They conceived all the social and administrative re- forms effected by the devolution before the idea of free institutions had once flashed upon their mind. They were in favor of the removal of all restrictions upon the sale and conveyance of produce and merchan- dise. But of political liberty they took no thought; and when it first occurred to them they rejected the idea. Most of them were strongly opposed to delib- erative assemblies, to local and subordinate authori- ties, and to the various checks which have been es- tablished from time to time in free countries to coun- terbalance the supreme government. "The system of counterpoises," said Quesnay, "is a fatal feature in governments." A friend of his was satisfied that " the system of counterpoises was the fruit of chimer- ical speculations."
The only safeguard against despotism which they proposed was public education; for, as Quesnay said, "Despotism is impossible in an enlightened nation." " Mankind," says one of his disciples, " have invented a host of fruitless contrivances to obviate the evils arising fi*om abuses of power by governments, but they have generally neglected the only one that could re- ally be of service, namely, a general permanent system of public education in the essence of justice and natu- ral order." Such was the literary nonsense they wanted to substitute in the place of political guaran- tees.
Letronne bitterly deplores the government's neglect of the rural districts, and describes them as having no AND THE KEVOLUTION. 195 roads, no industry, no intellectual progress; but he never seems to have imagined that they would have been better regulated if their affairs had been intrusted to the people themselves.
Even Turgot, with all his peculiar breadth of view and rare genius, was but little fonder than they of po- litical liberty. He had no taste for it till late in life, when public opinion pointed in that direction. Like the economists, he conceived that the best of all political guarantees was public education afforded by the state; but he desired it to be conducted in a particular spirit, and according to a particular plan. His confidence in this intellectual course of medicine — or, as a contem- porary styled it, this " educational mechanism on fixed principles" — was unbounded. " I will venture to an- swer," said he to the king, in a memorial on the sub- ject, " that in ten years the nation will be so thorough- ly altered that you shall not recognize it; and that, in point of enlightenment, morality, loyalty, and pa- triotism, it will surpass every other nation in the world. Children now ten years old will then be men, trained in ideas of love for their country, submissive to authority from conviction, not from fear, charitable to their fellow-countrymen, habituated to obey and to respect the voice of justice."
It was so long since political liberty had flourished in France that its conditions and effects had been well-nigh forgotten. More than this, its shapeless rel- ics, and the institutions which seemed to have been framed to take its place, rather aroused prejudice against it. Most of the surviving state assemblies exhibited the spirit as well as the forms of the Middle 196 THE OLD EEGIME Ages, and hindered instead of assisting social progress. The Parliaments, which were the only substitutes for political bodies, could not arrest the mischief done by- government, and often impeded it when it desired to do good.
The economists did not think it possible to use these old institutions as instruments for the accom- plishment of the Revolution, nor did they approve the idea of intrusting the business to the nation as sovereign; they doubted the feasibility of effecting so elaborate and intricate a reform by the aid of a popu- lar movement. Their designs, they thought, could be best and most easily accomplished by the crown it- self.
The royal power had not taken its rise in the Mid- dle Ages, and bore no mediaeval stamp. They dis- covered in it good as well as bad points. It shared their proclivity for leveling all ranks, and making all laws uniform. It detested as heartily as they did the old institutions which had grown out of the feudal system, or which favored oligarchy. It was the best organized, the greatest and strongest government ma- chine in Europe. Its existence seemed to them a very fortunate accident; they would have called it provi- dential had it been the fashion then as now to allude to Providence on all possible occasions. Letronne ob- serves that "France is much more happily situated than England; for here reforms that will change the whole state of the country can be accomplished in a moment, whereas in England similar measures are al- ways exposed to be defeated by party strife."
Their idea, then, was not to destroy, but to convert AND THE EEVOLUTION. 197 the absolute monarchy. ^* The state must govern ac- cording to the laws of natural order {regies de Vordre essentieiy says Mercier de la Riviere; " on these con- ditions it should be absolute." " Let the state," said another, "understand its duty thoroughly; this se- cured, it should be untrammeled." All of them, from Quesnay to Abbe Bodeau, were of the same mind.
They were not satisfied with using the royal power to eiFect social reforms; they partly borrowed from it the idea of the fature government they proposed to es-. tablish. The one was to be, in some measure, a copy of the other.
The state, said the economists, must not only gov- ern, it must shape the nation. It must form the mind of citizens conformably to a preconceived model. It is its duty to fill their minds with such opinions and their hearts with such feelings as it may judge necessary. In fact, there are no limits either to its rights or its powers. It must transform as well as reform its sub- jects; perhaps even create new subjects, if it thinks fit. "The state," says Bodeau, "moulds men into whatever shape it pleases." That sentence expresses the gist of the whole system.
The immense social power conceived by the econo- mists differed from the power they had before them in point of origin and character as well as magnitude. It was not of divine origin; it owed nothing to tradition; it was impersonal: it was called the state, not the king; it was not the heirloom of a family, it was the collect- ive product and representative of the whole nation. In- dividual rights gave way to it as the sum of the rights of all.
198 THE OLD REGIME They were quite familiar with the form of tyranny which we call democratic despotism, and which had not been conceived in the Middle Ages. No more social hierarchies, no distinctions of class or rank; a people consisting of individuals entirely equal, and as nearly alike as possible; this body acknowledged as the only legitimate sovereign, but carefully deprived of the means of directing or even superintending the government; over it a single agent, commissioned to perform all acts without consulting his principals: to control him, a public sense of right and wrong, destitute of.organs for its expression; to check him, revolutions, not laws; the agent being de jure a subordinate agent, in fact a master: such was the plan.
Finding nothing in their neighborhood conformable to this ideal of theirs, they went to the heart of Asia in search of a model. I do not exaggerate when I af- firm that every one of them wrote in some place or other an emphatic eulogium on China. One is sure to find at least that in their books; and as China is very imperfectly known even in our day, their state- ments on its subject are generally pure nonsense. They wanted all the nations of the world to set up exact cop- ies of that barbarous and imbecile government, which a handful of Europeans master whenever they please. China was for them what England, and afterward Amer- ica, became for all Frenchmen. They were filled with emotion and delight at the contemplation of a govern- ment wielded by an absolute but unprejudiced sover- eign, who honored the useful arts by plowing once a year with his own hands; of a nation whose only re- ligion was philosophy, whose only aristocracy were men AND THE REVOLUTION. 199 of letters, whose public offices were awarded to the vic- tors at literary tournaments.
It is generally believed that the destructive theories known by the name of socialism are of modern origin. This is an error. These theories are coeval with the earliest economists. While some of them wanted to use the absolute power they desired to establish to change the forms of society, others proposed to employ it in ruining its fundamental basis.
Bead the Code de la Nature by Morelly; you will find there, together with the economist doctrines re- garding the omnipotence and the boundless rights of the state, several of those political theories which have terrified France of late years, and whose origin we fan- cy we have seen — community of property, rights of labor, absolute equality, universal uniformity, mechan- ical regularity of individual movements, tyrannical reg- ulations on all subjects, and the total absorption of the individual in the body politic.
"Nothing," says the first article of this code, "be- longs wholly to any one. Property is detestable, and any one who attempts to re-establish it shall be im- prisoned for life, as a dangerous madman and an ene- my of humanity." The second article declares that ** every citizen shall be kept, and maintained, and sup- plied with work at the public expense. All produce shall be gathered into public garners, to be distributed to citizens for their subsistence. All cities shall be built on the same plan; all private residences shall be alike. All children shall be taken from their families at five years of age, and educated together on a uniform plan." This book reads as if it had been written yesterday.
200 THE OLD EEGIME It is a hundred years old; it appeared in 1755, simnl- taneously with the foundation of Quesnay's school. So true it is that centralization and socialism are natives of the same soil: one is the wild herb, the other the garden-plant.
Of all the men of their age, the economists would seem the least out of place at the present day; their passion for equality is so violent, their love of liberty so variable, that they wear a false air of contemporaries of our own. When I read the speeches and writings of the men who made the Revolution, I feel that I am in the company of strangers; but when I glance at the writings of the economists, I begin to fancy that I have lived with them, and just heard them talk.
About 1750 the nation at large cared no more for political liberty than the economists themselves; when it fell into disuse, the taste for it, and even the idea of it, were soon lost. People sought reforms, not rights. Had the throne then been occupied by a monarch of the calibre and character of Frederick the Great, I have no doubt he would have accomplished many of the re- forms which were brought about by the Revolution; and that not only without endangering his throne, but with a large gain of power. It is said that M. de Ma- chault, one of the ablest ministers of Louis XY., con- ceived this idea, and communicated it to his master; but such enterprises are not executed at second-hand; a man capable of accomplishing them could not fail to conceive them himself.
Twenty years changed the face of things. France had a glimpse of political liberty, and liked it. Many indications prove this. The provinces began to desire AND THE EEVOLUTION. 201 once more to administer their own government. Men's minds became imbued with the notion that the people at large were entitled to a share in their own govern- ment. Kecollections of the old States-General were revived. National history contained but this single item which the people loved to recall. The economists were carried away by the current, and compelled to clog their absolute scheme with some free institu- tions.
When the Parliaments were destroyed in 1771, the public, which had suffered severely from their evils, was profoundly affected by their fall. It seemed as if the last barrier against the royal prerogative had been destroyed.
^Yoltaire was indignant at the symptom. He wrote to his friends, " Nearly all the kingdom is in a state of effervescence and consternation; the provinces fer- ment as violently as the capital. Yet the edict seems to me to be pregnant with useful reforms. To abolish all venal offices; to establish courts that will adminis- ter justice gratuitously; to prevent litigants from com- ing to Paris from all parts of the kingdom to ruin them-r selves; to burden the crown with the expense of the seigniorial courts — are not these great services render- ed to the nation? Have not these Parliaments been bar- barous and intolerant? Eeally I admire the ' Welch- es' for taking the side of these insolent and indocile burghers. For my part, I think the king is right } if one must serve, I hold it better to serve a well-bred lion, who is naturally stronger than I am, than two hundred rats of my own breed." And he adds, by way of excuse, " Think how infinitely I ought to appreciate 12 202 THE OLD REGIME the kindness of the king in relieving seignioi'^^^of the cost of their courts."
Yoltaire had been absent from Paris for many years, and fancied that the public mind was just as he had known it. This was not the case. The French were not satisfied now with desiring to see their affairs well managed; they wanted to manage them themselves. It was already visible that the great revolution which was in preparation would be effected, not only with the consent of the people, but by their hands.
I think that from this moment the radical revolu- tion, which was to ruin simultaneously the worst fea- tures of the old regime and its redeeming traits, be- came inevitable. A people so badly trained for action could not undertake reforms without destroying every thing. An absolute sovereign would have been a less dangerous reformer. And, for my part, when I remem- ber that this revolution, which destroyed so many in- stitutions, and ideas, and habits that were inimical to liberty, also destroyed others without which liberty can hardly exist, I am inclined to think that, had it been accomplished by a despot, it would have left us per- haps fitter to become a free nation than it did, though it was done in the name of and by the sovereign people.
The preceding remarks must be carefully borne in mind by all who desire to understand the history of our Eevolution.
At the time the French conceived a desire for po- litical liberty, they were imbued with a number of no- tions on the subject of government which were not only difficult to reconcile with liberty, but were almost hostile to it.
K AND THE REVOLUTION. 203 In their ideal society there was no aristocracy but that of public functionaries, no authority but the gov- ernment, sole and all-powerful, director of the state, tutor of individuals. They did not wish to depart from this system in the search for liberty; they tried to conciliate the two.
They attempted to combine an unlimited executive with a preponderating legislative body — a bureaucracy to administer, a democracy to govern. Collectively, the nation was sovereign — individually, citizens were confined in the closest dependence; yet from the former were expected the virtues and the experience of a free people, from the latter the qualities of a submissive servant.
It is to this desire of adjusting political liberty to institutions or ideas which are either foreign or hostile to it, but to which we were wedded by habit or at- tracted by taste, that we owe the many vain experi- ments of government that have been made during the last sixty years. Hence the fatal revolutions we have undergone. Hence it is that so many Frenchmen, worn out by fruitless efforts and sterile toil, have aban- doned their second object and fallen back on their first, declaring that there is, after aU, a certain pleasure in enjoying equality under a master. Hence we resem- ble the economists of 1750 more closely than our fa- thers of 1789.
I have often asked myself what was the source of that passion for political liberty which has inspired the greatest deeds of which mankind can boast. In what feelings does it take root? From whence does it de- rive nourishment?
204 THE OLD REGIME I see clearly enough that when a people is badly- governed it desires self-government; but this kind of love for independence grows out of certain particular temporary mischiefs wrought by despotism, and is never durable; it passes away with the accident which gave it birth. What seemed to be love for liberty turns out to be mere hatred of a despot. Nations born to freedom hate the intrinsic evil of dependence.
Nor do I believe that a true love for liberty can ever be inspired by the sight of the- material advan- tages it procures, for they are not always clearly vis- ible. It is very true that, in the long run, liberty al- ways yields to those who know how to preserve it comfort, independence, and often wealth; but there are times when it disturbs these blessings for a while, and there are times when their immediate enjoyment can only be secured by a despotism. Those who only value liberty for their sake have never preserved it long.
It is the intrinsic attractions of freedom, its own peculiar charm — quite independently of its incidental benefits — which have seized so strong a hold on the great champions of liberty throughout history; they loved it because they loved the pleasure of being able to speak, to act, to breathe' unrestrained, under the sole government of God and the laws. He who seeks free- dom for any thing but freedom's self is made to be a slave.
Some nations pursue liberty obstinately through all kinds of dangers and sufferings, not for its material benefits; they deem it so precious and essential a boon that nothing could console them for i'ts loss, AND THE EEVOLUTION. 205 while its enjoyment would compensate them for all possible afflictions. Others, on the contrary, grow tired of it in the midst of prosperity; they allow it to be torn from them without resistance rather than com- promise the comfort it has bestowed on them by mak- ing an effort. What do they need in order to remain free? A taste for freedom. Do not ask me to analyze that sublime taste; it can only be felt. It has a place in every great heart which God has prepared to re- ceive it: it fills and inflames it. To try to explain it to those inferior minds who have never felt it is to waste time.
206 THE OLD REGIME CHAPTER XYI.
THAT THE KEIGN OF LOIJIS XVI. WAS THE MOST PROSPEROUS ERA OF THE OLD MONARCHY, AND HOW THAT PROSPERITY REALLY HASTENED THE REVOLUTION.
IT can not be questioned "but the exhaustion of France under Louis XIV. commenced long be- fore the reverses of that monarch. Symptoms of v/eak- ness may be detected in the most glorious years of his reign. France was ruined before she had ceased to conquer. Who has not read the terrible essay on Statistics of Administration which Vauban has left us? In memorials addressed to the Duke of Bur- gundy at the close of the seventeenth century, before the outbreak of the disastrous war of Succession, all the intendants allude to the growing decay of the na- tion, and do not speak as though it were of recent origin. One observes that population has greatly fallen off within his province of late years; another says that such a town, formerly rich and flourishing, now affords no demand for labor. One reports that there used to be manufactures in the province, but they have been abandoned; another, that the soil was more productive, and agriculture more flourishing twen- ty years ago than it is now. An intendant of Orleans was positive that population and production had fallen off twenty per cent, within thirty years. Partisans of despotism and warlike sovereigns should be recom- mended to read these documents.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 207 As these evils grew out of the faults of the Consti- tution, neither the death of Louis XIV. nor even the advent of peace restored public prosperity. Writers on government and social economy, in the first half of the eighteenth century, invariably held to the opinion that the provinces were not recovering — that their de- cline was steadily progressive. They asserted that Paris alone was increasing in size and wealth. In- tendants, ministers, men of business, agreed with men of letters on this point.
I confess that, for my part, I disbelieve this steady decline of France during the first half of the eighteenth century; but the universality of the belief in it, even among those who were best fitted to judge, shows that no sensible progress was being made. All the public documents of the time which I have seen, in fact, in- dicate a sort of social lethargy. The government re- volved in the old routine ckcle, creating nothing new; cities made hardly any effort to render the condition of their inhabitants more comfortable and more whole- some; no private enterprise of any magnitude was un- dertaken.
i About thirty or forty years before the Eevolution broke out/ the scene changed. (Every portion of the social body seemed to quiver with internal motion.) The phenomenon was unprecedented, and casual ob- servers did not notice it; but it gradually became more characteristic and more distinct. Year after year it became more general and more violent, till the whole nation was aroused. Beware of supposing that its old life is going to be restored! 'Tis the awakening of a new spirit, which gives life only in order to destroy.
208 THE OLD REGIME (Every one is dissatisfied with his condition, and seeks to change it. Reform is the cry on every side. But it is sought impatiently and angrily; men curse the past, and dream of a state of things opposite in ev- ery particular to that which they see before them. The spirit soon penetrates the government itself; trans- forms it inwardly without changing its outward form; leaves the laws as they were, but alters their adminis- tration.)
I have said elsewhere that the comptroller-general and the intendants of 1740 were very different person- ages from the comptroller-general and the intendants of 1780. This is shown in detail in the official cor- respondence of the time. At both periods intendants were invested with the same authority, employed the same agents, used the same arbitrary means; but their objects were different. In 1740 intendants were en- grossed with the business of keeping their province in order, levying militia, and collecting the taille; in 1780 their heads were full of schemes for enriching the pub- lic. Eoads, canals, manufactures, commerce, and agri- culture above all, absorbed their attention. Sully was then the fashionable model of an administrator.
It was at this period that the agricultural societies I have mentioned began to be established; that fairs began to be common, and prizes to be distributed. I have seen circulars from the comptroller-general which read more like agricultural treatises than public state papers.
/' The change that had come over the spirit of the gov- erning class was best seen in the collection of the tax- es. Though the laws were as unequal, as arbitrary.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 209 as liarsli as ever, their faults were materially alleviated in practice. ' M. Mollien, in his Memoirs, observes that, when he " began to study the fiscal laws, he was terrified by what he discovered: exceptional courts allowed to sen- tence men to fine, imprisonment, corporal punishment for mere omissions; tax-farmers exercising plenary au- thority over persons and property on the sole respon- sibility of their own oath, &c. Fortunately, he did not confine his studies to the letter of the law, and he soon discovered that there was as much difierence between the text of the law and its application, as there was between the style of living of the old and modern school of financiers. The courts were always inclined to extenuate offenses and mitigate penalties."
The Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy said, in like manner, in 1787, "The tax levy may lead to abuses and vexations innumerable; we are, however, bound to admit that in practice the law has been car- ried out with moderation and discretion of late years."
Official documents abundantly justify this assertion. They prove conclusively that life and liberty were re- spected; they indicate, moreover, a general concern for the ills of the poor: a new sentiment. The state rare- ly employed violence with the poor, but often remit- ted their taxes or granted them alms. The king sub- scribed to all the country work-houses or poor-houses, and occasionally founded new ones. I find that more than 80,000 livres were distributed by the state in charity, in Haute-Guienne alone, in the year 1779; 40,000 in Touraine in 1784; 48,000 in Normandy in 1787. Louis XVI. would not always leave this branch 210 THE OLD REaiME 210 THE OLD REaiME of public "business to his ministers; lie often took charge of it himself. When a decree was drawn to fix the indemnity due to the peasantry for the damage done to their fields by the royal game in the neighbor- hood of the captainries, the king drafted the preamble himself, and indicated the method which the peasants were to pursue in order to obtain speedy justice. Tur- got describes this good and unfortunate sovereign bring- ing him the draft in his own handwriting, and saying, "You perceive that I work, too, on my side." If the old regime were described as it really was during the last years of its existence, the portrait would be flat- tering and very unfaithful.
( Simultaneously with these changes in the mind of governed and governors, public prosperity began to de- velop with unexampled strides. This is shown by all sorts of evidence. Population increased rapidly; wealth more rapidly still. The American war did not check the movement: it completed the embarrassment of the state, but did not impede private enterprise; in- dividuals grew more industrious, more inventive, rich- er than ever.)
An official of the time states that in 1774 "indus- trial progress had been so rapid that the amount of taxable articles had largely increased." On compar- ing the various contracts made between the state and the companies to which the taxes were farmed out, at different periods during the reign of Louis XYI., one perceives that the yield was increasing with astonishing rapidity. The lease of 1786 yielded fourteen millions more than that of 1780. Necker, in his report of 1781, estimated that " the produce of taxes on articles AND THE REVOLUTION. 211 of consumption increased at the rate of two millions a year."
C Arthur Young states that in 1788 the commerce of Bordeaux was greater than that of Liverpool, and adds that " of late years maritime trade has made more progress in France than in England; the whole trade of France has doubled in the last twenty years.")
Due allowance made for the difference of the times, it may be asserted that at no period since the Rev- olution has public prosperity made such progress as it did during the twenty years prior to the Revolu- tion. i In this respect, the thirty-seven years of con- stitutional monarchy, which were periods of peace and rapid progress for us, can alone compare with the reign of Louis XVI.
Considering the vices of the government and the burdens which weighed upon industry, the spectacle of this great and increasing prosperity is astonishing; so astonishing, indeed, that some political writers, find- ing themselves incapable of explaining the fact, have denied it altogether, on the same principle that Mo- liere's doctor refused to believe that a patient could be cured contrary to rule. How was it possible that France could prosper and grow rich with unequal tax- es, diversified customs, town dues, feudal rights, trade guilds, venal offices, etc.? For all these, France did begin to grow rich and develop its resources on all sides; and for the simple reason that, independently of these misshapen and inharmonious machines, which seemed better calculated to retard than to accelerate so- cial progress, society was held together and driven to- ward public prosperity by two very simple but very 212 THE OLD EEaiME powerful agents: the one a government, strong with- out being despotic, which maintained order every where; the other a nation whose upper classes were the most enlightened and the freest people on the Con- tinent, and in which individuals were at liberty to make money if they could, and to keep it when made.
{ Though the king used the language of a master, he was, in reality, the slave of public opinion. From pub- lic opinion he derived all his inspirations; he consult- ed it, feared it, flattered it. Absolute in theory, he was limited in practice. As early as 1784, Necker said in a public document, " Foreigners rarely realize the authority wielded by public opinion in France; they can not readily understand the nature of that in- visible power which rules even over the royal palace. It does so, however." He mentions the fact as a mat- ter beyond dispute. )