The intense aversion which the old regime peasant- ry felt for the militia system was due less to the prin- ciple of the law than to the manner in which it was executed; to the length of time during which the risk hung over men's heads (a man was liable till he was forty, unless he married); to the arbitrary revision of the lots, which often made a good number as fatal as a bad one; to the legal impossibility of procuring a sub- stitute; to the disgust inspired by a hard, dangerous vocation, in which it was wholly impossible to rise; but, above all, to the reflection that this great burden bore on them alone, and on the most wretched individ- uals among them. The ignominious distinction estab- lished between them and other classes imbittered their actual wrongs.
I have examined the reports of several drawings for militia-men, in various parishes, in the year 1769. The exempts are enumerated: one is the servant of a gen- tleman; another, watchman at an abbey; a third is only valet of a burgher, it is true, but his master "lives no- bly." No one, as a rule, was exempt but persons in easy circumstances. When a farmer, for instance, paid AND THE REVOLUTION. 161 heavy taxes for several years, his sons were exempt: this was called encouraging agriculture. Political econ- omists, much as they admired equality in other mat- ters, made no objection to this privilege; they only de- sired to extend it to other cases, or, in other words, to increase the burden of the poorest and most unprotect- ed peasantry. One of them observes that " soldiers are so badly paid, so poorly lodged, dressed, and fed, and kept in such strict dependence, that it would be too cruel to choose them out of any class but the very lowest."
Up to the close of the reign of Louis XIV. the high- roads were not repaired at all, or were kept in repair at the cost of the state and of the road-side landowners: it was at that period that the plan of keeping them in repair at the expense of the peasantry, by corvees, was first commenced. It seemed so excellent a mode of securing good roads without paying for them, that in 1737 a circular of Comptroller-general Orry applied it to the whole of France. Intendants were authorized to imprison refractory peasants, or to send bailiffs for them.& Thenceforth, measurably with the extension of trade and the desire for good roads, corvees were extended and increased.^ A report made in 1779 to the Pro- vincial Assembly of Berry states that the annual value of labor performed by the peasantry in corvees in that poor province was 700,000 livres. A similar estimate was made for lower Normandy in 1787. ISTo better indication of the sad condition of the country-people could be found. Social progress enriched all other classes of society, but impoverished the peasantry. Civilization was a blessing to all but them.
162 THE OLD KEGIME 162 THE OLD KEGIME It is stated in the correspondence of the intendants about the same period, that the peasantry must not Ibe allowed to perform their regular corvees on private roads, for they are all required on the highways, or, as the phrase was, on the king's highway. ^ The strange notion that the cost of keeping the roads in repair ought to be borne by the poorest persons in the community, and those who travel the least — new as it was — took such root in the minds of those who were gainers by it, that they soon came to believe that no other sys- tem was feasible. An attempt was made in 1776 to commute corvees for a tax payable in money: the new tax was as unequally distributed as the old imposi- tion.
Corvees, on ceasing to be seigniorial and becoming royal, were gradually applied to all public works. In 1719 they were exacted for the construction of bar- racks. ' ' The parishes must send their best workmen,''^ said the ordinance, '^and give up all other work for this.'''' Corvees were exacted for the conveyance of con- victs to the galleys,^ and of beggars to charitable insti- tutions; for the removal of military baggage from place to place, when troops were moved. ^ This was no slight task at a time when every regiment was encumbered with heavy baggage: it was requisite to gather from the neighborhood for many miles around an immense number of carts and oxen. This kind of compulsory labor, which was hardly felt at first, became a very heavy burden when the standing armies became large. I have seen pressing demands from contractors, insist- ing on the employment of corvees for the conveyance of timber from the forests to ship-yards.™ Labor of AND THE REVOLUTION. 163 this description was usually remunerated, but the price was low and unalterable. This ill-advised imposition sometimes became so burdensome as to frighten the receivers of the taille. In 1751 a receiver was appre- hensive lest ''the expense to which the peasantry were put for the repairs of the roads would incapacitate them from paying the taille."
Could these oppressive measures have been carried into eifect if beside the peasantry there had stood rich and enlightened men, with the will and the power, if not to protect them, at least to intercede on their be- half with the master, who held the fortune of rich and poor alike in his hand?
I have read a letter, written in 1774 by a wealthy landholder to the provincial intendant on the subject of opening a road. The road, says he, would insure the prosperity of the village, and he explains why; then he recommends the establishment of a fair, which could not fail to double the price of produce; and, lastly, this excellent citizen advises the foundation of a school, with some small help from government, as the best method of procuring industrious subjects for the king. None of these ideas had occurred to him until he had been confined a couple of years by a let- tre de cachet in his chateau. " It is my exile on my estate," he adds ingenuously, "which has convinced me of the extreme utility of all these projects."
It was especially in time of scarcity that observers noticed the rupture of the old bonds of patronage and dependence which had formerly linked the great land- 'Owners and the peasantry together. At these critical periods the central government was terrified by a con- 164 THE OLD REGIME sciousness of its weakness. It tried to recall to life the individual influences or tlie political associations it had destroyed, but they gave no sign, and it saw with surprise that the people it had killed were really dead.
When the suffering was very great, especially in the poorer provinces, some intendants, like Turgot, is- sued illegal ordinances, compelling the rich landown- ers to feed their peasantry till the harvest came round. I have seen letters from several curates, dated 1770, advocating the taxation of the richest landowners of their parishes, laymen and ecclesiastics alike — " men who own large estates, on which they never reside, and which only serve to give them an 'income which they spend elsewhere."
Villages were always infested with beggars, for, as Letronne remarks, the poor are relieved m the cities, but in the country, especially in winter, there is no one to help them, and they have no choice but to beg.
These unfortunate people were sometimes furious- ly persecuted. The Duke of Choiseul undertook m 1767 to put down mendicity throughout France. The intendant's correspondence bears witness to the rigor with which he proceeded. Orders were given to the police to arrest simultaneously all the beggars in the kingdom: it is said they seized fifty thousand. All able-bodied vagabonds were sent to the galleys; for the others, some forty poor-houses were opened m vari- ous parts of the kingdom. It would have answered better to have opened the hearts of the rich.
The government of the old regime, which was so mild and so timid, so fond of formalities and delays in dealing with the upper classes, was often rough and AND THE REVOLUTION. 165 always prompt in dealing with the lower, especially with the peasantry, I have never been able to dis- cover, in all the documents I have examined, a single instance where a burgher was arrested by order of an intendant, but peasants were arrested daily for corvees, militia duty, mendicity, and a thousand other matters. One class was entitled to be judged by an independent tribunal, after a long and public hearing; the other was dragged before the police magistrate {prevot), who decided summarily and without appeal. "^ " The immense distance which separates the people from other classes of society," says ISTecker in 1785, " tends to divert attention from the manner in which power may be used against individuals. Were it not for the gentleness and humanity of the French char- acter, and the spirit of the age, the subject would be an endless source of sorrow to those who can sympa- thize with sufferings which they do not share."
But the oppressive character of the system was more conspicuous in the improvement it prevented than m the injury it caused. Free, and landholders as they were, the peasantry were almost as ignorant as, and often more wretched than the serfs their ancestors. In the midst of a prodigious development of art and science, they made no industrial progress; they re- mained dark and uncivilized in a world that glittered with intelligence. They had never learned to use the quickness and keenness of their race; they could not even succeed in their own calling — agriculture. A celebrated English agricultural writer described what he saw as being "farms dating from the tenth cen- tury." They excelled in nothing but warfare; for, as 166 THE OLD REGIME soldiers, thej could not help mingling with other so- cial classes.
Such was the depth of wretchedness and solitude in which the French peasantry were hermetically seal- ed. I was surprised and almost alarmed by discov- ering that, less than twenty years before the Cath- olic faith was abolished without resistance and the churches profaned, the government often adopted the following method of ascertaining the population of a canton: the curates reported the number of communi- cants at Easter; to this an approximate figure was added for children under age and sick persons; and the total was assumed to be the exact population. Yet the ideas of the time, strangely altered and disguised, were making their way into the peasant's mind by de- vious and crooked channels, though nothing of them appeared on the surface. Manners, customs, belief — all were unchanged: the peasant was not only resign- ed, he was in good spirits.
Care must be taken not to misunderstand the gaye- ty which the French have often exliibited in the great- est affliction. It is a mere attempt to divert the mind from the contemplation of misfortune which seems inevitable; it by no means indicates insensibility. Throw open a door by which these men may escape from the misery which they appear to bear so lightly, and they will rush through it with such force as to pass over any obstacle that stands in the way, without even noticing it.
We see these things very plainly from our point of view, but they were hidden from contemporaneous ob- servers. The upper classes never easily read the AND THE REVOLUTION. 167 mind of their inferiors, and least of all of the peasantry. Their education and their social habits endow the lat- ter with habits of judging which are peculiar to them- selves, and which other classes do not acquire; and when rich and poor have no interests, or grievances, or business in common, the obscurity which wraps their respective minds becomes impenetrable; they may live side by side for centuries without understanding each other. It is curious to note the astonishing feeling of security which pervaded the upper and middle classes of society at the time the Revolution began, to hear their ingenious lucubrations on the virtues of the peo- ple, on their gentleness, their affectionate disposition, their innocent pleasures, when '93 is close at hand. A ridiculous, but a terrible spectacle I Let us stop here, before proceeding further, and ob- serve, through all the small facts I have noticed, one of the greatest of God's laws for the government of society.
The French nobility will not mix witt the other classes. Men of rank succeed in throwing oif all their public burdens. They fancy that by doing so they may preserve their rank without its troublesome ap- pendages, and at first sight it really seems they can; but before long an internal disease assails them, and reduces them gradually. They grow poorer as their privileges multiply. The middle classes, from which they had taken such care to keep aloof, grow rich and enlightened beside them, without them, in spite of them. The very men they had refused to accept as associates or fellow-citizens are about to become their rivals, their enemies, and, ere long, their masters.
168 THE OLD KEGIME 168 THE OLD KEGIME Though thej have been relieved from the responsibil- ity of guiding, protecting, assisting their vassals, they estimate that they have lost nothing, because their titles and their pecuniary privileges still remain in- tact. As they are still the first men in the country in rank, they persuade themselves that they still hold rule; and, in fact, they are still surrounded by those whom in notarial acts they style ''their subjects," while others are their vassals, their tenants, their farm- ers. But, in reality, they govern no one. They stand quite alone, and from the blow that threatens to over- whelm them, their only resource will be in flight.
Though the career of the nobility and that of the middle classes had differed widely, there was one point of resemblance between them: both had kept them- selves aloof from the people. Instead of uniting with the peasantry, the middle classes had shrunk from the contact of their miseries; instead of joining them to combat the principle of inequality of ranks, they had only sought to aggravate the injustice of their position: they had been as eager for exceptional rights as the no- bility for privileges. Themselves sprung from the ranks of the peasantry, they had so lost all recollection and knowledge of their former character, that it was not tiU they had armed the peasants that they perceived they had roused passions which they could neither gauge, guide, nor restrain, and of which they were destined to be the victims as well as the authors.
The ruin of the great house of France, which once promised to spread over the whole Continent, will ai- rways be a subject of wonder, but no careful student of its history can fail to comprehend its fall. With few AND THE EEVOLUTION. 169 exceptions, all the vices, all the errors, all the fatal prej- udices which I have sketched, owed either their ori- gin, or their continuance, or their development to the exertions made by most of our kings to create distinc- tions of classes in order to govern more absolutely.
But when the work was complete — when the nobil- ity were isolated from the middle classes, and both from the peasantry — when each class contained a va- riety of small private associations, each as distinct from the others as the classes themselves, the whole nation, though homogeneous, was composed of parts that did not hold together. There was no organization that could resist the government, but there was none that could assist it. So it was that, the moment the ground- work moved, the whole edifice of the French monarchy gave way and fell with a crash.
Nor did the people, in taking advantage of the faults of their masters, and throwing off their yoke, wholly succeed in eradicating the false notions, the vicious hab- its, the bad propensities these masters had either im- parted or allowed them to acquire. They have at times used liberty like slaves, and shown themselves to be as incapable of self-government as they were void of pity for their old teachers.
I shall now pursue my subject, and, losing sight of the ancient and general predisposing causes of the great revolution, pass to some specific facts of more recent date, which determined finally its locality, its origin, and its character.
H 170 THE OLD EEGIME CHAPTER XIIL HOW, TOWARD THE MIDDLE OP THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY, LITEE- ARr MEN BECAME THE LEADING- POLITICIANS OP THE COUNTRY, AND OF THE EFPECTS THEREOF.
FRANCE liad long been the most literary nation of Europe, but her men of letters had never ex- hibited the' mental peculiarities, or occupied the rank which distinguished them in the eighteenth century. Nothing of the kind had ever been witnessed either here or abroad.
They took no part in public business, as English authors did; on the contrary, they had never lived so much out of the world. They held no public office, and, though society teemed with functionaries, they had no public functions to discharge.
But they were not strangers to politics, or wholly absorbed in abstract philosophy and belles-lettres, as most of the German literary men were. They paid sedulous, and, indeed, special attention to the subject of government. They were to be heard day after day discoursing of the origin and primitive form of society, of the primordial rights of the governed and governing power, of the natural and artificial relations of men one to the other, of the soundness or the errors of the pre- vailing customs, of the principles of the laws. They made thorough inquiries into the Constitution, and criticised its structure and general plan. They did not invariably devote particular or profound studies to AND THE EEVOLUTION. 171 these great problems. Many merely glanced at them in passing, often playfully, but none omitted them al- together. Abstract and literary views on political sub- jects are scattered throughout the works of that day; from the ponderous treatise to the popular song, none are wholly devoid of this feature.
The political systems of these writers were so va- ried that it would be wholly impossible to reconcile them together, and mould them all into a theory of government.
Still, setting details aside, and looking only to main principles, it is readily discerned that all these authors concurred in one central point, from whence their par- ticular notions diverged. They all started with the principle that it was necessary to substitute simple and elementary rules, based on reason and natural law, for the complicated and traditional customs which reg- ulated society in their time.
It will be ascertained, on close inquiry, that the whole of the political philosophy of the eighteenth cen- tury is really comprised in that single notion.
It was not new. For three thousand years it had been floating backward and forward through the minds of men without finding a resting-place. How was it that it contrived to engross the attention of all the au- thors of the day just at this time? How did it hap- pen that, instead of lying buried in the brain of phi- losophers, as it had done so often, it became so absorb- ing a passion among the masses, that idlers were daily heard discussing abstract theories on the nature of human society, and the imaginations of women and peasants were fired by notions of new systems? How 172 THE OLD REGIME cam^ it that literary men, without rank, or honors, or riches, or responsibility, or power, monopolized politi- cal authority, and found themselves, though strangers to the government, the only leading politicians of the day? I desire to answer these queries briefly, and to show how facts which seem to belong to the history of our literature alone exercised an influence over our revolution that was both extraordinary and terrible, and is still felt in our time.
It was not chance which led the philosophers of the eighteenth century to advocate principles so opposed to those on which society rested in their day. They were naturally suggested by the spectacle they had before them. They had constantly in view a host of absurd and ridiculous privileges, whose burden in- creased daily, while their origin was growing more and more indistinct; hence they were driven toward no- tions of natural equality. They beheld as many ir- regular and strange old institutions, all hopelessly jarring together and unsuited to the time, but cling- ing to life long after their virtue had departed; and they naturally felt disgusted with all that was ancient and traditional, and — each taking his own reason for his guide — they sought to rebuild society on some wholly new plan.° These writers were naturally tempted to indulge un- reservedly in abstract and general theories of govern- ment. They had no practical acquaintance with the subject; their ardors were undamped by actual ex- perience; they knew of no existing facts which stood in the way of desirable reforms; they were ignorant of the dangers inseparable from the most necessary AND THE REVOLUTION. 173 revolutions, and dreamed of none. There "being no approach toward political liberty, the business of gov- ernment was not only ill understood, it was not un- derstood at all. Having no share in it themselves, and seeing nothing that was done by those who had, these writers lacked the superficial education wliich the habit of political freedom imparts even to those who take no part in politics. They were hence bolder in their projects of innovation, fonder of theory and system, more prone to despise the teaching of antiqui- ty and to rely on individual reason than is usually the case with speculative writers on politics.
Ignorance of the same kind insured their success among the masses. If the French people had still participated in the government by means of States- General, if they had still taken part in the administra- tion of the public business in Provincial Assemblies, it is certain that they would have received the lucubra- tions of these authors with more coolness; their busi- ness habits would have set them on their guard against pure theory.
Had they seen a possibility of changing the spirit without wholly destroying the form of their old insti- tutions, as the English did, they might have been reluc- tant to adventure upon absolute novelties; but there was not a man whose fortune, or whose comfort, or whose person, or whose pride was not daily interfered with by some old law, or old institution, or old de- cayed authority, and each particular grievance seemed altogether incurable short of the total destruction of the constitution of the country.
We had, however, saved one right from the general 174 THE OLD REGIME wreck — that was the right of philosophizing freely on the origin of society, on the natural principles of gov- ernment, and the primitive rights of man.
A rage for this political literature seized all who were inconvenienced by the legislation of the day, in- cluding many who were naturally but little prone to in- dulge in abstract speculations. Tax-payers, wronged by the unjust distribution of the taille, warmed over the principle of the natural equality of man. Farm- ers, whose harvests were spoiled by rabbits kept by their noble neighbors, rejoiced to hear that reason re- pudiated all privileges without exception. Popular passions thus disguised themselves in a philosophic garb; political aspirations were forcibly driven into a literary channel, and men of letters, taking the direc- tion of public opinion, temporarily occupied the posi- tion which in free countries belongs to party leaders.
Nor could their claim to that place be disputed. A vigorous aristocracy will not only conduct public busi- ness, but will make public opinion, and give the key- note to authors, and authority to principles; but these prerogatives had passed away from the French nobility long before the eighteenth century; they had lost credit and power together. The place they had occu- pied in the public mind was vacant, and no one could gainsay the authors for seizing upon it.
The aristocracy rather favored than impeded their usurpation. Forgetting that established theories, soon- er or later, inevitably become political passions, and find expression in acts, they made no objection to the discussion of doctrines that were wholly subversive of their private rights, and even of their existence. They AND THE REVOLUTION. 175 considered them ingenious exercises for the mind, amused themselves by taking part in them, and peace- fully enjoyed their immunities and privileges, while they serenely discoursed on the absurdity of all exist- ing customs.
Astonishment is expressed at the blindness with which the upper classes of the old regime helped to ruin themselves; but where could they have learned better? Ruling classes can no more acquire a knowl- edge of the dangers they have to avoid without free in- stitutions, than their inferiors can discern the rights they ought to preserve in the same circumstances. More than a century had elapsed since the last trace of public life had disappeared in France. During the interval, no noise or shock warned conservatives of the impending fall of the ancient edifice. Appearances re- maining unchanged, they suspected no internal revolu- tion. Their minds had stood still at the point where their ancestors had left off. The nobility were as jeal- ous of the royal prerogative in 1789 as they had been in the fifteenth century, as the reports of the States- General prove. On the other hand, on the very eve of his wreck in the democratic storm, the unhappy Louis XVI., as Burke very truly observes, could see no ri- val to the throne outside the ranks of the aristocracy; he was as suspicious of the nobles as if he had been living in the time of the Fronde. He felt as certain as any of his ancestors that the middle and lower classes were the surest supports of the throne.
But of all the strange phenomena of these times, the strangest to us, who have seen so many revolutions, is the absence of any thought of revolution from the mind 176 THE OLD EEGIME of our ancestors. No such thing was discussed, be- cause no such thing had been conceived. In free com- munities, constant vibrations keep men's minds alive to the possibility of a general earthquake, and hold gov- ernments in check; but in the old French society that was so soon to topple over, there was not the least symptom of unsteadiness.
I have read attentively the cahiers of the Three Es- tates presented to the States-General in 1789; I say the Three Estates — nobility and clergy as well as Third Estate. I observe that here a law and there a custom is sought to be changed, and I note it. Pursuing the immense task to the end, and adding together all the separate demands, I discover with terror that nothing less is demanded than the simultaneous and systematic repeal of all the laws, and abolition of all the customs prevailing in the country; and I perceive at once that one of the greatest revolutions the world ever saw is impending. Those who are to be its victims to-mor- row suspect nothing; they delude themselves with the notion that this elaborate old society can be transform- ed without a shock, and with the help of reason alone. Unhappy creatures! how had they forgotten the quaint old maxim of their fathers four hundred years ago, " He that is too desiring of liberty and franchess must needs fall into serfage."