes
who are fond of war.
As these hardships had their chief source in the evils of the
constitution, the death of Louis XIV., and even the restoration of
peace, did not restore the prosperity of the nation. It was the general
opinion of all those who wrote on the art of government or on social
economy in the first half of the eighteenth century, that the provinces
were not recovering themselves; many even thought that their ruin was
progressive. Paris alone, they said, grows in wealth and in extent.
Intendants, ex-ministers, and men of business were of the same opinion
on this point as men of letters.
For myself, I confess that I do not believe in this continuous decline
of France throughout the first half of the eighteenth century; but an
opinion so generally entertained amongst persons so well informed,
proves at least that the country was making at that time no visible
progress. All the administrative records connected with this period of
the history of France which have fallen under my observation denote,
indeed, a sort of lethargy in the community. The government continued
to revolve in the orbit of routine without inventing any new thing;
the towns made scarcely an effort to render the condition of their
inhabitants more comfortable or more wholesome; even in private life no
considerable enterprise was set on foot.
About thirty or forty years before the Revolution broke out the scene
began to change. It seemed as if a sort of inward perturbation, not
remarked before, thrilled through the social frame. At first none but
a most attentive eye could discern it; but gradually this movement
became more characterised and more distinct. Year by year it gained in
rapidity and in extent; the nation stirs, and seems about to rise once
more. But, beware! It is not the old life of France which re-animates
her. The breath of a new life pervades the mighty body, but pervades it
only to complete its dissolution. Restless and agitated in their own
condition, all classes are straining for something else; to better that
condition is the universal desire, but this desire is so feverish and
wayward that it leads men to curse the past, and to conceive a state of
society altogether the reverse of that which lies before them.
Nor was it long before the same spirit penetrated to the heart of the
Government. The Government was thus internally transformed without any
external, alteration; the laws of the kingdom were unchanged, but they
were differently applied.
I have elsewhere remarked that the Comptrollers-General and the
Intendants of 1760 had no resemblance to the same officers in 1780. The
correspondence of the public offices demonstrates this fact in detail.
Yet the Intendant of 1780 had the same powers, the same agents, the
same arbitrary authority as his predecessor, but not the same purposes;
the only care of the former was to keep his province in a state of
obedience, to raise the militia, above all to collect the taxes;
the latter has very different views, his head is full of a thousand
schemes for the augmentation of the wealth of the nation. Roads,
canals, manufactures, commerce, are the chief objects of his thoughts;
agriculture more particularly attracts his notice. Sully came into
fashion amongst the administrators of that age.
Then it was that they began to form the agricultural societies, which I
have already mentioned; they established exhibitions, they distributed
prizes. Some of the circulars of the Comptrollers-General were more
like treatises on husbandry than official correspondence.
In the collection of all the taxes the change which had come over the
mind of the governing body was especially perceptible. The existing law
was still unfair, arbitrary and harsh, as it had long been, but all its
defects were mitigated in the application of it.
‘When I began to study our fiscal laws,’ says M. Mollien,[72] in his
Memoirs, ‘I was terrified by what I found there: fines, imprisonment,
corporal punishment, were placed at the disposal of exceptional courts
for mere oversights; the clerks of the revenue farms had almost all
property and persons in their power, subject to the discretion of their
oaths. Fortunately I did not confine myself to the mere perusal of this
code, and I soon had occasion to find out that between the text of the
law and its application there was the same difference as between the
manners of the old and the new race of financiers.’
‘The collection of taxes may undoubtedly give rise to infinite abuses
and annoyances,’ said the Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy in
1787; ‘we must, however, do justice to the gentleness and consideration
with which these powers have been exercised for some years past.’
The examination of public records fully bears out this assertion.
They frequently show a genuine respect for the life and liberty of
man, and more especially a sincere commiseration for the sufferings
of the poor, which before would have been sought for in vain. Acts of
violence committed by the fiscal officers on paupers had become rare;
remissions of taxation were more frequent, relief more abundant. The
King augmented all the funds intended to establish workshops of charity
in the rural districts, or to assist the indigent, and he often founded
new ones. Thus more than 80,000 livres were distributed by the State
in this manner in the district of Upper Guienne alone in 1779; 40,000
in 1784 in that of Tours; 48,000 in that of Normandy in 1787. Louis
XVI. did not leave this portion of the duties of government to his
Ministers only; he sometimes took it upon himself. When in 1776, an
edict of the Crown fixed the compensation due to the peasantry whose
fields were devastated by the King’s game in the neighbourhood of the
Royal seats, and established a simple and certain method of enforcing
the payment of it, the King himself drew the preamble of the decree.
Turgot relates that this virtuous and unfortunate Prince handed the
paper to him with these words: ‘You see that I too have been at work.’
If we were to pourtray the Government of the old French monarchy such
as it was in the last years of its existence, the image would be too
highly flattered and too unlike the reality.
As these changes were brought about in the minds of the governing class
and of the governed, the prosperity of the nation expanded with a
rapidity heretofore unknown. It was announced by numerous symptoms: the
population largely augmented; the wealth of the country augmented more
largely still. The American War did not arrest this movement; the State
was embarrassed by it, but the community continued to enrich itself by
becoming more industrious, more enterprising, more inventive.
‘Since 1774,’ says one of the members of the administration of that
time, ‘different kinds of industry have by their extension enlarged
the area of taxation on all commodities. ‘If we compare the terms of
arrangement agreed upon at different periods of the reign of Louis
XVI. between the State and the financial companies which farmed the
public revenue, the rate of payment will be found to have risen at each
renewal with increasing rapidity. The farm of 1786 produced fourteen
millions more than that of 1780. ‘It may be reckoned that the produce
of duties on consumption is increasing at the rate of two millions per
annum,’ said Necker, in his Report of 1781.
Arthur Young declared that, in 1788, Bordeaux carried on a larger trade
than Liverpool. He adds: ‘Latterly the progress of maritime commerce
has been more rapid in France than in England; trade has doubled there
in the last twenty years.’
With due regard to the difference of the times we are speaking of, it
may be established that in no one of the periods which have followed
the Revolution of 1789 has the national prosperity of France augmented
more rapidly than it did in the twenty years preceding that event.[73]
The period of thirty-seven years of the constitutional monarchy of
France, which were times of peace and progress, can alone be compared
in this respect to the reign of Louis XVI.
The aspect of this prosperity, already so great and so rapidly
increasing, may well be matter of surprise, if we think of all the
defects which the Government of France still included, and all the
restrictions against which the industry of the nation had still to
contend. Perhaps there may be politicians who, unable to explain the
fact, deny it, being of the opinion of Molière’s physician that a
patient cannot recover against the rules of art. How are we to believe
that France prospered and grew rich with unequal taxation, with a
diversity of customary law, with internal custom-houses, with feudal
rights, with guilds, with purchased offices, &c.? In spite of all this,
France was beginning to grow rich and expand on every side, because
within all this clumsy and ill-regulated machinery, which seemed
calculated to check rather than to impel the social engine, two simple
and powerful springs were concealed, which, already, sufficed to keep
the fabric together, and to drive it along in the direction of public
prosperity--a Government which was still powerful enough to maintain
order throughout the kingdom, though it had ceased to be despotic; a
nation which, in its upper classes, was already the most enlightened
and the most free on the continent of Europe, and in which every man
could enrich himself after his own fashion and preserve the fortune he
had once acquired.
The King still spoke the language of an arbitrary ruler, but in reality
he himself obeyed that public opinion which inspired or influenced
him day by day, and which he constantly consulted, flattered, feared;
absolute by the letter of the laws, limited by their application.
As early as 1784, Necker said in a public document as a thing not
disputed: ‘Most foreigners are unable to form an idea of the authority
now exercised in France by public opinion; they can hardly understand
what is that invisible power which makes itself obeyed even in the
King’s palace; yet such is the fact.’
Nothing is more superficial than to attribute the greatness and the
power of a people exclusively to the mechanism of its laws; for, in
this respect, the result is obtained not so much by the perfection of
the engine as by the amount of the propelling power. Look at England,
whose administrative laws still at the present day appear so much more
complicated, more anomalous, more irregular, than those of France![74]
Yet is there a country in Europe where the national wealth is greater,
where private property is more extended, varied, and secure, or where
society is more stable and more rich? This is not caused by the
excellence of any laws in particular, but by the spirit which pervades
the whole legislation of England. The imperfection of certain organs
matters nothing, because the whole is instinct with life.
As the prosperity, which I have just described, began to extend
in France, the community nevertheless became more unsettled and
uneasy; public discontent grew fierce; hatred against all established
institutions increased. The nation was visibly advancing towards a
revolution.
Nay, more, those parts of France which were about to become the chief
centres of this revolution were precisely the parts of the territory
where the work of improvement was most perceptible. An examination
of what remains of the archives of the ancient circumscription of
the Ile de France readily shows that the abuses of the monarchy had
been soonest and most effectually reformed in the immediate vicinity
of Paris.[75] There, the liberty and property of the peasants were
already better secured than in any other of what were termed the _pays
d’élection_. Personal forced service had disappeared long before 1789.
The _taille_ was levied with greater regularity, moderation, and
fairness than in any other part of France. The ordinance made in 1772
for the amelioration of this tax in this district is a striking proof
of what an Intendant could do for the advantage or for the misery of a
whole province. As seen through this document, the aspect of the tax
was already changed. Government commissioners were to proceed every
year to each parish; the community was to assemble before them; the
value of the taxable property was to be publicly established, and the
resources of every tax-payer to be ascertained in his presence; in
short, the _taille_ was assessed with the assent of all those who had
to pay it. The arbitrary powers of the village syndic, the unprofitable
violence of the fiscal officers, were at an end. The _taille_ no doubt
retained its inherent defects under any system of collection: it
lighted upon but one class of taxpayers, and lay as heavy on industry
as upon property; but in all other respects it widely differed from
that which still bore the same name in the neighbouring divisions of
the territory.
Nowhere, on the contrary, were the institutions of the whole monarchy
less changed than on the banks of the Loire, near the mouths of that
river, in the marshes of Poitou and the heaths of Brittany. Yet there
it was that the fire of civil war was kindled and kept alive, and that
the fiercest and longest resistance was opposed to the Revolution; so
that it might be said that the French found their position the more
intolerable the better it became. Surprising as this fact is, history
is full of such contradictions.
It is not always by going from bad to worse that a country falls into
a revolution. It happens most frequently that a people, which had
supported the most crushing laws without complaint, and apparently
as if they were unfelt, throws them off with violence as soon as the
burden begins to be diminished. The state of things destroyed by a
revolution is almost always somewhat better than that which immediately
preceded it; and experience has shown that the most dangerous moment
for a bad government is usually that when it enters upon the work of
reform. Nothing short of great political genius can save a sovereign
who undertakes to relieve his subjects after a long period of
oppression. The evils which were endured with patience so long as they
were inevitable seem intolerable as soon as a hope can be entertained
of escaping from them. The abuses which are removed seem to lay bare
those which remain, and to render the sense of them more acute; the
evil has decreased, it is true, but the perception of the evil is more
keen. Feudalism in all its strength had not inspired as much aversion
to the French as it did on the eve of its disappearance. The slightest
arbitrary proceedings of Louis XVI. seemed more hard to bear than all
the despotism of Louis XIV.[76] The brief detention of Beaumarchais
produced more excitement in Paris than the Dragonnades.
No one any longer contended in 1780 that France was in a state of
decline; there seemed, on the contrary, to be just then no bounds
to her progress. Then it was that the theory of the continual and
indefinite perfectibility of man took its origin. Twenty years before
nothing was to be hoped of the future: then nothing was to be feared.
The imagination, grasping at this near and unheard-of felicity, caused
men to overlook the advantages they already possessed, and hurried them
forward to something new.
Independently of these general reasons, there were other causes of this
phenomenon which were more peculiar and not less powerful. Although
the financial administration had improved with everything else, it
still retained the vices which are inherent in absolute government.
As the financial department was secret and uncontrolled, many of the
worst practices which had prevailed under Louis XIV. and Louis XV. were
still followed. The very efforts which the Government made to augment
the public prosperity--the relief and the rewards it distributed--the
public works it caused to be executed--continually increased the
expenditure without adding to the revenue in the same proportion;
hence the King was continually thrown into embarrassments greater than
those of his predecessors. Like them, he left his creditors unpaid;
like them, he borrowed in all directions, but without publicity and
without competition, and the creditors of the Crown were never sure of
receiving their interest; even their capital was always at the mercy of
the sovereign.
A witness worthy of credit, for he had seen these things with his own
eyes and was better qualified than any other person to see them well,
remarks on this subject:--‘The French were exposed to nothing but risks
in their relations with their own Government. If they placed their
capital in the State stocks, they could never reckon with certainty on
the payment of interest to a given day; if they built ships, repaired
the roads, clothed the army, they had nothing to cover their advance
and no certainty of repayment, so that they were reduced to calculate
the chances of a Government contract as if it were a loan on terms
of the utmost risk.’ And the same person adds, very judiciously: ‘At
this time, when the rapid growth of industry had developed amongst a
larger number of men the love of property and the taste and the desire
of comfort, those who had entrusted a portion of their property to the
State were the more impatient of a breach of contract on the part of
that creditor who was especially bound to fulfil his obligations.’
The abuses which are here imputed to the French administration were not
at all new; what was new was the impression they produced. The vices
of the financial system had even been far more crying in former times;
but changes had taken place in Government and in society which rendered
them infinitely more perceptible than they were of old.
The Government, having become more active in the last twenty years,
and having embarked in every species of undertaking which it had never
thought of before, was at last become the greatest consumer of the
produce of industry and the greatest contractor of public works in the
kingdom. The number of persons who had pecuniary transactions with the
State, who were interested in Government loans, lived by Government
wages, or speculated in Government contracts, had prodigiously
increased. Never before had the fortune of the nation and the fortunes
of private persons been so much intermingled. The mismanagement of
the public finances, which had long been no more than a public evil,
thus became to a multitude of families a private calamity. In 1789
the State was indebted nearly 600 millions of francs to creditors who
were almost all in debt themselves, and who inoculated with their own
dissatisfaction against the Government all those whom the irregularity
of the public Treasury caused to participate in their embarrassments.
And it must be observed, that as malcontents of this class became
more numerous, they also became more exasperated; for the love of
speculation, the thirst for wealth, the taste for comfort, having grown
and extended in proportion to the business transacted, the same evils
which they might have endured thirty years before without complaint now
appeared altogether insupportable.
Hence it arose that the fundholders, the traders, the manufacturers,
and other persons engaged in business or in monetary affairs, who
generally form the class most hostile to political innovation, the most
friendly to existing governments, whatever they may be, and the most
submissive to the laws even when they despise and detest them, were on
this occasion the class most eager and resolute for reform. They loudly
demanded a complete revolution in the whole system of finance, without
reflecting that to touch this part of the Government was to cause every
other part to fall.
How could such a catastrophe be averted? On the one hand, a nation in
which the desire of making fortunes extended every day--on the other,
a Government which incessantly excited this passion, which agitated,
inflamed, and beggared the nation, driving by either path on its own
destruction.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] [Count Mollien was educated in the fiscal service of the old
monarchy, and after having escaped the perils of the Revolution
he became Minister of the Treasury to the Emperor Napoleon, and
under the Restoration a Peer of France. He left Memoirs of his
Administration, which have been printed for private circulation by his
widow, the estimable Countess Mollien, in four volumes octavo, but
not yet published. These Memoirs are a model of personal integrity
and financial judgment, the more remarkable as it was the fate of
M. Mollien to live in times when these qualities were equally rare.
The work was reviewed in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ 1849-1850, and this
article was republished in 1872, in Mr. Reeve’s ‘Royal and Republican
France.’]
[73] See Note LXVI., Progress of France.
[74] See Note LXVII., Judicial Institutions of England.
[75] See Note LXVIII., Privileges of the District of Paris.
[76] See Note LXIX.
CHAPTER XVII.
SHOWING THAT THE FRENCH PEOPLE WERE EXCITED TO REVOLT BY THE MEANS
TAKEN TO RELIEVE THEM.
As the common people of France had not appeared for one single moment
on the theatre of public affairs for upwards of one hundred and forty
years, no one any longer imagined that they could ever again resume
their position. They appeared unconscious, and were therefore believed
to be deaf; accordingly, those who began to take an interest in their
condition talked about them in their presence just as if they had not
been there. It seemed as if these remarks could only be heard by those
who were placed above the common people, and that the only danger to be
apprehended was that they might not be fully understood by the upper
classes.
The very men who had most to fear from the fury of the people declaimed
loudly in their presence on the cruel injustice under which the people
had always suffered. They pointed out to each other the monstrous vices
of those institutions which had weighed most heavily upon the lower
orders: they employed all their powers of rhetoric in depicting the
miseries of the common people and their ill-paid labour; and thus they
infuriated while they endeavoured to relieve them. I do not speak of
the writers, but of the Government, of its chief agents, and of those
belonging to the privileged class itself.
When the King, thirteen years before the Revolution, tried to abolish
the use of compulsory labour, he said, in the preamble to this decree,
‘With the exception of a small number of provinces (the _pays d’état_),
almost all the roads throughout the kingdom have been made by the
gratuitous labour of the poorest part of our subjects. Thus the whole
burden has fallen on those who possess nothing but their hands, and who
are interested only in a secondary degree in the existence of roads;
those really interested are the landowners, nearly all privileged
persons, whose estates are increased in value by the construction of
roads. By forcing the poor to keep them up unaided, and by compelling
them to give their time and labour without remuneration, they are
deprived of their sole resource against want and hunger, because they
are made to labour for the profit of the rich.’
When, at the same period, an attempt was made to abolish the
restrictions which the system of trading companies or guilds imposed
on artisans, it was proclaimed, in the King’s name, ‘that the right to
work is the most sacred of all possessions; that every law by which
it is infringed violates the natural rights of man, and is null and
void in itself; that the existing corporations are moreover grotesque
and tyrannical institutions, the result of selfishness, avarice, and
violence.’ Such words as these were dangerous, no doubt, but, what was
infinitely more so, was that they were spoken in vain. A few months
later the corporations and the system of compulsory labour were again
established.
It is said that Turgot was the Minister who put this language into the
King’s mouth, but most of Turgot’s successors made him hold no other.
When, in 1780, the King announced to his subjects that the increase of
the _taille_ would, for the future, be subject to public registration,
he took care to add, by way of commentary, ‘Those persons who are
subject to the _taille_, besides being harassed by the vexations
incident to its collection, have likewise hitherto been exposed to
unexpected augmentations of the tax, insomuch that the contributions
paid by the poorest part of our subjects have increased in a much
greater proportion than those paid by all the rest.’ When the King,
not yet venturing to place all the public burdens on an equal footing,
attempted at least to establish equality of taxation in those which
were already imposed on the middle class, he said, ‘His Majesty hopes
that rich persons will not consider themselves aggrieved by being
placed on the common level, and made to bear their part of a burden
which they ought long since to have shared more equally.’
But it was, above all, at periods of scarcity that nothing was left
untried to inflame the passions of the people far more than to provide
for their wants. In order to stimulate the charity of the rich,
one Intendant talked of ‘the injustice and insensibility of those
landowners who owe all they possess to the labours of the poor, and who
let them die of hunger at the very moment they are toiling to augment
the returns of landed property.’ The King, too, thus expressed himself
on a similar occasion: ‘His Majesty is determined to defend the people
against manœuvres which expose them to the want of the most needful
food, by forcing them to give their labour at any price that the rich
choose to bestow. The King will not suffer one part of his subjects to
be sacrificed to the avidity of the other.’
Until the very end of the monarchy the strife which subsisted among
the different administrative powers gave occasion for all sorts of
demonstrations of this kind; the contending parties readily imputed
to each other the miseries of the people. A strong instance of this
appeared in the quarrel which arose, in 1772, between the Parliament of
Toulouse and the King, with reference to the transport of grain. ‘The
Government, by its bad measures, places the poor in danger of dying of
hunger,’ said the Parliament. ‘The ambition of the Parliament and the
avidity of the rich are the cause of the general distress,’ retorted
the King. Thus both the parties were endeavouring to impress the minds
of the common people with the belief that their superiors are always to
blame for their sufferings.
These things are not contained in the secret correspondence of the
time, but in public documents which the Government and the Parliaments
themselves took care to have printed and published by thousands. The
King took occasion incidentally to tell very harsh truths both to his
predecessors and to himself. ‘The treasure of the State,’ said he on
one occasion, ‘has been burdened by the lavish expenditure of several
successive reigns. Many of our inalienable domains have been granted
on leases at nominal rents.’ On another occasion he was made to say,
with more truth than prudence, ‘The privileged trading companies mainly
owed their origin to the fiscal avidity of the Crown.’ Farther on,
he remarked that ‘if useless expenses have often been incurred, and
if the _taille_ has increased beyond all bounds, it has been because
the Board of Finance found an increase of the _taille_ the easiest
resource inasmuch as it was clandestine, and was therefore employed,
although many other expedients would have been less burdensome to our
people.’[77]
All this was addressed to the enlightened part of the nation, in
order to convince it of the utility of certain measures which private
interests rendered unpopular. As for the common people, it was assumed
that if they listened they did not understand.
It must be admitted that at the bottom of all these charitable feelings
there remained a strong bias of contempt for these wretched beings
whose miseries the higher classes so sincerely wished to relieve: and
that we are somewhat reminded, by this display of compassion, of the
notion of Madame Duchâtelet, who, as Voltaire’s secretary tells us, did
not scruple to undress herself before her attendants, not thinking it
by any means proved that lackeys are men. And let it not be supposed
that Louis XVI. or his ministers were the only persons who held the
dangerous language which I have just cited; the privileged persons, who
were about to become the first objects of the popular fury, expressed
themselves in exactly the same manner before their inferiors. It must
be admitted that in France the higher classes of society had begun to
pay attention to the condition of the poor before they had any reason
to fear them; they interested themselves in their fate at a time when
they had not begun to believe that the sufferings of the poor were
the precursors of their own perdition. This was peculiarly visible
in the ten years which preceded 1789; the peasants were the constant
objects of compassion, their condition was continually discussed, the
means of affording them relief were examined, the chief abuses from
which they suffered were exposed, and the fiscal laws which pressed
most heavily upon them were condemned; but the manner in which this
new-born sympathy was expressed was as imprudent as the long-continued
insensibility which had preceded it.
If we read the reports of the Provincial Assemblies which met in some
parts of France in 1779, and subsequently throughout the kingdom, and
if we study the other public records left by them, we shall be touched
by the generous sentiments expressed in them, and astonished at the
wonderful imprudence of the language in which they are expressed.
The Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy said, in 1787, ‘We have
too frequently seen the money destined by the King for roads serve
only to increase the prosperity of the rich without any benefit to
the people. It has often been employed to embellish the approach to
a country mansion instead of making a more convenient entrance to a
town or village.’ In the same assembly the Orders of nobility and
clergy, after describing the abuses of compulsory labour, spontaneously
offered to contribute out of their own funds 50,000 livres towards the
improvement of the roads, in order, as they said, that the roads of
the province might be made practicable without any further cost to the
people. It would probably have cost these privileged classes less to
abolish the compulsory system, and to substitute for it a general tax
of which they should pay their quota; but though willing to give up
the profit derived from inequality of taxation, they liked to maintain
the appearance of the privilege. While they gave up that part of their
rights which was profitable, they carefully retained that which was
odious.
Other assemblies, composed entirely of landowners exempt from the
_taille_, and who fully intended to continue so, nevertheless depicted
in the darkest colours the hardships which the _taille_ inflicted on
the poor. They drew a frightful picture of all its abuses, which they
circulated in all directions. But the most singular part of the affair
is that to these strong marks of the interest they felt in the common
people, they from time to time added public expressions of contempt
for them. The people had already become the object of their sympathy
without having ceased to be the object of their disdain.
The Provincial Assembly of Upper Guienne, speaking of the peasants
whose cause they so warmly pleaded, called them _coarse and ignorant
creatures, turbulent spirits, and rough and intractable characters_.
Turgot, who did so much for the people, seldom spoke of them
otherwise.[78]
These harsh expressions were used in acts intended for the greatest
publicity, and meant to meet the eyes of the peasants themselves. It
seemed as though the framers of them imagined that they were living
in a country like Galicia, where the higher classes speak a different
language from the lower, and cannot be understood by them. The
feudalists of the eighteenth century, who frequently displayed towards
the ratepayers and others who owed them feudal services, a disposition
to indulgence, moderation, and justice, unknown to their predecessors,
still spoke occasionally of ‘vile peasants.’ These insults seem to have
been ‘in proper form,’ as the lawyers say.
The nearer we approach towards 1789, the more lively and imprudent
does this sympathy with the hardships of the common people become. I
have held in my hands the circulars addressed by several Provincial
Assemblies in the very beginning of 1788 to the inhabitants of the
different parishes, calling upon them to state in detail all the
grievances of which they might have to complain.
One of these circulars is signed by an abbé, a great lord, three
nobles, and a man of the middle class, all members of the Assembly,
and acting in its name. This committee directed the Syndic of each
parish to convoke all the peasants, and to inquire of them what they
had to say against the manner in which the various taxes which they
paid were assessed and collected. ‘We are generally aware,’ they say,
‘that most of the taxes, especially the _gabelle_ and the _taille_,
have disastrous consequences for the cultivators, but we are anxious to
be acquainted with every single abuse.’ The curiosity of the Provincial
Assembly did not stop there; it investigated the number of persons in
the parish enjoying any privileges with respect to taxes, whether
nobles, ecclesiastics, or _roturiers_, and the precise nature of these
privileges; the value of the property of those thus exempted; whether
or not they resided on their estates; whether there was much Church
property, or, as the phrase then was, land in mortmain, which was out
of the market, and its value. All this even was not enough to satisfy
them; they wanted to be told the share of duties, _taille_, additional
dues, poll-tax, and forced labour-rate which the privileged class would
have to pay, supposing equality of taxation existed.
This was to inflame every man individually by the catalogue of his own
grievances; it pointed out to him the authors of his wrongs, emboldened
him by showing him how few they were in number, and fired his heart
with cupidity, envy, and hatred. It seemed as if the Jacquerie, the
Maillotins, and the Sixteen were totally forgotten, and that no one was
aware that the French people, which is the quietest and most kindly
disposed in the world, so long as it remains in its natural frame of
mind, becomes the most barbarous as soon as it is roused by violent
passions.
Unfortunately I have not been able to procure all the returns sent in
by the peasants in reply to these fatal questions; but I have found
enough to show the general spirit which pervaded them.
In these reports the name of every privileged person, whether of the
nobility or the middle class, is carefully mentioned; his mode of life
is frequently described, and always in an unfavourable manner. The
value of his property is curiously examined; the number and extent of
his privileges are insisted on at length, and especially the injury
they do to all the other inhabitants of the village. The bushels of
corn which have to be paid to him as dues are reckoned up; his income
is calculated in an envious tone--an income by which no one profits,
they say. The casual dues of the parish priest--his stipend, as it
was already called--are pronounced to be excessive; it is remarked
with bitterness that everything at church must be paid for, and that a
poor man cannot even get buried gratis. As to the taxes, they are all
unfairly assessed and oppressive; not one of them finds favour, and
they are all spoken of in a tone of violence which betrays exasperation.
‘The indirect taxes are detestable,’ they say; ‘there is not a
household in which the clerk of the excise does not come and search,
nothing is sacred from his eyes and hands. The registration dues are
crushing. The collector of the _taille_ is a tyrant, whose rapacity
leads him to avail himself of every means of harassing the poor. The
bailiffs are no better; no honest farmer can be secure from their
ferocity. The collectors are forced to ruin their neighbours in order
to avoid exposing themselves to the voracity of these despots.’
The Revolution not only announces its approach in this inquiry; it is
already there, speaking its own proper language and showing its face
without disguise.
Amid all the differences which exist between the religious Revolution
of the sixteenth century and the French Revolution of the eighteenth,
one contrast is peculiarly striking: in the sixteenth century most of
the great nobles changed their religion from motives of ambition or
cupidity; the people, on the contrary, from conviction and without any
hope of profit. In the eighteenth century the reverse was the case;
disinterested convictions and generous sympathies then agitated the
enlightened classes and incited them to revolution, while a bitter
feeling of their wrongs and an ardent desire to alter their position
excited the common people. The enthusiasm of the former put the last
stroke to inflaming and arming the rage and the desires of the latter.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] See Note LXX., Arbitrary Augmentation of Taxes.
[78] See Note LXXI., Manner in which Turgot spoke of the Country People.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CONCERNING SOME PRACTICES BY WHICH THE GOVERNMENT COMPLETED THE
REVOLUTIONARY EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE OF FRANCE.
The Government itself had long been at work to instil into and rivet
upon the mind of the common people many of the ideas which have been
called revolutionary--ideas hostile to individual liberty, opposed to
private rights, and favourable to violence.
The King was the first to show with how much contempt it was possible
to treat the most ancient, and apparently the best established,
institutions. Louis XV. shook the monarchy and hastened the Revolution
quite as much by his innovations as by his vices, by his energy as
by his indolence. When the people beheld the fall and disappearance
of a Parliament almost contemporary with the monarchy itself, and
which had until then seemed as immovable as the throne, they vaguely
perceived that they were drawing near a time of violence and of chance
when everything may become possible, when nothing, however ancient, is
respected, and nothing, however new, may not be tried.
During the whole course of his reign Louis XVI. did nothing but talk
of reforms to be accomplished. There are few institutions of which
he did not foreshadow the approaching ruin, before the Revolution
came to effect it. After removing from the statute-book some of the
worst of these institutions he very soon replaced them; it seemed
as if he wanted only to loosen their roots, leaving to others the
task of striking them down. By some of the reforms which he effected
himself, ancient and venerable customs were suddenly changed without
sufficient preparation, and established rights were occasionally
violated. These reforms prepared the way for the Revolution, not so
much by overthrowing the obstacles in its way, as by showing the people
how to set about making it. The evil was increased by the very purity
and disinterestedness of the intentions which actuated the King and
his ministers; for no example is more dangerous than that of violence
exerted for a good purpose by honest and well-meaning men.
At a much earlier period Louis XIV. had publicly broached in his edicts
the theory that all the land throughout the kingdom had originally been
granted conditionally by the State, which was thus declared to be the
only true landowner, and that all others were possessors whose titles
might be contested, and whose rights were imperfect. This doctrine
had arisen out of the feudal system of legislation; but it was not
proclaimed in France until feudalism was dying out, and was never
adopted by the Courts of justice. It is, in fact, the germ of modern
socialism, and it is curious enough to see it first springing up under
royal despotism.
During the reigns which followed that of Louis XIV., the administration
day by day instilled into the people in a manner still more practical
and comprehensible the contempt in which private property was to
be held. When during the latter half of the eighteenth century the
taste for public works, especially for roads, began to prevail, the
Government did not scruple to seize all the land needed for its
undertakings, and to pull down the houses which stood in the way. The
French Board of Works was already just as enamoured of the geometrical
beauty of straight lines as it has been ever since; it carefully
avoided following the existing roads if they were at all crooked, and
rather than make the slightest deviation it cut through innumerable
estates. The ground thus damaged or destroyed was never paid for but at
an arbitrary rate and after long delay, or frequently not at all.[79]
When the Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy took the administration
out of the hands of the Intendant, it was discovered that the price
of all the land seized by authority in the preceding twenty years for
making roads was still unpaid. The debt thus contracted by the State,
and not discharged, in this small corner of France, amounted to 250,000
livres. The number of large proprietors thus injured was limited; but
the small ones who suffered were very numerous, for even then the land
was much subdivided.[80] Every one of these persons had learnt by his
own experience how little respect the rights of an individual can claim
when the interest of the public requires that they should be invaded--a
doctrine which he was not likely to forget when the time came for
applying it to others for his own advantage.
In a great number of parishes charitable endowments had formerly
existed, destined by their founders to relieve the inhabitants in
certain cases, and in conformity to testamentary bequest. Most of these
endowments were destroyed during the later days of the monarchy, or
diverted from their original objects by mere Orders in Council, that is
to say, by the arbitrary act of Government. In most instances the funds
thus left to particular villages were taken from them for the benefit
of neighbouring hospitals. At the same time the property of these
hospitals was in its turn diverted to purposes which the founder had
never had in view, and would undoubtedly not have approved. An edict
of 1780 authorised all these establishments to sell the lands which
had been devised to them at various times to be held by them for ever,
and permitted them to hand over the purchase-money to the State, which
was to pay the interest upon it. This, they said, was making a better
use of the charity of their forefathers than they had done themselves.
They forgot that the surest way of teaching mankind to violate the
rights of the living is to pay no regard to the will of the dead. The
contempt displayed by the Administration of the old French monarchy for
testamentary dispositions has never been surpassed by any succeeding
power. Nothing could be more unlike the scrupulous anxiety which leads
the English to invest every individual citizen with the force of the
whole social body in order to assist him in maintaining the effect of
his last dispositions, and which induces them to pay even more respect
to his memory than to himself.
Compulsory requisitions, the forced sale of provisions, and the
maximum, are measures not without their precedents under the old
monarchy. I have discovered instances in which the officers of
Government, during periods of scarcity, fixed beforehand the price
of the provisions which the peasants brought to market; and when the
latter stayed away from fear of this constraint, ordinances were
promulgated to compel them to come under penalty of a fine.
But nothing taught a more pernicious lesson than some of the forms
adopted by criminal justice when the common people were in question.
The poor were even then far better protected than has generally been
supposed against the aggressions of any citizen richer or more powerful
than themselves; but when they had to do with the State, they found
only, as I have already described, exceptional tribunals, prejudiced
judges, a hasty and illusory procedure, and a sentence executed
summarily and without appeal. ‘The Provost of the Constables and his
lieutenant are to take cognisance of the disturbances and gatherings
which may be occasioned by the scarcity of corn; the prosecution is to
take place in due form, and judgment to be passed by the Provost, and
without appeal. His Majesty inhibits the jurisdiction of all courts of
justice in these cases.’ We learn by the Reports of the Constables,
that on these occasions suspected villages were surrounded during the
night, that houses were entered before daybreak, and peasants who
had been denounced were arrested without further warrant. A man thus
arrested frequently remained for a long time in prison before he could
speak to his judge, although the edicts directed that every accused
person should be examined within four-and-twenty hours. This regulation
was as precise and as little respected then as it is now.
By these means a mild and stable government daily taught the people the
code of criminal procedure most appropriate to a period of revolution,
and best adapted to arbitrary power. These lessons were constantly
before their eyes; and to the very last the old monarchy gave the lower
classes this dangerous education. Even Turgot himself, in this respect,
faithfully imitated his predecessors. When, in 1775, his change in the
corn-laws occasioned resistance in the Parliament and disturbances
in the rural districts, he obtained a Royal ordonnance transferring
the mutineers from the jurisdiction of the tribunals to that of the
Provost-Marshal, ‘which is chiefly destined,’ so the phrase runs, ‘to
repress popular tumults when it is desirable that examples should be
quickly made.’ Nay, worse than this, every peasant leaving his parish
without being provided with a certificate signed by the parish priest
and by the Syndic, was to be prosecuted, arrested, and tried before the
Provost-Marshal as a vagabond.
It is true that under this monarchy of the eighteenth century, though
the forms of procedure were terrific, the punishment was almost always
light. The object was to inspire fear rather than to inflict pain; or
rather, perhaps, those in power were violent and arbitrary from habit
or from indifference, and mild by temperament. But this only increased
the taste for this summary kind of justice. The lighter the penalty the
more readily was the manner forgotten in which it had been pronounced.
The mildness of the sentence served to veil the horror of the mode of
procedure.
I may venture to affirm, from the facts I have in my possession, that a
great number of the proceedings adopted by the Revolutionary Government
had precedents and examples in the measures taken with regard to the
common people during the last two centuries of the monarchy. The
monarchy gave to the Revolution many of its forms; the latter only
added to them the atrocity of its own spirit.
FOOTNOTES:
[79] See Note LXXII., Growth of Revolutionary Opinions under the Old
Monarchy.
[80] See Note LXXIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
SHOWING THAT A GREAT ADMINISTRATIVE REVOLUTION HAD PRECEDED THE
POLITICAL REVOLUTION, AND WHAT WERE THE CONSEQUENCES IT PRODUCED.
Nothing had yet been changed in the form of the French Government,
but already the greater part of the secondary laws which regulated
the condition of persons and the administration of affairs had been
abolished or modified.
The destruction of the Guilds, followed by their partial and incomplete
restoration, had totally changed all the old relations between workmen
and their employers. These relations had become not only different, but
uncertain and difficult. The police of the masters was at an end; the
authority of the State over the trades was imperfectly established; and
the artisan, placed in a constrained and undecided position between the
Government and his employer, did not know to whom he was to look for
protection, or from whom he was to submit to restraint. This state of
discontent and anarchy, into which the whole lower class of the towns
had been plunged at one blow, produced very great consequences as soon
as the people began to reappear on the political stage.
One year before the Revolution a Royal edict had disturbed the order
of the administration of justice in all its parts; several new
jurisdictions had been created, a multitude of others abolished, and
all the rules of judicial competence changed. Now in France, as I have
already shown, the number of persons engaged in administering justice
and in executing the sentences of the law was enormous. In fact, it may
be said that the whole of the middle class was more or less connected
with the tribunals. The effect of this law, therefore, was to unsettle
the station and property of thousands of families, and to place them in
a new and precarious position. The edict was little less inconvenient
to litigants, who found it difficult, in the midst of this judicial
revolution, to discover what laws were applicable to their cases, and
by what tribunals they were to be decided.
But it was the radical reform which the Administration, properly so
called, underwent in 1787, which more than all the rest first threw
public affairs into disorder, and shook the private existence of every
individual citizen.
I have already mentioned that in what were termed the _pays
d’élection_, that is to say, in about three-quarters of France, the
whole administration of each district was abandoned to one man, the
Intendant, who acted not only without control, but without advice.
In 1787, in addition to the Intendant, a Provincial Assembly was
created, which assumed the real administration of the country. In each
village an elective municipal body likewise took the place of the
ancient parochial assemblies, and in most cases of the Syndic.
A state of the law so opposed to that which had preceded it, and which
so completely changed not only the whole course of affairs, but the
relative position of persons, was applied in all places at the same
moment and almost in the same manner, without the slightest regard to
previous usages or to the peculiar situation of each province, so fully
had the passion for unity which characterised the Revolution taken
possession of the ancient Government, which the Revolution was about to
destroy.
These changes served to display the force of habit in the action of
political institutions, and to show how much easier it is to deal with
obscure and complicated laws, which have long been in use, than with a
totally new system of legislation, however simple.
Under the old French monarchy there existed all sorts of authorities,
which varied almost infinitely, according to the provinces; but as
none of these authorities had any fixed or definite limits, the
field of action of each of them was always common to several others
besides. Nevertheless, affairs had come to be transacted with a
certain regularity and convenience; whereas the newly established
authorities, which were fewer in number, carefully circumscribed, and
exactly similar, instantly conflicted and became entangled in hopeless
confusion, frequently reducing each other mutually to impotence.
Moreover the new law had one great vice which in itself would have
sufficed, especially at first, to render it difficult of execution: all
the powers it created were collective[81] or corporate.
Under the old monarchy there had been only two methods of
administration. Where the administration was entrusted to one man, he
acted without the assistance of any assembly; wherever assemblies
existed, as in the _pays d’état_ or in the towns, the executive power
was not vested in any particular person; the Assembly not only governed
and superintended the administration, but administered itself, or by
means of temporary commissions which it appointed.
As these were the only two modes of operation which were then
understood, when one was given up the other was adopted. It is
strange that in the midst of a community so enlightened, and where
the administration of the Government had long played so prominent a
part, no one ever thought of uniting the two systems and of drawing a
distinction, without making a separation, between the power which has
to execute and that which superintends and directs. This idea, which
appears so simple, never occurred to any one; it was not discovered
until the present century, and may be said to be the only great
invention in the field of public administration which we can claim.
We shall see hereafter the results of the contrary practice when
these administrative habits were transferred to political life, and
when, in obedience to the traditions of the old institutions of the
monarchy, hated as they were, the system which had been followed by
the provincial estates and the small municipalities of the towns was
applied in the National Convention; and the causes which had formerly
occasioned a certain embarrassment in the transaction of business
suddenly engendered the Reign of Terror.
The Provincial Assemblies of 1787 were invested with the right of
governing themselves in most of the cases in which, until then, the
Intendant had acted alone; they were charged, under the authority of
the Central Government, with the assessment of the _taille_ and with
the superintendence of its collection--with the power of deciding what
public works were to be undertaken, and with their execution. All the
persons employed in public works, from the inspector down to the driver
of the road-gang, were under their control. They were to order what
they thought proper, to render an account of the services performed
to the Minister, and to suggest to him the fitting remuneration. The
parochial trusts were almost entirely placed under the direction of
these assemblies; they were to decide, in the first instance, most
of the litigated matters which had until then been tried before the
Intendant. Many of these functions were unsuitable for a collective and
irresponsible body, and moreover they were to be performed by men who
were now, for the first time, to take a part in the administration.
The confusion was made complete by depriving the Intendant of all
power, though his office was not suppressed. After taking from him the
absolute right of doing everything, he was charged with the task of
assisting and superintending all that was to be done by the Assembly;
as if it were possible for a degraded public officer to enter into the
spirit of the law by which he has been dispossessed and to assist its
operation.
That which had been done to the Intendant was now extended to his
Sub-delegate. By his side, and in the place which he had formerly
occupied, was placed a District Assembly, which was to act under the
direction of the Provincial Assembly, and upon analogous principles.
All that we know of the acts of the Provincial Assemblies of 1787,[82]
and even their own reports, show that as soon as they were created
they engaged in covert hostilities and often in open war with the
Intendants, who made use of their superior experience only to embarrass
the movements of their successors. Here an Assembly complained that
it was only with difficulty that it could extract the most necessary
documents from the hands of the Intendant. There an Intendant accused
the members of the Assembly of endeavouring to usurp functions, which,
as he said, the edicts had still left to himself. He appealed to the
Minister, who often returned no answer, or merely expressed doubts,
for the subject was as new and as obscure to him as to every one else.
Sometimes the Assembly resolved that the Intendant had administered
badly, that the roads which he had caused to be made were ill planned
or ill kept up, and that the corporate bodies under his trust have gone
to ruin. Frequently these assemblies hesitated in the obscurity of laws
so imperfectly known; they sent great distances to consult one another,
and constantly sent each other advice. The Intendant of Auch asserted
that he had the right to oppose the will of the Provincial Assembly
which had authorised a parish to tax itself; the Assembly maintained
that this was a subject on which the Intendant could no longer give
orders, but only advice, and it asks the Assembly of the Ile de France
for its opinion.
Amidst all these recriminations and consultations the course of
administration was impeded and often altogether stopped; the vital
functions of the country seemed almost suspended. ‘The stagnation of
affairs is complete,’ says the Provincial Assembly of Lorraine, which
in this was only the echo of several others, ‘and all good citizens are
grieved at it.’
On other occasions these new governing bodies erred on the side of
over-activity and excessive self-confidence; they were filled with a
restless and uneasy zeal, which led them to seek to change all the old
methods suddenly, and hastily to reform all the most ancient abuses.
Under the pretext that henceforth they were to be the guardians of
the towns, they assumed the control of municipal affairs; in a word,
they put the finishing stroke to the general confusion by aiming at
universal improvement.
Now, when we consider what an immense space the administrative powers
of the State had so long filled in France, the numerous interests
which were daily affected by them, and all that depended upon them or
stood in need of their co-operation; when we reflect that it was to
the Government rather than to themselves that private persons looked
for the success of their own affairs, for the encouragement of their
manufactures, to ensure their means of subsistence, to lay out and keep
up their roads, to maintain their tranquillity, and to preserve their
wealth, we shall have some idea of the infinite number of people who
were personally injured by the evils from which the administration of
the kingdom was suffering.
But it was in the villages that the defects of the new organisation
were most strongly felt; in them it not only disturbed the course
of authority, it likewise suddenly changed the relative position of
society, and brought every class into collision.
When, in 1775, Turgot proposed to the King to reform the administration
of the rural districts, the greatest difficulty he encountered, as he
himself informs us, arose from the unequal incidence of taxation: for
how was it possible to make men who were not all liable to contribute
in the same manner, and some of whom were altogether exempt from
taxation, act and deliberate together on parochial affairs relating
chiefly to the assessment and the collection of those very taxes and
the purposes to which they were to be applied? Every parish contained
nobles and the clergy who did not pay the _taille_, peasants who were
partially or wholly exempt, and others who paid it all. It was as
three distinct parishes, each of which would have demanded a separate
administration. The difficulty was insoluble.
Nowhere, indeed, was the inequality of taxation more apparent than
in the rural districts; nowhere was the population more effectually
divided into different groups frequently hostile to one another.
In order to make it possible to give to the villages a collective
administration and a free government on a small scale, it would have
been necessary to begin by subjecting all the inhabitants to an equal
taxation and lessening the distance by which the classes were divided.
This was not, however, the course taken when the reform was begun
in 1787. Within each parish the ancient distinction of classes was
maintained, together with the inequality of taxation, which was its
principal token, but, nevertheless, the whole administration was placed
in the hands of elective bodies. This instantly led to very singular
results.
When the electoral assembly met in order to choose municipal officers,
the Curé and the Seigneur were not to appear; they belonged, it was
alleged, to the orders of the nobility and the clergy, and this was
an occasion on which the commonalty had principally to choose its
representatives.
When, however, the municipal body was once elected, the Curé and the
Seigneur were members of it by right; for it would not have been decent
altogether to exclude two such considerable inhabitants from the
government of the parish. The Seigneur even presided over the parochial
representatives in whose election he had taken no part, but in most of
their proceedings he had no voice. For instance, when the assessment
and division of the _taille_ were discussed, the Curé and the Seigneur
were not allowed to vote, for were they not both exempt from this
tax? On the other hand, the municipal council had nothing to do with
their capitation-tax, which continued to be regulated by the Intendant
according to peculiar forms.
For fear that this President, isolated as he was from the body which
he was supposed to direct, should still exert an indirect influence
prejudicial to the interests of the Order to which he did not belong,
it was demanded that the votes of his own tenants should not count; and
the Provincial Assemblies, being consulted on this point, gave it as
their opinion that this omission was proper, and entirely conformable
to principle. Other persons of noble birth, who might be inhabitants of
the parish, could not sit in the same plebeian corporation unless they
were elected by the peasants and then, as the by-laws carefully pointed
out, they were only entitled to represent the lower classes.
The Seigneur, therefore, only figured in this Assembly in a position
of absolute subjection to his former vassals, who were all at once
become his masters; he was their prisoner rather than their chief. In
gathering men together by such means as these, it seemed as if the
object was not so much to connect them more closely with each other
as to render more palpable the differences of their condition and the
incompatibility of their interests.
Was or was not the village Syndic still that discredited officer whose
duties no one would accept but upon compulsion, or was the condition
of the Syndic raised with that of the community to which he belonged
as its chief agent?[83] Even this question was not easily answered. I
have found the letter of a village bailiff, written in 1788, in which
he expresses his indignation at having been elected to the office
of Syndic, ‘which was,’ he said, ‘contrary to all the privileges of
his other post.’ To this the Comptroller-General replies that this
individual must be set right: that he must be made to understand that
he ought to be proud of the choice of his fellow-citizens; and that
moreover the new Syndics were not to resemble the local officers who
had formerly borne the same appellation, and that they would be treated
with more consideration by the Government.
On the other hand some of the chief inhabitants of parishes, and even
men of rank, began at once to draw nearer to the peasantry, as soon
as the peasantry had become a power in the State. A landed proprietor
exercising a heritable jurisdiction over a village near Paris
complained that the King’s Edict debarred him from taking part, even as
a mere inhabitant, in the proceedings of the Parochial Assembly. Others
consented, from mere public spirit, as they said, to accept even the
office of Syndic.
It was too late: but as the members of the higher classes of society
in France thus began to approach the rural population and sought to
combine with the people, the people drew back into the isolation
to which it had been condemned and maintained that position. Some
parochial assemblies refused to allow the Seigneur of the place to take
his seat among them; others practised every kind of trick to evade the
reception of persons as low-born as themselves, but who were rich. ‘We
are informed,’ said the Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy, ‘that
several municipal bodies have refused to receive among their members
landowners not being noble and not domiciled in the parish, though
these persons have an undoubted right to sit in such meetings. Some
other bodies have even refused to admit farmers not having any property
in land in the parish.’
Thus then the whole reform of these secondary enactments was already
novel, obscure, and conflicting before the principal laws affecting the
government of the State had yet been touched at all. But all that was
still untouched was already shaken, and it could barely be said that
any law was in existence which had not already been threatened with
abolition or a speedy change by the Central Government itself.
This sudden and comprehensive renovation of all the laws and all
the administrative habits of France, which preceded the political
Revolution of 1789, is a thing scarcely thought of at the present time,
yet it was one of the severest perturbations which ever occurred in the
history of a great people. This first revolution exercised a prodigious
influence on the Revolution which was about to succeed it, and caused
the latter to be an event different from all the events of the same
kind which had ever till then happened in the world and from those
which have happened since.[84]
The first English Revolution, which overthrew the whole political
constitution of the country and abolished the monarchy itself, touched
but superficially the secondary laws of the land and changed scarcely
any of the customs and usages of the nation. The administration of
justice and the conduct of public business retained their old forms and
followed even their past aberrations. In the heat of the Civil Wars the
twelve judges of England are said to have continued to go the circuit
twice a year. Everything was not, therefore, abandoned to agitation at
the same time. The Revolution was circumscribed in its effects, and
English society, though shaken at its apex, remained firm upon its base.
France herself has since 1789 witnessed several revolutions which have
fundamentally changed the whole structure of her government. Most
of them have been very sudden and brought about by force, in open
violation of the existing laws. Yet the disorder they have caused has
never been either long or general; scarcely have they been felt by the
bulk of the nation, sometimes they have been unperceived.
The reason is that since 1789 the administrative constitution of
France has ever remained standing amidst the ruins of her political
constitutions. The person of the sovereign or the form of the
government was changed, but the daily course of affairs was neither
interrupted nor disturbed: every man still remained submissive, in
the small concerns which interested himself, to the rules and usages
with which he was already familiar; he was dependent on the secondary
powers to which it had always been his custom to defer; and in most
cases he had still to do with the very same agents; for, if at each
revolution the administration was decapitated, its trunk still
remained unmutilated and alive; the same public duties were discharged
by the same public officers, who carried with them through all the
vicissitudes of political legislation the same temper and the same
practice. They judged and they administered in the name of the King,
afterwards in the name of the Republic, at last in the name of the
Emperor. And when Fortune had again given the same turn to her wheel,
they began once more to judge and to administer for the King, for the
Republic, and for the Emperor, the same persons doing the same thing,
for what is there in the name of a master? Their business was not so
much to be good citizens as to be good administrators and good judicial
officers. As soon as the first shock was over, it seemed, therefore, as
if nothing had stirred in the country.
But when the Revolution of 1789 broke out, that part of the Government
which, though subordinate, makes itself daily felt by every member of
the commonwealth, and which affects his well-being more constantly and
decisively than anything else, had just been totally subverted: the
administrative offices of France had just changed all their agents and
revised all their principles. The State had not at first appeared to
receive a violent shock from this immense reform; but there was not a
man in the country who had not felt it in his own particular sphere.
Every one had been shaken in his condition, disturbed in his habits, or
put to inconvenience in his calling. A certain order still prevailed in
the more important and general affairs of the nation; but already no
one knew whom to obey, whom to apply to, nor how to proceed in those
lesser and private affairs which form the staple of social life. The
nation having lost its balance in all these details, one more blow
sufficed to upset it altogether, and to produce the widest catastrophe
and the most frightful confusion that the world had ever beheld.
FOOTNOTES:
[81] See Note LXXIV.
[82] See Note LXXV., Contests in the Provincial Assemblies of 1787.
[83] See Note LXXVI.
[84] See Note LXXVII., Definition of Feudal Rights.
CHAPTER XX.
SHOWING THAT THE REVOLUTION PROCEEDED NATURALLY FROM THE EXISTING
STATE OF FRANCE.
I propose ere I conclude to gather up some of the characteristics which
I have already separately described, and to trace the Revolution,
proceeding as it were of itself from the state of society in France
which I have already pourtrayed.
If it be remembered that in France the Feudal system, though it still
kept unchanged all that could irritate or could injure, had most
effectually lost all that could protect or could be of use, it will
appear less surprising that the Revolution, which was about virtually
to abolish this ancient constitution of Europe, broke forth in France
rather than elsewhere.
If it be observed that the French nobility, after having lost its
ancient political rights, and ceased more than in any other country of
feudal Europe to govern and guide the nation, had, nevertheless, not
only preserved, but considerably enlarged its pecuniary immunities, and
the advantages which the members of this body personally possessed;
that whilst it had become a subordinate class it still remained a
privileged and close body, less and less an aristocracy, as I have said
elsewhere, but more and more a caste; it will be no cause of surprise
that the privileges of such a nobility had become so inexplicable
and so abhorrent to the French people, as to inflame the envy of the
democracy to so fierce a pitch that it is still burning in their hearts.
If, lastly, it be borne in mind that the French nobility, severed
from the middle classes whom they had repelled, and from the people
whose affections they had lost, was thus alone in the midst of the
nation--apparently the head of an army, but in reality a body of
officers without soldiers--it will be understood how that which had
stood erect for a thousand years came to perish in a night.
I have shown how the King’s Government, having abolished the franchises
of the provinces, and having usurped all local powers in three-quarters
of the territory of France, had thus drawn all public affairs into
its own hands, the least as well as the greatest. I have shown, on the
other hand, how, by a necessary consequence, Paris had made itself the
master of the kingdom of which till then it had been the capital, or
rather had itself become the entire country. These two facts, which
were peculiar to France, would alone suffice, if necessary, to explain
why a riot could fundamentally destroy a monarchy which had for ages
endured so many violent convulsions, and which, on the eve of its
dissolution, still seemed unassailable even to those who were about to
overthrow it.
France being one of the states of Europe in which all political life
had been for the longest time and most effectually extinguished, in
which private persons had most lost the usage of business, the habit
of reading the course of events, the experience of popular movements
and almost the notion of the people, it may readily be imagined how
all Frenchmen came at once to fall into a frightful Revolution without
foreseeing it; those who were most threatened by that catastrophe
leading the way, and undertaking to open and widen the path which led
to it.
As there were no longer any free institutions, or consequently any
political classes, no living political bodies, no organised or
disciplined parties, and as, in the absence of all these regular
forces, the direction of public opinion, when public opinion came again
into being, devolved exclusively on the French philosophers, it might
be expected that the Revolution would be directed less with a view to a
particular state of facts, than with reference to abstract principles
and very general theories: it might be anticipated that instead of
endeavouring separately to amend the laws which were bad, all laws
would be attacked, and that an attempt would be made to substitute
for the ancient constitution of France an entirely novel system of
government, conceived by these writers.
The Church being naturally connected with all the old institutions
which were doomed to perish, it could not be doubted that the
Revolution would shake the religion of the country when it overthrew
the civil government; wherefore it was impossible to foretell to what
pitch of extravagance these innovators might rush, delivered at once
from all the restraints which religion, custom, and law impose on the
imagination of mankind.
He who should thus have studied the state of France would easily have
foreseen that no stretch of audacity was too extreme to be attempted
there, and no act of violence too great to be endured. ‘What,’ said
Burke, in one of his eloquent pamphlets, ‘is there not a man who can
answer for the smallest district--nay, more, not one man who can answer
for another? Every one is arrested in his own home without resistance,
whether he be accused of royalism, of _moderantism_, or of anything
else.’ But Mr. Burke knew but little of the condition in which that
monarchy which he regretted had abandoned France to her new masters.
The administration which had preceded the Revolution had deprived the
French both of the means and of the desire of mutual assistance. When
the Revolution arrived, it would have been vain to seek in the greater
part of France for any ten men accustomed to act systematically and
in concert, or to provide for their own defence; the Central Power
had alone assumed that duty, so that when this Central Power had
passed from the hands of the Crown into those of an irresponsible and
sovereign Assembly, and had become as terrible as it had before been
good-natured, nothing stood before it to stop or even to check it for
a moment. The same cause which led the monarchy to fall so easily
rendered everything possible after its fall had occurred.
Never had toleration in religion, never had mildness in authority,
never had humanity and goodwill to mankind been more professed, and, it
seemed, more generally admitted than in the eighteenth century. Even
the rights of war, which is the last refuge of violence, had become
circumscribed and softened. Yet from this relaxed state of manners a
Revolution of unexampled inhumanity was about to spring, though this
softening of the manners of France was not a mere pretence, for no
sooner had the Revolution spent its fury than the same gentleness
immediately pervaded all the laws of the country, and penetrated into
the habits of political society.
This contrast between the benignity of its theories and the violence
of its actions, which was one of the strangest characteristics of the
French Revolution, will surprise no one who has remarked that this
Revolution had been prepared by the most civilised classes of the
nation, and that it was accomplished by the most barbarous and the most
rude. The members of those civilised classes having no pre-existing
bond of union, no habit of acting in concert, no hold upon the people,
the people almost instantly became supreme when the old authorities of
the State were annihilated. Where the people did not actually assume
the government it gave its spirit to those who governed; and if, on the
other hand, it be recollected what the manner of life of that people
had been under the old monarchy, it may readily be surmised what it
would soon become.
Even the peculiarities of its condition had imparted to the French
people several virtues of no common occurrence. Emancipated early, and
long possessed of a part of the soil, isolated rather than dependent,
the French showed themselves at once temperate and proud; sons of
labour, indifferent to the delicacies of life, resigned to its greatest
evils, firm in danger--a simple and manly race who were about to fill
those mighty armies before which Europe was to bow. But the same
cause made them dangerous masters. As they had borne almost alone for
centuries all the burden of public wrongs--as they had lived apart
feeding in silence on their prejudices, their jealousies, and their
hatreds, they had become hardened by the rigour of their destiny, and
capable both of enduring and of inflicting every evil.
Such was the state of the French people when, laying hands on the
government, it undertook to complete the work of the Revolution.
Books had supplied the theory; the people undertook the practical
application, and adapted the conceptions of those writers to the
impulse of their own passions.
Those who have attentively considered, in these pages, the state
of France in the eighteenth century must have remembered the birth
and development of two leading passions, which, however, were not
contemporaneous, and which did not always tend to the same end.
The first, more deeply seated and proceeding from a more remote source,
was the violent and inextinguishable hatred of inequality. This
passion, born and nurtured in presence of the inequality it abhorred,
had long impelled the French with a continuous and irresistible force
to raze to their foundations all that remained of the institutions
of the Middle Ages, and upon the ground thus cleared to construct a
society in which men should be as much alike and their conditions as
equal as human nature admits of.
The second, of a more recent date and a less tenacious root, led them
to desire to live, not only equal but free.
At the period immediately preceding the Revolution of 1789, these two
passions were equally sincere and appeared to be equally intense. At
the outbreak of the Revolution they met and combined; for a moment they
were intimately mingled, they inflamed each other by mutual contact,
and kindled at once the whole heart of France. Such was 1789, a time
of inexperience no doubt, but a time of generosity, of enthusiasm,
of virility, and of greatness--a time of immortal memory, towards
which the eyes of mankind will turn with admiration and respect long
after those who witnessed it and we ourselves shall have disappeared.
Then, indeed, the French were sufficiently proud of their cause
and of themselves to believe that they might be equal in freedom.
Amidst their democratic institutions they therefore everywhere placed
free institutions. Not only did they crush to the dust all that
effete legislation which divided men into castes, corporations, and
classes, and which rendered their rights even more unequal than their
conditions, but they shattered by a single blow those other laws, more
recently imposed by the authority of the Crown, which had deprived the
French nation of the free enjoyment of its own powers, and had placed
by the side of every Frenchman the Government, as his preceptor, his
guardian, and, if need be, his oppressor. Centralisation fell with
absolute government.
But when that vigorous generation, which had commenced the Revolution
was destroyed or enervated, as commonly happens to any generation
which engages in such enterprises--when, following the natural course
of events of this nature, the love of freedom had been damped and
discouraged by anarchy and popular tyranny, and the bewildered nation
began to grope after a master--absolute government found prodigious
facilities for recovering and consolidating its authority, and these
were easily discovered by the genius of the man who was to continue the
Revolution and to destroy it.
France under the old Monarchy had, in fact, contained a whole system
of institutions of modern date, which, not being adverse to social
equality, could easily have found a place in the new state of society,
but which offered remarkable opportunities to despotism. These were
sought for amidst the ruins of all other institutions, and they were
found there. These institutions had formerly given birth to habits,
to passions, and to opinions, which tended to retain men in a state
of division and obedience: and such were the institutions which
were restored and set to work. Centralisation was disentangled from
the ruins and re-established; and as, whilst this system rose once
more, everything by which it had before been limited was destroyed,
from the bowels of that nation which had just overthrown monarchy a
power suddenly came forth more extended, more comprehensive, more
absolute than that which had ever been exercised by any of the French
kings. This enterprise appeared strangely audacious, and its success
unparalleled, because men were thinking of what they saw, and had
forgotten what they had seen. The Dominator fell, but all that was most
substantial in his work remained standing; his government had perished,
but the administration survived; and every time that an attempt has
since been made to strike down absolute power, all that has been done
is to place a head of Liberty on a servile body.
Several times, from the commencement of the Revolution to the present
day, the passion of liberty has been seen in France to expire, to
revive--and then to expire again, again to revive. Thus will it
long be with a passion so inexperienced and ill-directed, so easily
discouraged, alarmed, and vanquished; a passion so superficial and
so transient. During the whole of this period, the passion for
equality has never ceased to occupy that deep-seated place in the
hearts of the French people which it was the first to seize: it
clings to the feelings they cherish most fondly. Whilst the love of
freedom frequently changes its aspect, wanes and waxes, grows or
declines with the course of events, that other passion is still the
same, ever attracted to the same object with the same obstinate and
indiscriminating ardour, ready to make any sacrifice to those who allow
it to sate its desires, and ready to furnish every government which
will favour and flatter it with the habits, the opinions, and the laws
which Despotism requires to enable it to reign.
The French Revolution will ever be wrapped in clouds and darkness to
those who direct their attention to itself alone. The only light that
can illuminate its course must be sought in the times which preceded
it. Without a clear perception of the former society of France, of its
laws, of its defects, of its prejudices, of its littleness, of its
greatness, it is impossible to comprehend what the French have been
doing in the sixty years which have followed its dissolution; but even
this perception will not suffice without penetrating to the very quick
into the character of this nation.
When I consider this people in itself it strikes me as more
extraordinary than any event in its own annals. Was there ever any
nation on the face of the earth so full of contrasts and so extreme in
all its actions; more swayed by sensations, less by principles; led
therefore always to do either worse or better than was expected of
it, sometimes below the common level of humanity, sometimes greatly
above it;--a people so unalterable in its leading instincts, that
its likeness may still be recognised in descriptions written two or
three thousand years ago, but at the same time so mutable in its daily
thoughts and in its tastes as to become a spectacle and an amazement
to itself, and to be as much surprised as the rest of the world at the
sight of what it has done;--a people beyond all others the child of
home and the slave of habit, when left to itself, but when once torn
against its will from the native hearth and from its daily pursuits,
ready to go to the end of the world and to dare all things; indocile by
temperament, yet accepting the arbitrary and even the violent rule of
a sovereign more readily than the free and regular government of the
chief citizen; to-day the declared enemy of all obedience, to-morrow
serving with a sort of passion which the nations best adapted for
servitude cannot attain; guided by a thread as long as no one resists,
ungovernable when the example of resistance has once been given; always
deceiving its masters, who fear it either too little or too much; never
so free that it is hopeless to enslave it, or so enslaved that it may
not break the yoke again; apt for all things but excelling only in war;
adoring chance, force, success, splendour and noise, more than true
glory; more capable of heroism than of virtue, of genius than of good
sense, ready to conceive immense designs rather than to accomplish
great undertakings; the most brilliant and the most dangerous of the
nations of Europe and that best fitted to become by turns an object of
admiration, of hatred, of pity, of terror, but never of indifference!
Such a nation could alone give birth to a Revolution so sudden, so
radical, so impetuous in its course, and yet so full of reactions, of
contradictory incidents and of contrary examples. Without the reasons
I have related the French would never have made the Revolution; but it
must be confessed that all these reasons united would not have sufficed
to account for such a Revolution anywhere else but in France.
I am arrived then at the threshold of this great event. My intention is
not to go beyond it now, though perhaps I may do so hereafter. I shall
then proceed to consider it not only in its causes but in itself, and I
shall venture finally to pass a judgment on the state of society which
it has produced.
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
ON THE PAYS D’ÉTATS, AND ESPECIALLY ON THE CONSTITUTIONS OF LANGUEDOC.
It is not my intention minutely to investigate in this place how public
business was carried on in each of the provinces called Pays d’États,
which were still in existence at the outbreak of the Revolution. I wish
only to indicate the number of them; to point out those in which local
life was still most active; to show what were the relations of these
provinces with the administration of the Crown; how far they formed an
exception to the general rules I have previously established; how far
they fell within those rules; and lastly, to show by the example of one
of these provinces what they might all have easily become.
Estates had existed in most of the provinces of France--that is, each
of them had been administered under the King’s government by the
_gens des trois états_, as they were then called, which meant the
representatives of the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons. This
provincial constitution, like most of the other political institutions
of the Middle Ages, occurred, with the same features, in almost all the
civilised parts of Europe--in all those parts, at least, into which
Germanic manners and ideas had penetrated. In many of the provinces of
Germany these States subsisted down to the French Revolution; in those
provinces in which they had been previously destroyed they had only
disappeared in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Everywhere, for two hundred years, the sovereigns had carried on a
clandestine or an open warfare against them. Nowhere had they attempted
to improve this institution with the progress of time, but only to
destroy and deform it whenever an opportunity presented itself and when
they could not do worse.
In France, in 1789, these States only existed in five provinces of a
certain extent and in some insignificant districts. Provincial liberty
could, in truth, only be said to exist in two provinces--in Brittany
and in Languedoc: everywhere else the institution had entirely lost its
virility, and was reduced to a mere shadow.
I shall take the case of Languedoc separately, and devote to it in this
place a closer examination.
Languedoc was the most extensive and the most populous of all the
_pays d’états_. It contained more than two thousand parishes, or,
as they were then called, ‘communities,’ and nearly two millions of
inhabitants. It was, besides, the best ordered and the most prosperous
of all these provinces as well as the largest. Languedoc is, therefore,
the fairest specimen of what provincial liberty might be under the old
French monarchy, and to what an extent, even in the districts where it
appeared strongest, it had been subjected to the power of the Crown.
In Languedoc the Estates could only assemble upon the express order
of the King, and under a writ of summons addressed by the King
individually every year to the members of whom they were composed,
which caused one of the malcontents of the time to say, ‘Of the three
bodies composing our Estates, one--that of the clergy--sits at the
nomination of the King, since he names to the bishoprics and benefices;
and the two others may be supposed to be so, since an order of the
Court may prevent any member it pleases from attending the Assembly,
and this without exiling or prosecuting him, by merely not summoning
him.’
The Estates were not only to meet, but to be prorogued on certain days
appointed by the King. The customary duration of their session had been
fixed at forty days by an Order in Council. The King was represented
in the Assembly by commissioners, who had always free access when they
required it, and whose business it was to explain the will of the
Government. The Assembly was, moreover, strictly held in restraint.
They could take no resolution of any importance, they could determine
on no financial measure at all, until their deliberations had been
approved by an Order in Council; for a tax, a loan, or a suit at law
they require the express permission of the King. All their standing
orders, down to that which related to the order of their meetings, had
to be authorised before they became operative. The aggregate of their
receipts and expenditure--their budget, as it would now be called--was
subjected every year to the same control.
The Central Power, moreover, exercised in Languedoc the same political
rights which were everywhere else acknowledged to belong to it. The
laws which the Crown was pleased to promulgate, the general ordinances
it was continually passing, the general measures of its policy, were
applicable there as well as in the rest of the kingdom. The Crown
exercised there all the natural functions of government; it had there
the same police and the same agents; there, as well as everywhere
else, it created numerous new public officers, whose places the
province was compelled to buy up at a large price.
Languedoc was governed, like the other provinces of France, by an
Intendant. This Intendant had, in each district, his Sub-delegates,
who corresponded with the heads of the parishes and directed them. The
Intendant exercised the tutelage of the administration as completely
as in the _pays d’élection_. The humblest village in the gorges of the
Cevennes was precluded from making the smallest outlay until it had
been authorised by an Order of the King’s Council from Paris. That part
of the judicial administration which is now denominated in France the
_contentieux administratif_, or the litigated questions referred to the
Council of State, was not only not less, but more comprehensive than in
the remainder of France. The Intendant decided, in the first instance,
all questions relating to the public ways; he judged all suits relating
to roads; and, in general, he pronounced on all the matters in which
the Government was, or conceived itself to be, interested. The
Government extended the same protection as elsewhere to all its agents
against the rash prosecutions of the citizens whom they might have
oppressed.
What then did Languedoc possess which distinguished it from the
other provinces of the kingdom, and which caused them to envy its
institutions? Three things sufficed to render it entirely different
from the rest of France.
I. An Assembly, composed of men of station, looked up to by the
population, respected by the Crown, to which no officer of the Central
Power, or, to use the phraseology then in use, ‘no officer of the
King,’ could belong, and in which, every year, the special interests of
the province were freely and gravely discussed. The mere fact that the
royal administration was placed near this source of light caused its
privileges to be very differently exercised; and though its agents and
its instincts were the same, its results in no degree resembled what
they were elsewhere.
II. In Languedoc many public works were executed at the expense of
the King and his agents. There were other public works, for which
the Central Government provided the funds and partly directed the
execution, but the greater part of them were executed at the expense
of the province alone. When the King had approved the plan and
authorised the estimates for these last-mentioned works, they were
executed by officers chosen by the Estates, and under the inspection of
commissioners taken from this Assembly.
III. Lastly, the province had the right of levying itself, and in the
manner it preferred, a part of the royal taxes and all the rates which
were imposed by its own authority for its own wants.
Let us see the results which Languedoc continued to extract from these
privileges: they deserve a minute attention.
Nothing is more striking in the other parts of France--the _pays
d’élection_--than the almost complete absence of local charges.
The general imposts were frequently oppressive, but a province
spent nothing on itself. In Languedoc, on the contrary, the annual
expenditure of the province on public works was enormous; in 1780 it
exceeded two millions of livres.
The Central Government was sometimes alarmed at witnessing so vast
an outlay. It feared that the province, exhausted by such an effort,
would be unable to acquit the share of the taxes due to the State; it
blamed the Estates for not moderating this expenditure. I have read a
document, framed by the Assembly, in answer to these animadversions:
the passages I am about to transcribe from it will depict, better than
all I could say, the spirit which animated this small Government.
It is admitted in this statement that the province has commenced and
is still carrying on immense public works; but, far from offering any
apology for this proceeding, it is added that, saving the opposition of
the Crown, these works will be still further extended and persevered
in. The province had already improved or rectified the channel of the
principal rivers within its territory, and it was then engaged in
adding to the Canal of Burgundy, dug under Louis XIV., but already
insufficient, a prolongation which, passing through Lower Languedoc,
should proceed by Cette and Agen to the Rhone. The port of Cette had
been opened to trade, and was maintained at great cost. All these
expenses had, as was observed, a national rather than a provincial
character; yet the province, as the party chiefly interested, had
taken them on itself. It was also engaged in draining and restoring to
agriculture the marshes of Aigues-Mortes. Roads had been the object
of its peculiar care: all those which connect the province with the
rest of the kingdom had been opened or put in good order; even the
cross-roads between the towns and villages of Languedoc had been
repaired. All these different roads were excellent even in winter, and
formed the greatest contrast with the hard, uneven, and ill-constructed
roads which were to be found in most of the adjacent provinces,
such as Dauphiny, Quercy, and the government of Bordeaux--all _pays
d’élection_, it was remarked. On this point the Report appeals to the
opinion of travellers and traders; and this appeal was just, for
Arthur Young, when he visited the country ten years afterwards, put
on his notes, ‘Languedoc, _pays d’états_: good roads, made without
compulsory labour.’
‘If the King would allow it,’ this Report continued, ‘the States
will do more: they will undertake the improvement of the crossroads
in the villages, which are not less interesting than the others. For
if produce cannot be removed from the barns of the grower to market,
what use is it that it can be sent to a distance?’ ‘The doctrine of
the States on questions of public works has always been,’ they say,
‘that it is not the grandeur of these undertakings but their utility
that must be looked to.’ Rivers, canals, roads which give value to
all the produce of the soil and of manufactures, by enabling them to
be conveyed at all times and at little cost wherever they are wanted,
and by means of which commerce can penetrate to every part of the
province--these are things which enrich a country, whatever they may
cost it. Besides, works of this nature, undertaken in moderation at
the same time, in various parts of the country, and somewhat equally
distributed, keep up the rate of wages, and stand in lieu of relief to
the poor. ‘The King has not needed to establish charitable workhouses
at his cost in Languedoc, as has been done in other parts of France,’
said the province, with honest pride; ‘we do not ask for that favour;
the useful works we ourselves carry on every year supersede such
establishments, and give to all our people productive labour.’
The more I have studied the general regulations established by the
States of Languedoc, with the permission of the King (though generally
not originating with the Crown), in that portion of the public
administration which was left in their hands, the more I have been
struck with the wisdom, the equity, and the moderation they display;
the more superior do the proceedings of the local government appear in
comparison with all I have found in the districts administered by the
King alone.
The province was divided into ‘communities’ (towns or villages); into
administrative districts, called _dioceses_; and, lastly, into three
great departments called _stewardries_. Each of these parts had a
distinct representation, and a little separate government of its own,
which acted under the guidance either of the Estates or of the Crown.
If it be a question of public works which interest one of these small
political bodies, they are only to be undertaken at the request of
the interested parties. If the improvements of a community are of
advantage to the diocese, the diocese contributed to the expense in
a certain proportion. If the stewardry was interested, the stewardry
contributed likewise. So again these several divisions were all to
assist the townships, even for the completion of undertakings of local
interest, if they were necessary and above its strength, for, said the
States frequently, ‘the fundamental principle of our constitution is
that all parts of Languedoc are reciprocally bound together, and ought
successively to help each other.’
The works executed by the province were to be carefully prepared
beforehand, and first submitted to the examination of the lesser
bodies which were to contribute to them. They were all paid for:
forced labour was unknown. I have observed that in the other parts
of France--the _pays d’élection_--the land taken from its owners for
public works was always ill and tardily paid for, and often not paid
for at all. This was one of the great grievances complained of by the
Provincial Assemblies when they were convoked in 1787. In some cases
the possibility of liquidating debts of this nature had been taken
away, for the object taken had been altered or destroyed before the
valuation. In Languedoc every inch of ground taken from its owner was
to be carefully valued before the works were begun, and paid for in the
first year of the execution.
The regulations of these Estates relating to different public works,
from which these details are copied, seemed so well conceived that even
the Central Government admired, though without imitating them. The
King’s Council, after having sanctioned the application of them, caused
them to be printed at the Royal press, and to be transmitted to all the
Intendants of France as a document to be consulted.
What I have said of public works is _à fortiori_ applicable to that
other not less important portion of the provincial administration which
related to the levy of taxes. In this respect, more particularly, the
contrast was so great between the kingdom and the provinces that it is
difficult to believe they formed part of the same empire.
I have had occasion to say elsewhere that the methods of proceeding
used in Languedoc for the assessment and collection of the _taille_
were in part the same as are now employed in France in the levy of the
public taxes. Nor shall I here revert to this subject, merely adding
that the province was so attached to its own superior methods of
proceeding, that when new taxes were imposed by the Crown, the States
of Languedoc never hesitated to purchase at a very high price the right
of levying them in their own manner and by their own agents exclusively.
In spite of all the expenses which I have successively enumerated,
the finances of Languedoc were nevertheless in such good order, and
its credit so well established, that the Central Government often had
recourse to it, and borrowed, in the name of the province, sums of
money which would not have been lent on such favourable terms to the
Government itself. Thus Languedoc borrowed, on its own security, but
for the King’s service, in the later years of the monarchy, 73,200,000
livres, or nearly three millions sterling.
The Government and the Ministers of the Crown looked, however, with an
unfavourable eye on these provincial liberties. Richelieu had first
mutilated and afterwards abolished them. The spiritless and indolent
Louis XIII., who loved nothing, detested them; the horror he felt for
all provincial privileges was such, said Boulainvilliers, that his
anger was excited by the mere name of them. It is hard to sound the
hatred of feeble souls for whatever compels them to exert themselves.
All that they retain of manhood is turned in that direction, and they
exhibit strength in their animosity, however weak they may be in
everything else. Fortunately the ancient constitution of Languedoc was
restored under the minority of Louis XIV., who consequently respected
it as his own work. Louis XV. suspended it for a couple of years, but
afterwards allowed it to go on.
The creation of municipal offices for sale exposed the constitution
of the province to dangers less direct, but not less formidable.
That pernicious institution not only destroyed the constitution of
the towns; it tended to vitiate that of the provinces. I know not
whether the deputies of the commons in the Provincial Assemblies had
ever been elected _ad hoc_, but at any rate they had long ceased to
be so; the municipal officers of the towns were _ex officio_ the sole
representatives of the burgesses and the people in those bodies.
This absence of a direct constituency acting with reference to the
affairs of the day was but little remarked as long as the towns freely
elected their own magistrates by universal suffrage, and generally
for a very limited period. Thus the mayor, the council, or the syndic
represented the wishes of the population in the Hall of the Estates as
faithfully as if they had been elected by their fellow-citizens for
that purpose. But very different was the case with a civic officer
who had purchased for money the right of governing. Such an officer
represented no one but himself, or, at best, the petty interests
or the petty passions of his own coterie. Yet this magistrate by
contract retained the powers which had been exercised by his elected
predecessors. The character of the institution was, therefore,
immediately changed. The nobles and the clergy, instead of having
the representatives of the people sitting with them or opposite to
them in the Provincial Assembly, met there none but a few isolated,
timid, and powerless burgesses, and thus the commons occupied a more
subordinate place in the government at the very time when they were
every day becoming richer and stronger in society. This was not the
case in Languedoc, the province having always taken care to buy up
these offices as fast as they were established by the Crown. The loan
contracted by the States for this purpose, in the year 1773 only,
amounted to more than four millions of livres.
Other causes of still greater power had contributed to infuse a new
spirit into these ancient institutions, and to give to the States of
Languedoc an incontestable superiority over those of all the other
provinces.
In this province, as in a great portion of the south of France, the
_taille_ was real and not personal--that is to say, it was regulated
by the value of property, and not by the personal condition of the
proprietor. Some lands had, no doubt, the privilege of not paying this
tax: these lands had, in former times, belonged to the nobility, but,
by the progress of time and of capital, it had happened that a portion
of this property had fallen into the hands of non-noble holders. On the
other hand, the nobles had become the holders of many lands which were
liable to the _taille_. The privilege of exemption, being thus removed
from persons to things, was doubtless more abused; but it was less
felt, because, though still irksome, it was no longer humiliating. Not
being indissolubly connected with the idea of a class, not investing
any class with interests altogether alien and opposed to those of the
other classes, such a privilege no longer opposed a barrier to the
co-operation of all in public affairs. In Languedoc especially, more
than in any other part of France, all classes did so co-operate, and
this on a footing of complete equality.
In Brittany the landed gentry of the province had the right of all
appearing in their own persons at the States, which made these
Assemblies in some sort resemble the Polish Diets. In Languedoc
the nobles only figured at the States of the province by their
representatives: twenty-three of them sat for the whole body. The
clergy also sat in the person of the twenty-three bishops of the
province, and it deserves especial observation that the towns had as
many votes as the two upper orders.
As the Assembly sat in one house and the orders did not vote
separately, but conjointly, the commons naturally acquired much
importance, and their spirit gradually infused itself into the whole
body. Nay, more, the three magistrates, who, under the name of
Syndics-General, were charged, in the name of the States, with the
ordinary management of the business, were almost always lawyers,--that
is to say, commoners. The nobility was strong enough to maintain
its rank, but no longer strong enough to reign alone. The clergy,
though consisting to a great extent of men of gentle birth, lived on
excellent terms with the commons; they eagerly adopted most of the
plans of that Order, and laboured in conjunction with it to increase
the material prosperity of the whole community, by encouraging trade
and manufactures, thus placing their own great knowledge of mankind
and their singular dexterity in the conduct of affairs at the service
of the people. A priest was almost always chosen to proceed to
Versailles to discuss with the Ministers of the Crown the questions
which sometimes set at variance the royal authority and that of the
States. It might be said that throughout the last century Languedoc
was administered by the Commons, who were controlled by the Nobles and
assisted by the Bishops.
Thanks to this peculiar constitution of Languedoc, the spirit of the
age was enabled peacefully to pervade this ancient institution, and to
modify it altogether without at all destroying it.
It might have been so everywhere else in France. A small portion of the
perseverance and the exertions which the sovereigns of France employed
for the abolition or the dislocation of the Provincial Estates would
have sufficed to perfect them in this manner, and to adapt them to all
the wants of modern civilisation, if those sovereigns had ever had any
other aim than to become and to remain the masters of France.
[The chapters which follow were not included in the work first
published by M. de Tocqueville in 1855. They are the continuation of
it, left unfinished at the time of his death in 1859, and published
in 1865 by M. de Beaumont amongst the posthumous works of his friend.
They are now translated for the first time. Although they must be
regarded as incomplete, since they never received the final revision
of the author, and the latter portions of them are fragmentary, yet
they are not, I think, unworthy to form part of the work to which they
were intended to belong, and a melancholy interest attaches to them as
the last meditations of a great and original thinker. In the French
text an attempt has been made to distinguish, by a different type, the
passages which are more carefully finished from those which consisted
merely of notes for further elaboration. But as this arrangement
breaks the uniformity of the text more than is necessary, I have not
adopted it.--H. R.]
_BOOK III._
CHAPTER I.
OF THE VIOLENT AND UNDEFINED AGITATION OF THE HUMAN MIND AT THE MOMENT
WHEN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BROKE OUT.
What I have previously said of France is applicable to the whole
Continent. In the ten or fifteen years preceding the French Revolution,
the human mind was abandoned, throughout Europe, to strange,
incoherent, and irregular impulses, symptoms of a new and extraordinary
disease, which would have singularly alarmed the world if the world had
understood them.
A conception of the greatness of man in general, and of the omnipotence
of his reason and the boundless range of his intelligence, had
penetrated and pervaded the spirit of the age; yet this lofty
conception of mankind in general was commingled with a boundless
contempt for the age in which men were living and the society to which
they belonged. Never was so much humility united to so much pride--the
pride of humanity was inflated to madness; the estimate each man formed
of his age and country was singularly low.
All over the Continent that instinctive attachment and involuntary
respect which the men of all ages and all countries are wont in general
to feel for their own peculiar institutions, for their traditional
customs, and for the wisdom or the virtues of their forefathers, had
almost ceased to exist among the educated classes. Nothing was spoken
of but the decrepitude and incoherence of existing institutions, the
vices and corruption of existing society.
Traces of this state of mind may be discovered throughout the
literature of Germany. The philosophy, the history, the poetry, even
the novels of the time, are full of it. Every product of the intellect
was so stamped by it, that the books of that epoch bear a mark that
distinguishes them from the works of every other age. All the memoirs
of that day, which gave birth to a profusion of memoirs--all the
correspondence of the time which has been published--attest a state
of mind so different from the present, that nothing short of this
concurrence of certain and abundant evidence could convince us of the
fact.
Every page of Schlosser’s ‘History of the Eighteenth Century’ reveals
this general presentiment, that a great change was about to take place
in the condition of mankind.
George Forster, one of the companions of Captain Cook, to whose
expedition he had been attached with his father as a naturalist, writes
to Jacobi in 1779: ‘Things cannot remain as they are: this is announced
by every symptom in the world of science, in the world of theology, and
in that of politics. Much as my heart has hitherto desired peace, not
less do I desire to see the arrival of this crisis on which such mighty
hopes are founded.’[85] ‘Europe,’ he writes again in 1782, ‘seems to
me on the brink of a horrible revolution; in truth the mass is so
corrupt that bleeding may well be necessary.’[86] ‘The present state
of society,’ said Jacobi, ‘presents to me nothing but the aspect of a
dead and stagnant sea: that is why I could desire an inundation, be it
what it may, even of barbarians, to sweep away this reeking marsh and
lay bare a fresh soil.’[87] ‘We are living in the midst of shattered
institutions and forms’--a monstrous chaos which everywhere reflects
an image of dismay[88] and of death.’ These things were written in a
pretty country house, by wealthy people, surrounded by their literary
friends, who passed their time in endless philosophical discussions
which affected, excited, and inflamed them till they shed torrents of
daily tears--in imagination.
It was not the princes, the ministers, the rulers, or those, in short,
who, in different capacities, were directing the march of affairs, who
perceived that some great change was at hand. The idea that government
could become quite different from what government then was,--that all
which had lasted so long might be destroyed and superseded by that
which as yet only existed in the brain of a few men of letters--the
thought that the existing order of things might be overthrown to
establish a new order in the midst of disorder and ruin, would have
appeared to them an absurd illusion and a fantastic dream. The gradual
improvement of society seemed to them the limit of the possible.
It is a common error of the people who are called wise and practical
in ordinary times, to judge by certain rules the men whose very object
is to change or to destroy those rules. When a time is come at which
passion takes the guidance of affairs, the beliefs of men of experience
are less worthy of consideration than the schemes which engage the
imagination of dreamers.
It is curious to see in the official correspondence of that epoch,
civil officers of ability and foresight laying their plans, framing
their measures, and calculating scientifically the use they will make
of their powers, at a time when the Government they are serving, the
laws they are applying, the society they are living in, and they
themselves shall be no more.
‘What scenes are passing in France!’ writes Johann Müller on the 6th
of August, 1789.[89] ‘Blessed be the impression they produce on the
nations and on their masters! I know there are excesses, but the cost
of a free constitution is not too great. Is not a storm which purifies
the air better than an atmosphere tainted as with the plague, even
though here and there it should strike a few heads?’ ‘What an event,’
exclaimed Fox, ‘how much the greatest it is that ever happened in the
world! and how much the best!’[90]
Can we be surprised that this conception of the Revolution as a general
uprising of humanity, a conception which enlarged and invigorated so
many small and feeble souls, should have taken possession at once of
the mind of France, when even other countries partook of it? Nor is
it astonishing that the first excesses of the Revolution should have
affected the best patriots of France so little, when even foreigners
who were not excited by the struggle or embittered by personal
grievances could extend so much indulgence to them.
Let it not be supposed that this sort of abhorrence of themselves
and of their age, which had thus strangely fallen upon almost all
the inhabitants of the continent of Europe, was a superficial or a
transient sentiment.
Ten years later, when the French Revolution had inflicted on Germany
all sorts of violent transformations accompanied by death and
destruction, even then, one of those Germans, in whom enthusiasm for
France had turned to bitter hatred, exclaims, mindful of the past, in
a confidential effusion, ‘What was is no more. What new edifice will
be raised on the ruins, I know not. But this I know, that it would be
the direst calamity if this tremendous era were again to give birth
to the apathy and the worn-out forms of the past.’ ‘Yes,’ replied the
person to whom these words were addressed, ‘the old social body must
perish.’[91]
The years which preceded the French Revolution were, in almost every
part of Europe, years of great national prosperity. The useful arts
were everywhere more cultivated. The taste for enjoyments, which follow
in the train of affluence, was more diffused. Industry and commerce,
which supply these wants, were improving and spreading. It seemed
as if the life of man becoming thus more busy and more sensual, the
human mind would lose sight of those abstract studies which embrace
society, and would centre more and more on the petty cares of daily
life. But the contrary took place. Throughout Europe, almost as much
as in France, all the educated classes were plunged in philosophical
discussions and dogmatical theories. Even in places ordinarily the most
remote from speculations of this nature, the same train of argument was
eagerly pursued. In the most trading cities of Germany, in Hamburg,
Lubeck, and Dantzig, the merchants, traders, and manufacturers would
meet after the labours of the day to discuss amongst themselves
the great questions which affect the existence, the condition, the
happiness of man. Even the women, amidst their petty household cares,
were sometimes distracted by these enigmas of life. ‘We thought,’
says Perthes, ‘that by becoming highly enlightened, one might become
perfect.’
‘Der König sey der beste Mann, sonst sey der bessere König,’
said the poet Claudius.
This period too gave birth to a new passion, embodied in a new
word--_cosmopolitism_--which was to swallow up patriotism. It seemed as
if all classes were bent on escaping whenever they could from the care
of their private affairs, to give themselves up to the grand interests
of humanity.
As in France the love of letters filled a large space even in the
busiest times, the publication of a new book was an event of interest
in the smallest towns as well as in the chief cities. Everything was
a subject of inquiry; everything was a source of emotion. Treasures
of passion seemed accumulated in every breast, which sought but an
occasion to break forth.
Thus, a traveller who had been round the globe was an object of general
attention. When Forster went to Germany in 1774, he was received with
enthusiasm. Not a town but gave him an ovation. Crowds flocked about
him to hear his adventures from his own lips, but still more to hear
him describe the unknown countries he had visited, and the strange
customs of the men among whom he had been living. Was not their savage
simplicity worthy more than all our riches and our arts: were not their
instincts above our virtues?[92]
A certain unfrocked Lutheran priest, one Basidow, ignorant,
quarrelsome, and a drunkard, a caricature of Luther, excogitated a new
system of schools which was, he said, to change the ideas and manners
of his countrymen. He put forth his scheme in coarse and intemperate
language. The object, as he took care to announce, was not only to
regenerate Germany, but the human race. Forthwith, all Germany is in
movement. Princes, nobles, commons, towns, cities, abet the great
innovator. Lords and ladies of high estate write to Basidow to ask
his advice. Mothers of families place his books in the hands of their
children. The old schools founded by Melanchthon are forsaken. A
college, designed to educate these reformers of mankind, is founded
under the name of the ‘Philanthropian,’ blazes for a moment, and
disappears. The enthusiasm drops, leaving behind it confusion and doubt.
The real spirit of the age was to reject every form of mysticism,
and to cling in all things to the evidence most palpable to the
understanding. Nevertheless, in this violent perturbation of mind, men,
not knowing as yet which way to look, cast themselves suddenly on the
supernatural. On the eve of the French Revolution, Europe was covered
with strange fraternities and secret societies, which only revived
under new names delusions that had long been forgotten. Such, were the
doctrines of Swedenborg, of the Martinists, of the Freemasons, the
Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, the disciples of Strict Abstinence, the
Mesmerists, and many other varieties of similar sects. Many of these
sects originally contemplated no more than the private advantage of
their members. But all of them now aspired to embrace the destinies
of mankind. Most of them had been, at the time of their birth, wholly
philosophical or religious: all now turned at once to politics, and
were absorbed in them. By different means they all proposed to bring
about the regeneration of society and the reform of governments.
It is especially worthy of remark that this sense of unrest, this
perturbation of the human mind which I am describing, did not manifest
itself in the lower classes, which bore nevertheless the burden of
existing abuses. Those classes were still motionless and inert. Not
the poor man, but the rich man was tossing in this feverish condition:
the movement sunk not lower than the upper rank of the middle classes.
Nowadays secret societies are filled by poor workmen, obscure artisans,
or ignorant peasants. At the time I am speaking of they consisted
entirely of princes, great nobles, capitalists, merchants, and men of
letters.
When in 1786 the secret papers of the Illuminati were seized in the
hands of their principal chiefs, many anarchical documents were found
among them, in which personal property was denounced as the source
of all evil, and absolute equality of conditions was vaunted. In the
archives of the same sect a list of adepts was found. It consisted
entirely of the most distinguished names in Germany, princes, great
nobles, and ministers: the founder of the sect was himself a professor
of canon law. The King of Poland and Prince Frederick of Prussia were
Rosicrucians. The new King of Prussia, who had just succeeded Frederick
the Great on the throne, immediately sent for the leading Rosicrucians
and intrusted to them important missions.[93] ‘It is asserted,’ says
Mounier[94] in his books on these sects, ‘that several great personages
of France and Germany, some of whom were Protestants, took the tonsure
in order to be admitted into the sect of Strict Observance.’
Another thing well worthy of notice: it was a time when the sciences
had discredited the marvellous, as they became more positive and more
certain--when the inexplicable was easily taken for the false, and
when in all things reason claimed to supersede authority, reality the
imaginary, and free inquiry faith: nevertheless there was not one of
the sects I have just mentioned but had some point of contact with the
supernatural; all of them ended in some fantastic conclusion. Some of
them were imbued with mystical conceptions: others fancied they had
found out the secret to change some of the laws of nature. At that
moment every species of enthusiasm might pass for science, every
dreamer could find listeners, every impostor could find believers:
nothing is more characteristic of the perplexed and agitated condition
of men’s minds, running to and fro, like a benighted traveller who
has lost his way, and who, instead of getting onward, doubles back
upon his own footsteps. And it was not the common herd of the people
who were at the head of these extravagances; men of letters, men of
learning believed in alchemy, in the visible action of the demon, in
the transmutation of metals, in the apparition of ghosts. Strange
instance of belief in every form of absurdity, growing amidst the decay
of religious convictions--of men putting faith in every invisible and
supernatural influence, except in that of God!
These mountebanks were the especial delight of sovereigns. Forster
writes to his father from Cassel in 1782: ‘An old French adventuress
is here who shows spirits to the Landgrave, and receives 150 louis
d’or. He is vain enough to think that the devil may take the trouble to
tempt him in person. She has with her another Frenchman who casts out
bad spirits from the afflicted,’ etc. etc. Great monarchs had at their
courts charlatans of the first water--Cagliostro, the Count de St.
Germain or Mesmer: the little princes were fain to put up, for want of
better, with ridiculous little tricksters.
The aspect of this society was nevertheless one of the most imposing
which has ever been presented to the world, in spite of the errors and
follies of the age. Never had humanity been prouder of itself than at
that moment, for at no other moment, from the birth of all the ages,
had man believed in his own omnipotence. The whole of Europe resembled
a camp, awakening at break of day, bustling at first in different
directions, until the rising sun points out the destined track and
illuminates the road of march. Alas! how little do those who come at
the close of a great revolution resemble those who begin it,--full of
lofty hopes, of generous designs, of stores of energy they are ready
to pour forth, of noble delusions, of unselfish disinterestedness.
Many contemporary writers, unable to discern the general causes which
had produced the strange subversion of society they were witnessing,
attributed it to a conspiracy of secret societies.[95] As if any
private conspiracy could ever explain a movement of such depth and so
destructive of human institutions. The secret societies were certainly
not the cause of the Revolution: but they must be considered as one of
the most conspicuous signs of its approach.
They were not the only signs.
It would be a mistake to suppose that the American Revolution was
hailed with ardent sympathy in France alone: the noise of it went
forth to the ends of Europe: everywhere it was regarded as a beacon.
Steffens, who fifty years later took so active a part in rousing
Germany against France, relates in his Memoirs, that in early childhood
the first thing that excited him was the cause of American independence.
‘I still remember vividly,’ says he, ‘what happened at Elsinore and in
the roadstead, on the day when that peace was signed which secured the
triumph of freedom. The day was fine; the roadstead was full of people
of all nations. We awaited with eager impatience the very dawn. All
the ships were dressed--the masts ornamented with pennons, everything
covered with flags; the weather was calm, with just wind enough to
cause the gay bunting to flutter in the breeze; the boom of cannon,
the cheers of the crews on deck, completed the festal character of the
day. My father had invited some friends to his table; they drank to the
victory of the Americans and the triumph of the popular cause, whilst
a dim presentiment that great events would result from this triumph
mingled with their rejoicings. It was the bright and cheering dawn of
a bloody day. My father sought to imbue us with the love of political
freedom. Contrary to the habit of the house, he had us brought to
table; where he impressed on us the importance of the event we were
witnessing, and bade us drink with him and his guests to the welfare of
the new commonwealth.’[96]
Of the men who, in every corner of old Europe, felt themselves thus
moved by the deeds of a small community in the New World, not one
thoroughly understood the deep and secret cause of his own emotion, yet
all heard a signal in that distant sound. What it announced was still
unknown. It was the voice of John crying in the wilderness that new
times were at hand.
Seek not to assign to these facts which I have been relating any
peculiar cause: all of them were different symptoms of the same social
disease. On all hands the old institutions and the old powers no longer
fitted accurately the new condition and the new wants of man. Hence
that strange unrest which led even the great and the worldly to regard
their own state of life as intolerable. Hence that universal thirst for
change, which came unbidden to every mind, though no one knew as yet
how that change could be brought about. An internal and spontaneous
impulse seemed to shake at once the whole fabric of society, and
disturbed to their foundations the ideas and habits of every man. To
hold back was felt to be impossible: yet none knew on which side they
would incline; and the whole of Europe was in the condition of a huge
mass which oscillates before it falls.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] ‘Correspondence of George Forster,’ i. 257.
[86] _Idem_, ii. 286.
[87] See ‘Waldemar’: a philosophical novel, by Jacobi, written in 1779.
Notwithstanding its defects, which are immense, this book made a great
impression, because these defects were those of the age.
[88] The word in the French text is _confiance_--‘l’image de la
_confiance_ et de la mort.’ But this expression appears to me
unintelligible, and the word has probably been wrongly printed or
wrongly transcribed. M. de Tocqueville’s handwriting was singularly
illegible, and these detached notes were written in characters which
he was himself not always able to read. The passage here cited is from
Vandelbourg’s French translation of Jacobi’s ‘Waldemar,’ where it might
be verified (Tom. i. p. 154.)--H. R.
[89] Letter of Johann Müller to Baron de Salis, August 6th, 1789.
[90] Fox to Mr. Fitzpatrick, July 30th, 1789. (‘Memorials and
Correspondence of Fox,’ ii. 361.)
[91] Life of Perthes, p. 177; and of Stolberg, p. 179--in same book.
[92] Not a man of education, of whatever rank, would pass through
the town where Forster lived without coming to converse with him.
Princes invited him, nobles courted him, the commonalty thronged about
him, the learned were intensely interested by his conversation. To
Michaelis, Heyne, Herder, and others who were endeavouring to solve
the mystery of the antiquity and history of mankind, Forster seemed to
open the sources of the primæval world by describing those populations
of another hemisphere which had not come in contact with any form of
civilisation.
[93] See for these details Schlosser’s ‘History of the Eighteenth
Century,’ and Forster’s Correspondence.
[94] Mounier’s book, published at Tübingen in 1801, is entitled
‘Influence attribué aux Philosophes, aux Francs-maçons et aux Illuminés
sur la Révolution.’
[95] This was the view taken by the Abbé Barruel in his book on
Jacobinism. In 4 vols.
[96] ‘Memoirs of Henry Steffens.’ Breslau: 1840. Steffens was born in
1775, at Stavagner, in Norway.
CHAPTER II.
HOW THIS VAGUE PERTURBATION OF THE HUMAN MIND SUDDENLY BECAME IN
FRANCE A POSITIVE PASSION, AND WHAT FORM THIS PASSION AT FIRST
ASSUMED.
In the year 1787 this vague perturbation of the human mind, which I
have just described, and which had for some time past been agitating
the whole of Europe without any precise direction, suddenly became in
France an active passion directed to a positive object. But, strange
to say, this object was not that which the French Revolution was to
attain: and the men who were first and most keenly affected by this new
passion were precisely those whom the Revolution was to devour.
At first, indeed, it was not so much the equality of rights as
political freedom which was looked for; and the Frenchmen who were
first moved themselves, and who set society in motion, belonged not to
the lower but to the highest order. Before it sunk down to the people,
this new-born detestation of absolute and arbitrary power burst forth
amongst the nobles, the clergy, the magistracy, the most privileged of
the middle classes,--those in short who, coming nearest in the State
to the master, had more than others the means of resisting him and the
hope of sharing his power.
But why was the hatred of despotism the first symptom? Was it not
because in this state of general dissatisfaction, the common ground on
which it was most easy to agree was that of war against a political
power, which either oppressed every one alike or supported that by
which every one was oppressed; and because the noble and the rich found
in liberty the only mode of expressing this dissatisfaction, which they
felt more than any other class?
I shall not relate how Louis XVI. was led by financial considerations
to convoke about him, in an assembly, the members of the nobility,
the clergy, and the upper rank of the commons, and to submit to this
body of ‘Notables’ the state of affairs. I am discussing history,
not narrating it. It is well known that this assembly, which met at
Versailles on the 22nd February, 1787, consisted of nine peers of
France, twenty noblemen, eight privy councillors, four masters of
requests, ten marshals of France, thirteen archbishops or bishops,
eighteen chief judges, twenty-two municipal officers of different
cities, twelve deputies of the provinces which had retained their
local estates, and some other magistrates--in all from 125 to 130
members.[97] Henry IV. had once before used the same means to postpone
the meeting of the States-General and to obtain without them a sort of
public sanction to his measures: but the times were changed. In 1596
France was at the close of a long revolution, wearied by her efforts,
and distrustful of her powers, seeking nothing but rest, and asking
of her rulers no more than an external deference. The Notables caused
her without difficulty to forget the States-General. But in 1787 they
only revived the recollection of them in her memory. In the reign of
Henry IV., these princes, these nobles, these bishops, these wealthy
commoners who were summoned to advise the King, were still the masters
of society. They could therefore control the movement they had set on
foot. Under Louis XVI. in 1787 these same classes retained only the
externals of power. We have seen that the substance of it was lost to
them for ever. They were, so to speak, hollow bodies, resonant but
easily crushed: still capable of exciting the people, incapable of
directing it.
This great change had come about insensibly and imperceptibly. By none
was it clearly perceived. Those most affected by it knew not that it
had taken place. Even their opponents doubted it. The whole nation had
lived so long apart from its own concerns, that it took but a hazy
view of its condition. All the evils from which it suffered seemed to
have merged in a spirit of opposition and a dislike for the existing
Government. No sooner were the Notables assembled than, forgetting
that they were the nominees of the sovereign, chosen by him to give
their advice and not their injunctions, they proceeded to act as the
representatives of the country. They demanded the public accounts,
they censured the acts of the Government, they attacked most of the
measures, the execution of which they were merely asked to facilitate.
Their assistance was sought: they proffered their opposition.
Public opinion instantly rose in their favour, and threw its whole
weight on their side. Then was witnessed the strange spectacle of a
Government proposing measures favourable to the people without ceasing
to be unpopular, and of an Assembly resisting these measures with the
support of public favour.
Thus the Government proposed to reform the salt tax (_la gabelle_),
which pressed so heavily and often so cruelly on the people. It would
have abolished forced labour, reformed the _taille_, and suppressed
the _twentieths_, a species of tax from which the upper classes had
continued to make themselves exempt. In place of these taxes, which
were to be abolished or reformed, a land-tax was to be imposed, on the
very same basis which has since become the basis of the land-tax of
France, and the custom-houses, which placed grievous restrictions on
trade and industry, were to be removed to the frontier of the kingdom.
Beside, and almost in the place of, the Intendants who administered
each province, an elective body was to be constituted, with the power
not only of watching the conduct of public business, but, in most
cases, of directing it. All these measures were conformable to the
spirit of the times. They were resisted or postponed by the Notables.
Nevertheless, the Government remained unpopular, and the Notables had
the public cry in their favour.
Fearing that he had not been understood, the Minister, Calonne,
explained in a public document that the effect of the new laws would
be to relieve the people from a portion of the taxes, and to throw
that portion on the rich. That was true, but the Minister was still
unpopular. ‘The clergy,’ said he elsewhere, ‘are, before all things,
citizens and subjects. They must pay taxes like all the rest. If the
clergy have debts, a part of their property must be sold to discharge
them.’ That again was to aim at one of the tenderest points of public
opinion: the point was touched, but the public were unmoved.
On the question of the reform of the _taille_, the Notables opposed
it on the ground that it could not relieve those who paid it without
imposing an excessive burden on the other tax-payers, especially on
the nobility and clergy, _whose privileges on the score of taxation
had already been reduced to almost nothing_. The abolition of internal
custom-houses was objected to peremptorily on behalf of the privileges
of certain provinces, which were to be treated with great forbearance.
They highly approved in principle the creation of provincial
assemblies. But they desired that, instead of uniting together the
three Orders in these small local bodies, they should be separated, and
always be presided over by a nobleman or a prelate, for, said some of
the Committees of Notables, ‘these assemblies would tend to democracy
if they were not guided by the superior lights of the first Order.’
Nevertheless, the popularity of the Notables remained unshaken to the
end: nay, it was continually on the increase. They were applauded,
incited, encouraged: and when they resisted the Government, they were
loudly cheered on to the attack. The King, hastening to dismiss them,
thought himself obliged to offer them his public thanks.
Not a few of these persons are said to have been amazed at this degree
of public favour and sudden power. They would have been far more
astonished at it if they could have foreseen what was about to follow:
if they had known that these same laws, which they had resisted with so
much popular applause, were founded on the very principles which were
to triumph in the Revolution; that the traditional institutions which
they opposed to the innovations of the Government were precisely the
institutions which the Revolution was about to destroy.
That which caused the popularity of these Notables was not the form of
their opposition, but the opposition itself. They criticised the abuses
of the Government; they condemned its prodigality; they demanded an
account of its expenditure; they spoke of the constitutional laws of
the country, of the fundamental principles which limit the unlimited
power of the Crown, and, without precisely demanding the interposition
of the nation in the government by the States-General, they perpetually
suggested that idea. This was enough.
The Government had already long been suffering from a malady which
is the endemic and incurable disease of powers that have undertaken
to order, to foresee, to do everything. It had assumed a universal
responsibility. However men might differ in the grounds of their
complaints, they agreed in blaming the common source of them; what had
hitherto been no more than a general inclination of mind, then became a
universal and impetuous passion. All the secret sores caused by daily
contact with dilapidated institutions, which chafed both manners and
opinion in a thousand places--all the smothered animosities kept alive
by divided classes, by contested positions, by absurd or oppressive
distinctions, rose against the supreme power. Long had they sought a
pathway to the light of day: that path once opened they rushed blindly
along it. It was not their natural path, but it was the first they
found open. Hatred of arbitrary power became then their sole passion,
and the Government their common enemy.
FOOTNOTE:
[97] Buchez and Roux, ‘Parliamentary History of the Revolution,’ p. 480.
CHAPTER III.
HOW THE PARLIAMENTS OF FRANCE, FOLLOWING PRECEDENT, OVERTHREW THE
MONARCHY.
The feudal Government, whose ruins still sheltered the nation, had been
a government in which arbitrary power, violence, and great freedom
were commingled. Under its laws, if actions had often been restricted,
speech was habitually independent and bold. The legislative power was
exercised by kings, but never without control. When the great political
assemblies of France ceased to be, the Parliaments took, in some sort,
the place of them; and before they enregistered in the code that
regulated their judicial proceedings a new law decreed by the King,
they stated to the sovereign their objections, and made known to him
their opinions.
Much inquiry has been made as to the first origin of this usurpation
of legislative power by judicial authority. It is vain to seek that
origin elsewhere than in the general manners of the time, which could
not tolerate, or even conceive, a power so absolute and secret, as
not, at least, to admit of discussion on the terms of obedience. The
institution was in nowise premeditated. It sprang spontaneously from
the very root of the ideas then prevalent and from the usages alike of
subjects and of kings.
An edict, before it was put in force, was sent down to the Parliament.
The agents of the Crown explained its principles and its merits;
the magistrates discussed it. All this was done in public, in open
debate, with that virility which characterised all the institutions
of the Middle Ages. It frequently happened that the Parliament sent
deputies to the King, several times over, to supplicate him to modify
or withdraw an edict. If the King came down in person, he allowed his
own law to be debated with vivacity, sometimes with violence, in his
presence. But when at last his will was made known, all was silence and
obedience: for the magistracy acknowledged that they were no more than
the first officers and representatives of the sovereign; their duty was
to advise but not to coerce him.
In 1787, the ancient precedents of the monarchy were faithfully and
strictly followed. The old machine of Royal government was again set in
motion: but it became apparent that the machine was propelled by some
new motive power of an unknown kind, which, instead of causing it to
move onwards, was about to break it in pieces.
The King then, according to custom, caused the new edicts to be brought
down to the Parliament: and the Parliament, equally according to
custom, laid its humble remonstrance at the steps of the throne.[98]
The King replied; and Parliaments insisted. For centuries things had
gone on thus, and the nation heard from time to time this sort of
political dialogue carried on above its head between the sovereign and
his magistrates. The practice had only been interrupted during the
reign of Louis XIV. and for a time. But the novelty lay in the subject
of the debate and the nature of the arguments.
This time the Parliament, before it proceeded to register the edicts,
called for all the accounts of the finance department, which we should
now call the budget of the State, in support of the measures; and as
the King naturally declined to hand over the entire government to a
body which was irresponsible and non-elected, and so to share the
legislative power with a Court of Justice, the Parliament then declared
that the nation alone had the right to raise fresh taxes,[99] and
thereupon demanded that the nation should be convoked. The Parliament
grasped the very heart of the people, but held it only for a moment.
The arguments put forward by the Magistracy in support of their demands
were not less novel than the demands themselves. The King, they said,
was only the administrator and not the owner of the public fortune:
the representative and chief officer of the nation, not its master.
Sovereignty resided in the nation itself. The nation alone could decide
great questions: its rights were not dependent on the will of the
sovereign; they took their being from the nature of man; they were as
inalienable and indestructible as human nature itself. ‘The institution
of the States-General,’ they declared, ‘is a principle founded on the
rights of man and confirmed by reason.’[100] ‘Common interest has
combined men in society, and given rise to governments: that alone can
maintain them.’[101] ‘No prescription of the States-General can run
against the nature of things or against the imperishable rights of the
nation.’[102] ‘Public opinion is rarely mistaken: it is rare that men
receive impressions contrary to truth.’[103]
The King having exiled the Parliament from Paris, that body protested
that liberty of speech and action was an inalienable right of man, and
could not be wrested from him without tyranny, save by the regular
forms of judicial procedure.
It must not be supposed that the Parliaments alleged these principles
as novelties:[104] they were, on the contrary, very industriously
traced up to the cradle of the monarchy. The judgments or decrees
of the Parliament of Paris were crammed with historical quotations,
frequently borrowed from the Middle Ages, in barbarous Latin. They are
full of provincial capitulations, royal ordinances, beds of justice,
rules, privileges, and precedents, which lost themselves in the shadows
of the past.
Strangely enough, at the same moment that the Parliament of
Franche-Comté proclaimed the indestructible rights of the nation, it
protested against any infraction of the peculiar privileges of the
province as they existed at the period of annexation under Louis XIV.
So again the Parliament of Normandy invoked the States-General of the
kingdom ‘to inaugurate a new order of things,’ but not the less did it
demand, in the name of its own feudal traditions, the restoration of
the States of Normandy, as the peculiar privilege of that province: so
curiously were ideas, just born into the world, enclosed and swathed in
these remains of antiquity.
It was a tradition of the old monarchy that the Parliament should
use in its remonstrances animated and almost violent language: a
certain exaggeration of words was conceded to it. The most absolute
sovereigns had tolerated this licence of speech, by reason, indeed,
of the powerlessness of those who uttered it: as they were certain
in the end to be reduced to obedience and compressed within narrow
limits, the indulgence of a free utterance was readily left to them.
The Parliament, moreover, was wont to make a great deal of noise for a
small result: what it said went beyond what it meant: this franchise
had become a sort of right of the magistracy.
On this occasion the Parliament carried their ancient freedom to
a degree of licence never heard before; for a new-born fire was
burning in their hearts and unconsciously inflamed their language.
Certainly, among the governments of our own time, which are almost all,
nevertheless, governments maintained by the sword, not one could allow
its ministers and its measures to be attacked in such terms by the
representatives of its own authority.
‘Despotism, Sire,’ said the Parliament of Paris, ‘is substituted
for the laws of the realm, and the magistracy is no more than the
instrument of arbitrary power.... Would that Your Majesty could
interrogate the victims of that power, confined forgotten in
impenetrable prisons, the abode of silence and injustice; those whom
intrigue, cupidity, the jealousy of power, the thirst of vengeance, the
fear or the hatred of justice, private pique or personal convenience,
have caused to be put there.’ Then drawing a parallel between two
citizens, one rich and the other poor, the latter being oppressed by
the former, the Parliament added--‘Is indigence then a crime? Have
flesh and blood no claims? Does a man without credit, or a poor man,
cease to be a citizen?’
It was especially on the subject of taxation and against the collectors
of the revenue that, even in the calmest times, the judicial bodies
were accustomed to inveigh with extreme violence. No sooner was the
new tax announced than the Parliament of Paris declared it to be
disastrous; consternation followed the proposal; its adoption would
give rise to a general mourning.[105] The population, harassed by
fiscal exactions, were at their wits’ end.[106] To arrogate to one’s
self the power of levying tribute without the States-General was to
declare aloud that the sovereign seeks not to be a king of France, but
a king of serfs.[107] The substance of the people was become the prey
of the cupidity of courtiers and the rapacity of contractors.[108]
Great as was the excitement of that time, it would still be very
difficult to account for the language of these magistrates without
recalling what had been said so many times before on the same subject.
As under the old monarchy most of the taxes were levied on account
of private persons, who held them on farm, or by their agents; for
centuries past men had accustomed themselves to look upon taxation
as it bore on the private emolument of certain individuals, and not
as the common income of the nation. Taxes were commonly denounced as
_odious exactions_. The salt duty was styled the _infernal machine
of the gabelle_: those who collected the taxes were spoken of as
public robbers, enriched by the poverty of everybody else. So said the
tax-payers; the courts of justice held the same language; and even the
Government, which had leased to these very farmers the rights they
exercised, scarcely spoke differently of them. It seemed as if their
business was not its own, and that it sought a way of escape amidst the
clamour which pursued its own agents.
When, therefore, the Parliament of Paris spoke in this manner on the
subject of taxes, it merely followed an old and general practice. The
play was the same, but the audience was changed; and the clamour,
instead of dying away as it had commonly done within the limit of the
classes whom their privileges caused to be but little affected by
taxation, was now so loud and so reiterated that it penetrated to those
classes which bore the heaviest burden, and ere long filled them with
indignation.
If the Parliament employed new arguments to vindicate its own
rights, the Government employed arguments not less new in defence
of its ancient prerogatives. For example, in a pamphlet attributed
to the Court, which appeared about that time, the following passage
occurs:--‘It is a question of _privilege_ which excites the Parliament.
They want to retain their exemption from taxation; this is nothing but
a formidable combination between the nobility of sword and gown to
continue under colour of liberty to humble and enslave the commons,
whom the King alone defends, and means to raise.’[109]
‘My object has been’ said Calonne, ‘to slay the hydra of privileges,
exemptions, and abuses.’[110]
Whilst, however, these discussions were going on upon the principle
of government, the daily work of administration threatened to stop:
there was no money. The Parliament had rejected the measures relating
to taxation. It refused to sanction a loan. In this perplexity the
King, seeing that he could not gain over the Assembly, attempted to
coerce it. He went down to the Chamber, and before he proceeded to
command their submission, less eager to exercise his rights than
to confirm them, he caused the Edicts to be again debated in his
presence. He began by laying down that his authority was absolute. The
legislative power resided in its integrity in his hands. He required no
extraordinary powers to carry on the government. The States-General,
when he chose to consult them, could only tender advice; he was still
the supreme arbiter of their representations and their grievances. This
sitting took place on November 19th, 1787. Having said thus much, every
one was allowed to speak in his presence. The most opposite and often
violent propositions were asserted to his face during a discussion of
eight hours; after which he withdrew, declaring, as his last word, that
he refused to convoke the States-General at present, though he promised
them for the year 1791.
Yet, after having thus suffered his most acknowledged and least
formidable rights to be contested in his own presence, the King
resolved to resume the exercise of those which were most disputed and
most unpopular. His own act had opened the mouths of the speakers, but
he sought to punish them for having spoken. In one of its remonstrances
the Parliament of Paris had said, ‘Sire, the French monarchy would
be reduced to a state of despotism if, under the King’s authority,
Ministers could dispose of personal freedom by _lettres de cachet_, and
of the rights of property by _lits de justice_, of civil and criminal
affairs by _scire facias_,[111] and of the judicature itself by partial
exile or by the arbitrary translation of judges.’
To which the King replied: ‘If the greater number of votes in my Courts
can constrain my will, the monarchy would become a mere aristocracy
of magistrates.’ ‘Sire,’ rejoined the Parliament, ‘no aristocracy in
France, but no despotism.’[112]
Two men, in the course of this struggle, had especially distinguished
themselves by the boldness of their speeches and by their revolutionary
attitude: these were M. Goislard and M. d’Eprémenil. It was resolved
to arrest them. Then occurred a scene, the prelude, so to speak, of
the great tragedy that was to follow, well calculated to exhibit an
easy-going Government under the aspect of tyranny.
Informed of the resolution taken against them, these two magistrates
left their homes, and took refuge in the Parliament itself, in the
full dress of their Order, where they were lost amidst the crowd of
judges forming that great body. The Palace of Justice was surrounded
by troops, and the doors guarded. Viscount d’Agoult, who commanded
them, appeared alone in the great Chamber. The whole Parliament was
assembled, and sitting in the most solemn form. The number of the
judges, the venerable antiquity of the Court, the dignity of their
dress, the simplicity of their demeanour, the extent of their power,
the majesty of the very hall, filled with all the memorials of our
history, all contributed to make the Parliament the greatest and most
honoured thing in France, after the Throne.
In presence of such an Assembly the officer stood at first at gaze.
He was asked who sent him there. He answered in rough but embarrassed
accents, and demanded that the two members whom he was ordered to
arrest should be pointed out to him. The Parliament sat motionless
and silent. The officer withdrew--re-entered--then withdrew again;
the Parliament, still motionless and silent, neither resisting nor
yielding. The time of year was that when the days are shortest. Night
came on. The troops lit fires round the approaches to the Palace, as
round a besieged fort. The populace, astonished by so unwonted a sight,
surrounded them in crowds, but stood aloof: the populace was touched
but not yet excited, and therefore stood aloof to contemplate, by the
light of those bivouac fires, a scene so new and unwonted under the
monarchy. For there it might see how the oldest Government in Europe
applied itself to teach the people to outrage the majesty of the oldest
institutions, and to violate in their sanctuary the most august of
ancient powers.
This lasted till midnight, when D’Eprémenil at last rose. He thanked
the Parliament for the effort it had made to save him. He declined
to trespass longer on the generous sympathy of his colleagues. He
commended the commonwealth and his children to their care, and,
descending the steps of the court, surrendered himself to the officer.
It seemed as if he was leaving that assembly to mount the scaffold.
The scaffold, indeed, he was one day to mount, but that was in other
times and under other powers. The only living witness of this strange
scene, Duke Pasquier, has told me that at these words of D’Eprémenil
the whole Assembly burst into tears, as if it had been Regulus marching
out of Rome to return to the horrid death which awaited him in
Carthage. The Marshal de Noailles sobbed aloud. Alas! how many tears
were ere long to be shed on loftier woes than these. Such grief was no
doubt exaggerated, but not unreal. At the commencement of a revolution
the vivacity of emotions greatly exceeds the importance of events, as
at the close of revolutions it falls short of them.
Having thus struck a blow at the whole body of the Parliaments,
represented by their chief, it only remained to annihilate their
power. Six edicts were simultaneously published.[113] These edicts,
which roused all France, were designed to effect several of the
most important and useful reforms which the Revolution has since
accomplished: the separation of the legislative and judicial powers,
the abolition of exceptional courts of justice, and the establishment
of all the principles which, to this day, govern the judicial
organisation of France, both civil and criminal. All these reforms
were conceived in the true spirit of the age, and met the real and
lasting wants of society. But, as they were aimed at the privileged
jurisdiction of the Parliaments, they struck down the idol of the hour,
and they emanated from a power which was detested. That was enough.
In the eyes of the nation these new edicts were a triumph of absolute
government. The time had not yet come when everything may be pardoned
by democracy to despotism in exchange for order and equality. In a
moment the nation rose. Each Parliament became at once a focus of
resistance round which the Orders of the province grouped themselves,
so as to present a firm front to the action of the central power of
government.
France was at that time divided, as is well known, into thirteen
judicial provinces, each of which was attached to a Parliament. All
these Parliaments were absolutely independent of one another, all of
them had equal prerogatives, all of them were invested with the same
right of discussing the mandates of the legislator before submitting to
them. This organisation will be seen to have been natural, on looking
back to the time when most of these courts of justice were founded.
The different parts of France were so dissimilar in their interests,
their disposition, their customs, and their manners, that the same
legislation could not be applied to all of them at once. As a distinct
law was usually enacted for each province, it was natural that in each
province there should be a Parliament whose duty it was to test this
law. In more recent times, the French having become more similar, one
law sufficed for all: but the right of testing the law remained divided.
An edict of the King applying equally to the whole of France, after it
had been accepted and executed in a certain manner in one part of the
territory, might still be modified or contested in the twelve other
parts. That was the right, but that was not the custom. For a long
period of time the separate Parliaments had ceased to contest anything,
save the administrative rules, which might be peculiar to their own
province. They did not debate the general laws of the kingdom, unless
the peculiar interests of their own province seemed to be affected
by some one of their provisions. As for the principle of such laws,
their opportunity or efficiency, these were considerations they did
not commonly entertain. On these points they were wont to rely on the
Parliament of Paris, which, by a sort of tacit agreement, was looked up
to by all the other Parliaments as their political guide.
On this occasion each Parliament chose to examine these edicts, as if
they concerned its own province alone, and as if it had been the sole
representative of France; each province chose, too, to distinguish
itself by a separate resistance in the midst of the general resistance
they encountered. All of these discussed the principle of each edict,
as well as its special application. A clause which had been accepted
without difficulty by one of these bodies was obstinately opposed
elsewhere: one of them barely notices what called forth the indignation
of another. Assailed by thirteen adversaries at once, each of which
attacked with different weapons and struck in different places, the
Government, amidst all these bodies, could not lay its hand upon a
single head.
But, what was even more remarkable than the diversity of these
attacks, was the uniform intention which animated them. Each of the
thirteen courts struggled after its own fashion and upon its own soil,
but the sentiment which excited them was identically the same. The
remonstrances made at that time by the different Parliaments, and
published by them, would fill many volumes; but open the book where you
will, you seem to be reading the same page: always the same thoughts
expressed for the most part in the same words. All of them demanded
the States-General in the name of the imprescriptible rights of the
nation: all of them approved the conduct of the Parliament of Paris,
protested against the acts of violence directed against it, encouraged
it to resist, and imitated, as well as it could, not only its measures,
but the philosophical language of its opposition. ‘Subjects,’ said the
Parliament of Grenoble, ‘have rights as well as the sovereign--rights
which are essential to all who are not slaves.’ ‘The just man,’ said
the Parliament of Normandy, ‘does not change his principles when he
changes his abode.’ ‘The King,’ said the Parliament of Besançon,
‘cannot wish to have for his subjects humiliated slaves.’[114] The
tumult raised at the same time by all these magistrates scattered
over the surface of the country sounds like the confused noise of a
multitude: listen attentively to what they are saying: it is as the
voice of one man.
What is it then that the country was saying thus simultaneously?
Everywhere you find the same ideas and the same expressions, so that
beneath the unity of the judicature you discover the unity of the
nation: and through this multiplicity of old institutions, of local
customs, of provincial privileges, of different usages, which seemed
to sever France into so many different peoples, each living a separate
life, you discern one of the nations of the earth in which the greatest
degree of similarity subsists between man and man. This movement of
the Parliaments, at once multiple and uniform, attacking like a crowd,
striking like a single arm,--this judicial insurrection was more
dangerous to the Government than all other insurrections, even military
revolt; because it turned against the Government that regular, civil,
and moral power which is the habitual instrument of authority. The
strength of an army may coerce for a day, but the constant defence of
Governments lies in courts of justice. Another striking point in this
resistance of the judicial bodies, was not so much the mischief they
themselves did to the Government, as that which they allowed to be
done to it by others. They established, for instance, the worst form
of liberty of the press: that, namely, which springs not from a right,
but from the non-execution of the laws. They introduced, too, the right
of holding promiscuous meetings, so that the different members of each
Order and the Orders themselves could remove for a time the barrier
which divided them, and concert a common course of action.
Thus it was that all the Orders in each province engaged gradually
in the struggle, but not all at the same time or in the same manner.
The nobility were the first and boldest champions in that contest
against the absolute powers of the King.[115] It was in the place
of the aristocracy that absolute government had taken root: they
were the first to be humbled and annoyed by some obscure agent of
the central power, who, under the name of an Intendant, was sent
perpetually to regulate and transact behind their backs the smallest
local affairs: they had produced not a few of the writers who had
protested with the greatest energy against despotism; free institutions
and the new opinions had almost everywhere found in the nobles their
chief supporters. Independently of their own grievances, they were
carried away by the common passion which had become universal, as is
demonstrated by the nature of their attacks. Their complaint was not
that their peculiar privileges had been violated, but that the common
law of the realm had been trampled under foot, the provincial Estates
abolished, the States-General interrupted, the nation treated like a
minor, and the country deprived of the management of its own affairs.
At this first period of the Revolution, when hostilities had not
yet broken out amongst the ranks of society, the language of the
aristocracy was exactly the same as that of the other classes,
distinguished only by going greater lengths and taking a higher tone.
Their opposition had something republican about it: it was the same
feeling animating prouder men and souls more accustomed to live in
contact with the world’s greatness.
A man who had till then been a violent enemy of the privileged orders,
having been present at one of the meetings where the opposition was
organised and where the nobles had made a sacrifice of all their rights
amidst the applause of the commons, relates this scene in a letter
to a friend and exclaims with enthusiasm, ‘Our nobility (how truly
a nobility!) has come down to point out our rights, to defend them
with us: I have heard it with my own ears; free elections, equality
of numbers, equality of taxation--every heart was touched by their
disinterestedness and kindled by their patriotism.’[116]
When public rejoicings took place at Grenoble upon the news of the
dismissal of the Archbishop of Sens, August 29th, 1788, the city was
instantly illuminated and covered with transparencies, on one of which
the following lines were read:--
‘Nobles, vous méritez le sort qui vous décore,
De l’État chancelant vous êtes les soutiens.
La nation, par vous, va briser ses liens;
Déjà du plus beau jour on voit briller l’aurore.’
In Brittany the nobles were ready to arm the peasants, in order to
resist the Royal authorities; and at Paris when the first riot broke
out (August 24th, 1788) which was feebly and indecisively repressed
by the army, several of the officers, who belonged, as is well
known, to the nobility, resigned their commissions rather than shed
the blood of the people. The Parliament complimented them on their
conduct, and called them ‘those noble and generous soldiers whom the
purity and delicacy of their sentiments had compelled to resign their
commissions.’[117]
The opposition of the clergy was not less decided though more discreet.
It naturally assumed the forms appropriate to the clerical body. When
the Parliament of Paris was exiled to Troyes and received the homage of
all the public bodies of that city, the Chapter of the Cathedral, as
the organ of the clergy, complimented the Parliament in the following
terms:--‘The vigour restored to the constitutional maxims of the
monarchy has succeeded in defeating the territorial subsidy, and you
have taught the Treasury to respect the sacred rights of property.’
‘The general mourning of the nation and your own removal from your
duties and from the bosom of your families were to us a poignant
spectacle, and whilst these august walls echoed the sounds of public
grief, we carried into the Sanctuary our private sorrow and our
prayers.’--(Official Papers, 1787.)
Wherever the three Orders combined in opposition, the clergy made
their appearance. Usually the Bishop spoke little, but he took the
chair which was offered him. The famous meeting at Romans, that which
protested with the greatest violence against the Edicts of May, was
alternately presided over by the Archbishop of Narbonne and the
Archbishop of Vienne.[118]
Generally speaking, parish priests were seen at all the meetings of the
Orders, where they took a lively and direct part in the debates.
At the outset of the struggle the middle classes had shown themselves
timid and irresolute. Yet it was on those classes especially that the
Government had relied for consolation in its distress, and for aid
without abandoning its ancient prerogatives: the propositions of the
Government had been framed with peculiar regard to the interests of the
middle classes and to their passions. Long habituated to obedience,
they did not engage without apprehension in a course of resistance.
Their opposition was tempered with caution. They still flattered the
power to which they were opposed, and acknowledged its rights while
they contested the use of them. They seemed partly seduced by its
favours, and ready to yield to the Government, provided some share of
government were bestowed on themselves. Even when they appeared to
direct, the middle classes never ventured to walk alone; impelled by an
internal heat which they did not care to show, they sought rather to
turn the passions of the upper classes to their own advantage than to
increase the violence of them. But as the struggle was prolonged the
_bourgeoisie_ became more excited, more animated, more bold, until it
outstripped the other classes, assumed the leading part and kept it,
until the People appeared upon the stage.
At this period of the contest not a trace is to be seen of a war of
classes. ‘All the Orders,’ said the Parliament of Toulouse, ‘breathe
nothing but concord, and their only ambition is to promote the common
happiness.’
A man, then unknown, but who afterwards became celebrated for his
talents and for his misfortunes, Barnave, in a paper written in defence
of the _Tiers-État_ pointed out this agreement of the three Orders, and
exclaimed, with the enthusiasm of the time, ‘Ministers of religion!
you obtained from the reverence of our forefathers the right to form
among yourselves the first Order of the State; you are an integral
part of the French Constitution, and you ought to maintain it. And
you, illustrious families! the monarchy has never ceased to flourish
under your protection; you created it at the cost of your blood, you
have many times saved it from the foreigner; save it now from internal
enemies. Secure to your children the splendid benefits your fathers
have handed down to you; the name of hero is not honoured under a
servile sky.’[119]
These sentiments might be sincere; one sole passion paramount to other
passions pervaded all classes, namely, a spirit of resistance to the
Government as the common enemy, a spirit of opposition throughout, in
small as well as in great affairs, which struck at everything, and
assumed all shapes, even those which disfigured it. Some, in order
to resist the Government, laid stress on what remained of old local
franchises. Here a man stood up for some old privilege of his class,
some secular right of his calling or his corporation; there, another
man, forgetting his grievances and animosity against the privileged
classes, denounced an edict which, he said, would reduce to nothing the
seignorial jurisdictions, and would thus _strip the nobles of all the
dignity of their fiefs_.
In this violent struggle every man grasped, as if by chance, the
weapon nearest at hand, even when it was the least suited to him. If
one took note of all the privileges, all the exclusive rights, all
the old municipal and provincial franchises which were at this epoch
claimed, asserted, and loudly demanded, the picture would be at once
very exact and very deceptive; it would appear as if the object of the
impending Revolution was not to destroy, but to restore, the old order
of society. So difficult is it for the individuals who are carried
along by one of the great movements of human society to distinguish
the true motive power amongst the causes by which they are themselves
impelled. Who would have imagined that the impulse which caused so
many traditional rights to be asserted was the very passion which was
leading irresistibly to their entire abolition?[120]
Now let us close our ears for a moment to these tumultuous sounds,
proceeding from the middle and upper classes of the nation, to catch,
if we may, some whisper beginning to make itself heard from the midst
of the People. No sign that I can discover from this distance of time
announced that the rural population was at all agitated. The peasant
plodded onwards in his wonted track. That vast section of the nation
was still neutral, and, as it were, unseen.[121]
Even in the towns the people remained a stranger to the excitement of
the upper classes, and indifferent to the stir which was going on above
its head. They listen; they watch, with some surprise, but with more
curiosity than anger. But no sooner did the agitation make itself felt
among them than it was found to have assumed a new character. When
the magistrates re-entered Paris in triumph, the people, which had
done nothing to defend these members of Parliament, arrested in their
places, gathered together tumultuously to hail their return.
I have said in another part of this book that nothing was more frequent
under the old _régime_ than riots. The Government was so strong that it
willingly allowed these transient ebullitions to have free scope. But
on this occasion there were numerous indications that a very different
state of things had begun. It was a time when everything old assumed
new features--riots like everything else. Corn-riots had perpetually
occurred in France; but they were made by mobs without order, object,
or consistence. Now, on the contrary, broke out insurrection, as we
have since so often witnessed it, with its tocsin, its nocturnal
cries, its sanguinary placards; a fierce and cruel apparition; a mob
infuriated, yet organised and directed to some end, which rushes at
once into civil war, and shatters every obstacle.
Upon the intelligence that the Parliament had prevailed, and that the
Archbishop of Sens retired from the Ministry, the populace of Paris
broke out in disorderly manifestations, burnt the minister in effigy,
and insulted the watch. These disturbances were, as usual, put down
by force; but the mob ran to arms, burnt the guard-houses, disarmed
the troops, attempted to set fire to the Hôtel Lamoignon, and was only
driven back by the King’s household troops. Such was the early but
terrible germ of the insurrections of the Revolution.[122]
The Reign of Terror was already visible in disguise. Paris, which
nowadays a hundred thousand men scarcely keep in order, was then
protected by an indifferent sort of police called the watch. Paris
had in it neither barracks nor troops. The household troops and the
Swiss Guards were quartered in the environs. This time the watch was
powerless.
In presence of so general and so novel an opposition, the Government
showed signs at first of surprise and of annoyance rather than of
defeat. It employed all its old weapons--proclamations, _lettres de
cachet_, exile--but it employed them in vain. Force was resorted to,
enough to irritate, not enough to terrify; moreover, a whole people
cannot be terrified. An attempt was made to excite the passions of the
multitude against the rich, the citizens against the aristocracy, the
lower magistrates against the courts of justice. It was the old game;
but this too was played in vain. New judges were appointed, but most
of the new magistrates refused to sit. Favours, money were proffered;
venality itself had given way to passion. An effort was made to divert
the public attention; but it remained concentrated. Unable to stop or
even to check the liberty of writing, the Government sought to use it
by opposing one press to another press. A number of little pamphlets
were published on its side, at no small cost.[123] Nobody read the
defence, but the myriad pamphlets that attacked it were devoured. All
these pamphlets were evolved from the abstract principles of Rousseau’s
_Contrat Social_. The Sovereign was to be a citizen king; every
infraction of the law was treason _against the nation_. Nothing in the
whole fabric of society was sound; the Court was a hateful den in which
famished courtiers devoured the spoils of the people.
At length an incident occurred which hurried on the crisis. The
Parliament of Dauphiny had resisted like all the other Parliaments,
and had been smitten like them all. But nowhere did the cause which
it defended find a more general sympathy or more resolute champions.
Mutual class grievances were there perhaps more intense than in any
other place; but the prevailing excitement lulled for a time all
private passions; and, whereas in most of the other provinces each
class carried on its warfare against the Government separately and
without combination, in Dauphiny they regularly constituted themselves
into a political body and prepared for resistance. Dauphiny had
enjoyed for ages its own States, which had been suspended in 1618,
but not abolished. A few nobles, a few priests, and a few citizens
having met of their own accord in Grenoble, dared to call upon the
nobility, the clergy, and the commons to meet as provincial Estates in
a country-house near Grenoble, named Vizille. This building was an old
feudal castle, formerly the residence of the Dukes of Lesdiguières, but
recently purchased by a new family, that of Périer, to whom it belongs
to this day. No sooner had they met in this place, than the three
Orders constituted themselves, and an air of regularity was thrown
over their irregular proceedings. Forty-nine members of the clergy
were present, two hundred and thirty-three members of the nobility,
three hundred and ninety-one of the commons. The members of the whole
meeting were counted; but not to divide the Orders, it was decided,
without discussion, that the president should be chosen from one of
the two higher Orders, and the secretary from the commons: the Count
de Morges was called to the chair, M. Mounier was named secretary.
The Assembly then proceeded to deliberate, and protested in a body
against the Édicts of May and the suppression of the Parliament. They
demanded the restoration of the old Estates of the province which had
been arbitrarily and illegally suspended; they demanded that in these
Estates a double number of representatives should be given to the
commons; they called for the prompt convocation of the States-General,
and decided that on the spot a letter should be addressed to the King
stating their grievances and their demands. This letter, couched in
violent language and in a tone of civil war, was in fact immediately
signed by all the members. Similar protests had already been made,
similar demands had been expressed with equal violence; but nowhere as
yet had there been so signal an example of the union of all classes.
‘The members of the nobility and the clergy,’ says the Journal of the
House, ‘were complimented by a member of the commons on the loyalty
with which, laying aside former pretensions, they had hastened to do
justice to the commons, and on their zeal to support the union of the
three Orders.’ The President replied that the peers would always
be ready to act with their fellow-citizens for the salvation of the
country.[124]
The Assembly of Vizille produced an amazing effect throughout France.
It was the last time that an event, happening elsewhere than in
Paris, has exercised a great influence on the general destinies of
the country. The Government feared that what Dauphiny had dared to
do might be imitated everywhere. Despairing at last of conquering
the resistance opposed to it, it declared itself beaten. Louis XVI.
dismissed his ministers, abolished or suspended his edicts, recalled
the Parliaments, and granted the States-General. This was not, it must
be well remarked, a concession made by the King on a point of detail,
it was a renunciation of absolute power; it was a participation in the
Government that he admitted and secured to the country by at length
conceding in earnest the States-General. One is astonished in reading
the writings of that time to find them speaking of a great revolution
already accomplished before 1789. It was in truth a great revolution,
but one destined to be swallowed up and lost in the immensity of the
Revolution about to follow.
Numerous indeed and prodigious in extent were the faults that had to
be committed to bring affairs to the state they then were in. But the
Government of Louis XVI., having allowed itself to be driven to such a
point, cannot be condemned for giving way. No means of resistance were
at its disposal. Material force it could not use, as the army lent a
reluctant, a nerveless support to its policy. The law it could not use,
for the courts of justice were in opposition. In the old kingdom of
France, moreover, the absolute power of the Crown had never had a force
of its own nor possessed instruments depending solely on itself. It had
never assumed the aspect of military tyranny; it was not born in camps
and never had recourse to arms. It was essentially a civil power, a
work not of violence but of art. This Government was so organised as
easily to overpower individual resistance, but its constitution, its
precedents, its habits, and those of the nation forbade it to govern
against a majority in opposition. The power of the Crown had only
been established by dividing classes, by hedging them round with the
prejudices, the jealousies, the hatreds, peculiar to each of them, so
as never to have to do with more than one class at once, and to bring
the weight of all the others to bear against it. No sooner had these
different classes, sinking for a moment the barriers by which they had
been divided, met and agreed upon a common resistance, though but for
a single day, than the absolute power of the Government was conquered.
The Assembly of Vizille was the outward and visible sign of this new
union and of what it might bring to pass. And although this occurrence
took place in the depths of a small province and in a corner of the
Alps, it thus became the principal event of the time. It exhibited
to every eye that which had been as yet visible but to few, and in a
moment it decided the victory.
FOOTNOTES:
[98] The Edicts of the 17th June, 1787, were:
1. For the free transport of grain.
2. To establish provincial assemblies.
3. For the commutation of forced labour.
4. A land subsidy.
5. A Stamp Act.
The Parliament accepted the three first, and resisted the two
last. When the importance of the Edict on Provincial Assemblies is
considered, which created new local powers, and comprised an immense
revolution in government and society, one cannot but be amazed at the
concurrence which existed, on this occasion, between the two most
ancient powers of the monarchy, the one to present, the other to
accept it. Nothing can show more forcibly to what a degree, amongst
this people, who were all perpetually engaged, even to the women, in
debating on government, the true science of human affairs was unknown,
and how the Government, which had plunged the nation in this ignorance,
had ended by sinking into the same darkness. This Edict completed the
destruction of the whole ancient political system of Europe, overthrew
at once whatever remained of feudal monarchy, substituted democracy for
aristocracy, the commonwealth for the Crown. I do not pronounce on the
value of this change. I merely affirm that it amounted to an immediate
and radical overthrow of all the old institutions of the realm, and
that if the Parliament and the King plunged together thus resolutely
on this course, it was because neither of them saw whither they were
going. Hand in hand they leapt into the dark.
[99] 16th July, 1787. The nation assembled in the States-General has
alone the right to grant subsidies to the King.
[100] Remonstrance of the Parliament of Paris, 24th July, 1787. Notes
taken from the official documents.
[101] Parliament of Grenoble, 5th January, 1678. ‘Despotic measures,’
said the Parliament of Besançon (1787), ‘are not more binding on
a nation than a military constitution, and cannot run against the
inalienable rights of the nation.’
[102] Remonstrance of the Parliament of Grenoble, 20th December, 1787.
[103] Remonstrance of the Parliament of Paris, 24th July, 1787.
[104] In the speech of M. de Simonville, of the 16th July, 1787,
delivered in the Parliament of Paris, he went back to 1301 to prove the
utility, necessity, and safety of the States-General. He spoke at the
same time of the Constitution, of patriotism, rights of the nation,
ministers of the altars, &c. (Official Documents.)
[105] Histoire du Gouvernement Français du 22 Février, 1787, au 31
Décembre.
[106] Parlement de Normandie, 1787.
[107] Parlement de Toulouse, 27 Août, 1787.
[108] Parlement de Besançon, 1787.
[109] A pamphlet entitled, ‘Réclamation du Tiers-État au Roi.’
[110] ‘Mémoire Apologétique,’ 1787.
[111] The word in the original is _évocation_. I have adopted the
English law term which most nearly approaches it.--_Trans._
[112] Remonstrances of the 4th January, 1788, and 4th May, 1788.
A pamphlet of the time, written in defence of the King, is a mere
diatribe against aristocracy. It was attributed to Lecesne des Maisons.
[113] The object of the Edicts, which were sent down to the Parliament
on the 8th May, 1788, is well known. The first and second of these
established a new order of judicature. Exceptional courts of justice
were abolished. Small courts were scattered over the country, which
have since become the French Courts of First Instance. Higher courts
were established to hear appeals, to sit on criminal cases, and on
civil cases under 20,000 livres in value: these were the germ of the
appeal courts of France; lastly, the Parliaments were to hear causes
in appeal of more than 20,000 livres value--but this was a needless
provision, and it has disappeared. Such was the reform comprised in the
two first edicts. The third contained reforms of equal importance, in
criminal and penal law. No capital executions were henceforth to take
place, without such a respite as would afford time for the exercise of
the prerogative of mercy: no coercive interrogatory was to be used:
the felon’s bench was abolished: no criminal sentence to be given
without reasons: compensation was to be awarded to those who should be
unjustly indicted. The fourth and fifth edicts related exclusively to
the Parliaments, and were designed to modify or rather to destroy them.
(See the ‘History of the Revolution,’ by Buchez and Roux.)
[114] These citations are from official documents.
[115] ‘Will posterity believe,’ said a pamphlet of the time, ‘that the
seditious views of the Parliaments are shared by princes of the blood,
by dukes, counts, marquises, and by spiritual as well as temporal
peers?’ (‘Lettres flamandes à un Ami.’)
[116] Letter of Charles R---- to the Commons of Brittany, 1788.
[117] Decree of September 25th, 1788. (Official documents). On the
occasion of the partial riot caused at Grenoble by the triumphant
return of the Parliament (October 12th, 1788), the army, instead of
repressing it, was incited by its own officers to take part in the
movement. ‘The officers of the regiment’ (said an eye-witness) ‘did
not show less ardour; they waited in a body on the First President to
express the joy they felt on his return. On this occasion we cannot
refuse ourselves the pleasure of paying them a tribute of praise. Their
prudence, their humanity, their patriotism have earned for them the
esteem of the city.’ I think Bernadotte was serving in this regiment.
[118] September 14th, 1788. The Archbishop, as chairman, alone signed
the letter written in the name of the three Orders which appears by its
style to have been drafted by Mounier, November 8th, 1788.
[119] Published between May 8th, 1788, and the Restoration of the
Parliaments.
[120] A single instance will suffice to show how the hatred of
despotism, and public or corporate interests, caused the very
principles of this Revolution to be repudiated by those who were to
be its champions. After the Edicts of May, 1788, the whole bar of the
Parliament of Aix signed a protest, in which the following sentences
occur: ‘Is uniformity in legislation so absolute a benefit? In a
vast monarchy, composed of several distinct populations, may not the
difference of manners and customs bring about some difference in the
laws? The customs and franchises of each province are the patrimony
of all the subjects of the Crown. It is proposed to degrade and
destroy the seignorial jurisdictions, which are the sacred heritage of
the nobility. What confusion! What disorder!’ This document was the
production of the great lawyer Portalis (afterwards one of the chief
authors of the Code Civil): it was signed by him, by Simeon, and by
eighty members of the Bar.
[121] Yet in a paper, published a short time before the convocation of
the States-General, the following lines occur: ‘In some provinces the
inhabitants of the country are persuaded that they are to pay no more
taxes, and that they will share among themselves the property of the
landowners. They already hold meetings to ascertain what these estates
are, and to adjust the distribution of them. The States-General are
expected only to give a shape to these aggressions.’ (‘Tableau Moral du
Clergé en France sur la fin du 18ème Siècle, 1789.’)
[122] 24th August, 1788. All the pamphlets of the time laid down a
theory of insurrection. ‘It is the business of the people to break the
fetters laid upon it. Every citizen is a soldier, &c.’ See ‘Remarks
on the Cabinet Order for suppressing discussions in opposition to the
Edicts of the 8th of May.’ (‘Bibliothèque,’ No. 595.)
[123] Some of the authors of these papers favourable to Government were
said to be Beaumarchais, the Abbé Maury, Linguet, the Abbé Mosellet,
&c. The Abbé Maury alone was said to be receiving a pension of 22,000
francs. (‘Lettres d’un Français rétiré à Londres,’ July 1788.)
[124] In the meetings which followed that of Vizille, and which took
place either at Grenoble or at St. Rambert or at Romans, the same union
was maintained and drawn closer. The nobility and the clergy steadily
demanded that the representatives of the commons should be doubled,
taxation made equal, and the votes taken individually. The commons
continued to express their gratitude. ‘I am instructed by my Order,’
said the Speaker of the Commons at one of these meetings (held at
Romans, September 15th, 1788), ‘to repeat our thanks; we shall never
forget your anxiety to do us justice.’ Similar compliments were renewed
at an Assembly, also held at Romans on November 2nd, 1788. In a letter
addressed to the Municipalities of Brittany, an inhabitant of Dauphiny
writes: ‘I have seen the clergy and the nobility renounce with a
fairness worthy of all respect their old pretensions in the States, and
unanimously acknowledge the rights of the Commons. I could no longer
doubt the salvation of the country.’ (‘Letters of Charles R---- to the
Municipality of Brittany.’)
CHAPTER IV.
THE PARLIAMENTS DISCOVER THAT THEY HAVE LOST ALL AUTHORITY, JUST WHEN
THEY THOUGHT THEMSELVES MASTERS OF THE KINGDOM.
When the Royal authority had been conquered, the Parliaments at first
conceived that the triumph was their own. They returned to the bench,
less as reprieved delinquents than as conquerors, and thought that they
had only to enjoy the sweets of victory.
The King, when he withdrew the edicts which had raised to the bench
new judges, ordered that at least the judgments and decrees of those
judges should be maintained. The Parliaments declared that whatever had
been adjudged without themselves was not adjudged at all. They summoned
before them the insolent magistrates who had presumed to aspire to
their seats, and, borrowing an old expression of mediæval law to meet
this novel incident, they _noted them infamous_. All France saw that
the King’s friends were punished for their fidelity to the Crown,
and learnt that henceforth safety was not to be found on the side of
obedience.
The intoxication of these magistrates may easily be understood. Louis
XIV. in all his glory had never been the object of more universal
adulation, if that word can be applied to immoderate praise prompted by
genuine and disinterested passions.
The Parliament of Paris, exiled to Troyes, was received in that
city by all the public bodies, which hastened to pay it the homage
due to the sovereign, and to utter to its face the most extravagant
compliments. ‘August senators!’ they said, ‘generous citizens! strict
and compassionate magistrates! you all deserve in every French heart
the title of fathers of your country. You are the consolation of
the nation’s ills. Your actions are sublime examples of energy and
patriotism. The French nation looks upon you with tenderness and
veneration.’ The Chapter of the Cathedral of Troyes, complimenting them
in the name of the Church, said: ‘Our country and our religion solicit
some durable monument of what you have done.’ Even the University
came forth, in gowns and square caps, to drawl out its homage in bad
Latin, ‘Illustrissimi Senatûs princeps, præsides insulati, Senatores
integerrimi! We share the general emotion, and we are here to express
our lively admiration of your patriotic heroism. Hitherto the highest
courage was that military valour which calls legions of heroes from
their homes; we now see the heroes of peace in the sanctuary of
justice; like those generous citizens who were the pride of Rome in
their day of triumph, you have earned a triumph which secures to you
immortal fame.’ The First President replied to all these addresses
curtly, like a sovereign, and assured the speakers of the good will of
his Court.
In several provinces the arrest or exile of the judges had provoked
riots. In all, their return gave rise to almost insane explosions
of popular rejoicing. At Grenoble, when the courier arrived, who
brought the news of the restoration of the Parliaments, he was carried
in triumph through the town, and overpowered with caresses and
acclamations; women, unable to reach his person, kissed his horse.
In the evening the whole town was spontaneously illuminated. All the
public bodies and guilds defiled before the Parliament, declaiming
bombastic compliments.
At Bordeaux on the same day there was a similar ovation. The people
took the horses from the carriage of the First President, and drew
him to his chambers. The judges who had obeyed the King’s orders were
hooted. The First President reprimanded them in public. In the midst of
this scene the oldest member of the Parliament exclaimed, ‘My children,
tell this to your descendants, that the remembrance of this day may
keep alive the fire of patriotism.’ He who said this was an aged man,
born ninety years before, whose youth had been spent under the reign
of Louis XIV. What changes may not take place in the opinions and
the language of a people within the lifetime of a man! They ended by
burning a cardinal in effigy on the market-place; which did not prevent
the clergy from singing a _Te Deum_. These events took place at the end
of October, 1788.
Suddenly the acclamations which surrounded the Parliaments ceased;
the enthusiasm dropped; silence and solitude gathered about them. Not
only were they the objects of public indifference, but all sorts of
charges were brought against them, the same which the Government had
vainly attempted to urge. The country was inundated with vituperative
pamphlets against them. ‘These judges,’ it was said in these pamphlets,
‘know nothing of politics; in reality they have only been aiming at
power. They are at one with the nobles and the priests, and as hostile
as these are to the commons, who constitute almost the entire nation.
They fancied that their attack on despotism would cause all this to
be forgotten; but, in asserting the rights of the nation, they have
allowed them to be questioned: those rights are derived from the Social
Contract; to discuss them, is to clothe them in the false colours of
voluntary concession. Indeed, the demands they made from the King
were in some respects excessive. They are an aristocracy of lawyers
who want to be masters of the King himself.’[125] Another pamphlet,
attributed to Volney, apostrophised them in these terms: ‘August body
of Magistrates! we are under sacred obligations to you which we do not
disown, but we cannot forget that during all these years that you have
represented the people, you have allowed it to be oppressed: you, the
teachers of the people, have allowed almost all the books calculated
to enlighten it to be burnt; and when you resisted despotism it was
because it was about to crush yourselves.’
Especially for the Parliament of Paris was the fall sudden and
terrible. How shall I describe the mighty void, the death-like silence
which encompassed that great Court, and its own sense of impotence
and despair, or the scornful vengeance of the Crown, when, in reply
to fresh remonstrances, Louis XVI. said, ‘I have no answer to make to
my Parliament or to its supplications: with the assembled nation I am
about to concert measures to consolidate for ever public order and the
prosperity of the kingdom’?
The same measure which recalled the Parliament to its hall of justice
restored d’Eprémenil to liberty. The reader will remember the dramatic
scene of his arrest, his address in the style of Regulus, the emotion
of the audience, and the immense popularity of the martyr. He was
confined in the Ile Ste. Marguérite, off Cannes: the warrant for his
discharge arrives, and he starts. On the road he is at first treated
as a great man, but as he proceeds the radiance that surrounded him
fades away: once at Paris, nobody cares about him, unless it be to cut
a joke. To descend thus from the sublime to the ridiculous, he had only
to post across the territory some two hundred leagues.
The Parliament, wretched at the discovery of its unpopularity,
endeavoured to regain the favour of the public. Recourse was had to
stirring means: the same language which had so often served to excite
the people in its favour was again employed. The cry for periodical
sessions of the States-General, for the responsibility of Ministers,
for personal freedom, for the liberty of the press: all was in vain.
The amazement of the judges was extreme: they were totally unable to
comprehend what was happening before their eyes. They continued to
speak of the _constitution_ to be defended, not seeing that this word
was popular enough when the constitution was opposed to the King,
but hateful to public opinion when it was opposed to equality. They
condemned a publication which attacked the old institutions of the
kingdom to be burnt by the common hangman, not perceiving that the ruin
of these institutions was precisely what was desired. They asked of one
another what could possibly have brought about such a change in the
public mind. They fancied they had a strength of their own, not being
aware that they had only been the blind auxiliaries of another power:
everything, as long as that power made them its instruments; nothing,
as soon as, being able to act on its own behalf, it ceased to need
their assistance. They did not see that the same wave which had driven
them along, and raised them so high, carried them back with it as it
retired.
Originally the Parliament consisted of jurists and advocates chosen by
the King from the ablest members of their profession. A path to honours
and to the highest offices of State was thus opened by merit to men
born in the humblest conditions of fortune. The Parliament was then,
with the Church, one of those powerful democratic institutions, which
were born and had implanted themselves on the aristocratic soil of the
Middle Ages.
At a later period the Crown, to make money, put up to sale the right
of administering justice. The Parliament was then filled by a certain
number of wealthy families, who considered the national judicature as
a privilege of their own, to be guarded from the intrusion of others
with increasing jealousy; they obeyed in this the strange impulse
which seemed to impel each particular body to dwindle more and more
into a small close aristocracy, at the very time when the opinions and
general habits of the nation caused society to incline more and more to
democracy.
Nothing certainly could be more opposed to the ideas of the time than
a judicial caste, exercising by purchase the whole jurisdiction of the
country. No practice, indeed, had been more often and more bitterly
censured, for a century past, than the sale of these offices. This
magistracy, vicious as it was in principle, had nevertheless a merit
which the better constituted tribunals of our own time do not always
possess. The judges were independent. They administered justice in
the name of the sovereign, but not in compliance with his will. They
obeyed no passions but their own.
When all the intermediate powers which might counter-balance or
attenuate the unlimited power of the King had been struck down, the
Parliament alone still remained firm. The Parliament could still speak
when all the world was silent, and maintain itself erect, for a time,
when all the world had long been forced to bow. The consequence was
that it became popular as soon as the Government was out of favour
with the nation. And when, for a moment, hatred of despotism had
become a fervent passion and a sentiment common to all Frenchmen, the
Parliaments appeared to be the sole remaining barrier against absolute
power. The defects which had been most blamed in them acted as a
sort of guarantee of their political honesty. Even their vices were
a protection, and their love of power, their presumption, and their
prejudices were arms which the nation used. But no sooner had absolute
power been definitely conquered, and the nation felt assured that it
could defend its own rights, than the Parliament again at once became
what it was before--an old, decrepit, and discredited institution; a
legacy of the Middle Ages, again exposed to the full tide of public
aversion. To effect its destruction, the King had only to endure its
triumph.
FOOTNOTE:
[125] See a pamphlet attributed to Serovan (1789), and entitled
‘Glose sur l’arrêté du Parlement’; and one entitled ‘Despotisme des
Parlements,’ published on the 25th September, 1788, after the decree
which suddenly made the Parliaments unpopular.
CHAPTER V.
ABSOLUTE POWER BEING SUBDUED, THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION
FORTHWITH BECAME MANIFEST.
The bond of a common passion had for an instant linked all classes
together. No sooner was that bond relaxed than they flew asunder, and
the veritable spirit of the Revolution, disguised before, was suddenly
unveiled. After the triumph which had been obtained over the King, the
next thing was to ascertain who should win the fruits of the victory;
the States-General having been conceded, who should predominate in that
assembly. The King could no longer refuse to convoke them; but he had
still the power to determine the form they were to assume. One hundred
and seventy-five years had elapsed since their last meeting. They had
become a mere indistinct tradition. None knew precisely what should be
the number of the deputies, the mutual relations of the three Orders,
the mode of election, the forms of deliberation. The King alone could
have settled these questions: he did not settle them. After having
allowed the disputed powers, which he sought to retain, to be snatched
away from him, he failed to use those which were not disputed.
M. de Brienne, the First Minister, had strange notions on this
subject, and caused his master to adopt a resolution unparalleled in
history. He regarded the questions, whether the electoral franchise
was to be universal or limited, whether the assembly was to be
numerous or restricted, whether the Orders were to be separated or
united, whether they were to be equal or unequal in their rights, as
a matter of erudition. Consequently an Order in Council commanded
all the constituted bodies of the realm to make researches as to the
structure of the old States-General and the forms used by them; and
added that ‘His Majesty invited all the learned persons of the kingdom,
more especially those who belonged to the Academy of Belles-lettres
and Antiquities, to address to the Keeper of the Seals papers and
information on this subject.’
Thus was the constitution of the country treated like an academical
essay, put up to competition. The call was heard. All the local powers
deliberated on the answer to be given to the King. All the corporate
bodies put in their claims. All classes endeavoured to rake up from the
ruins of the old States-General the forms which seemed best adapted
to secure their own peculiar interests. Every one had something to
say; and as France was the most literary country in Europe, there was
a deluge of publications. The conflict of classes was inevitable;
but that conflict, which should naturally have been reserved for the
States-General themselves, where it might have been kept within bounds
when it arose on given questions, finding a boundless field before it,
and being fed by general controversy, speedily assumed a degree of
strange boldness and excessive violence, to be accounted for by the
secret excitement of the public mind, but which no external symptom had
as yet prepared men for. Between the time when the King renounced his
absolute authority and the commencement of the elections about five
months elapsed. In this interval little was changed in the actual state
of things, but the movement which was driving the French nation to a
total subversion of society dashed onwards with increasing velocity.
At first nothing was talked of but the constitution of the
States-General; big books were hastily filled with crude erudition, in
which an attempt was made to reconcile the traditions of the Middle
Ages with the demands of the present time: then the question of the
old States-General was dropped. This heap of mouldy precedents was
flung aside, and it was asked what, on general and abstract principles,
the legislative power ought to be. At each step the horizon extended:
beyond the constitution of the legislature the discussion embraced the
whole framework of government: beyond the frame of government the whole
fabric of society was to be shaken to its foundations. At first men
spoke of a better ponderation of powers, a better adjustment of the
rights of classes, but soon they advanced, they hurried, they rushed
to pure democracy. At first Montesquieu was cited and discussed, at
last Rousseau was the only authority; he, and he alone, became and
was to remain the Teacher of the first age of the Revolution. The old
_régime_ was still in complete existence, and already the institutions
of England were deemed superannuated and inadequate. The root of
every incident that followed was implanted in men’s minds. Scarcely
an opinion was professed in the whole course of the Revolution which
might not already be traced in its germ: there was not an idea realised
by the Revolution, that some theory had not at once reached and even
surpassed.
‘In all things the majority of numbers is to give the law’: such
was the keynote of the whole controversy. Nobody dreamed that the
concession of political rights could be determined by any other element
than that of number. ‘What can be more absurd,’ exclaims a writer who
was one of the most moderate of the time, ‘than that a body which has
twenty millions of heads should be represented in the same manner as
one which has an hundred thousand?’[126] After having shown that there
were in France eighty thousand ecclesiastics and about a hundred and
twenty thousand nobles, Siéyès merely adds, ‘Compare this number of
these two hundred thousand privileged persons to that of twenty-six
million souls, and judge the question.’[127]
The most timid among the innovators of the Revolution, those who
wished that the reasonable prerogatives of the different Orders
should be respected, talked, nevertheless, as if there were neither
class nor Order, and still took the numerical majority[128] as
the sole basis of their calculations. Everybody framed his own
statistics, but all was statistical. ‘The relation of privileged
persons to those not privileged,’ said Lafon-Ladebat, ‘is as one to
twenty-two.’[129] According to the city of Bourg,[130] the commons
formed nineteen-twentieths of the population; according to the city
of Nîmes,[131] twenty-nine thirtieths. It was, as you see, a mere
question of figures. From this political arithmetic, Volney deduced,
as a natural consequence, universal suffrage;[132] Roederer, universal
eligibility;[133] Péthion, the unity of the assembly.[134]
Many of these writers, in drawing out their figures, knew nothing of
the quotient: and the calculation frequently led them beyond their
hopes, and even beyond their wishes.
The most striking thing, at this passionate epoch, was not so much
the passions which broke forth, as the power of the opinions that
prevailed; and the opinion that prevailed above all others was,
that not only there were no privileges, but even that there were no
private rights. Even those who professed the largest consideration for
privileges and private rights considered such privileges and rights as
wholly indefensible--not only those exercised in their own time, but
those existing at any time and in any country. The conception of a
temperate and ponderated Government, that is to say, of a Government
in which the different classes of society, and the different interests
which divide them, balance each other--in which men are weighed not
only as individuals, but by reason of their property, their patronage,
and their influence in the scale of the common weal,--these conceptions
were wanting in the mind of the multitude; they were replaced by the
notion of a crowd, consisting of similar elements, and they were
superseded by votes, not as the representatives of interests or of
persons, but of numerical force.[135]
Another thing well worthy of remark in this singular movement of the
mind, was its _pace_, at first so easy and regulated, at last so
headlong and impetuous. A few months’ interval marked this difference.
Read what was written in the first weeks of 1788 by the keenest
opponents of the old _régime_, you will be struck by the forbearance
of their language: then take the publications of the most moderate
reformers in the last five months of the same year, you will find them
revolutionary.
The Government had challenged discussion on itself: no bounds therefore
would be set to the theme. The same impulse which had been given to
opinions soon drove the passions of the nation with furious rapidity in
the same direction. At first the commons complained that the nobility
carried their rights too far. Later on, the existence of any such
rights was denied. At first it was proposed to share power with the
upper classes: soon all power was refused to them. The aristocracy was
to become a sort of extraneous substance in the uniform texture of the
nation. Some said the privileged classes were a hundred thousand, some
that they were five hundred thousand. All agreed in thinking that they
formed a mere handful, foreign to the rest of the nation, only to be
tolerated in the interest of public tranquillity. ‘Take away in your
imagination,’ said Rabaut Saint-Etienne, ‘the whole of the clergy--take
away even the whole nobility, there still remains the nation.’ The
commons were a complete social body: all the rest was vain superfluity:
not only the nobles had no right to be masters of the rest, they had
scarcely the right to be their fellow-citizens.
For the first time perhaps in the history of the world, the upper
classes had separated and isolated themselves to such a degree from all
other classes, that their members could be counted one by one and set
apart like sheep draughted from a flock: whilst the middle classes were
bent on _not_ mixing with the class above them, but, on the contrary,
stood carefully aloof from all contact. These two symptoms, had they
been understood, would have revealed the immensity of the Revolution
which was about to take place, or rather which was already made.
Now follow the movement of passion in the track of opinion. At first
hatred was expressed against privileges, none against persons. But
by degrees the tone becomes more bitter, emulation becomes jealousy,
enmity becomes detestation, a thousand conflicting associations are
piled together to form the mighty mass which a thousand arms are at
once to lift, and drop upon the head of the aristocracy so as to crush
it.
The privileged ranks were attacked in countless publications. They were
defended in so few, that it is somewhat difficult to ascertain what
was said in their favour. It may seem surprising that the assailed
classes, holding most of the great offices of State and owning a large
portion of the land of the country, should have found so few defenders,
though so many eloquent voices have pleaded their cause since they
have been conquered, decimated, ruined. But this is explained by the
extreme confusion into which the aristocracy was thrown, when the rest
of the nation, having proceeded for a time in the track marked out by
itself, suddenly turned against it. With astonishment, it perceived
that the opinions used to attack it were its own opinions. The notions
which compassed its annihilation were familiar to its own mind. What
had been the amusement of aristocratic leisure became a terrible
weapon against aristocratic society. In common with their adversaries,
these nobles were ready enough to believe that the most perfect form
of society would be that most nearly akin to the natural equality of
man; in which merit alone, and not either birth or fortune, should
determine rank; and in which government would be a simple contract,
and law the creation of a numerical majority. They knew nothing of
politics but what they had read in books, and in the same books; the
only difference was that one party was bent on trying a great social
experiment, which must be made at the expense of the other party. But,
though their interests were different, their opinions were the same:
those same patricians would have made the Revolution if they had been
born plebeians.
When therefore they suddenly found themselves attacked, they were
singularly embarrassed in their defence. Not one of them had ever
considered by what means an aristocracy may justify its privileges in
the eyes of the people. They knew not what to say in order to show how
it is that an aristocracy can alone preserve the people from oppression
of the Crown and the calamities of revolution, insomuch that the
privileges apparently established in the sole interest of those who
possess them do constitute the best security that can be found for
the tranquillity and prosperity even of those who are without them.
All these arguments which are so familiar to those who have a long
experience of public affairs, and who have acquired the science of
government, were to those nobles of France novel and unknown.
Instead of this, they spoke of the services which their forefathers
had rendered six hundred years ago; of the superstitious veneration
due to a past, which was now detested; of the necessity of a nobility
to uphold the honour of arms and the traditions of military valour. In
opposition to a proposal to admit the peasantry to the franchise in the
provincial assemblies, and even to preside over those bodies, M. de
Bazancourt, a Councillor of State, declared that the kingdom of France
was based upon honour and prerogative: so great was the ignorance
and so deep the obscurity in which absolute power had concealed the
real laws of society, even from the eyes of those to whom it was most
interested in making them known.
The language of the nobles was often arrogant, because they were
accustomed to be the first; but it was irresolute, because they doubted
of their own right. Who can depict the endless divisions in the bosom
of the assailed parties? The spirit of rivalry and contention raged
amongst those who were thus isolated themselves--the nobles against
the priests (the first voice raised to demand the confiscation of the
property of the clergy was that of a noble[136]), the priests against
the nobles, the lesser nobility against the great lords, the parish
priests against the bishops.[137]
The discussion roused by the King’s Edicts, after having run round
a vast circumference of institutions and laws, always ended at the
two following points, which practically expressed the objects of the
contest.
1. In the States-General, then about to meet, were the commons to have
a greater number of representatives than each of the two other Orders,
so that the total number of its deputies should be equal to those of
the nobility and clergy combined?
2. Were the Orders to deliberate together or separately?
This reduplication of the commons and the fusion of the three Orders in
one assembly appeared, at the time, to be things less novel and less
important than they were in reality. Some minor circumstances which had
long existed, or were then in existence, concealed their novelty and
their magnitude. For ages the provincial Estates of Languedoc had been
composed and had sat in this manner, with no other result than that of
giving to the middle class a larger share of public business, and of
creating common interests and greater facility of intercourse between
that class and the two higher Orders. This example had been copied,
subsequently, in the two or three provincial assemblies which were held
in 1779: instead of dividing the classes, it had been found to draw
them together.
The King himself appeared to have declared in favour of this system;
for he had just applied it to the provincial assemblies, which the last
edict had called into being in all the provinces having previously no
Estates of their own (1788). It was still imperfectly seen, without
a clear perception of the fact, that an institution which had only
modified the ancient constitution of the country, when established in
a single province, could not fail to bring about its total and violent
overthrow the moment it was applied to the whole State. It was evident
that the commons, if equal in number to the two other Orders in the
General Assembly of the nation, must instantly preponderate there;--not
as participating in their business, but as the supreme master of it.
For the commons would stand united between two bodies, not only divided
against each other, but divided against themselves--the commons having
the same interests, the same passions, the same object: the two other
Orders having different interests, different objects, and frequently
different passions: these having the current of public opinion in their
favour, those having it against them. This preference from without
could not fail to drive a certain number of nobles and priests to join
the commons; so that whilst it banded all the commons together, it
detached from the nobility and the clergy all those who were aiming at
popularity or seeking to track out a new road to power.
In the States of Languedoc it was common to see the commons forsake
their own body to vote with the nobles and the bishops, because the
established influence of aristocracy, still prevailing in their
opinions and manners, weighed upon them. But here, the reverse
necessarily occurred; and the commons necessarily found themselves in a
majority, although the number of their own representatives was the same.
The action of such a party in the Assembly could not fail to be, not
only preponderating, but violent; for it was sure to encounter there
all that could excite the passions of man. To bring parties to live
together in a conflict of opposite opinions is no easy task. But to
enclose in the same arena political bodies, already formed, completely
organised, each having its proper origin, its past, its traditions,
its peculiar usages, its spirit of union--to plant them apart, always
in presence of each other, and to compel them to carry on an incessant
debate, with no medium between them, is not to provoke discussion but
war.
Moreover, this majority, inflamed by its own passions and the passions
of its antagonists, was all powerful. Nothing could, I will not say
arrest, but retard its movements; for nothing remained to check it but
the power of the Crown, already disarmed, and inevitably destined to
yield to the strain of a single Assembly concentrated against itself.
This was not to transpose gradually the balance of power, but to upset
it. It was not to impart to the commons a share in the exorbitant
rights of the aristocracy, but suddenly to transfer unbounded power to
other hands--to abandon the guidance of affairs to a single passion,
a single idea, a single interest. This was not a reform, but a
revolution. Mounier, who, alone among the reformers of that time, seems
to have settled in his own mind what it was he wished to effect, and
what were the conditions of a regular and free government,--Mounier,
who in his plan of government had divided the three Orders, was
nevertheless favourable to this union of them, and for this reason:
that what was wanted before all things was an assembly to destroy the
remains of the old constitution, all special privileges, and all local
privileges, which could never be done with an Upper House composed of
the nobles and the clergy.
It would seem at any rate that the reduplication of the votes of the
commons and the fusion of the three Orders in one body must have been
questions inseparable from each other; for to what end should the
number of representatives of the commons be augmented, if that branch
of the Assembly was to debate and vote apart from the other two?
M. Necker thought proper to separate these questions. No doubt he
desired both the reduplication of the commons, and that the three
Orders should vote together. It is very probable that the King leaned
in the same direction. By the aristocracy he had just been conquered.
It was the aristocracy which pressed him hardest, which had roused the
other classes against the royal authority, and had led them to victory.
These blows had been felt, and the King had not sufficient penetration
to perceive that his adversaries would soon be compelled to defend him,
and that his friends would become his masters. Louis XVI. therefore,
like his minister, was inclined to constitute the States-General in the
manner which the commons desired. But they were afraid to go so far.
They stopped half-way, not from any clear perception of their danger,
but confused by the inarticulate clamour around them. What man or what
class has ever had the penetration to see when it became necessary to
come down from a lofty pinnacle, in order to avoid being hurled down
from it?
It was then decided that the commons should return twice as many
members as each of the other Orders, but the question of the vote in
common was left unsettled. Of all courses of action, this was certainly
the most dangerous.
Nothing contributes more to the maintenance of despotism than the
division and mutual rivalry of classes. Absolute power lives on them:
on condition, however, that these divisions are confined to a pacific
bitterness, that men envy their neighbours without excessive hatred,
and that these classes, though separated, are not in arms. But every
Government must perish in the midst of a violent collision of classes,
when once they have begun to make war on each other.
No doubt, it was very late in the day to seek to maintain the old
constitution of the States-General, even if it were reformed. But this
resolution, however rash, was supported by the law of the land, which
had still some authority. The Government had tradition in its favour,
and still had its hand upon the instrument of the law. If the double
number of the commons and the vote of the three Orders in common had
been conceded at once, no doubt a revolution would have been made,
but it would have been made by the Crown, which by pulling down these
old institutions itself might have deadened their fall. The upper
classes must have submitted to an inevitable necessity. Borne in by the
pressure of the Crown, simultaneously with that of the commons, they
would at once have acknowledged their inability to resist. Despairing
of their own ascendency, they would only have contended for equal
rights, and would have learnt the lesson of fighting to save something,
instead of fighting to retain everything.
Would it not have been possible to do throughout France what was
actually done by the Three Orders in Dauphiny? In that province the
Provincial Estates chose, by a general vote, the representatives of
the Three Orders to the States-General. Each Order in the provincial
State had been elected separately and stood for itself alone; but all
the Orders combined to name the deputies to the States-General, so that
every noble had commoners among his constituents, and every commoner
nobles. The three representations, though remaining distinct, thus
acquired a certain resemblance. Could not the same thing have been done
elsewhere than in Dauphiny? If the Orders had been constituted in this
manner, might they not have co-existed in a single Assembly without
coming to a violent collision?
Too much weight must not be given to these legislative expedients.
The ideas and the passions of man, not the mechanism of law, are the
motive force of human affairs. Doubtless whatever steps had at that
time been taken to form and regulate the Assemblies of the nation, it
may be thought that war would have broken forth in all its violence
between classes. Their animosities were perhaps already too fierce for
them to have worked in harmony, and the power of the King was already
too weak to compel them to agree. But it must be admitted that nothing
could have been done more calculated than what was done to render the
conflict between them instantaneous and mortal. Could the utmost art,
skill, and deliberate design have brought all this to pass more surely
than was actually done by inexperience and temerity? An opportunity
had been afforded to the commons to take courage, to prepare for
the encounter, and to count their numbers. Their moral ardour had
immoderately increased, and had doubled the weight of their party. They
had been allured by every hope; they were intimidated by every fear.
Victory had been flaunted before their eyes, not given, but they were
invited to seize it. After having left the two classes for five months
to exasperate their old hatreds, and repeat the long story of their
grievances, until they were inflamed against each other with furious
resentment, they were arrayed face to face, and the first question they
had to decide was one which included all other questions; on that issue
alone they might have settled at once, and in a single day, all their
quarrels.
What strikes one most in the affairs of the world is not so much the
genius of those who made the Revolution, because they desired it, as
the singular imbecility of those who made it without desiring it,--not
so much the part played by great men as the influence frequently
exercised by the smallest personages in history. When I survey the
French Revolution I am amazed at the immense magnitude of the event,
at the glare it has cast to the extremities of the earth, at the power
of it, which has more or less been felt by all nations. If I turn to
the Court, which had so great a share in the Revolution, I perceive
there some of the most trivial scenes in history--a king, who had no
greatness save that of his virtues, and those not the virtues of a
king; hairbrained or narrow-minded ministers, dissolute priests, rash
or money-seeking courtiers, futile women, who held in their hands the
destinies of the human race. Yet these paltry personages set going,
push on, precipitate prodigious events. They themselves have little
share in them. They themselves are mere accidents. They might almost
pass for primal causes. And I marvel at the Almighty Power which, with
levers as short as these, can set rolling the mass of human society.
FOOTNOTES:
[126] ‘Le Tiers-État au Roi,’ by M. Louchet, December 20th, 1788.
[127] ‘Qu’est-ce-que le Tiers?’ p. 53.
[128] Lacretelle, ‘Convocation des États-Généraux’; Bertrand de
Molleville,’ Observations adressées à l’Assemblée des Notables.’
[129] ‘Observations lues aux représentants du Tiers-État à Bordeaux,’
December, 1788.
[130] ‘Requête du Tiers-État de la ville de Bourg,’ December, 1788.
[131] ‘Délibérations de la ville de Nîmes en Conseil général.’
[132] ‘Des conditions nécessaires à la légalité des États-Généraux.’
[133] ‘De la députation aux États-Généraux.’
[134] ‘Avis aux Français,’ 1788. A pamphlet written in 1788, but full
of the true revolutionary spirit of 1792.
[135] Mounier himself was just as little able as the most violent
revolutionists, who were soon to appear, to conceive the idea of rights
derived from the past; of political usages and customs which are in
reality laws, though unwritten, and only to be touched with caution, of
interests to be respected and very gradually modified without causing
a rupture between that which has been and that which is to be--the
idea, in short, which is the first principle of practical and regular
political liberty. See Mounier’s ‘Nouvelles Observations sur les
États-Généraux.’
[136] The Marquis de Gouy d’Arcy in a ‘Mémoire au Roi en faveur de la
noblesse Française, par un patricien ami du peuple,’ 1788.
[137] This appears from a correspondence of M---- with M. Necker,
examined by me in the archives.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PREPARATION OF THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE
STATES-GENERAL DROVE THE CONCEPTION OF A RADICAL REVOLUTION HOME TO
THE MIND OF THE PEOPLE.
Almost all the institutions of the Middle Ages had a stamp of boldness
and truth. Those laws were imperfect, but they were sincere. They had
little art, but they had less cunning. They always gave all the rights
they seemed to promise. When the commons were convoked to form part
of the assemblies of the nation, they were at the same time invested
with unbounded freedom in making known their complaints and in sending
up their requests. In the cities which were to send deputies to the
States-General, the whole people was called upon to say what it thought
of the abuses to be corrected and the demands to be made. None were
excluded from the right of complaint, and any man might express his
grievance in his own way. The means were as simple as the political
device was bold. Down to the States-General of 1614, in all the towns,
and even in Paris, a large box was placed in the market-place, with
a slit in it, to receive the papers and opinions of all men, which
a committee sitting at the Hôtel de Ville was empowered to sift and
examine. Out of all these diverse remonstrances a bill was drawn
up, which expressed the public grievances and the complaint of each
individual.
The physical and social constitution of that time was based on such
deep and solid foundations, that this sort of public inquest could
take place without shaking it. There was no question of changing the
principle of the laws, but simply of putting them straight. Moreover,
what were then styled the commons were the burgesses of certain towns.
The people of the towns might enjoy an entire liberty in the expression
of their wrongs, because they were not in a condition to enforce
redress: they exercised without inconvenience that amount of democratic
freedom, because in all other respects the aristocracy reigned supreme.
The communities of the Middle Ages were aristocratic bodies, which
merely contained (and this contributed to their greatness) some small
fragments of democracy.
In 1789, the commons who were to be represented in the States-General
no longer consisted of the burgesses of the towns alone, as was the
case in 1614, but of twenty millions of peasants scattered over the
whole area of the kingdom. These had till then never taken any part
in public affairs. Political life was not to them even the casual
reminiscence of another age: it was, in all respects, a novelty.
Nevertheless, on a given day, the inhabitants of each of the rural
parishes of France, collected by the sound of the church bells on the
market-place in front of the church, proceeded, for the first time
since the commencement of the monarchy, to confer together in order to
draw up what was called the _cahier_ of their representatives.[138]
In all the countries in which political assemblies are chosen by
universal suffrage, no general election takes place which does not
deeply agitate the people, unless the freedom of voting be a lie. Here
it was not only a universal voting; it was a universal deliberation
and inquest. The matter in discussion was not some particular custom
or local interest; each member of one of the greatest nations in the
world was asked what he had to say against all the laws and all the
customs of his country. I think no such spectacle had been seen before
upon the earth. All the peasants of France set to work therefore, at
the same time, to consider among themselves and recapitulate all that
they had suffered, all they had to complain of. The spirit of the
Revolution which excited the citizens of the towns, rushed therefore
through a thousand rills, penetrated the rural population, which was
thus agitated in all its parts, and sunk to its very depths; but the
form it assumed was not entirely the same; its shape became peculiar
and appropriate to those just affected by it. In the cities, it was a
cry for rights to be acquired. In the country, men thought principally
of wants to be satisfied. All the large, general, and abstract theories
which filled the minds of the middle classes here took a concrete and
definite form.
When the peasants came to ask each other what they had to complain of,
they cared not for the balance of powers, the guarantees of political
freedom, the abstract rights of man or of citizens. They dwelt at once
on objects more special and nearer to themselves, which each of them
had had to endure. One thought of the feudal dues which had taken
half his last year’s crop; another of the days of forced labour on
which he had been compelled to work without wages. One spoke of the
lord’s pigeons, which had picked his seed from the ground before it
sprouted; another of the rabbits which had nibbled his green corn. As
their excitement grew by the mutual relation of their wretchedness,
all these different evils seemed to them to proceed, not so much
from institutions, as from that single person, who still called them
his subjects, though he had long ceased to govern them--who was the
creature of privileges without obligations, and retained none of his
political rights but that of living at their cost; and they more and
more agreed in considering _him_ as their common enemy.
Providence, which had resolved that the spectacle of our passions
and our calamities should be the lesson of the world, permitted the
commencement of the Revolution to coincide with a great scarcity and
an extraordinary winter. The harvest of 1788 was short, and the first
months of the winter of 1789 were marked by cold of unparalleled
severity--a frost, like that which is felt in the northern extremity of
Europe, hardened the earth to a great depth. For two months the whole
of France lay hidden under a thick fall of snow, like the steppes of
Siberia. The atmosphere was congealed, the sky dull and sad; and this
accident of nature gave a gloomier and fiercer tone to the passions of
man. All the grievances which might be urged against the institutions
of the country, and those who ruled by those institutions, were felt
more bitterly amidst the cold and want that prevailed; and when the
peasant left his scarcely burning hearth and his chill and naked abode,
with a famished and frozen family, to meet his fellows and discuss
their common condition of life, it cost him no effort to discover the
cause of all his calamities, and he fancied that he could easily, if he
dared, put his finger on the source of all his wrongs.
FOOTNOTE:
[138] For a fuller account of these Instructions, and a specimen of
them, see Note XLIV. in the Appendix.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW, ON THE EVE OF THE CONVOCATION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, THE MIND
OF THE NATION WAS MORE ENLARGED, AND ITS SPIRIT RAISED.
Two questions had thus far divided all classes--that of the
reduplication of the commons, and that of the voting of the Orders
in one body: the first was settled, the second was postponed. That
great Assembly which every man had regarded in his own heart as the
fulfilment of his hopes, and which all had demanded with equal fervour,
was about to meet. The event had long been anticipated. To the last
it seemed doubtful. It came at length. Preparation was passing into
reality, speech into action. At that solemn moment all paused to
consider the greatness of the undertaking--near enough to discern the
bearing of what was to be done, and to measure the effort which the
work required. Nobles, clergy, and citizens alike distinctly perceived
that the object was not to modify this or that law, but to remodel all
laws, to breathe a new spirit into them, to impart to all of them new
purposes and a new course. No one knew as yet exactly what would be
destroyed, or what would be created; but all felt that immense ruins
would be made, and immense structures raised. Nor was this the limit of
public confidence. None doubted that the destiny of mankind was engaged
in the work about to be accomplished.
Nowadays when the calamity of revolutions has rendered us so humble
that we scarcely believe ourselves worthy of the freedom enjoyed by
other nations, it is difficult to form a conception of the proud
anticipations of our sires. The literature of the time shows to our
amazement the vast opinions which the French of all ranks had at
that time conceived of their country and of their race. Amongst the
schemes of reform just brought to light, hardly any were formed on
the model of foreign imitation. They were not received as lessons
from the British constitution, or borrowed from the experience of
American democracy. Nothing was to be copied; nothing was to be done
that was not new. Everything was to be different and more perfect
than had been seen before. The confidence of the French in themselves
and in the superiority of their own reason was unbounded--a great
cause of their mistakes, but also of their inimitable energy. What was
applicable to themselves alone would be equally applicable to all men.
Not a Frenchman but was convinced that not only was the government
of France to be changed, but new principles of government were to be
introduced into the world, applicable to all the nations of the earth,
and destined to regenerate the sum of human affairs. Every man imagined
that he held in his hand not only the fate of his country, but that
of his species. All believed that there existed for mankind, whatever
might be their condition, but one sovereign method of government,
dictated by reason. The same institutions were held to be good for all
countries and for any people. Whatever government was not approved by
the human reason was to be destroyed and superseded by the logical
institutions to be adopted, first by the French, and afterwards by the
human race.
The magnitude, the beauty, and the risks of such an enterprise
captivated and ravished the imagination of the whole French people.
In presence of this immense design, each individual completely forgot
himself. The illusion lasted but for a moment, but that moment was
perhaps unexampled in the existence of any people. The educated classes
had nothing of the timorous and servile spirit which they have since
learnt from revolutions. For some time past they had ceased to fear the
power of the Crown; they had not yet learned to dread the power of the
people. The grandeur of their design rendered them intrepid. Reforms
already accomplished had caused a certain amount of private suffering;
to this they were resigned. The reforms which were inevitable must
alter the condition of thousands of human beings: that was not thought
of. The uncertainty of the future had already checked the course of
trade and paralysed the exertions of industry: neither privations nor
suffering extinguished their ardour. All these private calamities
disappeared, in the eyes even of those who suffered by them, in the
splendour of the common enterprise. The love of well-being, which
was one day to reign supreme over all other passions, was then but a
subordinate and feeble predilection. Men aimed at loftier pleasures.
Every man was resolved, in his heart, to sacrifice himself for so
great a cause, and to grudge neither his time, nor his property, nor
his life. I hasten to record these virtues of our forefathers, for the
present age, which is already incapable of imitating them, will soon be
incapable of understanding them.
At that time, the nation, in every rank, sought to be free. To
doubt its ability for self-government would have seemed a strange
impertinence, and no phrase-maker of that day would have dared to tell
the people that, for their own happiness and safety, their hands must
be tied and their authority placed in leading-strings. Ere they can
listen to such language, nations must be reduced to think more humbly
of themselves.
The passions which had just been so violently excited between the
various classes of society seemed of themselves to cool down at
the moment when for the first time in two centuries these classes
were about to act together. All had demanded with equal fervour the
restoration of the great Assembly then new born. Each of them saw in
that event the means of realising its fondest hopes. The States-General
were to meet at last! A common gladness filled those divided hearts,
and knit them together for an instant before they separated for ever.
All minds were struck by the peril of disunion. A sovereign effort was
made to agree. Instead of dwelling on the causes of difference, men
applied themselves to consider what all alike desired: the destruction
of arbitrary power, the self-government of the nation, the recognition
of the rights of every citizen, liberty of the press, personal freedom,
the mitigation of the law, a stronger administration of justice,
religious toleration, the abolition of restraint on labour and human
industry--these were all things demanded by all. This, at least, was
remembered: this was a ground of common rejoicing.
I think no epoch of history has seen, on any spot on the globe, so
large a number of men so passionately devoted to the public good, so
honestly forgetful of themselves, so absorbed in the contemplation of
the common interest, so resolved to risk all they cherished in life to
secure it. This it is which gave to the opening of the year 1789 an
incomparable grandeur. This was the general source of passion, courage,
and patriotism, from which all the great deeds of the Revolution took
their rise. The scene was a short one; but it will never depart from
the memory of mankind. The distance from which we look back to it is
not the only cause of its apparent greatness; it seemed as great to
all those who lived in it. All foreign nations saw it, hailed it, were
moved by it. There is no corner of Europe so secluded that the glow of
admiration and of hope did not reach it. In the vast series of memoirs
left to us by the contemporaries of the Revolution, I have met with
none in which the recollection of the first days of 1789 has not left
imperishable traces; everywhere it kindled the freshness, clearness,
and vivacity of the impressions of youth.
I venture to add that there is but one people on the earth which could
have played this part. I know my country--I know but too well its
mistakes, its faults, its foibles, and its sins. But I know, too, of
what it is capable. There are undertakings which the French nation can
alone accomplish; there are magnanimous resolutions which this nation
can alone conceive. France alone may, on some given day, take in hand
the common cause and stand up in defence of it; and if she be subject
to awful reverses, she has also moments of sublime enthusiasm which
bear her aloft to heights which no other people will ever reach.
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.[139]
Note (I.)--Page 12, line 18.
THE POWER OF THE ROMAN LAW IN GERMANY.--THE MANNER IN WHICH IT HAD
SUPERSEDED THE GERMANIC LAW.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages the Roman law became the principal
and almost the sole study of the German legists; indeed, at this time,
most of them pursued their education out of Germany in the Italian
universities. These legists, though not the masters of political
society, were charged with the explanation and application of its
laws; and though they could not abolish the Germanic law, they altered
and disfigured it so as to fit into the frame of the Roman law.
They applied the Roman law to everything in the German institutions
that seemed to have the most remote analogy with the legislation of
Justinian; and they thus introduced a new spirit and new usage into
the national legislation; by degrees it was so completely transformed
that it was no longer recognisable, and in the seventeenth century, for
instance, it was almost unknown. It had been replaced by a nondescript
something, which was German indeed in name, but Roman in fact.
I find reason to believe that owing to these efforts of the legists,
the condition of ancient Germanic society deteriorated in many
respects, especially so far as the peasants were concerned; many of
those who had succeeded until then in preserving the whole or part of
their liberties or of their possessions, lost them at this period by
learned assimilations of their condition to that of the Roman bondsmen
or emphyteotes.
This gradual transformation of the national law, and the vain efforts
which were made to oppose it, may be clearly traced in the history of
Würtemberg.
From the origin of the county of that name in 1250, until the creation
of the duchy in 1495, the legislation was purely indigenous; it was
composed of customs and local laws made by the towns or by the Courts
of Seignory, and of statutes promulgated by the Estates; ecclesiastical
affairs alone were regulated by a foreign code, the canon law.
From 1495 the character of the legislation was changed: the Roman
law began to penetrate; the _doctors_, as they were called, those
who had studied law in the foreign schools, entered the Government
and possessed themselves of the direction of the superior courts.
During the whole of the first half of the sixteenth century political
society maintained the same struggle against them that was going on
in England at the same time, but with very different success. At
the diet of Tübingen in 1514, and at those which succeeded it, the
representatives of feudalism and the deputies of the towns made all
kinds of representations against that which was taking place; they
attacked the legists who were invading all the courts, and changing the
spirit or the letter of all customs and laws. The advantage at first
seemed on their side; they obtained from the Government the promise
that henceforth the high courts should be composed of honourable and
enlightened men chosen from among the nobility and the Estates of the
Duchy, and not of doctors, and that a commission composed of agents
of the Government, and of representatives of the estates, should draw
up the project of a code which might serve as a rule throughout the
country. These efforts were vain. The Roman law soon drove the national
law out of a great portion of the legislation, and even took root in
the very ground on which it still suffered this legislation to subsist.
This victory of a foreign over the indigenous law is ascribed by many
German historians to two causes:--1. To the movement which at that
period attracted all minds towards the languages and literature of
antiquity, and the contempt which this inspired for the intellectual
productions of the national genius. 2. To the idea which had always
possessed the whole of the Middle Ages in Germany, and which displays
itself even in the legislation of that period, that the Holy Empire was
the continuation of the Roman Empire, and that the legislation of the
former was an inheritance derived from the latter.
These causes, however, are not sufficient to explain why the same law
should at the same period have been introduced into the whole continent
of Europe. I believe that this arose from the fact that at this time
the absolute power of the sovereigns was everywhere established on the
ruins of the ancient liberties of Europe, and that the Roman law, a law
of servitude, was admirably fitted to second their views.
The Roman law which everywhere perfected civil society tended
everywhere to degrade political society, inasmuch as it was chiefly the
production of a highly civilised but much enslaved people. The kings
of Europe accordingly adopted it with eagerness, and established it
wherever they were the masters. Throughout Europe the interpreters of
this law became their ministers or their chief agents. When called on
to do so the legists even gave them the support of the law against the
law itself, and they have frequently done so since. Wherever there was
a sovereign who violated the laws we shall generally find at his side
a legist who assured him that nothing was more lawful, and who proved
most learnedly that his violence was just, and that the oppressed party
was in the wrong.
Note (II.)--Page 13, line 37.
THE TRANSITION FROM FEUDAL TO DEMOCRATIC MONARCHY.
As all monarchies had become absolute about the same period, it is
scarcely probable that this change of constitution was owing to any
particular circumstance which accidentally occurred at the same time
in every State, and we are led to the belief that all these similar
and contemporary events must have been produced by some general cause,
which simultaneously acted everywhere in the same manner.
This general cause was the transition from one state of society to
another, from feudal inequality to democratic equality. The nobility
was already depressed, and the people were not yet raised; the former
were brought too low, and the latter were not sufficiently high to
restrain the action of the ruling power. For a hundred and fifty years
kings and princes enjoyed a sort of golden age, during which they
possessed at once stability and unlimited power, two things which are
usually incompatible; they were as sacred as the hereditary chiefs of a
feudal monarchy, and as absolute as the rulers of a democratic society.
Note (III.)--Page 14, line 25.
DECAY OF THE FREE TOWNS OF GERMANY.--IMPERIAL TOWNS (REICHSTÄDTE).
According to the German historians the period of the greatest splendour
of these towns was during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They
were then the abode of wealth, of the arts and sciences--masters of the
commerce of Europe--the most powerful centres of civilisation. In the
north and in the south of Germany especially, they had ended by forming
independent confederations with the surrounding nobles, as the towns in
Switzerland had done with the peasants.
In the sixteenth century they still enjoyed the same prosperity, but
the period of their decay was come. The Thirty-years’ War hastened
their fall, and scarcely one of them escaped destruction and ruin
during that period.
Nevertheless, the Treaty of Westphalia mentions them positively, and
asserts their position as immediate States, that is to say, States
which depended immediately upon the Emperor; but the neighbouring
Sovereigns, on the one hand, and on the other the Emperor himself, the
exercise of whose power, since the Thirty-years’ War, was limited to
the lesser vassals of the empire, restricted their sovereignty within
narrower and narrower limits. In the eighteenth century fifty-one of
them were still in existence, they filled two benches at the Diet, and
had an independent vote there; but, in fact, they no longer exercised
any influence upon the direction of general affairs.
At home they were all heavily burdened with debts, partly because they
continued to be charged for the Imperial taxes at a rate suited to
their former splendour, and partly because their own administration
was extremely bad. It is very remarkable that this bad administration
seemed to be the result of some secret disease which was common to
them all, whatever might be the form of their constitution; whether
aristocratic or democratic it equally gave rise to complaints, which,
if not precisely similar, were equally violent; if aristocratic,
the Government was said to have become a coterie composed of a few
families: everything was done by favour and private interest; if
democratic, popular intrigue and venality appeared on every side.
In either case there were complaints of the want of honesty and
disinterestedness on the part of the Governments. The Emperor was
continually forced to interpose in their affairs, and to try to restore
order in them. Their population decreased, and distress prevailed
in them. They were no longer the abodes of German civilisation; the
arts left them, and went to shine in the new towns created by the
sovereigns, and representing modern society. Trade forsook them--their
ancient energy and patriotic vigour disappeared. Hamburg almost alone
still remained a great centre of wealth and intelligence, but this was
owing to causes quite peculiar to herself.
Note (IV.)--Page 19, line 14.
DATE OF THE ABOLITION OF SERFDOM IN GERMANY.
The following table will show that the abolition of serfdom in most
parts of Germany has taken place very recently. Serfdom was abolished--
1. In Baden, in 1783.
2. In Hohenzollern, in 1804.
3. In Schleswig and Holstein, in 1804.
4. In Nassau, in 1808.
5. In Prussia, Frederick William I. had done away with serfdom in
his own domains so early as 1717. The code of the Great Frederick,
as we have already seen, was intended to abolish it throughout the
kingdom, but in reality it only got rid of it in its hardest form,
the _leibeigenschaft_, and retained it in the mitigated shape of
_erbunterthänigkeit_. It was not till 1809 that it disappeared
altogether.
6. In Bavaria serfdom disappeared in 1808.
7. A decree of Napoleon, dated from Madrid in 1808, abolished it in the
Grand-duchy of Berg, and in several other small territories, such as
Erfurt, Baireuth, &c.
8. In the kingdom of Westphalia, its destruction dates from 1808 and
1809.
9. In the principality of Lippe Detmold, from 1809.
10. In Schomburg Lippe, from 1810.
11. In Swedish Pomerania, from 1810 also.
12. In Hessen Darmstadt, from 1809 and 1811.
13. Würtemberg, from 1817.
14. In Mecklenburg, from 1820.
15. In Oldenburg, from 1814.
16. In Saxony for Lusatia, from 1832.
17. In Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, only from 1833.
18. In Austria, from 1811. So early as in 1782 Joseph II. had
destroyed _leibeigenschaft_; but serfage in its mitigated form of
_erbunterthänigkeit_ lasted till 1811.
Note (V.)--Page 19, line 17.
A part of the countries which are now German, such as Brandenburg,
Prussia proper, and Silesia, were originally inhabited by a Slavonic
race, and were conquered and partially occupied by Germans. In those
countries serfdom had a far harsher aspect than in Germany itself, and
left far stronger traces at the end of the eighteenth century.
Note (VI.)--Page 20, line 11.
CODE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.
Amongst the works of Frederick the Great the least known, even in his
own country, and the least brilliant, is the Code drawn up under his
directions and promulgated by his successor. I do not know, however,
whether any of them throws more light upon the man himself and on his
time, or which more fully displays their reciprocal influence on each
other.
This code is a real constitution, in the sense usually attached to the
word; it undertakes to define not only the relations of the citizens to
one another, but also the relations between the citizens and the State:
it is at once a civil code, a criminal code, and a charter.
It rests, or appears to rest, on a certain number of general principles
expressed in a very philosophical and abstract form, and resembling in
many respects those which abound in the Declaration of the Rights of
Man in the French Constitution of 1791.
It proclaims that the good of the State and of its inhabitants is
the object of society and the limit of the law; that the laws cannot
restrict the liberty or the rights of citizens except for the sake of
public utility; that every member of the State is bound to labour for
the public good, according to his position and fortune; and that the
rights of individuals must give way to the interests of the public.
There is no mention of the hereditary right of the Sovereign and his
family, nor even of any private rights distinct from the rights of the
State. The name of the State is the only one used to designate royal
power.
On the other hand, much is said about the general rights of man: these
general rights of man are based on the natural liberty of each to
pursue his advantage, provided it be done without injury to the rights
of others. All actions not forbidden by the natural law, or by the
positive laws of the State, are permitted. Every inhabitant of the
State may demand from it protection for his person and property, and
has the right to defend himself by force if the State does not come to
his assistance.
After laying down these first great principles, the legislator, instead
of deducing from them, as in the code of 1791, the doctrine of the
sovereignty of the people and the organisation of a popular government
in a free state of society, turns shortly round and arrives at another
result equally democratic but by no means liberal; he looks upon the
sovereign as the sole representative of the State, and invests him
with all the rights that have been recognised as belonging to society.
In this code the sovereign is no longer the representative of God, he
is the representative of society, its agent and its servant, to use
Frederick’s own words printed in his works; but he alone represents
it, he alone wields its whole power. The head of the State, says the
Introduction, whose duty it is to bring forth the general good, which
is the sole object of society, is authorised to govern and direct all
the actions of individuals towards that end.
Among the chief duties of this all-powerful agent of society we find
the following: to preserve peace and public security at home, and to
protect every one against violence. Abroad it is for him to make peace
or war; he only is to make laws and enact general police regulations;
he alone possesses the right to pronounce pardons and to stop criminal
proceedings.
All associations that may exist in the State, and all public
establishments, are subject to his inspection and direction for the
sake of general peace and security. In order that the head of the
State may be enabled to fulfil these obligations, he must possess
certain revenues and profitable rights; accordingly he has the power of
taxing private fortunes and persons, their professions, their trades,
their produce, or their consumption. The orders given by the public
functionaries who act in his name are to be obeyed, like his own, in
all matters within the limits of their functions.
Beneath this perfectly modern head we shall presently see a thoroughly
Gothic body; Frederick only removed from it whatever stood in the way
of the action of his own power, and the result was a monster which
looked like a transition from one order of creation to another. In this
strange production Frederick exhibited as much contempt for logic as
care for his own power and anxiety not to place needless difficulties
in his own way by attacking that which was still strong enough to
defend itself.
The inhabitants of the rural districts, with the exception of a few
districts and a few places, were in a state of hereditary servitude,
which was not confined to the forced labour and services inherent to
the possession of certain estates, but which extended, as we have seen,
to the person of the possessor.
Most of the privileges of the owners of the soil were confirmed afresh
by the code; it may even be said that they were confirmed in opposition
to the code, since it states that where the local customs and the
new legislation differed the former were to be followed. It formally
declares that the State cannot destroy any of these privileges except
by purchasing them and the following forms of justice.
The code asserted, it is true, that serfage, properly so called
(_leibeigenschaft_), inasmuch as it established personal servitude,
was abolished, but the hereditary subjection which replaced it
(_erbunterthänigkeit_) was still a kind of servitude, as may be seen by
reading the text.
In the same code the burgher remained carefully separated from the
peasant; between the burghers and the nobility a sort of intermediate
class was recognised, composed of high functionaries who were not
noble, ecclesiastics, professors of learned schools, gymnasia and
universities.
Though apart from the rest of the burghers, these men were by no means
confounded with the nobles; they remained in a position of inferiority
towards them. They could not in general purchase noble estates
(_rittergüter_), or fill the highest places in the civil service.
Moreover, they were not _hoffähig_, that is to say, they could not be
presented at court except in very rare cases, and never with their
families. As in France, this inferiority was the more irksome, because
every day this class became more enlightened and influential, and the
burgher functionaries of the State, though they did not occupy the
most brilliant posts, already filled those in which the work was the
hardest and the most important. The irritation against the privileges
of the nobility, which was about to contribute so largely to the
French Revolution, prepared the way for the approbation with which it
was at first received in Germany. The principal author of the code,
nevertheless, was a burgher; but he doubtless followed the directions
of his master.
The ancient constitution of Europe was not sufficiently destroyed in
this part of Germany to make Frederick believe that, in spite of the
contempt with which he regarded it, the time was yet come for sweeping
away its remains. He mostly confined himself to depriving the nobles
of the right of assembling and governing collectively, and left each
individual in possession of his privileges, only restricting and
regulating their application. Thus it happened that this code, drawn up
under the direction of a disciple of our philosophers, and put in force
after the French Revolution had broken out, is the most authentic and
the most recent legislative document that gives a legal basis to those
very feudal inequalities which the Revolution was about to abolish
throughout Europe.
In it the nobility was declared to be the principal body in the State;
the nobles were to be appointed by preference, it says, to all posts of
honour which they might be competent to fill. They alone might possess
noble estates, create entails, enjoy the privileges of sporting and
of the administration of justice inherent in noble estates, as well
as the rights of patronage over the Church; they alone might take the
name of the estates they possessed. The burghers who were authorised by
express exemption to own noble estates could only enjoy the rights and
honours attached to their ownership, within the precise limits of this
permission. A burgher possessed of a noble estate could not bequeath it
to an heir of his own class unless he was within the first degree of
consanguinity. If there was no such heir, or any heir of noble birth,
the estate was to be sold by public auction.
One of the most characteristic parts of Frederick’s code is the penal
law for political offences, which is appended to it.
The successor of the Great Frederick, Frederick William II., who, in
spite of the feudal and absolutist portion of the legislation, of which
I have given a sketch, thought he perceived a revolutionary tendency
in his uncle’s production, and accordingly delayed its publication
until 1794, was only reassured, it is said, by the excellent penal
regulations by means of which this code corrected the bad principles
which it contained. Never, indeed, has anything been contrived, even
since that time, more perfect in its kind; not only were revolts and
conspiracies to be punished with the greatest severity, but even
disrespectful criticisms of the acts of the Government were likewise
to be most severely repressed. The purchase and dissemination of
dangerous works was carefully prohibited; the printer, the publisher,
and the disseminator were made responsible for the sins of the author.
Ridottos, masquerades, and other amusements, were declared to be public
assemblages, and must be authorised by the police; the same thing held
good with respect to dinners in public places. The liberty of the press
and of speech was completely subjected to an arbitrary surveillance;
the carrying of fire-arms was also prohibited.
In the midst of this production, of which half was borrowed from the
Middle Ages, there appear regulations, which, by their extreme spirit
of centralisation, actually bordered on socialism. Thus, it is laid
down that it is incumbent on the State to provide food, work, and
wages for all who are unable to maintain themselves, and who are not
entitled to assistance either from the lord or from the parish: for
such as these work was to be provided, according to their strength and
capacity. The State was to form establishments for the relief of the
poverty of its citizens; the State, moreover, was authorised to destroy
foundations which tended to encourage idleness, and to distribute
amongst the poor the money under their control.
The novelty and boldness of the theories, and the timidity in practice
which characterises this work of the Great Frederick, may be found in
every part of it. On the one hand, it proclaimed the great principle of
modern society, that all ought to be alike subject to taxation; on the
other, it suffered the provincial laws, which contain exemptions from
this rule, to subsist. It ordained that all lawsuits between a subject
and the sovereign shall be judged according to the forms and precedents
laid down for all other litigation; but, in fact, this rule was never
obeyed when the interests or the passions of the King were opposed to
it. The Mill of Sans-Souci was ostentatiously exhibited, while on many
other occasions justice was quietly suppressed.
The best proof of how little real innovation was contained in this
apparently innovating code, and which, therefore, renders it a most
curious study for those who desire to know the true state of society
in that part of Germany at the end of the eighteenth century, is that
the Prussian nation scarcely seemed to be conscious of its publication.
The legists alone studied it, and at the present day a great number of
educated men have never read it.
Note (VII.)--Page 21, last line.
LANDS OF THE PEASANTS IN GERMANY.
Amongst the peasantry there were many families who were not only
freemen and owners of land, but whose estates formed a perpetual
entail. The estate they possessed could not be divided, and was
inherited by only one of the sons, usually the youngest, as is the case
in certain English customs. This son was only bound to pay a certain
portion to his brothers and sisters.
These _Erbgüter_ of the peasantry were more or less common throughout
Germany; for in no part of it was the whole of the soil swallowed up by
the feudal system. In Silesia, where the nobility still retain immense
domains, of which most of the villages formed a part, there were
nevertheless villages owned entirely by their inhabitants, and entirely
free. In certain parts of Germany, such as the Tyrol and Friesland, the
predominant state of things was that the peasants owned the soil as
_Erbgüter_.
But in the greater part of Germany this kind of possession was but a
more or less frequent exception. In the villages where it existed the
small proprietors of this kind formed a sort of aristocracy among the
peasantry.
Note (VIII.)--Page 22, line 3.
POSITION OF THE NOBILITY AND DIVISION OF LANDS ALONG THE BANKS OF THE
RHINE.
From information gathered on the spot, and from persons who lived
under the old state of things, I gather that in the Electorate of
Cologne, for instance, there was a great number of villages without
lords, governed by the agents of the Prince; that in those places
where the nobility existed, its administrative powers were much
restricted; that its position was rather brilliant than powerful (at
least individually); that they enjoyed many honours, and formed part
of the council of the Prince, but exercised no real and immediate
power over the people. I have ascertained from other sources that in
the same electorate property was much divided, and that a great number
of the peasants were landowners; this was mainly attributable to the
state of embarrassment and almost distress in which so many of the
noble families had long lived, and which compelled them constantly
to alienate small portions of their land which were bought by the
peasants, either for ready money or at a fixed rent-charge. I have read
a census of the population of the Bishopric of Cologne at the beginning
of the eighteenth century, which gives the state of landed property at
that time, and I find that even then one-third of the soil belonged
to the peasants. From this fact arose a combination of feelings and
ideas which brought the population of this part of Germany far nearer
to a state of revolution than that of other districts in which these
peculiarities had not yet shown themselves.
Note (IX.)--Page 22, line 27.
HOW THE USURY LAWS HAD ACCELERATED THE SUBDIVISION OF THE SOIL.
A law prohibiting usury at whatever rate of interest was still in
force at the end of the eighteenth century. We learn from Turgot that
even so late as 1769 it was still observed in many places. The law
subsists, says he, though it is often violated. The consular judges
allow interest stipulated without alienation of the capital, while the
ordinary tribunals condemn it. We may still see fraudulent debtors
bring criminal actions against their creditors for lending them money
without alienation of the capital.
Independently of the effects which this legislation could not fail to
produce upon commerce, and upon the industrial habits of the nation
generally, it likewise had a very marked influence on the division
and tenure of the land. It had multiplied, _ad infinitum_, perpetual
rent-charges, both on real and other property. It had led the ancient
owners of the soil instead of borrowing when they wanted money to sell
small portions of their estates for payments partly in capital and
partly in perpetual annuities; this had contributed greatly on the one
hand to the subdivision of the soil, and on the other to burdening the
small proprietors with a multitude of perpetual services.
Note (X.)--Page 25, line 9.
EXAMPLE OF THE PASSIONS EXCITED BY THE TITHES TEN YEARS BEFORE THE
REVOLUTION.
In 1779 an obscure lawyer of Lucé complained in very bitter language,
which already had a flavour of the revolution, that the curés and other
great titheholders sold to the farmers, at an exorbitant price, the
straw they had received in tithe, which was indispensable to the latter
for making manure.
Note (XI.)--Page 25, line 15.
EXAMPLE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE CLERGY ALIENATED THE PEOPLE BY THE
EXERCISE OF ITS PRIVILEGES.
In 1780 the prior and the canons of the priory of Laval complained
of an attempt to subject them to the payment of the tariff duties on
articles of consumption, and on the materials needed for the repairs
of their buildings. They pleaded that as the tariff duties represented
the _taille_, and as they were exempt from the _taille_, they therefore
owed nothing. The minister referred them to a decision at the election,
with the right of appeal to the _Cour des Aides_.
Note (XII.)--Page 25, line 23.
FEUDAL RIGHTS POSSESSED BY PRIESTS.--ONE EXAMPLE FROM AMONGST A
THOUSAND.
_Abbey of Cherbourg_ (1753).--This abbey possessed at this period the
seignorial rent-charges, payable in money or in kind in almost every
parish round Cherbourg; one single village owed it three hundred and
six bushels of wheat. It owned the barony of Ste. Geneviève, the
barony and the seignorial mill of Bas-du-Roule, and the barony of
Neuville-au-Plein, situated at a distance of at least ten leagues. It
received moreover the tithes of twelve parishes in the peninsula, of
which several were very distant from it.
Note (XIII.)--Page 27, line 21.
IRRITATION AMONG THE PEASANTS CAUSED BY FEUDAL RIGHTS, AND ESPECIALLY
BY THE FEUDAL RIGHTS OF THE PRIESTS.
The following letter was written shortly before the Revolution by a
farmer to the Intendant himself. It cannot be quoted as an authority
for the truth of the facts which it alleges, but it is a perfect
indication of the state of feeling among the class to which its writer
belonged.
‘Although we have few nobles in this part of the country,’ says
he, ‘you must not suppose that the land is any the less burdened
with rent-charges; far from it, almost all the fiefs belong to the
cathedral, to the archbishopric, to the College of St. Martin, to the
Benedictines of Noirmoutiers, of Saint Julien, and other ecclesiastics,
who never suffer them to lapse from disuse, but perpetually hatch fresh
ones out of musty old parchments which are manufactured God only knows
how!
‘The whole country is infected with rent-charges. The greater part of
the land owes annually a seventh of wheat per half acre, others owe
wine; one has to send a quarter of his fruit to the seigneurie, another
the fifth, &c., the tithe being always previously deducted; this man a
twelfth, that a thirteenth. All these rights are so strange that I know
them of all amounts, from a fourth to a fortieth of the fruit.
‘What is to be said of the dues payable in all kinds of grain,
vegetables, money, poultry, labour, wood, fruit, candles?
‘I know strange dues in bread, wax, eggs, pigs without the head,
wreaths of roses, bunches of violets, gilt spurs, &c. There is also
a countless multitude of other seignorial rights. Why has not France
been released from all these absurd dues? At last men’s eyes are
beginning to be opened, and everything may be hoped from the wisdom of
the present Government: it will stretch forth a helping hand to the
poor victims of the exactions of the old fiscal laws called seignorial
rights, which ought never to be alienated or sold.
‘Again, what shall we think of the tyranny of fines (_lods et
ventes_)? A purchaser exhausts his means to buy some land, and is
then compelled to pay heavy expenses for adjudication and contract,
entering upon possession, _procès-verbaux_ (_contrôle_), verification
and registration (_insinuation_), hundredth _denier_, eight sous in
the livre, &c.: and besides all this, he has to submit his contract to
his seigneur, who makes him pay the fines (_lods et ventes_) on the
principal of his purchase; some exact a twelfth, others a tenth: some
demand a fifteenth, others a fifteenth and the fifth of that again.
In short they are to be found of all prices; and I even know some
who exact a third of the purchase money. No, the fiercest and most
barbarous nations in the universe never invented exactions so great and
so numerous as those of which our tyrants have heaped upon the heads of
our forefathers.’ (This philosophical and literary tirade is misspelt
throughout.)
‘How! can the late king have authorised the redemption of rent-charges
on property in towns and not have included those in the country? The
latter ought to have come first: why should the poor farmers not be
allowed to burst their fetters, to redeem and free themselves from the
multitude of seignorial rent-charges which cause so much injury to
the vassals and so little profit to their lords? There ought to be no
distinction as to the power of redemption between town and country and
between the lords and private persons.
‘The Intendants of the incumbents of ecclesiastical property pillage
and mulct all their farmers every time the property changes hands. We
have a recent example of this. The intendant of our new archbishop on
his arrival gave notice to quit to all the farmers of his predecessor
M. de Fleury, declared all the leases which they had taken under him
to be void, and turned out all who would not double their leases and
give over again heavy “pots de vin,” which they had already paid to
the intendant of M. de Fleury. They were thus deprived, in the most
notorious manner, of seven or eight years of their leases which had
still to run, and were forced to leave their homes suddenly just
before Christmas, the most critical time of the year on account of the
difficulty of procuring food for cattle, without knowing where to go
for shelter. The King of Prussia could have done no worse.’
It seems, indeed, that on ecclesiastical property the leases of the
preceding incumbent were not legally binding on his successor. The
author of the above letter is quite correct in his statement that
the feudal rent-charges were redeemable in the towns and not in
the country. It is a fresh proof of the neglect shown towards the
peasantry, and of the way in which all those placed above them found
means to forward their own interests.
Note (XIV.)--Page 27, line 27.
EFFECTS OF FEUDALISM.
Every institution that has long been dominant, after establishing
itself firmly in its proper sphere, penetrates beyond it, and ends by
exerting considerable influence even over that part of the legislation
which it does not govern; thus feudalism, although it belonged above
all to political law, had transformed the whole civil law as well,
and deeply modified the state of property and of persons in all the
relations of private life. It had affected the law of inheritance by
the inequality of partition, a principle which had even reached down to
the middle classes in certain provinces, for instance, Normandy. Its
influence had extended over all real property, for no landed estates
were entirely excluded from its action, or of which the owners did not
in some way feel its effects. It affected not only the property of
individuals but even that of the communes; it reacted on manufactures
by the duties which it levied upon them; it reacted on private incomes
by the inequality of public employments, and on pecuniary interests
generally in every man’s business; on landowners by dues, rent-charges,
and the corvée; on the tenant in a thousand different ways, amongst
others by the _banalités_ (the right of the seigneur to compel his
vassals to grind their corn at his mill, &c.), seignorial monopolies,
perpetual rent-charges, fines, &c.; on tradesmen, by the market dues;
on merchants by the transport dues, &c. By putting the final stroke
to the feudal system the Revolution made itself seen and felt, so to
speak, at all the most sensitive points of private interest.
Note (XV.)--Page 35, line 8.
PUBLIC CHARITY DISTRIBUTED BY THE STATE.--FAVOURITISM.
In 1748 the King granted 20,000 lbs. of rice (it was a year of great
want and scarcity, like so many in the eighteenth century). The
Archbishop of Tours asserted that this relief was obtained by him,
and ought therefore to be distributed by him alone and in his own
diocese. The Intendant declared that the succour was granted to the
whole _généralité_, and ought therefore to be distributed by him to
all the different parishes. After a protracted struggle, the King,
by way of conciliating both, doubled the quantity of rice intended
for the _généralité_, so that the Archbishop and the Intendant might
each distribute half. Both were agreed that the distribution should
be made by the curés. There was no question of entrusting it to the
seigneurs or to the syndics. We see, from the correspondence between
the Intendant and the Comptroller-General, that in the opinion of
the former the Archbishop wanted to give the rice entirely to his
own protégés, and especially to cause the greater part of it to be
distributed in the parishes belonging to the Duchess of Rochechouart.
On the other hand, we find among these papers letters from great
noblemen asking relief for their own parishes in particular, and
letters from the Comptroller-General recommending the parishes
belonging to particular persons.
Legal charity gives scope for abuses, whatever be the system pursued;
but it is perfectly impracticable when exercised from a distance and
without publicity by the Central Government.
Note (XVI.)--Page 35, line 8.
EXAMPLE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THIS LEGAL CHARITY WAS ADMINISTERED.
We find in the report made to the provincial assembly of Upper Guienne
in 1780: ‘Out of the sum of 385,000 livres, the amount of the funds
granted by his Majesty to this _généralité_ from 1773, when the
_travaux de charité_ were first established, until 1779 inclusively,
the elective district of Montauban, which is the chef-lieu and
residence of the Intendant, has received for its own share above
240,000 livres, the greater part of which sum was actually paid to the
communauté of Montauban.
Note (XVII.)--Page 35, line 12.
POWERS OF THE INTENDANT FOR THE REGULATION OF TRADES AND MANUFACTURES.
The archives of the Intendancies are full of documents relating to this
regulation of trades and manufactures.
Not only was industry subjected to the restrictions placed upon it by
the _corps d’état_, _maîtrises_, &c., but it was abandoned to all the
caprices of the Government, usually represented by the King’s council,
as far as general regulations went, and by the intendants in their
special application. We find the latter constantly interfering as to
the length of which the pieces of cloth are to be woven, the pattern
to be chosen, the method to be followed, and the defects to be avoided
in the manufacture. They had under their orders, independently of
the sub-delegates, local inspectors of manufactures. In this respect
centralisation was pushed even further than at the present time; it
was more capricious and more arbitrary: it raised up swarms of public
functionaries, and created all manner of habits of submission and
dependence.
It must be remembered that these habits were engrafted above all upon
the manufacturing and commercial middle classes whose triumph was at
hand, far more than upon those which were doomed to defeat. Accordingly
the Revolution, instead of destroying these habits, could not fail to
make them spread and predominate.
All the preceding remarks have been suggested by the perusal of a
voluminous correspondence and other documents, entitled ‘Manufactures
and Fabrics, Drapery, Dry-goods,’ which are to be found among the
remaining papers belonging to the archives of the Intendancy of the
Isle of France. They likewise contain frequent and detailed reports
from the inspectors to the Intendant of the visits they have made to
the various manufactures, in order to ascertain whether the regulations
laid down for the methods of fabrication are observed. There are,
moreover, sundry orders in council, given by the advice of the
Intendant, prohibiting or permitting the manufacture, either in certain
places, of certain stuffs, or according to certain methods.
The predominant idea in the remarks of these inspectors, who treat
the manufacturers with great disdain, is that it is the duty and the
right of the State to compel them to do their very best, not only for
the sake of the public interest, but for their own. Accordingly they
thought themselves bound to force them to adopt the best methods, and
to enter carefully into every detail of their art, accompanying this
kind interest with countless prohibitions and enormous fines.
Note (XVIII.)--Page 36, last line.
SPIRIT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XI.
No document better enables us to estimate the true spirit of the
government of Louis XI. than the numerous constitutions granted by him
to the towns. I have had occasion to study very carefully those which
he conferred on most of the towns of Anjou, of Maine, and of Touraine.
All these constitutions are formed on the same model, and the same
designs are manifest in them all. The figure of Louis XI., which they
reveal to us, is rather different from the one which we are familiar
with. We are accustomed to consider him as the enemy of the nobility,
but at the same time as the sincere though somewhat stern friend of the
people. Here, however, he shows the same hatred towards the political
rights of the people and of the nobility. He makes use of the middle
classes to pull down those above them, and to keep down those below:
he is equally anti-aristocratic and anti-democratic; he is essentially
the citizen-king. He heaps privileges upon the principal persons of
the towns, whose importance he desires to increase; he profusely
confers nobility on them, thus lowering its value, and at the same
time he destroys the whole popular and democratic character of the
administration of the towns, and restricts the government of them to
a small number of families attached to his reforms, and bound to his
authority by immense advantages.
Note (XIX.)--Page 37, line 30.
ADMINISTRATION OF A TOWN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
I extract from the inquiry made in 1764 into the administration of
towns, the document relating to Angers; in it we shall find the
constitution of the town analysed, attacked, and defended by turns by
the Présidial, the Corporation, the Sub-delegate, and the Intendant. As
the same facts were repeated in a great number of other places, this
must not be looked upon merely as an individual picture.
‘_Report of the Présidial on the actual state of the Municipal
Corporation of Angers, and on the Reforms to be made in it._’
‘The corporation of Angers,’ says the Présidial, ‘never consults the
inhabitants generally, even on the most important subjects, except in
cases in which it is obliged by special orders to do so. This system of
administration is, therefore, unknown to all those who do not belong to
the corporation, even to the échevins amovibles, who have but a very
superficial idea of it.’
(The tendency of all these small civic oligarchies was, indeed, to
consult what are here called the inhabitants generally as little as
possible.)
The corporation was composed, according to an arrêt de règlement of
29th March, 1681, of twenty-one officers:--
A mayor, who becomes noble, and whose functions continue for four years.
Four échevins amovibles, who remain in office two years.
Twelve échevins conseillers, who, when once elected, remain for life.
Two procureurs de ville.
One procureur in reversion.
One greffier.
They possessed various privileges, amongst others the following: their
capitation tax was fixed and moderate; they were exempt from having
soldiers billeted upon them and from providing ustensiles, fournitures,
and contributions; from the franchise des droits, the cloison double
and triple, the old and new octroi and accessoire on all articles of
consumption, even from the don gratuit, from which, says the Présidial,
they chose to exempt themselves on their own private authority; they
receive moreover allowances for wax-lights, and some of them salaries
and apartments.
We see by these details that it was a very pleasant thing to be
perpetual échevins of Angers in those days. Always and everywhere we
find the system which makes the exemption from taxation fall on the
richest classes. In a subsequent part of the same report we read:
‘These places are sought by the richest inhabitants, who aspire to
them in order to obtain a considerable reduction of capitation, the
surcharge of which falls on the others. There are at present several
municipal officers, whose fixed capitation is 30 livres, whereas they
ought to be taxed 250 or 300 livres; there is one especially among
them, who, considering his fortune, might pay, at least, 1000 livres
of capitation tax.’ We find in another part of the same report, that
‘amongst the richest inhabitants there are upwards of forty officers,
or widows of officers (men holding office), whose places confer on them
the privilege of not contributing to the heavy capitation levied on the
town; the burden of this capitation accordingly falls on a vast number
of poor artisans, who think themselves overtaxed, and constantly appeal
against the excessive charges upon them, though almost always unjustly,
inasmuch as there is no inequality in the distribution of the amount,
which remains to be paid by the town.’
* * * * *
The General Assembly consisted of seventy-six persons:--
The Mayor;
Two deputies from the Chapter;
One Syndic of the clerks;
Two deputies from the Présidial;
One deputy from the University;
One Lieutenant-general of Police;
Four Échevins;
Twelve Conseillers-échevins;
One Procureur du Roi au Présidial;
One Procureur de Ville;
Two deputies from the Eaux et Forêts;
Two from the Élection (elective district?);
Two from the Grenier à sel;
Two from the Traites;
Two from the Mint;
Two from the body of Avocats and Procureurs;
Two from the Juges Consuls;
Two from the Notaries;
Two from the body of Merchants; and, lastly,
Two sent by each of the sixteen parishes.
These last were supposed to represent the people, properly so called,
especially the industrial corporations. We see that care had been taken
to keep them in a constant minority.
When the places in the town corporation fell vacant, the general
assembly selected three persons to fill each vacancy.
Most of the offices belonging to the Hôtel de Ville were not
exclusively given to members of corporations, as was the case in
several municipal constitutions, that is to say, the electors were not
obliged to choose from among them their magistrates, advocates, &c.
This was highly disapproved by the members of the Présidial.
According to this Présidial, which appears to have been filled with
the most violent jealousy against the corporation of the town,
and which I strongly suspect objected to nothing so much in the
municipal constitution as that it did not enjoy as many privileges
in it as it desired, ‘the General Assembly, which is too numerous,
and consists, in part, of persons of very little intelligence, ought
only to be consulted in cases of sale of the communal domains, loans,
establishment of octrois, and elections of municipal officers. All
other business matters might be discussed in a smaller assembly,
composed only of the _notables_. This assembly should consist only of
the Lieutenant-General of the Sénéchaussée, the Procureur du Roi, and
twelve other notables, chosen from amongst the six bodies of clergy,
magistracy, nobility, university, trade, and bourgeois, and others not
belonging to the above-named bodies. The choice of the notables should
at first be confined to the General Assembly, and subsequently to the
Assembly of _Notables_, or to the body from which each _notable_ is to
be selected.’
All these functionaries of the State, who thus entered in virtue of
their office or as _notables_ into the municipal corporations of the
ancien régime, frequently resembled those of the present day as to
the name of the office which they held, and sometimes even as to the
nature of that office; but they differed from them completely as to the
position which they held, which must be carefully borne in mind, unless
we wish to arrive at false conclusions. Almost all these functionaries
were _notables_ of the town previous to being invested with public
functions, or they had striven to obtain public functions in order to
become notables; they had no thought of leaving their own town and no
hope of any higher promotion, which alone is sufficient to distinguish
them completely from anything with which we are acquainted at the
present day.
_Report of the Municipal Officers._--We see by this that the
corporation of the town was created in 1474, by Louis XI., on the ruins
of the ancient democratic constitution of the town, on the system which
we have already described of restricting political rights to the middle
classes only, of setting aside or weakening the popular influence, of
creating a great number of municipal officers in order to interest
a greater number of persons in his reform, of a prodigal grant of
hereditary nobility, and of all sorts of privileges, to that part of
the middle classes in whose hands the administration was placed.
We find in the same report letters patent from the successors of Louis
XI. which acknowledge this new constitution, while they still further
restrict the power of the people. We learn that in 1485 the letters
patent issued to this effect by Charles VIII. were attacked before the
parliament by the inhabitants of Angers, just as in England a lawsuit,
arising out of the charter of a town, would have been brought before a
court of justice. In 1601 a decision of the parliament determined the
political rights created by the Royal Charter. From that time forward
nothing appears but the _conseil du Roi_.
We gather from the same report that, not only for the office of mayor,
but for all other offices belonging to the corporation of the town,
the General Assembly proposed three candidates, from amongst whom the
King selects one, in virtue of a decree of the council of 22nd June,
1708. It appears, moreover, that in virtue of decisions of the council
of 1733 and 1741, the merchants had the right of claiming one place of
_échevin_ or _conseiller_ (the perpetual échevins). Lastly, we find
that at that period the corporation of the town was entrusted with the
distribution of the sums levied for the capitation, the _ustensile_,
the barracks, the support of the poor, the soldiery, coast-guard, and
foundlings.
There follows a long enumeration of the labours to be undergone by
the municipal officers, which fully justified, in their opinion,
the privileges and the perpetual tenure of office, which they were
evidently greatly afraid of losing. Many of the reasons which
they assign for their exertions are curious; amongst others, the
following: ‘Their most important avocations,’ they say, ‘consist in
the examination of financial affairs, which continually increased,
owing to the constant extension of the _droits d’aides_, the _gabelle_,
the _contrôle_, the _insinuation des actes_, _perception illicite des
droits d’enrégistrement et de francs fiefs_. The opposition which
was incessantly offered by the financial companies to these various
taxes compelled them to defend actions in behalf of the town before
the various jurisdictions, either the parliament or the _conseil du
Roi_, in order to resist the oppression under which they suffered.
The experience and practice of thirty years had taught them that
the term of a man’s life scarcely suffices to guard against all the
snares and pitfalls which the clerks of all the departments of the
_fermes_ continually set for the citizens in order to keep their own
commissions.’
The most curious circumstance is, that all this is addressed to the
Comptroller-General himself, in order to dispose him favourably towards
the privileges of those who make the statement, so inveterate had the
habit become of looking upon the companies charged with the collection
of the taxes as an enemy who might be attacked on every side without
blame or opposition. This habit grew stronger and more universal every
day, until all taxation came to be looked upon as an unfair and hateful
tyranny; not as the agent of all men, but as the common enemy.
‘The union of all the offices,’ the report goes on to say, ‘was
effected for the first time by an order in council of the 4th
September, 1694, for a sum of 22,000 livres;’ that is to say, that the
offices were redeemed in that year for the above-named sum. By an order
of 26th April, 1723, the municipal offices created by the edict of 24th
May, 1722, were united to the corporation of the town, or, in other
words, the town was authorised to purchase them. By another order of
24th May, 1723, the town was permitted to borrow 120,000 livres for the
purchase of the said offices. Another order of 26th July, 1728, allowed
it to borrow 50,000 livres for the purchase of the office of _greffier_
secretary of the Hôtel de Ville. ‘The town,’ says the report, ‘has
paid these moneys in order to maintain the freedom of its elections,
and to secure to the officers elected--some for two years and others
for life--the various prerogatives belonging to their offices.’ A part
of the municipal offices having been re-established by the edict of
November, 1733, an order in council intervened, dated 11th January,
1751, at the request of the mayor and échevins, fixing the rate of
redemption at 170,000 livres, for the payment of which a prorogation of
the octrois was granted for fifteen years.
This is a good specimen of the administration of the monarchy, as far
as the towns were concerned. They were forced to contract debts, and
then authorised to impose extraordinary and temporary taxes in order to
pay them. Moreover, I find that these temporary taxes were frequently
rendered perpetual after some time, and then the Government took its
share of them.
The report continues thus: ‘The municipal officers were only deprived
of the important judicial powers with which Louis XI. had invested
them by the establishment of royal jurisdictions. Until 1669 they took
cognisance of all disputes between masters and workmen. The accounts
of the octrois are rendered to the Intendant, as directed in all the
decrees for the creation or prorogation of the said octrois.’
We likewise find in this report that the deputies of the sixteen
parishes, who were mentioned above, and who appeared at the General
Assembly, were chosen by the companies, corporations, or _communautés_,
and that they were strictly the envoys of the small bodies by which
they were deputed. They were bound by exact instructions on every point
of business.
Lastly, this report proves that at Angers, as everywhere else, every
kind of expenditure was to be authorised by the Intendant and the
Council; and, it must be admitted, that when the administration of
a town is given over completely into the hands of a certain number
of men, to whom, instead of fixed salaries, are conceded privileges
which place them personally beyond the reach of the consequences
which their administration may produce upon the private fortunes of
their fellow-citizens, this administrative superintendence may appear
necessary.
The whole of the report, which is very ill drawn up, betrays
extraordinary dread, on the part of the official men, of any change in
the existing order of things. All manner of arguments, good and bad,
are brought forward by them in favour of maintaining the status quo.
_Report of the Sub-delegate._--The Intendant having received these
two reports of opposite tendency, desires to have the opinion of his
Sub-delegate, who gives it as follows:--
‘The report of the municipal councillors,’ says he, ‘does not deserve
a moment’s attention; it is merely intended to defend the privileges
of those officers. That of the _présidial_ may be consulted with
advantage; but there is no reason for granting all the prerogatives
claimed by those magistrates.’
According to the Sub-delegate, the constitution of the Hôtel de Ville
has long stood in need of reform. Besides the immunities already
mentioned, which were enjoyed by the municipal officers of Angers, he
informs us that the Mayor, during his tenure of office, had a dwelling
which was worth, at least, 600 francs rent, a salary of 50 francs, and
100 francs for _frais de poste_, besides the jetons. The _procureur
syndic_ was also lodged, and the _greffier_ as well. In order to
procure their own exemption from the _droits d’aides_ and the _octroi_,
the municipal officers had fixed an assumed standard of consumption for
each of them. Each of them had the right of importing into the town,
free of duty, so many barrels of wine yearly, and the same with all
other provisions.
The Sub-delegate does not propose to deprive the municipal councillors
of their immunities from taxation, but he desires that their
capitation, instead of being fixed and very inadequate, should be
taxed every year by the Intendant. He desires that they should also
be subject, like every one else, to the _don gratuit_, which they had
dispensed themselves from paying, on what precedent no one can tell.
The municipal officers, the report says further, are charged with
the duty of drawing up the _rôles de capitation_ for all the
inhabitants--a duty which they perform in a negligent and arbitrary
manner; accordingly a vast number of complaints and memorials are
sent in to the Intendant every year. It is much to be desired that
henceforth the division should be made in the interest of each company
or _communauté_ by its own members, according to stated and general
rules; the municipal officers would have to make out only the _rôles de
capitation_, for the burghers and others who belong to no corporation,
such as some of the artisans and the servants of all privileged persons.
The report of the Sub-delegate confirms what has already been said of
the municipal officers--that the municipal offices had been redeemed by
the town in 1735 for the sum of 170,000 livres.
_Letter the Intendant to the Comptroller-General._--Supported by
all these documents, the Intendant writes to the Minister: ‘It is
important, for the sake of the inhabitants and of the public good,
to reduce the corporation of the town, the members of which are too
numerous and extremely burdensome to the public, on account of the
privileges they enjoy.’ ‘I am struck,’ continues the Intendant,
‘with the enormous sums which have been paid at all periods for the
redemption of the municipal offices at Angers. The amount of these
sums, if employed on useful purposes, would have been profitable to
the town, which, on the contrary, has gained nothing but an increased
burden in the authority and privileges enjoyed by these officers.’
‘The interior abuses of this administration deserve the whole attention
of the council,’ says the Intendant further. ‘Independently of the
_jetons_ and the wax-lights, which consume an annual sum of 2127 livres
(the amount fixed for expenses of this kind by the normal budget,
which from time to time was prescribed for the towns by the King),
the public moneys are squandered and misapplied at the will of these
officers to clandestine purposes, and the _procureur du Roi_, who has
been in possession of his place for thirty or forty years, has made
himself so completely master of the administration, with the secret
springs of which he alone is acquainted, that the inhabitants have at
all times found it impossible to obtain the smallest information as
to the employment of the communal revenues.’ The result of all this
is, that the Intendant requests the Minister to reduce the corporation
of the town to a mayor appointed for four years, a _procureur du Roi_
appointed for eight, and a _greffier_ and _receveur_ appointed for life.
Altogether the constitution which he proposes for this corporation is
exactly the same as that which he elsewhere suggested for towns. In his
opinion it would be desirable--
1st. To maintain the General Assembly, but only as an electoral body
for the election of municipal officers.
2nd. To create an extraordinary _Conseil de Notables_, which should
perform all the functions which the edict of 1764 had apparently
entrusted to the General Assembly; the said council to consist of
twelve members, whose tenure of office should be for six years, and
who should be elected, not by the General Assembly but by the twelve
corporations considered as _notable_ (each corporation-electing its
own). He enumerates the _corps notables_ as follows:--
The Présidial.
The University.
The Election.
The Officers of Woods and Forests.
The Grenier à sel.
The Traites.
The Mint.
The Avocats and Procureurs.
The Juges Consuls.
The Notaires.
The Tradesmen.
The Burghers.
It appears that nearly all these _notables_ were public functionaries,
and nearly all the public functionaries were notables; hence we may
conclude, as from a thousand other passages in these documents, that
the middle classes were as greedy of place and as little inclined to
seek a sphere of activity removed from Government employment. The only
difference, as I have said in the text, was that formerly men purchased
the trifling importance which office gave them, and that now the
claimants beg and entreat some one to be so charitable as to get it for
them gratis.
We see that, according to the project we have described, the whole
municipal power was to rest with the extraordinary council, which would
completely restrict the administration to a very small middle-class
coterie, while the only assembly in which the people still made their
appearance at all was to have no privilege beyond that of electing
the municipal officers, without any right to advise or control them.
It must also be observed that the Intendant was more in favour of
restriction and more opposed to popular influence than the King,
whose edict seemed intended to place most of the power in the hands
of the General Assembly, and that the Intendant again is far more
liberal and democratic than the middle classes, judging at least by
the report I have quoted in the text, by which it appears that the
_notables_ of another town were desirous of excluding the people even
from the election of municipal officers, a right which the King and the
Intendant had left to them.
My readers will have observed that the Intendant uses the words
burghers and tradesmen to designate two distinct categories of
notables. It will not be amiss to give an exact definition of these
words, in order to show into how many small fractions the middle
classes were divided, and by how many petty vanities they were agitated.
The word _burgher_ had a general and a restricted sense; it was used to
designate those belonging to the middle class, and also to specify a
certain number of persons included within that class. ‘The burghers are
those whose birth and fortune enable them to live decently, without the
exercise of any gainful pursuit,’ says one of the reports produced on
occasion of the inquiry in 1764. We see by the rest of the report that
the word burgher was not to be used to designate those who belonged
either to the companies or the industrial corporations; but it is more
difficult to define exactly to whom it should be applied. ‘For,’ the
report goes on to say, ‘amongst those who arrogate to themselves the
title of burgher, there are many persons who have no other claim to
it but their idleness, who have no fortune, and lead an obscure and
uncultivated life. The burghers ought properly to be distinguished by
fortune, birth, talent, morality, and a handsome way of living. The
artisans, who compose the _communautés_, have never been admitted to
the rank of _notables_.’
After the burghers, the mercantile men formed a second class, which
belong to no company or corporation; but the limits of this small class
were hard to define. ‘Are,’ says the report, ‘the petty tradesmen of
low birth to be confounded with the great wholesale dealers?’ In order
to resolve these difficulties, the report proposes to have a list of
the _notable_ tradesmen drawn up by the _échevins_, and given to their
head or syndic, in order that he may summon to the deliberations at
the Hôtel de Ville none but those set down in it. In this list none
were to be inscribed who had been servants, porters, drivers, or who
had filled any other mean offices.
Note (XX.)--Page 39, line 33.
One of the most salient characteristics of the eighteenth century, as
regards the administration of the towns, was not so much the abolition
of all representation and intervention of the public in their affairs
as the extreme variation of the rules by which the administration was
guided, rights were incessantly granted, recalled, restored, increased,
diminished, and modified in a thousand different ways. Nothing more
fully shows into what contempt these local liberties had fallen as this
continual change in their laws, which seemed to excite no attention.
This variation alone would have been sufficient to destroy beforehand
all peculiar ideas, all love of old recollections, all local patriotism
in those very institutions which afford the greatest scope for them.
This it was which prepared the way for the great destruction of the
past, which the Revolution was about to effect.
Note (XXI.)--Page 41, line 6.
ADMINISTRATION OF A VILLAGE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. FROM THE PAPERS
OF THE INTENDANCY OF THE ÎLE-DE-FRANCE.
I have selected the transaction which I am about to describe from
amongst a number of others, in order to give an example of some of the
forms followed by the parochial administration, to show how dilatory
they were, and to give a picture of the General Assembly of a parish
during the eighteenth century.
The matter in hand was the repairs to be done to the parsonage and
steeple of a rural parish, that of Ivry, in the Île-de-France. The
question was, to whom to apply to get these repairs done, how to
determine on whom the expense should fall, and how to procure the sum
which was needed.
1. Memorial from the curé to the Intendant, setting forth that the
steeple and the parsonage are in urgent need of repairs; that his
predecessor had added useless buildings to the parsonage, and thus
entirely altered and spoiled it; that the inhabitants, having allowed
this to be done, were bound to bear the expense of restoring it to a
proper condition, and, if they chose, to claim the money from the heirs
of the last curé.
2. Ordonnance of the Intendant (29th August, 1747), directing that the
syndic shall make it his business to convoke a meeting to deliberate on
the necessity of the operations demanded.
3. Memorial from the inhabitants, setting forth that they consent to
the repairs of the parsonage but oppose those of the steeple, seeing
that the steeple is built over the chancel, and that the curé, who is
the great-tithe-owner, is liable for the repairs of the chancel. [By a
decree in council of the end of the preceding century (April, 1695) the
person in receipt of the great tithes was bound to repair the chancel,
the parishioners being charged only with keeping up the nave.]
4. Fresh ordonnance of the Intendant, who, in consequence of the
contradictory statements he has received, sends an architect, the Sieur
Cordier, to inspect and report upon the parsonage and the steeple, to
draw up a statement of the works and to make an inquiry.
5. _Procès-verbal_ of all these operations, by which it appears that
at the inquiry a certain number of landowners of Ivry appeared before
the commissioner sent by the Intendant, which persons appeared to
be nobles, burghers, and peasants of the place, and inscribed their
declarations for or against the claim set up by the curé.
7. Fresh ordonnance of the Intendant, to the effect that the statements
drawn up by the architect whom he had sent shall be communicated to the
landowners and inhabitants of the parish at a fresh general meeting to
be convoked by the syndic.
8. Fresh Parochial Assembly in consequence of this ordonnance, at which
the inhabitants declare that they persist in their declarations.
9. Ordonnance of the Intendant, who directs, 1st, That the adjudication
of the works set forth in the architect’s statement shall be proceeded
with before his Sub-delegate at Corbeil, in the dwelling of the latter;
and that the said adjudication shall be made in the presence of the
curé, the syndic, and the chief inhabitants of the parish. 2nd, That
inasmuch as delay would be dangerous, the whole sum shall be raised by
a rate on all the inhabitants, leaving those who persist in thinking
that the steeple forms part of the choir, and ought therefore to be
repaired by the large titheowners, to appeal to the ordinary courts of
justice.
10. Summons issued to all the parties concerned to appear at the
house of the Sub-delegate at Corbeil, where the proclamations and
adjudication are to be made.
11. Memorial from the curé and several of the inhabitants, requesting
that the expenses of the administrative proceeding should not be
charged, as was usually the case, to the adjudicator, seeing that
the said expenses were very heavy, and would prevent any one from
undertaking the office of adjudicator.
12. Ordonnance of the Intendant, to the effect that the expenses
incurred in the matter of the adjudication shall be fixed by the
Sub-delegate, and that their amount shall form a portion of the said
adjudication and rate.
13. Powers given by certain _notable_ inhabitants to the Sieur X. to be
present at the said adjudication, and to assent to it, according to the
statement of the architect.
14. Certificate of the syndic, to the effect that the usual notices and
advertisements have been published.
15. _Procès-verbal_ of the adjudication--
_liv._ _s._ _d._
Estimate of repairs 487 0 0
Expenses of adjudication 237 18 6
---------------
724 18 6
16. Lastly, an order in council (23rd July, 1748) authorising the
imposition of a rate to raise the above sum.
We see that in this procedure the convocation of the Parochial Assembly
was alluded to several times.
The following _procès-verbal_ of the meeting of one of these assemblies
will show the reader how business was conducted on such occasions:--
_Acte notarié._--‘This day, after the parochial mass at the usual and
accustomed place, when the bell had been rung, there appeared at the
Assembly held before the undersigned X., notary at Corbeil, and the
witnesses hereafter named, the Sieur Michaud, vine-dresser, syndic
of the said parish, who presented the ordonnance of the Intendant
permitting the Assembly to be held, caused it to be read, and demanded
that note should be taken of his diligence.
‘Immediately an inhabitant of the said parish appeared, who stated that
the steeple was above the chancel, and that consequently the repairs
belonged to the curé; there also appeared [here follow the names of
some other persons, who, on the other hand, were willing to admit the
claim of the curé].... Next appeared fifteen peasants, labourers,
masons, and vine-dressers, who declared their adhesion to what the
preceding persons had said. There likewise appeared the Sieur Raimbaud,
vine-grower, who said that he is ready to agree to whatever Monseigneur
the Intendant may decide. There also appeared the Sieur X., doctor of
the Sorbonne, the curé, who persists in the declarations and purposes
of the memorial. Those who appeared demanded that all the above should
be taken down in the Act. Done at the said place of Ivry, in front of
the churchyard of the said parish, in the presence of the undersigned;
and the drawing up of the present report occupied from 11 o’clock in
the morning until 2 o’clock.’
We see that this Parochial Assembly was a mere administrative inquiry,
with the forms and the cost of judicial inquiries; that it never
ended in a vote, and consequently in the manifestation of the will of
the parish; that it contained only individual opinions, and had no
influence on the determination of the Government. Indeed we learn from
a number of other documents that the Parochial Assemblies were intended
to assist the decision of the Intendant, and not to hinder it even
where nothing but the interests of the parish were concerned.
We also find in the same documents that this affair gave rise to three
inquiries: one before the notary, a second before the architect, and
lastly a third, before two notaries, in order to ascertain whether the
parishioners persisted in their previous declarations.
The rate of 524 liv. 10s., imposed by the decree of the 13th July,
1748, fell upon all the landowners, privileged or otherwise, as was
almost always the case with respect to expenses of this kind; but
the principle on which the shares were apportioned to the various
persons was different. The _taillables_ were taxed in proportion to
their _taille_, and the privileged persons according to their supposed
fortunes, which gave a great advantage to the latter over the former.
Lastly, we find that on this same occasion the division of the sum of
523 liv. 10s. was made by two collectors, who were inhabitants of the
village; these were not elected, nor did they fill the post by turns,
as was commonly the case, but they were chosen and appointed officially
by the Sub-delegate of the Intendant.
Note (XXII.)--Page 46, line 21.
The pretext taken by Louis XIV. to destroy the municipal liberties of
the towns was the bad administration of their finances. Nevertheless
the same evil, as Turgot truly says, continued and increased since the
reform introduced by that sovereign. Most of the towns, he adds, are
greatly in debt at the present time, partly owing to the sums which
they have lent to the Government, and partly owing to the expenses and
decorations which the municipal officers, who have the disposal of
other people’s money and have no account to render to the inhabitants,
or instructions to receive from them, multiply with a view of
distinguishing and sometimes of enriching themselves.
Note (XXIII.)--Page 46, line 32.
THE STATE WAS THE GUARDIAN OF THE CONVENTS AS WELL AS OF THE
COMMUNES.--EXAMPLE OF THIS GUARDIANSHIP.
The Comptroller-General, on authorising the Intendant to pay 15,000
livres to the convent of Carmelites, to which indemnities were owing,
desires the Intendant to assure himself that this money, which
represents a capital, is advantageously re-invested. Analogous facts
were constantly recurring.
Note (XXIV.)--Page 50, line 22.
SHOWING THAT THE ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRALISATION OF THE OLD MONARCHY
COULD BE BEST JUDGED OF IN CANADA.
The physiognomy of the metropolitan government can be most fully
appreciated in the colonies, because at that distance all its
characteristic features are exaggerated and become more visible. When
we wish to judge of the spirit of the Administration of Louis XIV.
and its vices, it is to Canada we must look. There we shall see the
deformity of the object of our investigation, as through a microscope.
In Canada a host of obstacles, which anterior circumstances or the
ancient state of society opposed either in secret or openly to the
spirit of the Government, did not exist. The nobility was scarcely seen
there, or, at all events, it had no root in the soil; the Church had
lost its dominant position; feudal traditions were lost or obscured;
judicial authority was no longer rooted in ancient institutions and
manners. There was nothing to hinder the central power from following
its natural bent and from fashioning all the laws according to its own
spirit. In Canada accordingly we find not a trace of any municipal or
provincial institutions; no authorised collective force; no individual
initiative allowed. The Intendant occupied a position infinitely more
preponderant than that of his fellows in France; the Administration
interfered in many more matters than in the metropolis, and chose to
direct everything from Paris, spite of the eighteen hundred leagues by
which they were divided. It adopted none of the great principles by
which a colony is rendered populous and prosperous, but, on the other
hand, it had recourse to all kinds of trifling artificial processes
and petty tyrannical regulations in order to increase and extend the
population; compulsory cultivation, all lawsuits arising out of the
grants of land withdrawn from the tribunals and referred to the sole
decision of the Administration, obligation to pursue particular methods
of cultivation, to settle in certain places rather than others, &c.
All these regulations were in force under Louis XIV., and the edicts
are countersigned by Colbert. One might imagine oneself in the very
thick of modern centralisation and in Algeria. Indeed Canada presents
an exact counterpart of all we have seen in Algeria. In both we find
ourselves face to face with an administration almost as numerous as
the population, preponderant, interfering, regulating, restricting,
insisting upon foreseeing everything, controlling everything, and
understanding the interests of those under its control better than they
do themselves; in short, in a constant state of barren activity.
In the United States, on the other hand, the decentralisation of the
English is exaggerated; the townships have become nearly independent
municipalities, small democratic republics. The republican element,
which forms the basis of the English constitution and manners, shows
itself in the United States without disguise or hindrance, and becomes
still further developed. The Government, properly so called, does but
little in England, and private persons do a great deal; in America,
the Government really takes no part in affairs, and individuals unite
to do everything. The absence of any higher class, which rendered the
inhabitants of Canada more submissive to the Government than even those
of France at the same period, makes the population of the English
provinces more and more independent of authority.
Both colonies resulted in the formation of a completely democratic
state of society; but in one, so long at least as Canada still belonged
to France, equality was united with absolutism; in the other it was
combined with liberty. As far as the material consequences of the two
colonial systems were concerned, we know that in 1763, the period of
the Conquest, the population of Canada consisted of 60,000 souls, and
that of the English provinces of 3,000,000.
Note (XXV.)--Page 52, line 10.
ONE EXAMPLE, AMONG MANY, OF THE GENERAL REGULATIONS CONTINUALLY MADE
BY THE COUNCIL OF STATE, WHICH HAD THE FORCE OF LAWS THROUGHOUT
FRANCE, AND CREATED SPECIAL OFFENCES, OF WHICH THE ADMINISTRATIVE
TRIBUNALS WERE THE SOLE JUDGES.
I take the first which comes to hand: an order in council of the 29th
April, 1779, which directs that throughout the kingdom the breeders and
sellers of sheep shall mark their flocks in a particular manner, under
a penalty of 300 livres. His Majesty, it declares, enjoins upon the
Intendants the duty of enforcing the execution of the present order,
which infers that the Intendant is to pronounce the penalty on its
infraction. Another example: an order in council, 21st December, 1778,
prohibiting the carriers and drivers to warehouse the goods entrusted
to them, under a penalty of 300 livres. His Majesty enjoins upon the
Lieutenant-General of Police and the Intendants to enforce this order.
Note (XXVI.)--Page 60, line 39.
RURAL POLICE.
The provincial assembly of Upper Guienne urgently demanded the creation
of fresh brigades of the maréchaussée, just as now-a-days the general
council of Aveyron or Lot doubtless requests the formation of fresh
brigades of gendarmerie. The same idea always prevails--the gendarmerie
is the symbol of order, and order can only be sent by Government
through the gendarme. The report continues: ‘Complaints are made
every day that there is no police in the rural districts’ (how should
there be? the nobles took no part in affairs, the burghers were all
in the towns, and the townships, represented by a vulgar peasant,
had no power), ‘and it must be admitted that with the exception of a
few cantons in which just and benevolent seigneurs make use of the
influence which their position gives them over their vassals in order
to prevent those acts of violence to which the country people are
naturally inclined, by the coarseness of their manners and the asperity
of their character, there nowhere exists any means of restraining these
ignorant, rude, and violent men.’
Such were the terms in which the nobles of the Provincial Assembly
allowed themselves to be spoken of, and in which the members of the
_Tiers-Etat_, who made up half the assembly, spoke of the people in
public documents!
Note (XXVII.)--Page 61, line 24.
Licences for the sale of tobacco were as much sought for under the old
monarchy as they are now. The greatest people begged for them for their
creatures. I find that some were given on the recommendation of great
ladies, and one at the request of some archbishops.
Note (XXVIII.)--Page 62, line 22.
The extinction of all local public life surpassed all power of belief.
One of the roads from Maine into Normandy was impracticable. Who do
our readers imagine requested to have it repaired? the _généralité_
of Touraine, which it traversed? the provinces of Normandy or Maine,
so deeply interested in the cattle trade which followed this road?
or even some particular canton especially inconvenienced by its
impassable condition? The _généralité_, the provinces, and the cantons
had no voice in the matter. The dealers who travelled on this road
and stuck fast in the ruts were obliged to call the attention of
the Central Government to its state, and to write to Paris to the
Comptroller-General for assistance.
Note (XXIX.)--Page 69, line 8.
MORE OR LESS IMPORTANCE OF THE SEIGNORIAL DUES OR RENT-CHARGES,
ACCORDING TO THE PROVINCE.
Turgot says in his works, ‘I ought to point out the fact that these
dues are far more important in most of the rich provinces, such as
Normandy, Picardy, and the environs of Paris. In the last named the
chief wealth consists in the actual produce of the land, which is held
in large farms, from which the owners derive heavy rents. The payments
in respect of the lord’s rights, in the case even of the largest
estates, form but an inconsiderable part of the income arising from
these properties, and such payments are little more than nominal.
In the poorer provinces, where cultivation is managed on different
principles, the lords and nobles have scarcely any land in their own
hands; properties, which are extremely divided, are charged with heavy
corn-rents, for payment of which all the co-tenants are jointly and
severally liable. These rents, in many instances, absorb the bulk of
the produce, and the lord’s income is almost entirely derived from them.
Note (XXX.)--Page 74, line 34.
INFLUENCE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT UNFAVOURABLE TO CASTE.
The unimportant labours of the agricultural societies of the eighteenth
century show the adverse influence which the common discussion
of general interests exercised on _caste_. Though the meetings
of these societies date from thirty years before the Revolution,
when the _ancien régime_ was still in full force, and though they
dealt with theories only--by the very fact of their discussions
turning on questions in which the different classes of society felt
themselves interested, and, therefore, took common part in--we may
at once perceive how they brought men together, and how by means of
them--limited as they were to conversations on agriculture--ideas of
reasonable reform spread alike among the privileged and unprivileged
classes.
I am convinced that no Government could have kept up the absurd and mad
inequality which existed in France at the moment of the Revolution, but
one which, like the Government of the old monarchy, aimed at finding
all its strength in its own ranks, continually recruited by remarkable
men. The slightest contact with _self-government_ would have materially
modified such inequality, and soon transformed or destroyed it.
Note (XXXI.)--Page 75, line 3.
Provincial liberties may exist for a while without national liberty,
when they are ancient, entwined with habits, manners, and early
recollections, and while despotism, on the contrary, is recent. But it
is against reason to suppose that local liberties may be created at
will, or even long maintained, when general liberty is crushed.
Note (XXXII.)--Page 75, line 19.
Turgot, in a report to the King, sums up in the following terms, which
appear to me singularly exact, the real privileges of the noble class
in regard to taxation:--
‘1. Persons of the privileged class have a claim to exemption from all
taxation in money to the extent of a four-plough farm, equivalent in
the neighbourhood of Paris to an assessment of 2,000 francs.
‘2. The same persons are entirely exempt from taxation in respect
of woods, meadows, vineyards, fish-ponds, and for enclosed lands
appurtenant to their castles, whatever their extent. In some cantons
the principal culture is of meadows or vineyards: in these the noble
proprietor escapes from all taxation whatever, the whole weight of
which falls on the tax-paying class; another immense advantage for the
privileged.’
Note (XXXIII.)--Page 76, line 7.
INDIRECT PRIVILEGES IN RESPECT OF TAXATION: DIFFERENCE IN ASSESSMENT
EVEN WHEN THE TAX IS GENERAL.
Turgot has given a description of this also, which, judging by the
documents, I have reason to believe exact.
‘The indirect advantages of the privileged classes in regard to
the poll-tax are very great. The poll-tax is in its very nature
an arbitrary impost; it cannot be distributed among the community
otherwise than at random. It has been found most convenient to assess
it on the tax-collector’s books, which are ready prepared. It is true
that a separate list has been made out for those whose names do not
appear in these books but as they resist payment, while the tax-paying
classes have no organ, the poll-tax paid by the former in the provinces
has gradually dwindled to an insignificant amount, while the poll-tax
on the latter is almost equal in amount to the whole tax-paying
capital.’
Note (XXXIV.)--Page 76, line 14.
ANOTHER INSTANCE OF INEQUALITY OF ASSESSMENT IN THE CASE OF A GENERAL
TAX.
It is well known that local rates were general: ‘which sums,’ say the
orders in council authorising the levy of such rates, ‘shall be levied
on all liable, exempt or non-exempt, privileged or non-privileged,
without any exception, together with the poll-tax, or in the
proportion of a mark to every franc payable as poll-tax.’
Observe that, as the tax-payer’s poll-tax, assessed according to the
assessment for other taxes, was always higher in comparison than the
poll-tax of the privileged class, inequality re-appeared even under the
form which seemed most to exclude it.
Note (XXXV.)--Page 76, line 14.
ON THE SAME SUBJECT.
I find in a draft edict of 1764, the aim of which is to equalise
taxation, all sorts of provisions, the object of which is to preserve
exceptional advantages to the privileged classes, in the mode of levy:
among these I find that all steps for the purpose of determining, in
their case, the value of the assessable property, must be taken in
their presence or that of their proxies.
Note (XXXVI.)--Page 76, line 27.
ADMISSION BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE ADVANTAGES ENJOYED BY THE PRIVILEGED
CLASSES IN THE ASSESSMENT EVEN OF GENERAL TAXES.
‘I see,’ writes the Minister, in 1766, ‘that the portion of the taxes
most difficult to levy is always that due from the noble and privileged
classes, from the consideration the tax-collectors feel themselves
bound to show such persons; in consequence of which long-standing
arrears of far too great an amount will be found due on their poll-tax
and their “twentieths”’ (the tax which they paid in common with the
rest of the community).
Note (XXXVII.)--Page 85, line 7.
In Arthur Young’s Travels, in 1789, is a little picture in which the
contrast of the systems of the two countries is so well painted, and so
happily introduced, that I cannot resist the temptation of citing it.
Young, travelling through France during the first excitement caused
by the taking of the Bastille, is arrested in a certain village by a
crowd, who, seeing him without a cockade, wish to put him in prison.
Young contrives to extricate himself by this speech:--
‘It has been announced, gentlemen, that the taxes are to be paid as
they have been hitherto. Certainly, the taxes ought to be paid, but
_not_ as they have been hitherto. They ought to be paid as they are
in England. We have many taxes there which you are free from; but the
_Tiers-Etat_--the people--does not pay them: they fall entirely on the
rich. Thus, in England, every window is taxed; but the man with only
six windows to his house does not pay anything for them. A nobleman
pays his twentieths[140] and his King’s-taxes, but the poor proprietor
pays nothing on his little garden. The rich man pays for his horses,
carriages and servants--he pays even for a licence to shoot his own
partridges; the poor man is free from all these burdens. Nay, more, in
England we have a tax paid by the rich to help the poor! So that, I
say, if taxes are still to be paid, they should be paid differently.
The English plan is far the better one.’
‘As my bad French,’ adds Young, ‘was much on a par with their patois,
they understood me perfectly.’
Note (XXXVIII.)--Page 86, line 24.
The church at X., in the electoral district of Chollet, was going to
ruin: it was to be repaired in the manner provided by the order of 1684
(16th December), viz., by a rate levied on all the inhabitants. When
the collectors came to levy this rate, the Marquis de X., seigneur of
the parish, refused to pay his proportion of the rate, as he meant to
take on himself the entire repair of the chancel; the other inhabitants
reply, very reasonably, that as lord of the manor and holder of the
great tithes, he is _bound_ to repair the chancel, and cannot, on the
plea of this obligation, claim to escape his proportion of the common
rate. This produces an order of the Intendant declaring the Marquis’s
liability, and authorising the collector’s proceedings. Among the
papers on the subject are more than ten letters from the Marquis, one
more urgent than the other, begging hard that the rest of the parish
may pay instead of himself, and, to obtain his prayer, stooping to
address the Intendant as ‘Monseigneur,’ and even ‘_le supplier_.’
Note (XXXIX.)--Page 87, line 35.
AN INSTANCE OF THE WAY IN WHICH THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OLD MONARCHY
RESPECTED VESTED RIGHTS, FORMAL CONTRACTS, AND THE FRANCHISES OF
TOWNS OR CORPORATIONS.
A royal declaration ‘suspending in time of war repayment of all loans
contracted by towns, villages, colleges, communities, hospitals,
charitable houses, trade-corporations,[141] and others, repayable out
of town dues by us conceded, though the instrument securing the said
loans stipulates for the payment of interest in the case of non-payment
at the stipulated terms.’
Thus not only is the obligation to repayment at the stipulated terms
suspended, but the security itself is impaired. Such proceedings, which
abounded under the old monarchy, would have been impracticable under
a Government acting under the check of publicity or representative
assemblies. Compare the above with the respect always shown for such
rights in England, and even in America. The contempt of right in this
instance is as flagrant as that of local franchises.
Note (XL.)--Page 89, line 21.
The case cited in the text is far from a solitary instance of an
admission by the privileged class that the feudal burdens which weighed
down the peasant reached even to themselves. The following is the
language of an agricultural society, exclusively composed of this
class, thirty years before the Revolution:--
‘Perpetual rent-charges, whether due to the State or to the lord, if
at all considerable in amount, become so burdensome to the tenant that
they cause first his ruin, and then that of the land liable to them;
the tenant is forced to neglect it, being neither able to borrow on
the security of an estate already too heavily burdened, nor to find
purchasers if he wish to sell. If then payments were commutable, the
tenant would readily be able to raise the means of commuting them by
borrowing, or to find purchasers at a price that would cover the value
both of the land and the payments with which it might be charged. A
man always feels pleasure in keeping up and improving a property of
which he believes himself to be in peaceable possession. It would
be rendering a great service to agriculture to discover means of
commutation for this class of payments. Many lords of manors, convinced
of this, would readily give their aid to such arrangements. It would,
therefore, be very interesting to discover and point out practicable
means for thus ridding land from permanent burdens.’
Note (XLI.)--Page 90, line 38.
All public functionaries, even the agents of farmers of the revenue,
were paid by exemptions from taxes--a privilege granted by the order of
1681. A letter from an Intendant to the minister in 1782 states, ‘Among
the privileged orders the most numerous class is that of clerks in the
Excise of salt, the public domain, the post-office, and other royal
monopolies of all kinds. There are few parishes which do not include
one; in many, two or three may be found.’
The object of this letter is to dissuade the minister from proposing
an extension of exemption from taxation to the clerks and servants
of these privileged agents; which extension, says the Intendant, is
unceasingly backed by the Farmers-General, that they may thus get rid
of the necessity of paying salaries.
Note (XLII.)--Page 91, line 1.
The sale of public employments, which were called _offices_, was
not quite unknown elsewhere. In Germany some of the petty princes
had introduced the practice to a small extent and in insignificant
departments of administration. Nowhere but in France was the system
followed out on a grand scale.
Note (XLIII.)--Page 95, line 17.
We must not be surprised, strange as it may appear and is, to find,
under the old monarchy, public functionaries--many of them belonging to
the public service, properly so called--pleading before the Parliaments
to ascertain the limits of their own powers. The explanation of this
is to be found in the fact that all these questions were questions of
private property as well as of public administration. What is here
viewed as an encroachment of the judicial power was a mere consequence
of the error which the Government had committed in attaching public
functions to certain offices. These offices being bought and sold, and
their holders’ income being regulated by the work done and paid for, it
was impossible to change the functions of an office without impairing
some right for which money had been paid to a predecessor in the office.
To quote an instance out of a thousand:--At Mans the Lieutenant-General
of Police carries on a prolonged suit with the _Bureau de Finance_
of the town, to prove, that being charged with the duty of
street-watching, he has a right to execute all legal instruments
relative to the paving of the streets, and to the fees for such
instruments.
The _Bureau_ replies, that the paving is a duty thrown upon him by the
nature of his office.
The question in this case is not decided by the king in council; the
parliament gives judgment, as the principal matter in dispute is the
interest of the capital devoted to the purchase of the office. The
administrative question becomes a civil action.
Note (XLIV.)--Page 96, line 23.
ANALYSIS OF THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE ORDER OF NOBILITY IN 1789.
The French Revolution is, I believe, the only one, at the beginning
of which the different classes were able separately to bear authentic
witness to the ideas they had conceived, and to display the sentiments
by which they were moved before the Revolution had altered and defaced
these ideas and feelings. This authentic testimony was recorded, as
we all know, in the _cahiers_ drawn up by the three Orders in 1789.
These _cahiers_, or Instructions, were drawn up under circumstances of
complete freedom and publicity, by each of the Orders concerned; they
underwent a long discussion from those interested, and were carefully
considered by their authors; for the Government of that period did not,
whenever it addressed the nation, undertake both to put the question
and to give the answer. At the time when the Instructions were drawn
up, the most important parts of them were collected in three printed
volumes, which are to be found in every library. The originals are
deposited in the national archives, and with them the _procès-verbaux_
of the assemblies by which they were drawn up, together with a part of
the correspondence which passed between M. Necker and his agents on the
subject of these assemblies. This collection forms a long series of
folio volumes. It is the most precious document that remains to us from
ancient France, and one which should be constantly consulted by those
who wish to know the state of feeling amongst our forefathers at the
time when the Revolution broke out.
I at first imagined that the abridgment printed in three volumes, which
I mentioned above, might perhaps be the work of one party, and not a
true representation of the character of this immense inquiry; but on
comparing one with the other, I found the strongest resemblance between
the large original picture and the reduced copy.
The extract from the _cahiers_ of the nobility, which I am about to
give, contains a true picture of the sentiments of the great majority
of that Order. It clearly shows how many of their ancient privileges
they were obstinately determined to maintain, how many they were not
disinclined to give up, and how many they offered to renounce of their
own accord. Above all, we see in full the spirit which animated them
with regard to political liberty. The picture is a strange and sad one!
_Individual Rights._--The nobles demand, first of all, that an explicit
declaration should be made of the rights which belong to all men, and
that this declaration should confirm their liberties and secure their
safety.
_Liberty of the Person._--They desire that the servitude to the glebe
should be abolished wherever it still exists, and that means should be
formed to destroy the slave trade and to emancipate the negroes; that
every man should be free to travel or to reside wherever he may please,
whether within or without the limits of the kingdom, without being
liable to arbitrary arrest; that the abuses of police regulations shall
be reformed, and that henceforth the police shall be under the control
of the judges, even in cases of revolt; that no one shall be liable to
be arrested or tried except by his natural judges; that, consequently,
the state prisons and other illegal places of detention shall be
suppressed. Some of them require the demolition of the Bastille. The
nobility of Paris is especially urgent upon this point.
_Are ‘Lettres Closes,’ or ‘Lettres de Cachet,’ to be prohibited?_--If
any danger of the State renders the arrest of a citizen necessary,
without his being immediately brought before the ordinary courts of
justice, measures should be taken to prevent any abuses, either by
giving notice of the imprisonment to the _Conseil d’État_, or by some
other proceeding.
The nobility demands the abolition of all special commissions, all
courts of attribution or exemption, all privileges of _committimus_,
all dilatory judgments, &c., &c., and requires that the severest
punishment should be awarded to all those who should issue or execute
an arbitrary order; that in common jurisdiction (the only one that
ought to be maintained) the necessary measures should be taken for
securing individual liberty, especially as regards the criminal;
that justice should be dispensed gratuitously; and that useless
jurisdictions should be suppressed. ‘The magistrates are instituted
for the people, and not the people for the magistrates,’ says one of
the memorials. A demand is even made that a council and gratuitous
advocates for the poor should be established in each bailiwick;
that the proceedings should be public, and permission granted to
the litigants to plead for themselves; that in criminal matters the
prisoner should be provided with counsel, and that in all stages of
the proceedings the judge should have adjoined to him a certain number
of citizens, of the same position in life as the person accused, who
are to give their opinion relative to the fact of the crime or offence
with which he is charged (referring on this point to the English
constitution); that all punishments should be proportionate to the
offence, and alike for all; that the punishment of death should be
made more uncommon, and all corporal pains and tortures, &c., should
be suppressed; that, in fine, the condition of the prisoner, and more
especially of the simply accused, should be ameliorated.
According to these memorials, measures should be taken to protect
individual liberty in the enlistment of troops for land or sea
service; permission should be given to convert the obligation of
military service into pecuniary contributions. The drawing of lots
should only take place in the presence of a deputation of the three
Orders together; in fact, that the duties of military discipline and
subordination should be made to tally with the rights of the citizen
and freemen, blows with the back of the sabre being altogether done
away with.
_Freedom and Inviolability of Property._--It is required that property
should be inviolable, and placed beyond all attack, except for some
reason of indispensable public utility; in which case the Government
ought to give a considerable and immediate indemnity: that confiscation
should be abolished.
_Freedom of Trade, Handicraft and Industrial Occupation._--The freedom
of trade and industry ought to be secured; and, in consequence,
freedoms and other privileges of certain companies should be
suppressed, and the custom-house lines all put back to the frontiers of
the country.
_Freedom of Religion._--The Catholic religion is to be the only
dominant religion in France; but liberty of conscience is to be left
to everybody: and the non-Catholics are to be restored to their civil
rights and their property.
_Freedom of the Press.--Inviolability of the Secrecy of the Post._--The
freedom of the press is to be secured, and a law is to establish
beforehand all the restrictions which may be considered necessary in
the general interest. Ecclesiastical censorship to exist only for books
relative to the dogmas of the Church; and in all other cases it is
considered sufficient to take the necessary precautions of knowing the
authors and printers. Many of the memorials demand that offences of the
press should only be tried by juries.
The memorials unanimously demand above all that the secrecy of letters
entrusted to the post should be inviolably respected, so that (as they
say) letters may never be made to serve as means of accusation or
testimony against a man. They denounce the opening of letters, crudely
enough, as the most odious espionage, inasmuch as it institutes a
violation of public faith.
_Instruction, Education._--The memorials of the nobility on this point
require no more than that active measures should be taken to foster
education, that it should be diffused throughout the country, and that
it should be directed upon principles conformable to the presumed
destination of the children; and, above all, that a national education
should be given to the children, by teaching them their duties and
their rights of citizenship. They urge the compilation of a political
catechism, in which the principal points of the constitution should be
made clear to them. They do not, however, point out the means to be
employed for the diffusion of instruction: they do no more than demand
educational establishments for the children of the indigent nobility.
_Care to be taken of the People._--A great number of the memorials lay
much stress upon greater regard being shown to the people. Several
denounce, as a violation of the natural liberty of man, the excesses
committed in the name of the police, by which, as they say, quantities
of artisans and useful citizens are arbitrarily, and without any
regular examination, dragged to prison, to houses of detention, &c.,
frequently for slight offences, or even upon simple suspicion. All
the memorials demand the definitive abolition of statute labour. The
greater portion of the bailiwicks desire the permission to buy off the
vassalage and toll-dues; and several require that the receipt of many
of the feudal dues should be rendered less onerous, and that those
paid upon _franc-fief_ should be abolished. ‘It is to the advantage
of the Government,’ says one of the memorials, ‘to facilitate the
purchase and sale of estates.’ This reason was precisely the one given
afterwards for the abolition at one blow of all the seignorial rights,
and for the sale of property in the condition of _mainmorte_. Many of
the memorials desire that the _droit de colombier_ (exclusive right of
keeping pigeons) should be rendered less prejudicial to agriculture.
Demands are made for the immediate abolition of the establishments used
as royal game-preserves, and known by the name of ‘_capitaineries_,’ as
a violation of the rights of property. The substitution of taxes less
onerous to the people in the mode of levying for those then existing is
also desired.
The nobility demand that efforts should be made to increase the
prosperity and comfort of the country districts; that establishments
for spinning and weaving coarse stuffs should be provided for the
occupation of the country people during the dead season of the year;
that public granaries should be established in each bailiwick, under
the inspection of the provincial authorities, in order to provide
against times of famine, and to maintain the price of corn at a certain
rate; that means should be studied to improve the agriculture of the
country, and ameliorate the condition of the country people; that an
augmentation should be given to the public works; and that particular
attention should be paid to the draining of marsh lands, the prevention
of inundations, &c.; and finally, that the prizes of encouragement to
commerce and agriculture should be distributed in all the provinces.
The memorials express the desire that the hospitals should be broken
up into smaller establishments, erected in each district; that the
asylums for beggars (_dépôts de mendicité_) should be suppressed, and
replaced by charitable workhouses (_ateliers de charité_); that funds
for the aid of the sick and needy should be established under the
management of the Provincial States, and that surgeons, physicians,
and midwives should be distributed among the _arrondissements_ at the
expense of the provinces, to give their gratuitous services to the
poor; that the courts of justice should likewise be gratuitous to the
people; finally, that care should be taken for the establishment of
institutions for the blind, the deaf and dumb, foundling children, &c.
Generally speaking, in all these matters the order of nobles does no
more than express its desire for reform, without entering into any
minor details of execution. It may be easily seen that it mixed much
less with the inferior classes than the lower order of clergy; and
thus, having come less in contact with their wretchedness, had thought
less of the means for mitigating it.
_Admissibility to Public Functions; Hierarchy of Ranks; Honorary
Privileges of the Nobility._--It is more especially, or rather it is
solely, upon the points that concern the hierarchy of ranks and the
difference of social classes, that the nobility separates itself from
the general spirit of the reforms required, and that, though willing to
concede some few important points, it still clings to the principles
of the old system. It evidently is aware that it is now struggling for
its very existence. Its memorials, consequently, urgently demanded
the maintenance of the clergy and the nobility as distinct orders.
They even require that efforts should be made to maintain the order
of nobility in all its purity, and that to this intent it should be
rendered impossible to acquire the title of noble by payment of money;
that it should no longer be attached to certain places about Court,
and that it should only be obtained by merit, after long and useful
services rendered to the State. They express the desire that men
assuming false titles of nobility should be found out and prosecuted.
All these memorials, in fact, make urgent protestations in favour of
the maintenance of the noble in all his honours. Some even desire
that a distinctive mark should be given to the nobles to ensure their
exterior recognition. It is impossible to imagine anything more
characteristic than this demand, or more indicative of the perfect
similitude that must have already existed between the noble and the
plebeian in spite of the difference of their social conditions. In
general, in its memorials, the nobility, although it appears easily
disposed enough to concede many of its more profitable rights, clings
energetically to its honorary privileges. So greatly does it feel
itself already hurried on by the torrent of democracy, and fear to sink
in the stream, that it not only wants to preserve all the privileges it
already enjoys, but is desirous of inventing others it never possessed.
It is singular to remark how it has a presentiment of the impending
danger without the actual perception of it.
With regard to public employments, the nobles require that the venality
of offices should be done away with in all places connected with the
magistracy, and that, in appointments of this kind, the citizens in
general should be presented by the nation to the king, and nominated by
him without any distinction, except as regards conditions of age and
capacity. The majority also opines that the _Tiers-État_ should not
be excluded from military rank, and that every military man, who had
deserved well of his country, should have the right to rise to the very
highest grade. ‘The order of nobility does not approve of any law that
closes the portals of military rank to the order of the _Tiers-État_,’
is the expression used by some of the memorials. But the nobles
desire that the right of coming into a regiment as officer, without
having first gone through the inferior grades, should be reserved
to themselves alone. Almost all the Instructions, however, require
the establishment of fixed regulations, applicable alike to all, for
the bestowal of rank in the army, and demand that they should not be
entirely left to favour, but be conferred, with the exception of those
of superior officers, by right of seniority.
As regards the clerical functions, they require the re-establishment
of the elective system in the bestowal of benefices, or at least the
appointment by the King of a committee that may enlighten him in the
distribution of these benefices.
Lastly, they express the opinion that, for the future, pensions ought
to be given away with more discernment; that they ought no longer to
be exclusively lavished upon certain families; that no citizen ought
to have more than one pension, or receive the salary of more than one
place at a time, and that all reversions of such emoluments should be
abolished.
_The Church and the Clergy._--In matters which do not affect its
own interests and especial constitution, the nobility is far less
scrupulous. In all that regards the privileges and organisation of the
Church, its eyes are opened wide enough to existing abuses.
It desires that the clergy should have no privileges in matters of
taxation, and that it should pay its debts without putting the burden
of them on the nation: moreover, that the monastic orders should
undergo a complete reformation. The greater part of the Instructions
declare that these monastic establishments have wholly departed from
the original spirit of their institution.
The majority of the bailiwicks express their desire that the tithes
should be made less prejudicial to agriculture; many demand their
abolition altogether. ‘The greater part of the tithes,’ says one of the
memorials, ‘is collected by those incumbents who do the least towards
giving spiritual succour to the people.’ It is easy to perceive,
that the latter order has not much forbearance for the former in
its remarks. No greater respect was shown in its treatment of the
Church itself. Several bailiwicks formally admit the right of the
States-General to suppress certain religious orders, and apply their
revenues to some other use. Seventeen bailiwicks declare the competence
of the States-General to regulate their discipline. Several complain
that the holidays (_jours de fête_) are too frequent, are prejudicial
to agriculture, and are favourable to drunkenness, and suggest that,
in consequence, a great number of them ought to be suppressed and kept
only on the Sundays.
_Political Rights._--As regards political rights, the Instructions
establish the right of every Frenchman to take his part in the
government, either directly or indirectly; that is to say, the right
to elect or be elected, but without disturbing the gradation of social
ranks; so that no one may nominate or be nominated otherwise than in
his own Order. This principle once established, it is considered that
the representative system ought to be established in such wise, that
the power of taking a serious part in the direction of affairs may be
guaranteed to each Order of the nation.
With regard to the manner of voting in the Assembly of the
States-General the opinions differ. Most desire a separate vote for
each Order; others think that an exception ought to be made to this
rule in the votes upon taxation; whilst others again consider that it
should always be so. ‘The votes ought to be counted by individuals and
not by Orders,’ say the latter. ‘Such a manner of proceeding being
the only sensible one, and the only one tending to remove and destroy
that egotism of caste, which is the source of all our evils--to bring
men together and lead them to that result, which the nation has the
right to expect from an Assembly, whose patriotism and great moral
qualities should be strengthened by its united intelligence.’ As an
immediate adoption of this innovation, however, might prove dangerous
in the existing state of general feeling, many of the Instructions
provide that it should be only decided upon with caution, and that the
assembly had better decide whether it were not more prudent to put
off the system of individual voting to the following States-General.
The nobility demands that, in any case, each Order should be allowed
to preserve that dignity which is due to every Frenchman, and
consequently that the humiliating ceremonies, to which the _Tiers-État_
was subjected under the old system, should be abolished, as, for
instance, that of being obliged to kneel--‘inasmuch,’ says one of
these documents, ‘as the spectacle of one man kneeling before another
is offensive to the dignity of man, and emblematic of an inferiority
between creatures equal by nature, incompatible with their essential
rights.’
_The System to be established in the Form of Government, and the
Principles of the Constitution._--With regard to the form of
government, the nobility desired the maintenance of the monarchical
constitution, the preservation of the legislative, judicial, and
executive powers in the person of the King, but, at the same time, the
establishment of fundamental laws for the purpose of guaranteeing the
rights of the nation in the exercise of these powers.
All the Instructions, consequently, declare that the nation has the
right to assemble in States-General, composed of a sufficient number
of members to ensure the independence of the Assembly; and they
express the desire that, for the future, these States should assemble
at fixed periodical seasons, as well as upon every fresh succession
to the throne, without the issue of any writs of convocation. Many of
the bailiwicks even advise the permanence of this Assembly. If the
convocation of the States-General were not to take place within the
period prescribed by the law, they should have the right of refusing
the payment of taxes. Some few of the Instructions desire that, during
the intervals between the sittings of the States, an intermediary
commission should be appointed to watch over the administration of
the kingdom; but most of them formally oppose the appointment of any
such commission, as being unconstitutional. The reason given for this
objection is curious enough. They feared lest so small an Assembly,
left to itself in the presence of the Government, might be seduced by
it.
The nobility desires that the Ministers should not possess the right of
dissolving the Assembly, and should be punished by law for disturbing
it by their cabals; that no public functionary, no one dependent in
any way upon the Government, should be a deputy; that the person of
the deputies should be inviolable, and that they should not be able
(according to the terms of the memorials) to be prosecuted for any
opinions they may emit; finally, that the sittings of the Assembly
should be public, and that, in order that the nation might more
generally take part in them, they should be made known by printed
reports.
The nobility unanimously demands that the principles destined to
regulate the government of the State should be applied to the
administration of the different parts of the kingdom, and that,
consequently, Assemblies made up of members freely elected, and for
a limited period of time, should be formed in each district and each
parish.
Many of the Instructions recommend that the functions of _Intendants_
and _Receveurs-Généraux_ ought to be done away with; all are of opinion
that, in future, the Provincial Assemblies should alone take in hand
the assessment of the taxes, and see to the special interests of the
province. The same ought to be the case, they consider, with the
Assemblies of each _arrondissement_ and of each parish, which ought
only to be accountable for the future to the Provincial States.
_Distribution of the Powers of State.--Legislative Power._--As
regards the distribution of the powers of the State between the
assembled nation and the King, the nobility requires that no law
should be considered effective until it has been consented to by the
States-General and the King and entered upon the registers of the
courts empowered to maintain the execution of the laws; that the
States-General should have the exclusive attribute of determining and
fixing the amount of the taxes; that all subsidies agreed upon should
be only for the period that may elapse between one sitting of the
States and the next; that all which may be levied or ordained, without
the consent of the States, should be declared illegal, and that all
ministers and receivers of such subsidies, who may have ordered or
levied them, should be prosecuted as public defaulters; that, in the
same way, no loan should be contracted without the consent of the
States-General, but that a credit alone should be opened, fixed by the
States, of which the Government might make use in case of war or any
great calamity, taking care, however, that measures should be taken to
convoke the States-General in the shortest possible time; that all the
national treasuries should be placed under the superintendence of the
States; that the expenses of each department should be fixed by them;
and that the surest measures should be taken to see that the funds
voted were not exceeded.
The greater part of the Instructions recommend the suppression of
those vexatious taxes, known under the names of _insinuation_,
_entérinement_, and _centième denier_, coming under the denomination of
‘Administration (_Régie_) of the Royal domains,’ upon the subject of
which one of the memorials says: ‘The denomination of _Régie_ is alone
sufficient to wound the feelings of the nation, inasmuch as it puts
forward, as belonging to the King, matters which are in reality a part
of the property of the citizens;’ that all the domains, not alienated,
should be placed under the administration of the Provincial States, and
no ordinance, no edict upon financial matters, should be given without
the consent of the three Orders of the nation.
It is evidently the intention of the nobility to confer upon the nation
the whole of the financial administration, as well in the regulation
of loans and taxes, as in the receipt of the same by the means of the
General and Provincial Assemblies.
_Judicial Power._--In the same way, in the judicial organisation, it
has a tendency towards rendering the power of the judges, at least in
a great measure, dependent upon the nation assembled. And thus many
of the memorials declare ‘that the magistrates should be responsible
for the fact of their appointments to the nation assembled;’ that they
should not be dismissed from their functions without the consent of the
States-General; that no court of justice, under any pretext whatever,
should be disturbed in the exercise of its functions without the
consent of these States; that the disputed matters in the Appeal Court,
as well as those before the Parliament, should be decided upon by the
States-General. The majority of the Instructions add that the judges
ought only to be nominated by the King, upon presentation to him by the
people.
_Executive Power._--The executive power is exclusively reserved to the
King; but necessary limits are proposed, in order to prevent its abuse.
For instance, in the administration, the Instructions require that the
state of the accounts of the different departments should be rendered
public by being printed; likewise, that before employing the troops in
the defence of the country from without, the King should make known his
precise intention to the States-General; that, in the country itself,
the troops should never be employed against the citizens, except upon
the requisition of the States-General; that the number of the troops
should be limited, and that two-thirds of them alone should remain, in
common times, upon the second effective list; and that the Government
ought to keep away all the foreign troops it may have in its pay from
the centre of the kingdom, and send them to the frontiers.
In perusing the Instructions of the nobility, the reader cannot fail
to be struck, more than all, with the conviction that the nobles are
so essentially of their own time. They have all the feelings of the
day, and employ its language with perfect fluency; they talk of ‘the
inalienable rights of man’ and ‘the principles inherent to the social
compact.’ In matters appertaining to the individual, they generally
look to his rights--in those appertaining to society, to its duties.
The principles of their political opinions appear to them _as absolute
as those of morality, both one and the other being based upon reason_.
In expressing their desire to abolish the last remnants of serfdom,
they talk of _effacing the last traces of the degradation of the
human race_. They sometimes denominate Louis XVI. the ‘Citizen-King,’
and frequently speak of that crime of _lèse-nation_ (treason to the
nation), which afterwards was so frequently imputed to themselves.
In their opinion, as in that of every one else, everything was to be
expected from the results of public education, which the States were to
direct. ‘_The States-General_,’ says one of the _Cahiers_, ‘_must take
care to inspire a national character by alterations in the education of
children_.’ Like the rest of their contemporaries, they show a lively
and constant desire for uniformity in the legislation, excepting,
however, in all that affected the existence of ranks. They are as
desirous as the _Tiers-État_ of administrative uniformity--uniformity
of measures, &c. They point out all kinds of reforms, and expect that
these reforms should be radical. According to their suggestions, all
the taxes, without exception, should be abolished or transferred, and
the whole judicial system changed, except in the case of the Seignorial
Courts of Justice, which they considered only to need improvement.
They, as well as all the other French, looked upon France as a field
for experiment--a sort of political model-farm, in which every portion
was to be turned up and every experiment tried, except in one special
little corner, where their own privileges blossomed. It must be said to
their honour, however, that even this was but little spared by them. In
short, as may be seen by reading their memorials, all the nobles wanted
in order to make the Revolution was that they should be plebeians.
Note (XLV.)--Page 97, line 2.
SPECIMEN OF THE RELIGIOUS GOVERNMENT OF AN ECCLESIASTICAL PROVINCE IN
THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
1. The Archbishop.
2. Seven Vicars-General.
3. Two Ecclesiastical Courts, denominated _Officialités_. One, called
the Metropolitan _Officialité_, took cognisance of the judgments of the
suffragans. The other, called the _Officialité_ of the Diocess, took
cognisance (1) of personal affairs between clerical men; (2) of the
validity of marriages, as regarded the performance of the ceremony.
This latter court was composed of three judges, to whom were adjoined
notaries and attorneys.
4. Two Fiscal Courts. The one, called the office of the Diocess
(_Bureau Diocésain_), took cognisance, in the first instance, of all
matters having reference to the dues levied on the clergy of the
diocess. (As is well known, they were fixed by the clergy themselves.)
This court was presided over by the Archbishop, and made up of six
other priests. The other court gave judgment in appeals on causes,
which had been brought before the other _Bureaux Diocésains_, of the
ecclesiastical province.
All these courts admitted counsel and heard pleadings.
Note (XLVI.)--Page 97, line 10.
GENERAL FEELING OF THE CLERGY IN THE STATES AND PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLIES.
What has been said in the text respecting the States of Languedoc is
applicable just as well to the Provincial Assemblies that met in 1779
and 1787, for instance, in Haute-Guienne. The members of the clergy,
in this Provincial Assembly, were among the most enlightened, the most
active, and the most liberal. It was the Bishop of Rhodez who proposed
to publish the minutes of the Assembly.
Note (XLVII.)--Page 98, line 26.
This liberal disposition on the part of the priests in political
matters, which displayed itself in 1789, was not only produced by the
excitement of the moment, evidence of it had already appeared at a much
earlier period. It exhibited itself, for instance, in the province
of Berri as early as 1779, when the clergy offered to make voluntary
donations to the amount of 68,000 livres, upon the sole condition that
the provincial administration should be preserved.
Note (XLVIII.)--Page 100, line 11.
It must be carefully remarked that, if the political conditions of
society were without any ties, the civil state of society still had
many. Within the circle of the different classes men were bound to
each other; something even still remained of that close tie which had
once existed between the class of the _Seigneurs_ and the people; and
although all this only existed in civil society, its consequence was
indirectly felt in political society. The men, bound by these ties,
formed masses that were irregular and unorganised, but refractory
beneath the hand of authority. The Revolution, by breaking all social
ties, without establishing any political ties in their place, prepared
the way at the same time for equality and servitude.
Note (XLIX.)--Page 101, line 5.
EXAMPLE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE COURTS EXPRESSED THEMSELVES UPON THE
OCCASION OF CERTAIN ARBITRARY ACTS.
It appears, from a memorial laid before the _Contrôleur-Général_ in
1781, by the _Intendant_ of the _Généralité_ of Paris, that it was one
of the customs of that _Généralité_ that the parishes should have two
syndics--the one elected by the inhabitants in an Assembly presided
over by the _Subdélégué_, the other chosen by the _Intendant_, and
considered the overseer of the former. A quarrel took place between the
two syndics in the parish of Rueil, the elected syndic not choosing to
obey the chosen syndic. The _Intendant_, by means of M. de Breteuil,
had the elected syndic put into the prison of La Force for a fortnight;
he was arrested, then dismissed from his post, and another was put
in his place. Thereupon the Parliament, upon the requisition of the
imprisoned syndic, commenced proceedings at law, the issue of which
I have not been able to find, but during which it declared that the
imprisonment of the plaintiff and the nullification of his election
could only be considered as _arbitrary and despotic acts_. The judicial
authorities, it seems, were then sometimes rather hard in the mouth.
Note (L.)--Page 103, line 30.
So far from being the case that the enlightened and wealthy classes
were oppressed and enslaved under the _ancien régime_, it may be said,
on the contrary, that all, including the _bourgeoisie_, were frequently
far too free to do all they liked; since the Royal authority did not
dare to prevent members of these classes from constantly creating
themselves an exceptional position, to the detriment of the people; and
almost always considered it necessary to sacrifice the latter to them,
in order to obtain their good will, or put a stop to their ill humour.
It may be said that, in the eighteenth century, a Frenchman belonging
to these classes could more easily resist the Government, and force it
to use conciliatory measures with him, than an Englishman of the same
position in life could have done at that time. The authorities often
considered themselves obliged to use towards such a man a far more
temporising and timid policy than the English Government would ever
have thought itself bound to employ towards an English subject in the
same category--so wrong is it to confound independence with liberty.
Nothing is less independent than a free citizen.
Note (LI.)--Page 103, line 37.
REASON THAT FREQUENTLY OBLIGED THE ABSOLUTE GOVERNMENT IN THE ANCIENT
STATE OF SOCIETY TO RESTRAIN ITSELF.
In ordinary times the augmentation of old taxes, and more especially
the imposition of new taxes, are the only subjects likely to cause
trouble to a Government, or excite a people. Under the old financial
constitution of Europe, when any Prince had expensive desires, or
plunged into an adventurous line of policy, or allowed his finances
to become disordered, or (to take another instance) needed money for
the purpose of sustaining himself by winning partisans by means of
enormous gains or heavy salaries that they had never earned, or by
keeping up numerous armies, by undertaking great public works, &c.
&c., he was obliged at once to have recourse to taxation; a proceeding
that immediately roused and excited every class, especially that
class which creates revolutions--the people. Nowadays, in similar
positions, loans are contracted, the immediate effect of which passes
almost unperceived, and the final result of which is only felt by the
succeeding generation.
Note (LII.)--Page 105, line 29.
As one example, among many others, the fact may be cited, that the
principal domains in the jurisdiction of Mayenne were farmed out to
_Fermiers-Généraux_, who took as _Sous-Fermiers_ little miserable
tillers of land, who had nothing of their own, and for whom they
were obliged to furnish the most necessary farming utensils. It may
be well conceived that _Fermiers-Généraux_ of this kind had no great
consideration for the farmers or due-paying tenants of the old feudal
_Seigneur_, who had put them in his place, and that the exercise of
feudalism in such hands as these was often more hard to bear than in
the Middle Ages.
Note (LIII.)--Page 105, line 29.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE.
The inhabitants of Mantbazon had put upon the _taille_ the Stewards of
the Duchy, which was in possession of the Price de Rohan, although
these Stewards only farmed in his name. This Prince (who must have been
extremely wealthy) not only caused this ‘abuse,’ as he termed it, to be
put a stop to, but obtained the reimbursement of 5344 livres 15 sous,
which he had been improperly made to pay, and which was charged upon
the inhabitants.
Note (LIV.)--Page 108, line 7.
EXAMPLE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PECUNIARY CLAIMS OF THE CLERGY
ALIENATED FROM THEM THE HEARTS OF THOSE WHOSE ISOLATED POSITION
OUGHT TO HAVE CONCILIATED THEM.
The Curé of Noisai asserted that the inhabitants were obliged to
undertake the repairs of his barn and wine-press, and asked for the
imposition of a local tax for that purpose. The _Intendant_ gave answer
that the inhabitants were only obliged to repair the parsonage-house,
and that the barn and wine-press were to be at the expense of this
pastor, who was evidently more busied about the affairs of his farm
than his spiritual flock (1767).
Note (LV.)--Page 110, line 4.
In one of the memorials sent up in 1788 by the peasants--a memorial
written with much clearness and in a moderate tone, in answer to an
inquiry instituted by a Provincial Assembly--the following passages
occur:--‘In addition to the abuses occasioned by the mode of levying
the _taille_, there exists that of the _garnissaires_. These men
generally arrive five times during the collection of the _taille_.
They are commonly _invalides_, or Swiss soldiers. They remain every
time four or five days in the parish, and are taxed at 36 sous a day
by the tax-receipt office. As to the assessment of the _taille_,
we will forbear to point out the too well-known abuses occasioned
by the arbitrary measures employed and the bad effects produced by
the officious parts played by officers who are frequently incapable
and almost always partial and vindictive. They have been the cause,
however, of many disturbances and quarrels, and have occasioned
proceedings at law, extremely expensive for the parties pleading, and
very advantageous to the courts.’
Note (LVI.)--Page 110, line 39.
THE SUPERIORITY OF THE METHODS ADOPTED IN THE PROVINCES POSSESSING
ASSEMBLIES (PAYS D’ÉTAT) RECOGNISED BY THE GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONARIES
THEMSELVES.
A confidential letter, written by the Director of the Taxes to the
_Intendant_, on June 3rd, 1772, has the following:--‘In the _Pays
d’États_, the tax being a fixed _tantième_ (per-centage), every
taxpayer is subject to it, and really pays it. An augmentation
upon this _tantième_ is made in the assessment, in proportion to
the augmentation required by the King upon the total supplied--for
instance, a million instead of 900,000 livres. This is a simple
operation; whilst in the _Généralité_ the assessment is personal, and,
so to say, arbitrary; some pay their due, others only the half, others
the third, the quarter, or nothing at all. How, in this case, subject
the amount of taxation to the augmentation of one-ninth?’
Note (LVII.)--Page 112, line 37.
THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES UNDERSTOOD AT FIRST THE
PROGRESS OF CIVILISATION IN ROAD-MAKING.
Count X., in a letter to the _Intendant_, complains of the very little
zeal shown in the establishment of a road in his neighbourhood. He says
it is the fault of the _Subdélégué_ who does not use sufficient energy
in the exercise of his functions, and will not compel the peasants to
do their forced labour (_corvées_).
Note (LVIII.)--Page 112, line 42.
ARBITRARY IMPRISONMENT FOR THE CORVÉE.
An example is given in a letter of a _Grand Prévôt_, in 1768:--‘I
ordered yesterday,’ it says, ‘the imprisonment of three men (at the
demand of M. C., Sub-Engineer), for not having done their _corvée_.
Upon which there was a considerable agitation among the women of the
village, who exclaimed, “The poor people are thought of quite enough
when the _corvée_ is to be done; but nobody takes care to see they have
enough to live upon.”’
Note (LIX.)--Page 113, line 20.
The resources for the making of roads were of two kinds. The greater
was the _corvée_, for all the great works that required only labour;
the smaller was derived from the general taxation, the amount of which
was placed at the disposition of the _Ponts et Chaussées_ for the
expenses of works requiring science. The privileged classes--that is
to say, the principal landowners--though more interested than all in
the construction of roads, contributed nothing to the _corvée_ and,
moreover, were still exempt otherwise, inasmuch as the taxation for the
_Ponts et Chaussées_ was annexed to the _taille_, and levied in the
same manner.
Note (LX.)--Page 113, line 29.
EXAMPLE OF FORCED LABOUR IN THE TRANSPORT OF CONVICTS.
It may be seen by a letter, addressed by a Commissary at the head of
the police department of convict-gangs, to the _Intendant_, in 1761,
that the peasants were compelled to cart the galley-slaves on their
way; that they executed this task with very ill will; and that they
were frequently maltreated by the convict-guards, ‘inasmuch,’ says
the Commissary, ‘as the guards are coarse and brutal fellows, and the
peasants who undertake this work by compulsion are often insolent.’
Note (LXI.)--Page 113, line 32.
Turgot has given descriptions of the inconvenience and hardship of
forced labour for the transport of military baggage, which, after a
perusal of the office papers, appear not to have been exaggerated.
Among other things, he says that its chief hardship consisted in the
unequal distribution of a very heavy burden, inasmuch as it fell
entirely upon a small number of parishes, which had the misfortune
of being placed on the high road. The distance to be done was often
one of five, six, or sometimes ten and fifteen leagues. In which case
three days were necessary for the journey out and home again. The
compensation given to the landowners only amounted to one-fifth of the
expense that fell upon them. The period when forced labour was required
was generally the summer, the time of harvest. The oxen were almost
always overdriven, and frequently fell ill after having been employed
at the work--so much so that a great number of landowners preferred
giving a sum of 15 to 20 livres rather than supply a waggon and four
oxen. The consequent confusion which took place was unavoidable. The
peasants were constantly exposed to violence of treatment from the
military. The officers almost always demanded more than was their
due; and sometimes they obliged the drivers, by force, to harness
saddle-horses to the vehicles at the risk of doing them a serious
injury. Sometimes the soldiers insisted upon riding upon carts already
overloaded; at other times, impatient at the slow progress of the oxen,
they goaded them with their swords, and when the peasants remonstrated
they were maltreated.
Note (LXII.)--Page 113, line 38.
EXAMPLE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH FORCED LABOUR WAS APPLIED TO EVERYTHING.
A correspondence arising, upon a complaint made by the Intendant of the
Naval department at Rochefort, concerning the difficulties made by the
peasants who were obliged by the _corvée_ to cart the wood purchased
by the navy contractors in the different provinces for the purposes
of shipbuilding, shows that the peasants were in truth still (1775)
obliged to do this forced labour, the price of which the Intendant
himself fixed. The Minister of the Navy transferred the complaint to
the Intendant of Tours, with the order that he must see to the supply
of the carriages required. The Intendant, M. Ducluzel, refused to
authorise this species of forced labour, whereupon the Minister wrote
him a threatening letter, telling him that he would have to answer
for his refusal to the King. The Intendant, to this, replied at once
(December 11th, 1775) with firmness, that, during the ten years he
had been Intendant at Tours, he never had chosen to authorise these
_corvées_, on account of the inevitable abuses resulting from them, for
which the price fixed for the use of the vehicles was no compensation.
‘For frequently,’ says his letter, ‘the animals are crippled by the
weight of the enormous masses they are obliged to drag through roads as
bad as the time of year when they are ordered out.’ What encouraged the
Intendant in his resistance seems to have been a letter of M. Turgot,
which is annexed to the papers on this matter. It is dated on July
30th, 1774, shortly after his becoming Minister; and it says that he
himself never authorised these _corvées_ at Limoges, and approves of M.
Ducluzel for not authorising them at Tours.
It is proved by some portions of this correspondence that the timber
contractors frequently exacted this forced labour even when they were
not authorised to do so by the contracts made between themselves and
the State, inasmuch as they thus profited at least one-third in the
economy of their transport expenses. An example of the profit thus
obtained is given by a _Subdélégué_ in the following computation:
‘Distance of the transport of the wood from the spot where it is cut
to the river, by almost impracticable cross-roads, six leagues; time
employed in going and coming back, two days; reckoning (as an indemnity
to the _corvéables_) the square foot at the rate of six liards a
league, the whole amounts to 13 francs 10 sous for the journey--a sum
scarcely sufficient to pay the actual expenses of the small landowner,
of his assistant, and of the oxen or horses harnessed to his cart.
His own time and trouble, and the work of his beasts, are dead losses
to him.’ On May 17th, 1776, the Intendant was served by the Minister
with a positive order from the King to have this _corvée_ executed. M.
Ducluzel being then dead, his successor, M. l’Escalopier, very readily
obeyed, and published an ordinance declaring that the _Subdélégué_
had to make the assessment of the amount of labour to be levied upon
each parish, in consequence of which the different persons obliged to
statute labour in the said parishes were constrained to go, according
to the time and place set forth by the syndics, to the spot where the
wood might happen to be, and cart it at the price regulated by the
_Subdélégué_.
Note (LXIII.)--Page 115, line 22.
EXAMPLE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PEASANTS WERE OFTEN TREATED.
In 1768 the King allowed a remittance of 2000 francs to be made upon
the _taille_ in the parish of Chapelle-Blanche, near Saumur. The
_curé_ wanted to appropriate a part of this sum to the construction of
a belfry, in order to get rid of the sound of the bells that annoyed
him, as he said, in his parsonage-house. The inhabitants complained and
resisted. The _Subdélégué_ took part with the _curé_, and had three of
the principal inhabitants arrested during the night and put into prison.
Further examples may be found in a Royal order to imprison for
a fortnight a woman who had insulted two of the mounted rural
police; and another order for the imprisonment for a fortnight of a
stocking-weaver who had spoken ill of the same police. In this latter
case the Intendant replied to the Minister, that he had already put
the man in prison--a proceeding that met with the approval of the
Minister. This abuse of the _maréchaussée_ had arisen from the fact
of the violent arrest of several beggars, that seems to have greatly
shocked the population. The _Subdélégué_, it appears, in arresting the
weaver, made publicly known that all who should continue to insult the
_maréchaussée_ should be even still more severely punished.
It appears by the correspondence between the _Subdélégué_ and their
Intendant (1760-1770) that orders were given by him to them to have
all ill-doing persons arrested--not to be tried, but to be punished
forthwith by imprisonment. In one instance the _Subdélégué_ asks leave
of the Intendant to condemn to perpetual imprisonment two dangerous
beggars whom he had arrested; in another we find the protest of a
father against the arrest of his son as a vagabond, because he was
travelling without his passport. Again, a householder of X. demands
the arrest of a man, one of his neighbours, who had come to establish
himself in the parish, to whom he had been of service, but who had
behaved ill, and was disagreeable to him; and the Intendant of Paris
writes to request the Intendant of Rouen to be kind enough to render
this service to the householder, who is one of his friends.
In another case an Intendant replies to a person who wants to have
some beggars set at liberty, saying that the _Dépôt des Mendicants_ was
not to be considered as a prison, but only as a house intended for the
detention of beggars and vagabonds, as an ‘administrative correction.’
This idea has come down to the French Penal Code, so much have the
traditions of the old monarchy, in these matters, maintained themselves.
Note (LXIV.)--Page 121, line 7.
It has been said that the character of the philosophy of the eighteenth
century was a sort of adoration of human reason--a boundless confidence
in its almighty power to transform at its will laws, institutions, and
morals. But, upon examination, we shall see that, in truth, it was more
their own reason that some of these philosophers adored than human
reason. None ever showed less confidence in the wisdom of mankind than
these men. I could name many who had almost as much contempt for the
masses as for the Divinity. The latter they treated with the arrogance
of rivals, the former with the arrogance of upstarts. A real and
respectful submission to the will of the majority was as far from their
minds as submission to the Divine will. Almost all the revolutionists
of after days have displayed this double character. There is a wide
distance between their disposition and the respect shown by the English
and Americans to the opinion of the majority of their fellow-citizens.
Individual reason in those countries has its own pride and confidence
in itself, but is never insolent; it has thus led the way to freedom,
whilst in France it has done nothing but invent new forms of servitude.
Note (LXV.)--Page 132, line 15.
Frederick the Great, in his Memoirs, has said: ‘Your great men, such as
Fontenelle, Voltaire, Hobbes, Collins, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, have
struck a mortal blow at religion. Men began to look into that which
they had blindly adored; reason overthrew superstition; disgust for all
the fables they had believed succeeded. Deism acquired many followers.
As Epicureanism became fatal to the idolatrous worship of the heathen,
so did Deism in our days to the Judaical visions adopted by our
forefathers. The freedom of opinion prevalent in England contributed
greatly to the progress of philosophy.’
It may be seen by the above passage that Frederick the Great, at
the time he wrote those lines, that is to say, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, still at that time looked upon England as the
seat of irreligious doctrines. But a still more striking fact may
be gathered from it, namely, that one of the sovereigns, the most
experienced in the knowledge of man, and of affairs in general, does
not appear to have the slightest idea of the political utility of
religion. The errors of judgment in the mind of his instructors had
evidently disordered the natural qualities of his own.
Note (LXVI.)--Page 150, line 1.
The spirit of progress which showed itself in France at the end of
the eighteenth century appeared at the same time throughout all
Germany, and was everywhere accompanied by the same desire to change
the institutions of the time. A German historian gives the following
picture of what was then going on in his own country:--
‘In the second half of the eighteenth century the new spirit of the age
gradually introduced itself even into the ecclesiastical territories.
Reforms were begun in them; industry and tolerance made their way in
them on every side; and that enlightened absolutism, which had already
taken possession of the large states, penetrated even there. It must
be said at the same time, that at no period of the eighteenth century
had these ecclesiastical territories possessed such remarkable and
estimable Princes as during the last ten years preceding the French
Revolution.’
The resemblance of this picture to that which France then offered is
remarkable. In France, the movement in favour of amelioration and
progress began at the same epoch; and the men the most able to govern
appeared on the stage just at the time when the Revolution was about to
swallow up everything.
It must be observed also how much all that portion of Germany was
visibly hurried on by the movement of civilisation and political
progress in France.
Note (LXVII.)--Page 151, line 1.
THE LAWS OF ENGLAND PROVE THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR INSTITUTIONS TO
BE FULL OF DEFECTS AND YET NOT PREVENT THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE
PRINCIPAL END AND AIM FOR WHICH THEY WERE ESTABLISHED.
The power, which nations possess, of prospering in spite of the
imperfections to be met with in secondary portions of their
institutions, as long as the general principles and the actual spirit
which animate those institutions are full of life and vigour, is a
phenomenon which manifests itself with peculiar distinctness when the
judicial constitution of England in the last century, as described by
Blackstone, is looked into.
The attention is immediately arrested by two great diversities, that
are very striking:--
First. The diversity of the laws.
Secondly. The diversity of the Courts that administer them.
I.--_Diversity of the Laws._--(1.) The laws are different for England
(properly so called), for Scotland, for Ireland, for the different
European dependencies of Great Britain, such as the Isle of Man, the
Channel Islands, &c., and, finally, for the British Colonies.
(2.) In England itself may be found four kinds of laws--the common law,
statute laws, canon law, and equity. The common law is itself divided
into general customs adopted throughout the whole kingdom, and customs
specially belonging to certain manors or certain towns, or sometimes
only to certain classes, such as the trades. These customs sometimes
differ greatly from each other; as those, for instance, which, in
opposition to the general tendency of the English laws require an equal
distribution of property among all the children (gavelkind), and, what
is still more singular, give a right of primogeniture to the youngest
child (borough-English).
II.--_Diversity of the Courts._--Blackstone informs us that the law has
instituted a prodigious variety of different courts. Some idea of this
may be obtained from the following extremely summary analysis:--
(1.) In the first place there were the Courts established without
the limits of England, properly so called; such as the Scotch and
Irish courts, which never were dependencies of the superior courts in
England, although an appeal lies from these several jurisdictions to
the House of Lords.
(2.) In England itself, if I am correct in my memory, among the
classifications of Blackstone are to be found the following:
1. Eleven kinds of Courts of Common Law, four of which, it is true,
seem to have already fallen into disuse.
2. Three kinds of courts, the jurisdiction of which extends to the
whole country, but which take cognisance only of certain matters.
3. Ten kinds of courts, having a special character of their own. One
of these kinds consists of Local Courts, established by different Acts
of Parliament, and existing by tradition, either in London itself or
in towns and boroughs in the counties. These Courts were so numerous,
and were so extremely various in their constitution and in their
regulations, that it would be out of the question to attempt to give a
detailed account of them.
Thus, in England (properly so called) alone, if Blackstone is to be
believed, there existed, at the period when he wrote, that is to
say, in the second half of the eighteenth century, twenty-four kinds
of Courts, several of which were subdivided into a great number of
individual courts, each of which had its special peculiarities. If we
set aside those kinds, which appear at that time to have almost fallen
into disuse, we shall then find eighteen or twenty.
If now the judicial system in itself be examined it will be found to
contain all sorts of imperfections.
In spite of the multiplicity of the courts there was frequently a
want of smaller courts, of primary instance, placed within the reach
of those concerned, and empowered to judge on the spot, and at little
expense, all minor matters. This want rendered such legal proceedings
perplexing and expensive. The same matters came under the jurisdiction
of several courts; and thus an embarrassing uncertainty hung over the
commencements of legal proceedings. Some of the Appeal Courts were also
Courts of original jurisdiction--sometimes the Courts of Common Law, at
other times the Courts of Equity. There was a great diversity of Appeal
Courts. The only central point was that of the House of Lords. The
administrative litigant was not separated from the ordinary litigant--a
fact which, in the eyes of most French legal men, would appear a
monstrous anomaly. All these courts, moreover, looked for the grounds
of their judgments in four different kinds of legislation; that of the
Courts of Equity was established upon practice and tradition, since its
very object was most frequently to go against custom and statute, and
to correct, by the rules of the system framed by the Judges in Equity,
all that was antiquated or too harsh in statute and custom.
These blemishes were very great; and if the enormous old machine of the
English judicial system be compared with the modern construction of
that of France, and the simplicity, consistence, and natural connexity
to be observed in the latter, with the remarkable complication and
incoherence of the former, the errors of the English jurisprudence
will appear greater still. Yet there is not a country in the world in
which, in the days of Blackstone, the great ends of justice are more
completely attained than in England; that is to say, no country in
which every man, whatever his condition of life--whether he appeared in
court as a common individual or a Prince--was more sure of being heard,
or found in the tribunals of his country better guarantees for the
defence of his property, his liberty, and his life.
It is not meant by this that the defects of the English judicial
system were of any service to what I have here called the great ends
of justice: it proves only that in every judicial organisation there
are secondary defects that are only partially injurious to these ends
of justice; and other principal ones, that not only prove injurious to
them, but destroy them altogether, although joined to many secondary
perfections. The first mentioned are the most easily perceived;
they are the defects that generally first strike common minds: they
stare one in the face, as the saying goes. The others are often more
concealed; and it is not always the men the most learned in the law,
and other men in the profession, who discover them and point them out.
It must be observed, moreover, that the same qualities may be either
secondary or principal, according to the period of history or the
political organisation of a country. In periods of aristocratic
predominance and inequality everything that tends to lessen any
privilege of any individual before the face of justice, to afford
guarantees to the weak against the strong, and to give a predominance
to the action of the state--which is naturally impartial in differences
only occurring between subjects--becomes a principal quality; whereas
it diminishes in importance in proportion to the inclination of the
social state and political constitution towards democracy.
In studying the English judicial system upon these principles it will
be found that, although it permitted the existence of every defect that
could contribute to render justice in that country obscure, hampered,
slow, expensive, and inconvenient, it had taken infinite precautions
to prevent the strong from ever being favoured at the expense of the
weak, or the State at the expense of the private individual. The more
the observer penetrates into the details of the English legislation
the more he will see that every citizen was provided with all sorts
of weapons for his defence, and that matters were so arranged as to
afford to every one the greatest number of guarantees possible against
partiality, actual venality, and that sort of venality which is more
common, and especially more dangerous in democratic times--the venality
consisting of the servility of the courts towards the Government.
In this point of view the English judicial system, in spite of the
numerous secondary errors that may still be found in it, appears to me
superior to the French, which, although almost entirely untainted, it
is true, by any one of these defects, does not at the same time offer
in like degree the principal qualities that are to be found in it,
which, although excellent in the guarantees it affords to every citizen
in all disputes between individuals, fails precisely in that point that
ought always to be strengthened in a democratic state of society like
the French, namely, in the guarantees afforded to individuals against
the State.
Note (LXVIII.)--Page 151, line 19.
ADVANTAGES ENJOYED BY THE GÉNÉRALITÉ OF PARIS.
This _Généralité_ was as much favoured in charities bestowed by the
Government as it was in the levying of taxes. An example may be found
in a letter of the _Contrôleur-Général_ to the _Intendant_ of the
_Généralité_ of the Île-de-France (dated May 22nd, 1787), in which he
informs the latter that the King had fixed the sum, which was to be
employed upon works of charity during the year, in the _Généralité_ of
Paris, at 172,800 livres; and 100,000 livres, moreover, were destined
for the purchase of cows, to be given to different husbandmen. It
may be seen by this letter that the sum of 172,000 livres was to be
distributed by the _Intendant_ alone, with the proviso that he was to
conform himself to the general rules already made known to him by the
Government, and that he was to lay the account of the distribution
before the _Contrôleur-Général_ for approval.
Note (LXIX.)--Page 152, line 27.
The administration of the old monarchy was made up of a multitude
of different powers, which had been established at different times,
but generally for the purposes of the Treasury, and not of the
Administration, properly so called, and which frequently had the
same field of action. It was thus impossible to avoid confusion
and contention otherwise than by each party acting but little, or
even doing nothing at all. As soon as they made any efforts to rise
above this sort of languor, they hampered and entangled each other’s
movements; and thus it happened that the complaints made against the
complication of the administrative machinery, and the confusion as to
its different attributions, were very much more grievous during the
years that immediately preceded the Revolution than thirty or forty
years before. The political institutions of the country had not become
worse--on the contrary, they had been greatly ameliorated; but the
general political movement had become much more active.
Note (LXX.)--Page 157, line 30.
ARBITRARY AUGMENTATION OF THE TAXES.
What was here said by the King respecting the _taille_ might have
been said by him, with as much reason, concerning the _vingtièmes_,
as may be seen by the following correspondence:--In 1772 the
_Contrôleur-Général_ Terray had decided upon a considerable
augmentation (as much as 100,000 livres) upon the _vingtièmes_ of
the _Généralité_ of Tours. It is evident that this measure caused M.
Ducluzel, an able administrator and an honourable man, both sorrow and
embarrassment; for, in a confidential letter, he says: ‘It is probably
the facility with which the 200,000 livres’ (a previous augmentation)
‘have been given, that has encouraged the cruel interpretation and the
letter of the month of June.’
In a private and confidential letter, which the Director of
Contributions wrote thereupon to the _Intendant_, he says: ‘If the
augmentations which have been demanded appear to you, on account of the
general distress, to be as aggravating and as revolting as you give me
to understand, it would be better for the province, which can have no
other defence or protection than in your generous good-feeling, that
you should spare it, at least, the _rôles de supplément_, a retroactive
tax, that is always odious.’
It may be seen by this correspondence what a complete absence there was
of any solid basis, and what arbitrary measures were exercised, each
with honest intentions. Both Minister and Intendant laid the weight of
the increased taxation sometimes upon the agricultural rather than the
manufacturing interests, sometimes upon one kind of agriculture more
than another (as the growth of vines, for instance), according as they
fancied that the manufacturing or any one branch of the agricultural
interest ought to be more tenderly handled.
Note (LXXI.)--Page 159, line 13.
EXPRESSIONS USED BY TURGOT RESPECTING THE COUNTRY PEOPLE IN THE
PREAMBLE OF A ROYAL DECLARATION.
‘The rural communities consist, throughout the greater part of the
kingdom, of poor peasants, who are ignorant and brutal, and incapable
of self-administration.’
Note (LXXII.)--Page 163, line 24.
HOW IT WAS THAT REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS NATURALLY SPRANG UP IN MEN’S MINDS,
EVEN UNDER THE OLD MONARCHY.
In 1779 an _avocat_ addressed a petition to the Council for a decree to
establish a maximum of the price of straw throughout the whole kingdom.
Note (LXXIII.)--Page 163, line 32.
The Head Engineer, in a letter written to the _Intendant_, in 1781,
relative to a demand for an increase of indemnification, thus expresses
himself: ‘The claimant does not pay heed to the fact that the
indemnifications granted are an especial favour to the _Généralité_
of Tours, and that people ought to consider themselves very fortunate
in recovering only a part of their loss. If such compensations as the
claimant requires were to be given, four millions would not suffice.’
Note (LXXIV.)--Page 167, line 39.
The Revolution did not break out on account of this prosperity, but
that active, uneasy, intelligent, innovating, ambitious spirit, that
was destined to produce the Revolution--the democratic spirit of
new states of society--began to stir up everything, and, before it
overthrew for a period the social state of France, was already strong
enough to agitate and develop it.
Note (LXXV.)--Page 169, line 13.
COLLISION OF THE DIFFERENT ADMINISTRATIVE POWERS IN 1787.
The following may be taken as an example:--The intermediate commission
of the Provincial Assembly of the Île-de-France claimed the
administration of the _Dépôt de Mendicité_. The _Intendant_ insisted
upon its remaining in his own hands, ‘inasmuch,’ said he, ‘as this
establishment is not kept up by the funds of the province.’ During
the discussion, the intermediate commission communicated with the
intermediate commissions of other provinces, in order to learn their
opinions. Among other answers given to its questions, exists one
from the intermediate commission of Champagne, informing that of the
Île-de-France that it had met with the very same difficulties, and had
offered the same resistance.
Note (LXXVI.)--Page 172, line 2.
In the minutes of the first Provincial Assembly of the Île-de-France,
the following declaration may be found, proceeding from the mouth of
the reporter of the committee:--‘Up to the present time the functions
of syndic, which are far more onerous than honourable, are such as
to indispose from accepting them all those who unite a sufficient
competency to the intelligence to be expected from their position in
life.’
Note (LXXVII.)--Page 173, line 9.
FEUDAL RIGHTS, WHICH STILL EXISTED AT THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION,
ACCORDING TO THE FEUDAL LAWYERS.
It is not the intention of the author here to write a treatise upon
feudal rights, and, least of all, to attempt any research into their
possible origin. It is simply his desire to point out those which were
still exercised in the eighteenth century. These rights played so
important a part at that time, and have since retained so large a space
in the imagination of the very persons who have no longer anything
to suffer from them, that it was a most interesting task to find out
precisely what they were when the Revolution destroyed them all. For
this purpose a great number of _terriers_, or rolls of feudal manors,
were studied,--those of the most recent date being selected. But this
manner of proceeding led to nothing; for the feudal rights, although
regulated by a legal code, which was the same throughout the whole
of feudal Europe, were infinitely various in their kinds, according
to the province, or even the districts, where they existed. The only
system, then, which appeared likely to lead, in an approximate manner,
to the required result, was the following:--These feudal rights were
continually giving rise to all sorts of disputes and litigation. In
these cases it was necessary to know how these rights were acquired,
how they were lost, in what they consisted exactly, which were the
dues that could only be collected by virtue of a Royal patent, which
those that could only be established by private title, which those on
the contrary that had no need of formal titles, and might be collected
upon the strength of local custom, or even in virtue of long usage.
Again, when they were for sale, it was necessary to know in what manner
they were to be valued, and what capital each of them represented,
according to its importance. All these points, so immediately affecting
a thousand pecuniary interests, were subject to litigation; and thus
was constituted a distinct class of legal men, whose only occupation
it was to elucidate them. Many of these men wrote during the second
half of the eighteenth century; some even just upon the threshold
of the Revolution. They were not lawyers, properly speaking, but
practitioners, whose only task it was to point out to professional
men the rules to be followed in this special and little attractive
portion of legal science. By an attentive study of these _feudistes_, a
tolerably minute and distinct idea of a subject, the size and confusion
of which is at first bewildering, may be at last come at. The author
gives below the most succinct summary he was able to make of his
work. These notes are principally derived from the work of Edmé de
Fréminville, who wrote about the year 1750, and from that of Renauldon,
written in 1765, and entitled ‘_Traité historique et pratique des
Droits Seigneuriaux_.’
The _cens_ (that is to say, the perpetual quit-rent, in kind and in
money, which, by the feudal laws, was affixed to the possession of
certain lands) still, in the eighteenth century, affected most deeply
the position of a great number of landed proprietors. This _cens_
continued to be indivisible, that is to say, the entire _cens_ might
be claimed of any one of the possessors of the property, subject to
the _cens_ at will. It was always irredeemable. No proprietor of any
lands, subject to the _cens_, could sell them without being exposed to
the _retrait censuel_, that is to say, without being obliged to let the
property be taken back at the price of the sale; but this only took
place in certain _coutumes_. The _coutume_ of Paris, which was the most
general, did not recognise this right.
_Lods et Ventes._--It was a general rule that, in every part of the
country where the _coutume_ prevailed, the sale of every estate
subject to the _cens_ should produce what were called _lods et
ventes_; in other words, the fines paid to the lords of the manor,
upon the alienation of this kind of property. These dues were more or
less considerable, according to the customs of the manor, but were
everywhere considerable enough; they existed just as well in parts
where the _droit écrit_ (written law) was established. They generally
consisted of one-sixth of the price, and were then named _lods_. But in
these parts the lord of the manor had to establish his rights. In what
was called _pays écrit_, as well as in _pays coutumier_, the _cens_
gave the lord of the manor a privilege which took precedence of all
other debts on the estate.
_Terrage or Champart.--Agrier.--Tasque._--These dues consisted of a
certain portion of the produce, which the lord of the manor levied
upon lands subject to the _cens_. The amount varied according to the
contracts or the customs of the place. This right is frequently to be
met with in the eighteenth century. I believe that the _terrage_, even
in _pays coutumier_, could only be claimed under express deed. The
_terrage_ was either _seigneurial_ or _foncier_. It is not necessary
to explain here the distinctions which existed between these two
different kinds. Suffice it to say that the _terrage foncier_ was fixed
for thirty years, like the _rentes foncières_, whilst the _terrage
seigneurial_ was irredeemable. Lands subject to _terrage_ could not be
mortgaged without the consent of the lord of the manor.
_Bordelage._--A right which only existed in the Nivernais and
Bourbonnais countries, and which consisted in an annual quit-rent,
paid in money, corn, and fowls, upon lands subject to the _cens_. This
right entailed very rigorous consequences: non-payment of the dues
during three years gave cause for the exercise of the _commise_ or
entry to the advantage of the lord of the manor. A tenant owing the
_bordelage_ was more open than any other to a variety of annoyances
on his property. Sometimes the lord of the manor possessed the right
of claiming his inheritance, even when he died having heirs who had
legal rights to the succession. This was the most rigorous of any of
the feudal rights; and the law had finally restricted it only to rural
inheritances. ‘For,’ as our author says, ‘the peasant is always the
mule ready to bear every burden.’
_Marciage_ was the name of peculiar dues levied upon the possessors
of land, subject to the _cens_, in very few places, and consisting in
certain payments due only upon the natural death of the lord of the
manor.
_Dîmes Inféodées._--There still existed in the eighteenth century
a great number of tithes in fief. They were generally established
by separate contract, and did not result from the mere fact of the
lordship of the manor.
_Parcière._--The _parcières_ were dues levied upon the crops of fruit
gathered on the manor-lands. They bore resemblance to the _champart_
and the _dîme inféodée_, and were principally in usage in the
Bourbonnais and Auvergne countries.
_Carpot._--This was observed in the Bourbonnais country, and was a due
levied upon the vineyards, as the _champart_ was upon arable lands,
that is to say, it was levied upon a portion of the crops. It amounted
to a quarter of the vintage.
_Servage._--The customs that still possessed traces of serfdom were
called _coutumes serves_; they were very few in number. In the
provinces where they were still observed there were no estates, or at
least very few, where some traces of ancient serfdom were not visible.
[This remark is derived from a work written in 1765.] The _Servage_
(or, as the author terms it, the _Servitude_) was either personal or
real.
The personal servitude was attached to the person, and followed him
everywhere. Wherever the serf might go, to whatever place he might
transport his substance, he might be reclaimed by the lord by right of
_suite_. Our authors cite several legal verdicts that establish this
right--among others, a verdict given on the 17th June, 1760, in which
the court decides against a _Seigneur_ of the Nivernais in respect to
his right of claiming the succession of Pierre Truchet, who was the
son of a serf subject to _poursuite_, according to the custom of the
Nivernais, who had married a Parisian woman, and who had died in Paris,
as well as his son. But this verdict seems to have been founded on the
fact that Paris was a ‘place of refuge’ (_lieu d’asile_) in which the
_suite_ could not take place. If the right of _asile_ alone prevented
the _Seigneur_ from seizing upon property possessed by his serfs in the
_lieu d’asile_, it formed no opposition against his claiming to succeed
to property left in his own manor.
The ‘real’ servitude resulted from the occupation of land, and might
cease upon the land being given up or residence in a certain place
changed.
_Corvées._--The right possessed by the lord of the manor over his
subjects, by means of which he could employ for his own profit a
certain number of their days of labour, or of their oxen and horses.
The _corvée à volonté_, that is to say, at the arbitrary will of the
_Seigneur_, had been completely abolished: forced labour had been for
some time past confined to a certain number of days a year.
The _corvée_ might be either personal or real. The personal
_corvées_ were paid by labourers and workmen, whose residence was
established upon the manor, each according to his occupation. The real
_corvées_ were attached to the possession of certain lands. Nobles,
ecclesiastics, clerical personages, officers of justice, advocates,
physicians, notaries, and bankers, and men in that position of life,
were exempt from the _corvée_. A verdict, given on the 13th August,
1735, is cited by one of our authors, exempting a notary whom his
_Seigneur_ wanted to force to come for nothing, during three days, and
draw up certain law papers concerning the _seigneurie_ on which the
notary resided. Another verdict, of the date of 1750, decides that,
when the _corvée_ is personal, it may be paid either in person or by
money, the choice to be left to the person by whom it is due. Every
_corvée_ had to be established by written title-deeds. The _corvée
seigneuriale_ had become extremely rare in the eighteenth century.
_Banalités._ (Rights possessed by the lords of certain manors to oblige
those residing on them to make use of his baking-office, mill, &c.,
upon payment.)--The provinces of Flanders, Artois, and Hainault were
alone exempt from _banalités_. The Custom of Paris rigorously requires
that this should not be exercised without written title. Every person
domiciled within the circuit of the _banalité_ was subject to it, and,
most generally, even the nobles and priests also.
Besides the _banalité_ of the wine-press and baking-office there
existed several others:--
(1.) _Banalités_ of industrial establishments, such as for cloth,
tanning, or hemp. This _banalité_ is established by many _coutumes_, as
for instance, by those of Anjou, the Maine, and Brittany.
(2.) _Banalités_ of the wine-press. Few _coutumes_ mention this. But
that of Lorraine, as well as that of the Maine, establish it.
(3.) _Banalité_ of the manor bull. No _coutumes_ mention this; but
there were title-deeds that established the right. The same may be said
of the right of _banalité_ for butchers’ shambles.
In general these latter _banalités_ of which we have just spoken were
more uncommon, and looked upon with a still less favourable eye than
the others. They could only be exercised by the clearest declaration
of the _coutumes_, or, where that was wanting, by the most precise
title.
_Ban des Vendanges._--This was still practised throughout the whole of
the kingdom in the eighteenth century. It was a simple right of police
attached to the right of _haute justice_. In order to exercise it,
the _Seigneur_, who was _Haut Justicier_, did not need to possess any
other title. The _ban des vendanges_ was obligatory upon everybody. The
_coutumes_ of Burgundy give the _Seigneur_ the right of gathering in
his vintage a day before any other vine proprietor.
_Droit de Banvin._--This was a right still possessed by a quantity
of _Seigneurs_ (as our authors have it), either by custom or special
title, to sell the wine grown upon their manors for a certain period
of time, in general a month or forty days, before any one else. Among
the _grandes coutumes_ those of Tours, Anjou, the Maine, and La Marche
alone established it, and had regulations for it. A verdict of the
_Cour des Aides_, dated 28th August, 1751, authorises publicans (as
an exception to the common rule) to sell wine during the _banvin_;
but this must have referred only to the wine of the _Seigneur_, made
from that year’s growth. The _coutumes_ that establish and regulate
the right of _banvin_ generally require that it should be founded upon
legal title.
_Droit de Blairie_ was a right belonging to the _Seigneur_, who was
_Haut Justicier_, to grant permission to the inhabitants to have their
cattle graze upon lands situated throughout his jurisdiction, or upon
waste lands. This right did not exist in any parts regulated by _droit
écrit_; but it was common enough in those where the _droit coutumier_
was in force. It was to be found under different denominations, more
particularly in the Bourbonnais, the Nivernais, Auvergne, and Burgundy.
This right rested upon the supposition that the whole territory
originally belonged to the _Seigneur_, in such wise that, after the
distribution of the greater part into _fiefs_, _cencites_, and other
concessions of lands upon quit-rents, there still remained portions
which could only be used for waste pasture-ground, and of which he
might grant the temporary use to others. The _blairie_ was established
in several _coutumes_; but it could only be claimed by a _Seigneur_ who
was _Haut Justicier_, and was maintained only by some special title, or
at least by old claims supported by long possession.
_Péages._--According to our authors, there originally existed a
prodigious number of manorial tolls upon bridges, rivers, and roads.
Louis XIV. did away with a great number of them. In 1724 a commission,
nominated to examine into the titles by which the tolls were claimed,
suppressed twelve hundred of them; and, in 1765, they were still being
constantly suppressed. ‘The principle observed in this respect,’ says
Renauldon, ‘was that, inasmuch as the toll was a tax, it was necessary
to be founded not only upon legal title, but upon one emanating from
the sovereign.’ The toll was levied ‘_De par le Roi_.’ One of the
conditions of the toll was that it should be established by _tarif_
regulating the dues, which each kind of merchandise had to pay. It
was necessary that this _tarif_ should be approved by a decree of
the Council. ‘The title of concession,’ says one author, ‘had to be
followed by uninterrupted possession.’ In spite of these precautions
legally taken, it appears that the value of the tolls had greatly
increased in later times. ‘I know one toll,’ says the same author,
‘that was farmed out, a century ago, at 100 livres, and now brings in
1400; and another, farmed at 39,000 livres, that brings in 90,000.’ The
principal ordinances or principal decrees that regulated the right of
toll, were paragraph 29 of the Ordinance of 1669, and the Decrees of
1683, 1693, 1724, 1775.
The authors I have quoted, although in general favourable enough to
feudal rights, acknowledge that great abuses were committed in the
levying of the tolls.
_Bacs._--The right of ferries differed materially from the right of
toll. The latter was only levied upon merchandise; the former upon
individuals, animals, and carriages. It was necessary that this right,
in order to be exercised, should likewise be authorised by the King;
and the dues, to be levied, had to be fixed by the same decree of
Council that established and authorised it.
_Droit de Leyde_ (to which many other names have been given in
different places) was a tax levied upon merchandise brought to fairs
and markets. Many lords of the manor (as appears by our _feudistes_)
considered this right as one attached to the right of _haute justice_,
and wholly manorial, but quite mistakenly, inasmuch as it could only
be authorised by the King. At all events, this right only belonged to
the _Seigneur_, who was _Haut Justicier_: he levied the police fines,
to which the exercise of the right gave occasion. It appears, however,
that, although by theory the _droit de leyde_ could only emanate from
the King, it was frequently set up solely upon the basis of feudal
title or long possession.
It is very certain that fairs could not be established otherwise than
by Royal authorisation.
The lords of the manor, however, had no need of any precise title, or
any concession on the part of the King, for the exercise of the right
of regulating the weights and measures to be used by their vassals
in all fairs and markets held upon the manor. It was enough for the
right to be founded upon custom and constant possession. Our authors
say that all the Kings, who, one after the other, were desirous of
re-establishing uniformity in the weights and measures, failed in the
attempt. Matters had been allowed to remain at the same point where
they were when the old _coutumes_ were drawn up.
_Chemins._ (Rights exercised by the lords of the manor upon
roads.)--The high roads, called ‘_Chemins du Roi_’ (King’s highway),
belonged, in fact, to the sovereigns alone; their formation, their
reparation, and the offences committed upon them, were beyond the
cognisance of the _Seigneurs_ or their judges. The by-roads, to be
met with on any portion of a _Seigneurie_, doubtless belonged to such
_Seigneurs_ as were _Hauts Justiciers_. They had all the rights of
_voirie_ and police upon them, and their judges took cognisance of all
the offences committed upon them, except in Royal cases. At an earlier
period the _Seigneurs_ had been obliged to keep up the high roads
passing through their _seigneurie_, and, as a compensation for the
expenses incurred in these repairs, they were allowed the dues arising
from tolls, settlement of boundaries, and barriers; but, at this epoch,
the King had resumed the general direction of the high roads.
_Eaux._--All the rivers, both navigable and floatable (admitting the
passage of rafts), belonged to the King, although they flowed through
the property of lords of the manor, and in spite of any title to the
contrary. (See Ordinance of 1669.) If the lords of the manor levied
any dues upon these rivers, it was those arising from the rights of
fishing, the mills, ferry-boats, and bridge-tolls, &c., in virtue of
concessions emanating only from the King. There were some lords of the
manor who still arrogated to themselves the rights of jurisdiction
and police upon these rivers; but this manifestly only arose from
usurpation, or from concessions improperly acquired.
The smaller rivers unquestionably belonged to the _Seigneurs_ through
whose property they flowed. They possessed in them the same rights of
property, of jurisdiction, and police, which the King possessed upon
the navigable rivers. All _Seigneurs Hauts Justiciers_ were universally
the lords of the non-navigable rivers running through their territory.
They wanted no other legal title for the exercise of their claims
than that which conferred the right of _haute justice_. There were
some customs, such as the _Coutume du Berri_, that authorised private
individuals to erect a mill upon the seignorial river passing through
the lands they occupied, without the permission of the _Seigneur_. The
_Coutume de Bretagne_ only granted this right to private personages
who were noble. As a matter of general right, it is very certain
that the _Seigneur Haut Justicier_ had alone the right of erecting
mills throughout every part of his jurisdiction. No one was entitled
to erect barriers for the protection of his property without the
permission of the judges of the _Seigneur_.
_Fontaines.--Puits.--Routoirs.--Étangs._--The rain-water that fell
upon the high roads belonged exclusively to the _Seigneurs Hauts
Justiciers_; they alone were enabled to dispose of it. The _Seigneur
Haut Justicier_ possessed the right of constructing ponds in any part
throughout his jurisdiction, and even upon lands in the possession of
those who resided under it, upon the condition of paying them the price
of the ground put under water. Private individuals were only able to
make ponds upon their own soil; and, even for this, many _coutumes_
require that permission should be obtained of the _Seigneur_. The
_coutumes_, however, thus requiring the acquiescence of the _Seigneur_,
establish that it is to be given gratuitously.
_La Pêche._--The right of fishing on navigable or floatable rivers
belonged only to the King, and he alone could make grants of this
right. The Royal Judges alone had the right of judging offences
against the right of fishery. There were many _Seigneurs_, however,
who exercised the right of fishing in these streams; but they either
possessed by concession made by the King, or had usurped it. No
person could fish, even with the rod, in non-navigable rivers without
permission from the _Seigneur Haut Justicier_ within whose limits they
flowed. A judgment (dated April 30th, 1749) condemns a fisherman in a
similar case. Even the _Seigneurs_ themselves, however, were obliged,
in fishing, to observe the general regulations respecting fisheries.
The _Seigneur Haut Justicier_ was enabled to give the right of fishing
in his river to tenants in fief, or _à cens_.
_La Chasse._--The right of the chase was not allowed to be farmed
out like that of fishing. It was a personal right, arising from the
consideration that it belonged to the King, and that the nobles
themselves could not exercise it, in the interior of their own
jurisdiction, without the permission of the King. This doctrine was
established in an Ordinance of 1669 (par. 30). The judges of the
_Seigneur_ had the power of taking cognisance of all offences against
the rights of the chase, except in cases appertaining to _bêtes
rousses_ (signifying, it would appear, what were generally called
‘_grosses bêtes_’--stags, does, &c.), which were considered Royal.
The right of shooting and hunting was more interdicted to the non-noble
than any other. The fee fief of the non-noble did not even bestow it.
The King never granted it in his own hunt. So closely observed was
this principle, and so rigorous was the right considered, that the
_Seigneur_ was not allowed to give any permission to hunt. But still
it did constantly occur that _Seigneurs_ granted such permissions
not only to nobles but to non-nobles. The _Seigneur Haut Justicier_
possessed the faculty of hunting and shooting on any part of his
own jurisdiction, but alone. He was allowed to make regulations
and establish prohibitions upon matters appertaining to the chase
throughout its extent. Every _Seigneur de Fief_, although not having
the feudal power of judicial courts, was allowed to hunt and shoot
in any part of his fief. Nobles who possessed neither fief nor
jurisdiction were allowed to do so upon the lands belonging to them in
the immediate neighbourhood of their dwelling-houses. It was decided
that the non-noble possessing a park upon the territory of a _Seigneur
Haut Justicier_ was obliged to leave it open for the diversion of the
lord. But this judgment was given as long ago as 1668.
_Garennes._--Rabbit-warrens could not be established without
title-right. Non-nobles, as well as nobles, were allowed to have
rabbit-warrens; but the nobles alone were allowed to keep ferrets.
_Colombiers._--Certain _coutumes_ only give the right of _colombiers à
pied_ (dovecots standing apart from a building) to the _Seigneurs Hauts
Justiciers_; others grant it to all holders of fiefs. In Dauphiny,
Brittany, and Normandy, no non-noble was allowed to possess dovecot,
pigeon-house, or aviary; the nobles alone were allowed to keep pigeons.
The penalties pronounced against those who killed the pigeons were
extremely severe: the most afflictive punishments were sometimes
bestowed.
Such, according to the authors above cited, were the principal feudal
rights still exercised and dues still levied in the second half of the
eighteenth century. ‘The rights here mentioned,’ they add, ‘are those
generally established at the present time. But there are still very
many others, less known and less widely practised, which only occur
in certain _coutumes_, or only in certain _seigneuries_, in virtue of
peculiar titles.’ These rarer and more restricted feudal rights, of
which our authors thus make mention, and which they enumerate, amount
to the number of ninety-nine; and the greater part of them are directly
prejudicial to agriculture, inasmuch as they give the _Seigneurs_
certain rights over the harvests, or tolls upon the sale or transport
of grain, fruit, provisions, &c. Our authors say that most of these
feudal rights were out of use in their day; I have reason to believe,
however, that a great number of these dues were still levied, in some
places, in 1789.
After having studied, among the writers on feudal rights in the
eighteenth century, the principal feudal rights still exercised, I was
desirous of finding out what was their importance in the eyes of their
contemporaries, at least as regarded the fortunes of those who levied
them and those who had to pay them.
Renauldon, one of the authors I have mentioned, gives us an insight
into this matter, by laying before us the rules that legal men had
to follow in their valuation of the different feudal rights which
still existed in 1765, that is to say, twenty-four years before the
Revolution. According to this law writer, the rules to be observed on
these matters were as follow:--
_Droits de Justice._--‘Some of our _coutumes_,’ he says, ‘estimate
the value of _justice haute_, _basse_, or _moyenne_ at a tenth of the
revenues of the land. At that time the seignorial jurisdiction was
considered of great importance. Edmé de Fréminville opines that, at
the present day, the right of jurisdiction ought not to be valued at
more than a twentieth of the revenues of the land; and I consider this
valuation still too large.’
_Droits Honorifiques._--‘However inestimable these rights may be
considered,’ declares our author, a man of a practical turn of mind,
and not easily led away by appearances, ‘it would be prudent on the
part of those who make valuations to fix them at a very moderate price.’
_Corvées Seigneuriales._--Our author, in giving the rules for the
estimation of the value of forced labour, proves that the right of
enforcing it was still to be met with sometimes. He values the day’s
work of an ox at 20 sous, and that of the labourer at 5 sous, with his
food. A tolerably good indication of the price of wages paid in 1765
may be gathered from this.
_Péages._--Respecting the valuation of the tolls our author says,
‘There is not one of the Seignorial rights that ought to be estimated
lower than the tolls. They are very precarious. The repairs of
the roads and bridges--the most useful to the commerce of the
country--being now maintained by the King and the provinces, many of
the tolls become useless nowadays, and they are suppressed more and
more every day.
_Droit de Pêche et de Chasse._--The right of fishing may be farmed
out, and may thus give occasion for valuation. The right of the chase
is purely personal, and cannot be farmed out; it may consequently be
reckoned among the honorary rights but not among the profitable rights,
and cannot, therefore, be comprehended in any valuation.
Our author then mentions more particularly the rights of _banalité_,
_banvin_, _leyde_, and _blairie_, and thus proves that these rights
were those most frequently exercised at that time, and that they
maintained the greatest importance. He adds, ‘There is a quantity of
other seignorial rights, which may still be met with from time to time,
but which it would be too long and indeed impossible to make mention
of here. But intelligent appraisers will find sufficient rules, in the
examples we have already given, for the estimation of those rights of
which we do not speak.’
_Estimation du Cens._--The greater number of the _coutumes_ place the
estimation of the _cens_, _au denier_ 30 (3-1/3 per cent.). The high
valuation of the _cens_ arises from the fact that it represents at the
same time all such remunerative casualties as the _lods et ventes_, for
instance.
_Dîmes inféodées.--Terrage._--The tithes in fief cannot be estimated at
less than 4 per cent.; this sort of property calling neither for care,
culture, nor expense. When the _terrage_ or _champart_ includes _lods
et ventes_, that is to say, when the land subject to these dues cannot
be sold without paying for the right of exchange to the _Seigneur_, who
has the right of tenure _in capite_, the valuation must be raised to
3-1/3 per cent.; if not it must be estimated like the tithes.
_Les Rentes foncières_, which produced no _lods et ventes_ or _droit de
retenu_ (that is to say, which are not seignorial revenue), ought to be
estimated at 5 per cent.
ESTIMATE OF THE DIFFERENT HEREDITARY ESTATES EXISTING IN FRANCE BEFORE
THE REVOLUTION.
We recognise in France, says this writer, only three kinds of estates:--
(1.) The _Franc Alleu_.--This was a freehold estate, exempt from every
kind of burden, and subject neither to seignorial duties nor dues,
either profitable or honorary.
There were both noble and non-noble _francs alleux_. The noble _franc
alleu_ had its right of jurisdiction or fiefs dependent on it, or lands
paying quit-rents: it followed all the observances of feudal law in
subdivision. The non-noble _franc alleu_ had neither jurisdiction, nor
fief, nor _censive_, and was heritable according to the laws affecting
non-nobles. The author looks upon the holders of _francs alleux_ as
alone possessing complete property in the land.
_Valuation of Estates in Franc Alleu._--They were valued the highest of
all. The _coutumes_ of Auvergne and Burgundy put the valuation of them
as high as 40 years’ purchase. Our author opines that their valuation
at 30 years’ purchase would be exact. It must be observed that all
non-noble _francs alleux_ placed within the limits of a seignorial
jurisdiction were subject to this jurisdiction. They were not in any
dependence of vassalage to the _Seigneur_, but owed submission to a
jurisdiction which had the position of that of the Courts of the State.
(2.) The second kind was that of estates held in fief.
(3.) The third was that of estates held on quit-rents, or, in the law
language of the time, _Rotures_.
_Valuation of an Estate held in Fief._--The valuation was less,
according as the feudal burdens on it were greater.
(1.) In the parts of the country where written law was observed, and in
many of the _coutumes_, the fiefs lay only under the obligation of what
was called ‘_la bouche et les mains_,’ that is to say, that of doing
homage.
(2.) In other _coutumes_ the fiefs, besides the obligation of ‘_la
bouche et les mains_,’ were what was called ‘_de danger_,’ as in
Burgundy, and were subject to the _commise_, or feudal resumption, in
case the holder of the property should take possession without having
rendered submission or homage.
(3.) Other _coutumes_, again, as in that of Paris and many others,
subject the _fiefs_ not only to the obligation of doing homage, but to
the _rachat_, the _quint_, and the _requint_.
(4.) By other _coutumes_, also, such as that of Poitou and a few
others, they were subjected to _chambellage_ dues, the _cheval de
service_, &c.
Of these four all estates of the first category were valued more highly
than the others.
The _coutume_ of Paris laid their valuation at 20 years’ purchase,
which is looked upon by our author as tolerably correct.
_Valuation of Estates ‘en roture’ and ‘en censive.’_--In order to
come to a proper valuation, these lands have to be divided into three
classes:--
(1.) Estates held simply on quit-rents.
(2.) Those which, beside the quit-rent, are subject to other kinds of
feudal servitude.
(3.) Those held in mortmain, _à taille réelle, en bordelage_.
Only the first and second of these three forms of non-noble property
were common in the eighteenth century; the third was extremely rare.
The valuations to be made of them, according to our author, were less
on coming down to the second class, and still less on coming down to
the third. Men in possession of estates of the third class were not
even, strictly speaking, their owners, inasmuch as they were not able
to alienate them without permission from the _Seigneur_.
_Le Terrier._--The _feudistes_, whom we have cited above, point out
the following rules observed in the compilation or renewal of the
seignorial registers, called ‘_Terriers_,’ mention of which has been
made in many parts of the work. The _Terrier_ was a single register, in
which were recorded all the titles proving the rights appertaining to
the _seigneurie_, whether in property or in honorary, real, personal,
or mixed rights. All the declarations of the payers of the _cens_, the
usages of the _seigneurie_, the leases _à cens_, &c., were inserted
in it. We learn by our authors that, in the _coutume_ of Paris, the
_Seigneurs_ were permitted to renew their registers every thirty years
at the expense of their _censitaires_: they add, however, ‘It may be
considered a very fortunate circumstance, nevertheless, when a new
one may be found once a century.’ The _Terrier_ could not be renewed
(it was a vexatious business for all the persons dependent on the
_seigneurie_) without obtaining, either from the _Grande Chancellerie_
(if in cases of _seigneuries_ situated within the jurisdiction of
different Parliaments), or of the Parliaments (in the contrary case),
an authorisation which was denominated ‘_Lettres à Terrier_.’ The
notary who drew them up was nominated by the judicial authorities. All
the vassals, noble or non-noble, the payers of the _cens_, holders of
long leases (_emphytéotes_), and personages subject to the jurisdiction
of the _seigneurie_ were bound to appear before this notary. A plan of
the _seigneurie_ had to be annexed to the _Terrier_.
Besides the _Terrier_, the _seigneurie_ was provided with other
registers, called ‘_lièves_,’ in which the _Seigneurs_ or their farmers
inscribed the sums received in payment of the _cens_, with the names of
those who paid and the dates of the receipts.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
FOOTNOTES:
[139] These Notes and Illustrations were translated by the late Lady
Duff Gordon.
[140] See last note.
[141] _I.e._ not corporations for trading purposes, but bodies like our
livery companies.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Original spellings and variations in hyphenation have been retained.
The following apparent typographical errors were corrected:
Page 38, “sate” changed to “sat.” (some of whom sat there in virtue)
Page 74, “commmunity” changed to “community.” ( The other classes of
the community)
Page 169, “not” changed to “no.” (could no longer give orders)
Page 300, “uresses” changed to “rousses.” (appertaining to _bêtes
rousses_)
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