During the subsequent reigns, the government took pains to teach the people, in practical lessons which they could easily understand, that private property was to be regarded with contempt. During the sec- ond half of the eighteenth century the government was seized with a mania for public works; it took posses- sion without scruple of all the lands it required for its enterprises, and threw down the houses which stood in its way. The Department of Bridges and Eoads was, then as now, smitten with admiration for the geomet- rical charm of the straight line. It would have noth- 230 THE OLD REGIME ing to do with roads in which there was the slightest curve; to avoid a bend, it would cut through a thou- sand estates. Properties thus injured or destroyed were always arbitrarily and tardily paid for; sometimes they were not paid for at all.* When the Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy took the administration of the province out of the hands of the intendantjit was ascertained that the price of all the lands taken by public authority during the twenty years previous was yet unpaid. The debt which the state thus owed to this little corner of France amount- ed to 250,000 livres. But few large landholders were injured; the burden fell chiefly on the smaller proprie- tors, for lands were very generally parceled out into small lots. Here were a large number of persons whose own experience taught them that private rights were not for a moment to be balanced against the pub- lic interest: a doctrine they were not likely to forget when the time came for its application to their own benefit.
In many parishes persons had bequeathed sums of money to be employed in supporting charitable insti- tutions for the benefit of the parishioners in certain specific cases. Most of these institutions were either destroyed or transformed during the later period of the monarchy, by mere Orders in Council, that is to say, by the arbitrary will of government. The fund was us- ually taken away from the village, and bestowed on neighboring hospitals. Carrying out the principle still farther, the government simultaneously diverted the property of the hospitals from its original destination, and applied it to purposes of which the founder of the AND THE REVOLUTION. 231 charity would doubtless have disapproved. Much of this property had been left to the hospitals, to be held by them inalienably: the government authorized them to sell it, and to pay over the price to the public treas- ury, which was to pay interest thereon. This, the ad- ministrators said, was making a better use of the be- quest than the testator himself had done. They forgot that the very best way to teach men to violate the in- dividual rights of the living is to disregard the wishes of the dead. No subsequent government has display- ed such marked contempt for testamentary injunctions as the old monarchy. Never, on any occasion, did it evince any of those fastidious scruples which in En- gland rally the whole weight of the social body to the support of the citizen's last will, and secure for his memory a respect that is never paid to his person.
Requisitions, compulsory sales of produce, the unax- iinum, were all in use under the government of the old regime. I find that in times of scarcity the public of- ficials would fix the price at which farm produce must be sold, and punish farmers who refused to send their grain to market by the imposition of a fine.
But the most pernicious of all lessons was that in- culcated by judicial proceedings in criminal cases in which the people were concerned. Poor men were far better protected against the rich and the powerful than is generally supposed. But when they had to deal with the state, they were judged, as I said before, by abnormal tribunals composed of partial judges: the proceedings were speedy and delusive; the decision, which was final, might be anticipated by preliminary execution. " His majesty appoints the provost of po- 232 THE OLD REGIME 232 THE OLD REGIME lice {prevot de la marechaussee) and his lieutenant to take cognizance of all movements and assemblages to which the scarcity of provisions may give rise; or- dains that cases shall be heard and decided by them summarily and without appeal; and forbids all courts of justice to take cognizance of any such." This Or- der in Council was the law throughout the eighteenth century. Police reports of the time show that, in cases of this -oharacter, suspected villages were surrounded at night; houses were entered before daybreak; peas- ants designated for arrest were seized without other warrant or authority. They were often detained for a length of time in prison before they could speak to a judge, though edicts declared that every person ac- cused should be examined within twenty-four hours after his arrest. That provision of the law was nei- ther less formal nor more respected than it is in our own day.
It was thus that a benign and solidly-established government taught the people, day by day, the system of criminal procedure best adapted to the requirements of revolution and the desires of tyranny. It kept open school, and to the last gave to the lower classes this perilous education. Even Turgot faithfully copied his predecessors in this respect. When his legislation of 1775 on the subject of breadstuffs gave rise to resist- ance in the Parliament and riots in the country parts, he obtained from the king an ordinance which removed the cases of the rioters from the jurisdiction of the or- dinary courts, and gave them exclusively to the cog- nizance of the provost. ' ' The police jurisdiction, " the ordinance said, " is principally designed to repress pop- AND THE REVOLUTION. 233 ular disturbances when it is desirable that speedy ex- amples be made." Under this ordinance, peasants traveling out of their parish without a certificate signed by the curate and the syndic were liable to prosecution before the provost, arrest, and punishment as vaga- bonds.
It is true that, under terrible forms, the monarchy of the eighteenth century concealed moderate penal- ties. Its principle was rather to terrify than to injure; or, rather, it was arbitrary and violent from habit and indifference, but, at the same time, instinctively gentle. But summary judicial proceedings were none the less popular with government. The lighter the penalty, the easier the vice of its infliction was forgotten. The mildness of the sentence cloaked the harshness of the trial.
I venture to state — for I hold the proofs in my hand — ^that precedents and examples for very many of the proceedings of the revolutionary government were found in the records of the measures employed against the lower classes during the two last centuries of the mon- archy. The old regime furnished the Eevolution with many of its forms; the latter merely added the atro- city of its genius.
234 THE OLD EEGIME CHAPTEE XIX.
HOW GREAT ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES HAD PRECEDED THE POLIT- ICAL REVOLUTION, AND OF THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF.
BEFORE the form of the government was altered, most of the laws regulating the condition of per- sons and the administration of public business had been repealed or modified. ^ The destruction of trade-companies and their par- tial and incomplete restoration afterward had wholly changed the relation formerly existing between master and workman. That relation was now uncertain — con- strained. Neither was the old dominical authority in a state of preservation, nor the guardianship of the state fully developed; so that, between the two, the mechanic, cramped and embarassed, knew not to which side he ought to look for protection or control. This state of uncertainty and anomaly, in which all the lower classes of the large cities had been suddenly placed, led to very grave consequences when the peo- ple appeared on the political stage.
A year before the Eevolution a royal edict over- turned the whole judicial system. New jurisdictions were created, old ones abolished, all the old rules gov- erning the competency of judges changed. Now I have already had occasion to remark that the number of persons who were employed in France, either in hearing cases or executing judgments, was immense. In fact, nearly all the middle class had something to AND THE REVOLUTION. 235 do with the courts. Hence the effect of the law was to disturb the condition and means of several thousand families, whose situation was rendered uncertain and precarious. Nor was it less prejudicial to litigants, who, in the judicial confusion, had some trouble in finding out the law which was applicable to their case, and the court that was to hear it.
But it was especially the radical reform effected in the government proper, in 1787, which threw public business into disorder, and brought trouble into the home of every private family.
I stated that in the pays cf election, that is to say, in three fourths of France, the whole government of each district {generalite) was placed in the hands of a single man, the intendant, who was not only uncon- trolled, but without advisers.
In 1787 provincial assemblies were created, which became the real governors of the country. In every village an elective municipal body took the place of the old parochial assemblies, and, generally speaking, of the syndic also.
Thus a system diametrically opposed to the past, and completely subversive, not only of the old meth- ods of transacting business, but of the relative posi- tions of men, had to be applied to every part of the country by one uniform plan, quite independently of old usages and of the particular situation of the sever- al provinces. So profoundly was the old government imbued with the unitarian spirit of the Revolution by Avhose hands it was to perish.
It was then plainly seen how large an influence habit exercises over the working of political institu- 236 THE OLD REGIME tions, and how imicli more easily men manage their affairs with obscure and complicated laws to which thej are used than with a far simpler system which is new to them.
There were in France, under the old regime, all Idnds of authorities, infinitely diversified according to locality, with powers of unknown and unlimited scope, so that the field of action of each was always common to several others; yet business was transacted in an orderly and tolerably easy manner. The new author- ities, on the contrary, which were few in number, care- fully limited in their sphere, and harmoniously adjust- ed, were no sooner put in force, than they encroached upon one another, and clashed, throwing every thing into confusion and paralyzing each other.
The new system, moreover, had a great fault, which alone would have rendered its execution difiicult, at the outset especially; all the authorities it created were corporate.
Under the old monarchy, but two methods of gov- erning were known. Where the government was in the hands of a single individual, he acted without the concurrence of any assembly. Where, on the other hand, assemblies were used, as was the case in ])ays d'etats and in cities, the executive power was confided to no one in particular: the assembly not only gov- erned and controlled the administration, it executed the laws, either directly or through the medium of tem- porary committees which it appointed.
These being the only two plans known, when one was abandoned the other was adopted. It is not a lit- tle singular that, in so enlightened a society, and one AND THE KEVOLUTION. 237 in which government had so long played a leading part, no one should have thought of combining the two systems, and drawing a distinction between the exec- utive branch and that which was supervisory or di- rectory, without disuniting them. This idea, simple as it is, never struck any one; it is a discovery which dates from this century, and almost the only discovery in administrative science that we can fairly claim. We shall perceive the effects of the contrary system when we see the old administrative methods applied to poK- tics, the traditions of the detested old regime followed, and the plan of the Provincial States and small munici- palities adopted by the;N"ational Convention. Causes which had formerly led to nothing but embarassment in the transaction of public business then gave rise to the Reign of Terror.
The Provincial Assemblies of 1787 were authorized to administer their own government, and to supersede the intendant in almost all matters. They were intrust- ed with the distribution and levy of the taille, under the authority of the central government, and with the se- lection and general direction of all public works. All the agents of the Bridges and Eoads, from the inspect- or to the overseer of works, were under their immediate orders. The assemblies decided according, to their own discretion what was to be done, reported to the minis- ters, suggested the names of persons deserving reward. They were the guardians of the communes, heard most of the lawsuits which had formerly been brought be- fore the intendant, &c., and discharged a variety of functions that were ill suited to a corporate and irre- sponsible body, especially when composed of persons who were entirely new to such duties.
238 THE OLD REGIME The confusion was completed by an error; the in- tendant was stripped of his power, but the office was retained. After being deprived of their absolute au- thority, the intendants were expected to aid the assem- bly and supervise its acts — as though a fallen function- ary could ever help to execute and enter into the spir- it of laws which dispossess him.
A similar course was adopted with regard to the of- fice of sub-delegate. District assemblies were appoint- ed to discharge its functions under the dkection of the Provincial Assembly, and on similar principles.
From all that we can learn of the proceedings of the Provincial Assemblies of 1787, including their own re- ports, it would appear that from the first they found themselves at war, sometimes open, sometimes secret, with the intendants, who employed all their superior business experience in defeating the aims of their suc- cessors.^ One assembly complains that it can hardly succeed in wresting from the hands of the intendant the most necessary papers. Another is accused by the intendant of seeking to usurp powers which the edicts reserve to him. He appeals to the minister, who makes no answer, or answers doubtfully, being as new to the business as the others. Sometimes the assembly de- cides that the intendant has been guilty of maladmin- istration, that the roads he has made are in the wrong direction or in bad repair; he is accused of ruining the communities whose guardian he was. In their inex- perience, every thing is obscure to the assemblymen, and they often hesitate, send to distant assemblies for advice, keep couriers constantly on the road from one to another. The intendant of Audi pretends that he AND THE REVOLUTION. 239 is entitled to oppose the assembly, wliicli had author- ized a commune to tax itself; the assembly replies that in this matter the intendant may offer advice, but nothing more, and sends to the assembly of He de France to ask what that body thinks on the point.
These recriminations and interchange of opinions often delay, and sometimes stop altogether, the transac- tion of public business. National life seems suspend- ed. The Provincial Assembly of Lorraine — a mere echo of others — declares that " the stagnation of pub- lic business is complete, and all good citizens are af- flicted thereat."
Others of these new administrations go wrong by excessive activity and self-reliance; they are ftdl of a restless and disturbing zeal, which prompts them to want to change all the old methods with a stroke of the pen, and to correct the most deeply-rooted abuses in a day. Under the pretext that they are henceforth the guardians of cities, they assume the management of municipal affairs; in a word, their efforts to improve matters succeed in throwing every thing into confusion.
JSTow consider th« immense influence which the gov- ernment had long exercised in France, the multitude of interests which it affected, the vast number of affairs which depended on it for support or aid; bear in mind that private individuals relied more on it than on them- selves to secure the success of their own business, to develop their industry, to insure their means of sub- sistence, to make and mend their roads, to preserve the peace among them, and to guarantee their well- being; and then calculate how many individuals must have been personal sufferers by its disorder.
240 THE OLD REGIME The vices of the new organization were more con- spicuous in the villages than any where else; for there it not only disturbed the old divisions of authority, but changed suddenly the relative position of individuals, and drove the several orders into mutual hostility.
When Turgot, in 1775, proposed to the king to re- form the administration of the rural districts, the great- est difficulty he met with, as he states himself, arose from the unequal distribution of taxes. For the chief parochial business was the distribution, levy, and ap- propriation of the taxes, and how was it possible to make people, on whom they pressed unequally, and some of whom were wholly exempt from them, delib- erate and act in concert on their subject? Every par- ish contained some men of rank, or churchmen, who paid no taille, peasants who were partially or wholly exempt, others who paid an integral share. These formed three distinct parishes, each of which would have required a separate administration. The prob- lem was insoluble.
Nowhere was the inequality of taxation so conspicu- ous as in the country; nowhere were people so divid- ed into distinct and mutually hostile classes. Before attempting a collective administration and a free gov- ernment in villages, the taxes should have been equal- ized, and distinctions of class mid rank modified.
This was not the plan pursued when reform was at- tempted in 1787. Within the parish, the old distinc- tions of rank were maintained with the unequal taxa- tion which marked them; yet the whole government was intrusted to elective bodies. This led directly to most singular results.
AND THE KEVOLUTION. 241 The curate and tlie seignior had no business to ap- pear in the assembly which elected municipal officers; for they were respectively members of the orders of the clergy and the nobility, while the officials elected were the special representatives of the Third Estate.
But when the Municipal Council was chosen, the curate and the seignior were members ex officio, for it would not have been seemly to exclude from the gov- ernment of the parish its two leading inhabitants. It was the seignior who presided over the municipal coun- cilors, though he had not contributed to elect them, and could not take part in the bulk of their acts. Neither seignior nor curate, for instance, could vote on the distribution or levy of the taille, in consequence of their exemption. In return, the Council could not interfere with their capitation-tax, which continued to be regulated according to particular forms by the in- tendant.
Lest this president — so carefully isolated from the body which he was said to direct — should still exer- cise an indirect influence in opposition to the interest of the order to which he did not belong, it was pro- posed to disfranchise his tenants; and the Provincial Assemblies, to which the point was referred, consid- ered the proposal proper, and in conformity with cor- rect principle. Other men of rank, resident in the par- ish, were excluded from this municipal body, unless they were elected by the peasants; and then, as the regulation is careful to observe, they were represent- atives of the Third Estate alone.
The seignior then only appeared there to exhibit his subjection to his old subjects, who were now his mas- L 242 THE OLD KEGIME ters, while he was more like their prisoner than their chief. Indeed, the principal object of the assemblage appeared to be less to bring the different ranks to- gether than to show them how widely they differed, and how adverse their interests were.
Was the office of syndic still so discredited that it was never willingly accepted, or had it risen in im- portance side by side with the community whose chief agency it was? 'No one knew precisely. ^ I have seen a letter from a village bailiff of 1788, complaining in- dignantly that he has been elected syndic, " which is in violation of the privileges of his office." The comp- troller-general replied that the ideas of this personage required to be rectified; " that he must be made to understand that it was an honor to be elected by his fellow-citizens; and that, moreover, the new syndics would not resemble the functionaries hitherto known by the title, and might expect more consideration at the hands of government."
On the other, hand, the moment the peasantry be- came a power in the state, the leading citizens of the parishes and men of rank were suddenly attracted to their side. A seignior and high justiciary of a village near Paris complained that the edict prevented his taking part, even as a simple inhabitant of the parish, in the proceedings of the parochial assembly. Others " consent," they said, " to devote themselves for the pubKc good, and accept the office of syndic."
It came too late. In proportion to the advances of the wealthy classes, the people of the rural districts shrank back; when they tried to mingle with them, the people sheltered themselves in the isolation into AND THE EEVOLUTION. 243 wliicli they had been driven. Some municipal as- semblies declined to admit their seignior as a mem- ber; others made all sorts of objections to the recep- tion of commoners who were rich. The Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy states, " We are in- formed that several municipal assemblies have refused to admit absentee landholders, who, as commoners, have an indisputable right to seats there. Other as- semblies have declined to admit farmers who owned no land within their jurisdiction."
Thus all was novelty, obscurity, conflict between the secondary laws, even before the chief laws which regu- lated the government of the state had been touched. Those which were still in force were shaken, and there was not a law or a regulation which the government had not announced its intention to abolish or modify.
Our Revolution, then, was preceded by a sudden and thorough remodeling of all administrative rules and habits. The event is barely remembered now, yet it was one of the greatest perturbations that ever marked the liistory of a great people. It was a first revolution, which exercised a prodigious influence over the second, and rendered it a very different affair from aU former or subsequent revolutions.
The first English revolution, though it overthrew the political constitution of the country, and for a time abolished royalty itself, barely touched the secondary class of laws, and made no change in the prevailing customs and usages. Justice and government were administered in the old forms and in the beaten track. At the height of the civil war, it is said that the twelve judges of England continued their semi-annual circuits 244 THE OLD EEaiME 244 THE OLD EEaiME throughout the country to hold the assizes. The agi- tation was not universal. The effects of the revolution were circumscribed, and English society, though shak- en at the -top, was unmoved at the base.
We have ourselves seen in France, since 1789, sev- eral revolutions which have altered the whole edifice of government. Most of them have been very sudden, and- have been achieved by violence, in open violation of existing laws. Yet none have given rise to long continued or general disorder; they have been scarce- ly felt, in some cases hardly noticed by the majority of the nation.
The reason is that, since 1789, the administrative system has always remained untouched in the midst of political convulsions. The person of the sovereign or the form of the central power has been altered, but the daily transaction of business has neither been dis- turbed nor interrupted. Each citizen has remained subject to the laws and usages which he understood, in the small matters which concerned him personally. He had to deal with secondary authorities, with which he had done business before, and which were rarely changed. For if each revolution struck off the head of the government, it left its body untouched and alive, so that the same functionaries continued to perform their functions, in the same spirit, and according to the same routine, under every different political system. They administered justice or managed public affairs in the name of the king, then in that of the republic, last- ly in that of the emperor. Fortune's wheel turning on and on, the same individuals began again to administer and manage in the same way for the king, for the re- AND THE REVOLUTION. 245 public, for the emperor; what mattered the name of the master? It was their business to be good admin- istrators and managers — not citizens. Thus, the first shock over, it seemed as though nothing had changed in the country.
At the outbreak of the Eevolution, those branches of the government which, though subordinate, are most felt by individuals, and exercise the largest and most steady- influence on their welfare, had just been over- turned; the government had suddenly changed all its agents and all its principles. At first the state did not seem to have felt a severe shock from this sweeping reform; but every Frenchman had experienced a slight commotion. Not a man but was affected either in his rank, or in his habits, or in his business. Though great state affairs continued to be transacted in a sort of regular order, in those smaller transactions which constitute the routine of every-day life, no one knew whom to obey, where to apply, how to act.
Every part of the nation being thus thrown off the level, one final blow was enough to set the whole in motion, and produce the greatest convulsion and the most terrible disorders that were ever witnessed.
246 THE OLD REGIME CHAPTEE XX.
HOW THE REVOLUTION SPRANG SPONTANEOUSLY OUT OF THE PRE- CEDING FACTS.
IDESIEE, in conclusion, to put together some of the features which I have separately sketched, and, having drawn the portrait of the old regime, to watch the Revolution spring from it by its own unaided effort.
Let it be borne in mind that France was the only country in which the feudal system had preserved its injurious and irritating characteristics, while it had lost all those which were beneficial or useful; and it will seem less surprising that the Revolution which was to abolish the old constitution of Europe should have broken out there rather than elsewhere.
Let it also be borne in mind that France was the only feudal country in which the nobility had lost its old political rights, lost the right of administering gov- ernment and leading the people, but had nevertheless retained and even largely increased its pecuniary in- demnities and the individual privileges of its members; had, in its subordinate position, remained a close body, growing less and less of an aristocracy and more and more of a caste; and it will at once be understood why its privileges seemed so inexplicable and detestable to the French, and why their hearts were inflamed with a democratic envy that is not yet extinguished.
Let it be borne in mind, finally, that the nobility was separated from the middle classes, which it had AND THE EEVOLUTION. 247 eschewed, and from the people, whose affections it had lost; that it stood alone in the midst of the nation, seemingly the staff of an army, really a group of sol- dierless officers; and it will be easy to conceive how, after an existence of a thousand years, it was over- thrown in a single night.