It is a superficial error to ascribe the greatness and power of a nation to the mechanism of its legislation; for in this matter the product is due less to the per- fection of the instrument than to the strength of the power used. Look at England; how much more com- plicated, and varied, and irregular do her laws seem than ours 1^ Yet where is the European nation whose public credit stands higher, or in which private prop- erty is more extensive, more varied, and safer, or so- ciety sounder or more opulent 1"^ The fact does not spring from the excellence of this or that law, but from the spirit which pervades the whole body of English legislation. The imperfection of special organs is im- material, the vital spirit is so strong.
( Measurably with the increase of prosperity in AND THE REVOLUTION. 213 France, men's minds grow more restless and uneasy; public discontent is imbittered; the hatred of the old institutions increases. The nation visibly tends to- ward revolution, j •^More than this, those districts where progress makes the greatest strides are precisely those which are to be the chief theatre of the Revolution. The extant ar- chives of the old district of He de France prove that the old regime was soonest and most thoroughly re- formed in the neighborhood of Paris. In no other pays d' election were the liberty and property of the peasant so well secured. Corvees had disappeared long before 1789. The taille was more moderate, more regular, more evenly distributed there than in any other part of France.. A perusal of the law which re- formed it in 1772 is absolutely essential to those who would understand how powerful an intendant could be, whether for good or for evil. In this law the tax appears in a new light. Government commissioners visit each parish once a year and convene the whole community; the relative value of estates is settled publicly; the means of each citizen ascertained by fair discussion; the taille is distributed with the con- currence of all who are to pay it. The arbitrary pow- er of the syndic, the old useless recourse to violence, are done away with. The taille retains its inherent vices, no doubt, under the best system of collection; it is levied on one class of taxables only, and weighs upon their industry as well as upon their property, but in all other respects it is a very different affair from the tax of the same name in the neighboring dis- tricts. ^ 214 THE OLD EEGIME On the other hand, the old regime was nowhere in so high a state of preservation as on the borders of the Loire, especially near its mouth, in the swamps of Poitou and the moors of Brittany. That is the very place where the civil war broke out, and the Bevolu- tion was resisted with most obstinacy and violence. So that it would appear that the French found their condition the more insupportable in proportion to its improvement.
One is surprised at such an anomaly, but similar phenomena abound in history.
Revolutions are not always brought about by a gradual decline from bad to worse. JSTations that have endured patiently and almost unconsciously the most overwhelming oppression, often burst into rebellion against the yoke the moment it begins to grow lighter. The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is al- most always an improvement on its immediate pred- ecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which wit- nesses their first steps toward reform. A sovereign who seeks to relieve his subjects after a long period of oppression is lost, unless he be a man of great genius. Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inev- itable, become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested. The very redress of griev- ances throws new light on those which are left un- touched, and adds fresh poignancy to their smart: if the pain be less, the patient's sensibility is greater.* Never had the feudal system seemed so hateful to the French as at the moment of its proximate destruction. The arbitrary measures of Louis XVI. — insignificant AND THE KEVOLUTION. 215 as they were — seemed harder to bear than all the des- potism of Louis XIV. The short imprisonment of Beaumarchais aroused more emotion in Paris than the Dragonnades.
No one in 1780 had any idea that France was on the decline; on the contrary, there seemed to be no bounds to its progress. It was then that the theory of the continual and indefinite perfectibility of man- took its rise. Twenty years before, nothing was hoped from the future; in 1780 nothing was feared. Imagination anticipated a coming era of unheard-of felicity, diverted attention from present blessings, and concentrated it upon novelties.
(Besides these general reasons for the phenomenon, there were others of a particular nature and equally po- tent. Though the administration of the finances had been improved with the other departments, it was stiU marked by the faults which are inseparable from abso- lute governments. It was secret and irresponsible, and hence many of the mischievous practices of Louis XIV. and XV. were still in use. The very efforts which the government made to develop public pros- perity, the assistance it occasionally lavished upon the needy, the public works it undertook, increased its ex- penses without proportionally increasing its revenue; hence the king's embarrassments were even greater than those of his predecessors. Like them, he often made his creditors sufier; like them, he borrowed on all sides privately, and without calling for tenders. His creditors were never sure of their interest; in- deed, their only guarantee for their capital was the personal faith of the sovereign^ 216 THE OLD REGIME 216 THE OLD REGIME ^ An observer who is reliable, for he was an eye-wit- ness, and better placed for observation than most peo- ple, says on this subject, "The French ran great risks in dealing with their own government. ^ If they in- vested money in its securities, t'hey were never sure of- the time when the interest would be paid. If they built ships, mended roads, clothed soldiers for the gov- ernment, they had no security for repayment of their advances, no certainty when the debt would be consid- ered due; in fact, they were forced to calculate the chances of losing on a contract with ministers just as they would do on a bottomry bond." He adds, very sensibly, " At this time, especially when the develop- ment of industry created an unusual thirst for the ac- quisition of property, and a new liking for ease and comfort, those who had lent money to the state felt more keenly than they would have done at another time the bad faith of the creditor who, of all others, ought to have been the last to forget the sanctity of a contract."
The abuses with which the French government was charged were not new, but the light in which they were viewed was. More crying faults had existed in the financial department at an earlier period, but since then changes had taken place, both in government and in society, which made them more keenly felt than before.
Within the last twenty years the government had acquired an unwonted activity, and had taken part in all kinds of new enterprises. It had thus become the largest consumer of industrial products, and the great- est contractor in the kingdom. A prodigious increase had taken place in the number of those who had mon- ey relations with it, who were interested in its loans.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 217 speculated in its bargains, or were its salaried servants. At no former period were private fortunes so deeply involved with the state finances. Bad financial man- agement had formerly been a public evil, now it be- came disastrous to a thousand private families. In 1789 the state owed nearly 600 millions to creditors who were themselves in debt, and whose grievances were aggravated by the personal injury inflicted on them by the remissness of the state. And be it re- marked that the irritation of this class of malcontents increased in proportion to their number; for a specu- lative mania, a thirst for riches, a taste for comfort spreading as business became extended, troubles of this kind appeared intolerable to those who, thirty years before, might have borne them without complaint.
Hence it happened that capitalists, merchants, man- ufacturers, and other business men or financiers — who are usually the most conservative class of the com- munity, and the stanchest supporters of government, and who will submit patiently to laws which they de- spise or detest — were now more impatient and more resolutely bent on reform than any other section of the people. They were especially determined on a revolu- tion in the financial department, never dreaming that a radical change in that branch of the government must involve the ruin of the whole.
How could a catastrophe have been avoided? On one side, a nation in which the desire for wealth in- creased daily; on the other, a government unceasingly engaged in exciting and disturbing men's minds, now inflaming their avarice, now driving them to despair — rushing to its ruin by both roads.
K 218 THE OLD REGIME CHAPTER XVIL HOW ATTEMPTS TO RELIEVE THE PEOPLE PROVOKED REBELLION.
AS the people had not appeared for a single instant on the public stage for a hundred and forty years, the possibility of their ever appearing there was forgot- ten, and their insensibility was regarded as a proof of deafness. Hence, when some interest began to be tak- en in their lot, they were discussed publicly as though they had not been present. It appeared as though it was supposed that the discussion would only be heard by the upper classes, and that the only danger was lest these might not be made to understand the case.
The very classes which had most to fear from pop- ular fury declaimed loudly and publicly against the cruel injustice which the people had so long suffered. They took pleasure in pointing out to each other the monstrous vices of the institutions which weighed upon the people. They employed rhetoric to paint their sufferings and the inadequate rewards for their labor. Thus, in their endeavor to relieve the lower classes, they roused them to fury. I am not speaking of writ- ers— I allude to the government, to its chief agents, themselves members of the privileged classes.
When the king endeavored to abolish corvees thir- teen years before the Kevolution, he stated in the pre- amble of the ordinance, "With the exception of a few provinces {pays d'etats), nearly all the roads of the kingdom have been made gratuitously by the poorest AND THE REVOLUTION. 219 portion of our subjects. The whole burden has fallen upon those who have no property but their labor, and whose interest in the roads is very slender; the land- owners, who are really interested in the matter — for their property increases in value in proportion to the improvement in the roads — are privileged exempts. By compelling the poor to keep the roads in repair, to give their time and their labor for nothing, we have deprived them of their only safeguard against poverty and hunger, in order to make them toil for the benefit of the rich."
When an effort was made, at the same time, to re- move the restraints which the system of industrial cor- porations imposed on workmen, it was proclaimed in the king's name "that the right to labor is the most sacred of all properties; that any law which infringes that right is essentially null and void, as being incon- sistent with natural right; that the existing corpora- tions are, moreover, abnormal and tyrannical institu- tions, the product of selfishness, cupidity, and vio- lence." Such expressions were perilous indeed; but it was more dangerous still to utter them in vain. A few months later, corporations and corvees were re-es- tablished.
It was Turgot, it is said, who put these words in the king's mouth. Most of his successors followed the example. When the king announced, in 1780, that from that time forth the augmentations of the taille would be made public by registry, he took pains to add as a commentary, " The persons liable to pay the taille have been not only tormented by the vexa- tious manner in which it is collected, but have^ been 220 THE OLD KEGIME 220 THE OLD KEGIME exposed besides to unexpected augmentations in the amount levied, and that to such an extent that the taxes paid Tby the poorest portion of our subjects have increased much more rapidly than those levied on the richer classes." Again, when the king, not daring to equalize all the taxes, endeavored to establish the principle of equality in the collection of those which were already paid by all classes in common, he said, " His majesty hopes that the rich will not complain of being placed on the same level as the poor in the per- \ formance of a duty which they ought long ago to have \ shared more equally." X In times of scarcity, especially, greater efforts seem to have been made to inflame the passions of the peo- ple than to supply their necessities. An intendant, desirous of stimulating the charity of the rich, would speak of " the injustice and the harshness of those landowners who owe all they have to the labor of the poor, and who leave the unfortunate laborers, broken down in their service, to perish of hunger." On a similar occasion, the king declared that it was "his majesty's intention to protect the poor against schemes ' which compelled them to work for the rich at a rate of wages fixed by the latter, and thus exposed them to lack the very necessaries of life. The king will not permit one portion of mankind to be surrendered to the cupidity of another."
To the close of the monarchical era, the struggle between the various administrative branches of gov- ernment gave rise to all sorts of manifestations of this kind; each disputant accused his rival of being the cause of the people's misery. Tliis is seen distinctly AND THE EEVOLUTION. 221 in the quarrel whicli took place between the king and the Parliament of Toulouse on the subject of the move- ment of breadstuffs. The Parliament declared that " the false policy of the government endangered the subsistence of the poor;" and the king replied that it was " the ambition of the Parliament and the greed of the rich which caused the public distress." Thus on both sides efforts were made to convince the peo- ple that their sufferings were the work of their supe- riors.
These matters were not stated in private letters; they are to be found in pubKc documents, which the government and the Parliament took care to print by thousands. In the course of his explanations, the king told some harsh truths both of his predecessors and of himself. " The state treasury," said he once, " has been embarrassed by the profusion of several reigns. Several of our inalienable domains have been sold far below their value." "Industrial corporations," he is made to say on another occasion, with more truth than .prudence, " are the especial product of the fiscal greed of kings." Farther on he says, " If money has often been thrown away in useless expenses, and the taille has increased beyond measure, the fact must be charged upon the administrators of the finances, who, finding an increase of the taille the easiest, because the most secret method of meeting their difficulties, have had recourse to that plan, though almost any other would have been less burdensome to our subjects.""
All this was addressed to the educated classes, in order to prove the merit of measures which certain private interests opposed. As for the people, it was 222 THE OLD REGIME taken for granted that they heard all, but understood nothing.
It must be admitted that the very benevolence which prompted the relief of these poor people concealed a large share of contempt for them. One is reminded of Madame de Duchatelet, who, according to Voltaire's secretary, had no objection to undress before her serv- ants, as she was not convinced that valets were men.
Nor was the dangerous language quoted above con- fined to Louis XVI. or his ministers. The very priv- ileged classes who were the most immediate objects of popular hatred never spoke otherwise. It must be acknowledged that the upper classes in France con- cerned themselves about the condition of the poor long before they learned to fear them: their interest in pop- ular sufferings was prior to the first suspicion that those sufferings might eventuate in their ruin. This is especially visible in the ten years which preceded 1789. The peasantry were the theme of constant con- versations, of abiding sympathy. Remedies for their evils were suggested incessantly. Light was thrown on their chief grievances, and the fiscal laws which pressed heavily on them were loudly censured. But their new friends were as thoughtless in their sympa- thy as they had formerly been in their insensibility.
Read the reports of the Provincial Assemblies which were convened in some parts of France in 1779, and, at a later period, throughout the kingdom; study the public documents which they have left us, and you will be touched with the humanity and amazed at the singular imprudence of their language.
The Provincial Assembly of Normandy declared, in AND THE REVOLUTION. 223 1787, that " the money appropriated Tby the king to the roads has often been so used as to be convenient to the rich, but useless to the poor. It has often been employed to render the approach to a chateau more agreeable, while the entry of a bourg or village has been neglected." At the same assembly, the two or- ders of the nobility and the clergy, after having de- scribed the vices of the system of corvees^ offered spon- taneously to devote 50,000 livres to the improvement of the roads, " so that," as they say, " the internal communications of the province may be made practi- cable without costing the people any thing." It would have been less onerous to the privileged classes to have substituted a general tax for the corvees, and to have paid their share; but even in abandoning the benefit of unequal taxation, they liked to preserve the name of being exempt. They sacrificed the useful portion of their rights, but they preserved what was odious.
Other assemblies, wholly composed of persons who were, and intended to remain, exempt from the taille, painted, in equally sombre colors, the evils which that tax inflicted on the poor. They drew a frightful sketch of its abuses, and scattered copies broadcast. And, singular to state, with these striking marks of interest in the people's welfare, they intermingled, from time to time, public expressions of contempt. The people had inspired sympathy without ceasing to inspire dis- dain.
The Provincial Assembly of Upper Guienne, plead- ing with warmth the cause of the peasantry, alluded to them as " ignorant and gross beings, turbulent spirits, and rude and indocile characters,'''' Turgot, 224 THE OLD REGIME who did so much for the people, used language very similar."^ Expressions as harsh were commonly u^ed in docu- ments destined to a wide publicity, and intended to be seen by the peasantry. It was as if the writers had been living in one of those European countries like Gallicia, where the upper classes speak a different tongue from the lower, and can not be understood by them. Feudal lawyers of the eighteenth century, who often evince an unusual spirit of justice, moderation, and tenderness for copyholders and other feudal debt- ors, still occasionally speak of low ^peasants. These insults appear to have been technical {de style), as the notaries say.
Toward 1789, the sympathy for the people grew warmer and more imprudent. I have had in my hands circulars, addressed by several Provincial Assemblies, in the early part of 1788, to the people of several par- ishes, inquiring for the details of their grievances. One of these was signed by an ahbe, a nobleman of high de- gree, three men of rank, and a burgher, all members of the assembly and acting in its name. This com- mission directed the syndic of each parish to convene the peasantry, and inquire of them what complaints they had to make of the manner in which the taxes were levied upon them. "We are aware," it said, " that most of the taxes, and especially the gavel and the taille, are disastrous in their effects upon farmers; but we desire to ascertain the particulars of each abuse." Nor does the curiosity of the Assembly rest there. They want to know the number of persons who are exempt from taxation in the parish; whether they are AND THE REVOLUTION. 225 noblemen, ecclesiastics, or commoners; wliat is the na- ture of their privileges; what is the value of their prop- erty; whether they reside on their estates; whether the parish contains much Church property, or, as the phrase then was, much land in mortmain, not mer- chantable; and what its value may be. Even these inquiries fall short of their requirements. They desire to know what sum of money would represent the share which each privileged person would have to bear in taxes, taille and its accessories, capitation-tax, corvees^ if taxation weighed equally on all.
This was simply inflaming the passions of each in- dividual by the recital of his wrongs, pointing out their authors to him, encouraging him by indicating the smallness of their number, stealing into his inmost heart to light up his cupidity, his envy, his hatred. It seemed as though the Jacquerie, the Maillotins, the Sixteen, had been wholly forgotten; and as if no one knew that the French, who are naturally the gentlest and even the kindest people in the world so long as they are in repose, become the most barbarous race alive when violent passions pervert their natural dis- position, I have, unhappily, been unable to procure all the an- swers which the peasants made to these murderous in- quiries, but I have found a few of them, and they suf- fice to indicate the spirit of the whole.
They give with care the name of every privileged person, whether belonging to the nobility or the mid- dle classes. Occasionally they describe, and invaria- bly criticise his mode of life. They enter into curious calculations with regard to the value of his property; K2 226 THE OLD EEGIME they enlarge upon the number and nature of his priv- ileges, and especially upon the injury which they in- flict upon the neighborhood. They enumerate the bushels of wheat which he receives by way of dues; they estimate enviously his revenue, which they say is advantageous to no one. The curate's fees — his salary, as they have already begun to say — are excess- ive; they remark bitterly that the Church exacts mon- ey for every thing, and that a poor man can not even be buried gratuitously. As for the taxes, they are all ill-distributed and oppressive; not one obtains favor at their hands, and all are spoken of in violent lan- guage breathing absolute fury.
"The indirect taxes are odious," they say; "not a household but the tax-gatherer invades; nothing is sacred either from his eyes or his hands. The regis- try duties are crushing. The receiver of the taille is a tyrant whose cupidity shrinks from no measure of annoyance for honest people. The bailiffs are no bet- ter; no honest farmer is safe from their ferocity. The collectors are obliged to ruiij their neighbors in order to save themselves from the voracity of these despots."
The inquiry is no mere preliminary of the Revolu- tion; it is part of it, speaks its language, wears its features.
One among the many points of difference between the religious revolution of the sixteenth century and the French Eevolution is especially striking. In the sixteenth century, most of the nobility took the side of the new religion from ambitious or interested motives; while the people, on the contrary, embraced it from conviction, and without expecting any profit from the AND THE REVOLUTION. 227 change. In the eighteenth century this was not the case. It was disinterested principle and generous sym- pathy which roused the upper classes to revolution, while the people were agitated by the bitter feeling of their grievances, and a rage to change their condition. The enthusiasm of the former fanned the flame of popular wrath and covetousness, and ended by arm- ing the people.
228 THE OLD EEOIME CHAPTEE XVIII.
OP CERTAIN PRACTICES BY MEANS OP WHICH THE GOVERNMENT COMPLETED THE REVOLUTIONARY EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.
THE government had long labored to plant and fasten in the popular mind several of those ideas which are now called revolutionary — ^principles of hos- tility to individual and private rights, and arguments in favor of appeals to violence.
The king set the example of treating the oldest and most solidly established institutions with contempt. Louis XV. shook the monarchy, and hastened the Eevolution as much by his innovations as by his vices, by his energy as by his dissipation. When the people saw the Parliament — an institution coeval with, and apparently as strong as the monarchy— fall and disappear, they inferred, in a vague manner, that a pe- riod of violence was at hand, when age would prove no guarantee of respectability, and novelty no indica- tion of risk.
During the whole course of his reign, Louis XVL talked of nothing but reform. The Eevolution over- threw very few institutions whose overthrow he did not foreshadow. He issued ordinances abolishing some of the worst, but he restored them soon after- ward, as though he intended only to uproot them, leaving to others the task of pulling them down.
Some of the reforms which he effected changed vio- AND THE EEVOLUTION. 229 lently and unexpectedly old and respected customs; others did violence to acquired rights. They paved the way for the Revolution less by striking down ob- stacles which stood in its way than by showing the people how it might be brought about. The mischief was aggravated by the pure and disinterested motives of the king and his advisers; for no example is so dan- gerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
Long before, Louis XIY. had publicly promulgated in his edicts the theory that all the lands in the king- dom had been in the origin conditionally granted by the state, which was therefore the only real landowner — the actual holders having mere possessory rights, and an imperfect and questionable title. This doctrine sprang out of the feudal system, but it was never open- ly professed in France till that system was on the point of death; courts of justice never admitted it. It was the mother of modern socialism, which thus, strange to say, seems to have been the offspring of royal des- potism.'^^