To attempt to form an opinion of the age from its laws would lead to the most ridiculous errors. A roy- al declaration of 1757 condemned to death aU writers or printers of works assailing religion or government. Booksellers in whose shops they were found, peddlers who hawked them, were liable to the same penalties. Was this the age of Saint Dominic? No, it was ex- actly the period of Voltaire's reign.
Complaints are heard that Frenchmen show con- tempt for law. Alas! when could they have learned to respect it? It may he broadly said that, among the men of the old regime, the place in the mind which should have been occupied by the idea of law was va- cant. Petitioners begged that established rules might be departed from in their case as seriously and as earnestly as if they had been insisting on the honest execution of the law; nor were they ever referred to the law unless government intended to give them a rebuff. Custom, rather than volition, still inculcated submission to authority on the part of the people; but whenever they did break loose, the least excitement gave rise to violent acts, which were themselves met, not by the law, but by violence on the other side, and arbitrary stretches of power.
Though the central power had not acquired in the eighteenth century the strong and healthy constitution it has since possessed, it had, notwithstanding, so thor- oughly destroyed all intermediate authorities, and left so wide a vacant space between itself and the public, that it already appeared to be the mainspring of the social machine, the sole source of national life.
Nothing proves this more thoroughly than the writ- AND THE REVOLUTION. 91 ings of its assailants. During the period of uneasiness which preceded the Eevolution, a host of schemes for new forms of society and government were brought to light. These schemes sought various ends, but the means by which they were to be reached were invari- ably identical. All the schemers wanted to use the central power for the destruction of the existing sys- tem, and the substitution of their new plan in its stead: that power alone seemed to them capable of accom- plishing so great a task. They all assumed that the rights and powers of the state ought to be unlimited, and that the only thing needed was to persuade it to use them aright. Mirabeau the father, whose aristo- cratic prejudices led him to denominate the intendants intruders, and to declare that if the government had the sole right of appointing magistrates, the courts of justice would soon be mere "bands of commission- ers," relied on the central power alone for the realiza- tion of his chimerical plans.
Nor were these notions confined to books; they per- vaded men's minds, gave a color to society and social habits, and were conspicuous in every transaction of every-day life.
Nobody expected to succeed in any enterprise unless the state helped him. Farmers, who, as a class, are generally stubborn and indocile, were led to believe that the backwardness of agriculture was due to the lack of advice and aid from the government. A letter from one of them, somewhat revolutionary in tone, in- quired of the intendant " why the government did not appoint inspectors to travel once a year through the provinces, and examine the state of agriculture through- 92 THE OLD REGIME out the kingdom? Such officers would teach farmers what to plant, what to do with their cattle, how to fatten, raise, and sell them, and where to send them to market. They would, of course, be paid officials. Some honorary distinction should be conferred on suc- cessful agriculturists."
Inspectors and honorary distinctions! These are the last encouragements a Suffi^lk farmer would have thought of expecting.
The masses were quite satisfied that the government alone could preserve the public peace. The mounted police alone commanded the respect of the rich, and in- spired terror among the people. Both viewed that force rather as the incarnation of public order than as one of its chief instruments. The provincial assem- bly of Guienne observed that " every one has noticed how quickly the sight of a mounted policeman will subdue the most riotous mob." And every body want- ed, accordingly, to have a troop of them at his door.* Petitions to that effect overloaded the registers of the intendants: no one seemed to suspect that the pro- tector might be a master in disguise.
Nothing astonished the exiles who fled to England so much as the absence of any such force there. Some express surprise, others contempt at the phenomenon. A man of some merit, but who had not been taught to expect such a contrast, exclaimed, "It is positively true that an Englishman congratulates himself on be- ing robbed, with the reflection that, at all events, there are no mounted police in his country. An English- man is sorry to see riots, but when rioters escape scot free into the bosom of society, he consoles himself with AND THE REVOLUTION. 93 the remark that the law must Tbe observed to the let- ter, at whatever cost. These false notions, however, are not universally adopted. There are wise men who think differently, and their view must ultimately pre- vail."
He never dreamed that these eccentricities of the English might possibly have some connection with their liberties. He accounted for them on scientific principles. "In countries where a damp climate and a want of elasticity in the air gives a gloomy cast to the character of the people, serious subjects are sure to be popular. Hence it is that the English are natural- ly inclined to busy themselves about their government, while the French are not."
Government having assumed the place of Provi- dence, people naturally invoked its aid for their private wants. Heaps of petitions were received from persons who wanted their petty private ends served, always for the public good.^ The chests which contained them were, perhaps, the only spot where all classes of socie- ty under the old regime freely intermingled. Sad read- ing, this: farmers begging to be reimbursed the value of lost cattle or horses; men in easy circumstances begging a loan to enable them to work their land to more advantage; manufacturers begging for monopo- lies to crush out competition; business men confiding their pecuniary embarrassments to the intendant, and begging for assistance or a loan. It would appear that the public funds were liable to be used in this way.
Men of rank were not unfrequent applicants for fa- vors. They might be recognized by the lofty tone in which they begged. They came to solicit from the in- 94 THE OLD REGIME tendant delays in wHcli to pay their share of the land- tax, which was their chief burden; or they asked that it be remitted altogether. I have read a great num- ber of petitions of this kind from noblemen, some of very high degree; the ground alleged is usually the inadequacy of the petitioner's income, or his pecuniary straits. Men of rank always addressed intendants simply "Sir;" on these occasions they addressed him ''''MonseigneuT^^^ as every body else did.
Pride and poverty are often amusingly combined in these petitions. One reads as follows: "Your warm heart can never surely insist on the payment of a strict twentieth by a man of my rank, as you might with men of the common sort."
In times of scarcity, which recurred frequently dur- ing the eighteenth century, the people of each province flew to the intendant, and seemed to expect food from him as a matter of course.^ The act was redeemed by wholesale denunciations of the government. All the sufferings of the people were laid to its charge; it was loudly blamed for the, severity of the weather.
Let no one again express surprise at the wonderful ease with which centralization was re-established in France at the beginning of this century. It had been overthrown by the men of 1789; but its foundations were deep in the minds of its very destroyers, and upon these it was rebuilt anew stronger than ever.
AND THE EEVOLUTION. 95 CHAPTEE VII.
now THE CAPITAL OF FRANCE HAD ACQUIRED MORE PREPONDER- ANCE OVER THE PROVINCES, AND USURPED MORE CONTROL OVER THE NATION, THAN ANT OTHER CAPITAL IN EUROPE.
IT is not situation, or size, or wealth which makes some capital cities rule the countries in which they stand; that phenomenon is caused by the prevailing form of government.
London, which is as j)Opulous as many a kingdom, has, up to this time, exercised no sovereign control over Great Britain.
No citizen of the United States ever supposes that New York could decide the fate of the American Un- ion, nor does any citizen of the State of New York fancy that that city could even direct state affairs at will; yet New York contains as many inhabitants to- day as Paris did when the Eevolution broke out.
Moreover, Paris bore to the rest of the kingdom the same proportion, so far as population was concerned, during the religious wars as it did in 1789; yet it was powerless at the former period. At the time of the Fronde, Paris was nothing niore than the largest French city; in 1789 it was France.
In 1740 Montesquieu wrote to a friend, "France is nothing but Paris and a few distant provinces which Paris has not yet had time to swallow up." In 1750 the Marquis de Mirabeau, a man of chimerical views, but occasionally profound in his way, said of Paris 96 THE OLD REGUME without naming it, *' Capitals are necessities, but if the head grow too large, the body becomes apoplectic and wastes away. What will the consequence be if, by drawing all the talent of the kingdom to this metropo- lis, and leaving to the provincials no chance of reward or motive for ambition, the latter are placed in a sort of quasi dependence, and converted into an inferior class of citizens?" He adds that this process is ef- fecting a silent revolution by depopulating the prov- inces of their notables, leading men, and men of ability.
The foregoing chapters have explained pretty fully the causes of this phenomenon; the reader's patience may be spared their repetition here.
The Eevolution did not escape the notice of govern- ment, but it only viewed the fact in its bearing on the capital, whose rapid increase seemed to presage in- creased difficulties of administration. Numerous royal ordinances, especially in the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, endeavored to check its growth. The monarchy steadily concentrated in Paris all the nation- al life of France, and yet desired to see Paris remain small. People were forbidden to build new houses, or were bound to build them in- the most costly manner, in the worst localities. But each successive ordinance admitted that, notwithstanding its predecessors, Paris had increased steadily. Six times did Louis XIV. exert his omnipotent will to check the expansion of the city, but each effort was a failure; the capital expand- ed in spite of decrees. Its power swelled even more rapidly than its volume, which was due less to its own exertions than to events beyond its walls.
For, simultaneously with its extension, the local AND THE REVOLUTION. 97 franchises of tlie rural districts were fading away, all symptoms of independent vigor were vanishing, pro- vincial characteristics were being effaced, the last flick- er of the old national life was dying out. Not that the nation was growing sluggish; on the contrary, it nev- er knew a more active time; hut the only mainspring of movement was at Paris. One illustration, chosen out of a thousand, may make this plainer. I find re- ports to the minister on the hook business, in which it is stated that, during the sixteenth and at the begin- ning of the seventeenth century, there were large print- ing-offices in many provincial cities, but that now there are no printers to be found, and no work to be done. Yet it is not to be questioned but there were far more books printed at the close of the eighteenth century than during the sixteenth. The secret is, sim- ply, that mind had ceased to radiate from any point but the centre; Paris had swallowed up the provinces.
This preliminary revolution was fully accomplished before the French Eevolution broke out.
The famous traveler, Arthur Young, left Paris a few days after the assembling of the States-General, and before the capture of the Bastille; he was struck with the contrast between city and country. In Paris, all was activity and noise; political' pamphlets appeared in such quantities that ninety-two were counted in one week. " I never saw such a fever of publishing," said he, "even at London." Outside of Paris he could find nothing but inertia and silence; no pamphlets, and but few journals. The provinces were roused and ready to niove, but not to take the initiative; when the people met, it was to hear the news firom Paris. Young ask- E 98 THE OLD REGIME ed the people of each eity what they purposed doing. " Their answer was always the same, ' We are but a provincial city; you must go and see what they are going to do at Paris.' These people," he adds, " dare not hold an opinion till they know how it is received at Paris."
Surprise has heen expressed at the remarkable ease with which the Constituante assembly destroyed at a blow provinces in some cases older than the monarchy, and parceled out the kingdom into eighty -three dis- tinct sections, as if it had been virgin soil in the New World. Europe was not prepared for any such act, and viewed it with surprise and horror. " This is the first time," said Burke, "that men have so barbarous- ly torn their country to pieces." It did look as though they had torn living bodies, but in reality they had only dismembered corpses.
At the very time that Paris was becoming all-power- ful, another noteworthy change was taking place with- in its borders. It had long been a city of trade, busi- ness, and pleasure; it now became an industrial and manufacturing city. This change gave it a new and formidable character.
It had long been inevitable. Even in the Middle Ages Paris had been the most industrious, as it was the largest city of the kingdom; latterly, the distance between it and its rivals had increased. Arts and in- dustrial energy followed the government. As Paris became more and more the arbiter of taste, the only centre of power and of art, the focus of national activ- ity, the manufacturing life of the country gradually concentrated itself there.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 99 Thougli I place, in general, but little reliance on the statistical tables of the old regime, I believe it may be safely asserted that during the sixty years which pre- ceded the French Eevolution, the number of workmen at Paris was more than doubled, though the whole pop- ulation of the city during the same period only increas- ed one third.
Independently of these general causes, peculiar mo- tives attracted mechanics from all parts of France to Paris; and when they came, they lived mostly togeth- er, and ultimately monopolized whole wards. The burdens laid on mechanics by the fiscal policy of the government were lighter at Paris than in the provinces; nor was it so easy any where as there to obtain the freedom of a trade-company. Kesidents of the sub- urbs of Saint Antoine and of the Temple enjoyed pe- culiar privileges in this respect. Louis XVI. enlarged still further the prerogatives of the Saint Antoine sub- urb, in the design of collecting an immense number of operatives there, or, as that unfortunate monarch phrased it, "being desirous of showing a new mark of our favor to the workmen of the Saint Antoine suburb, and relieving them from burdens which are alike in- jurious to their interests and to the freedom of trade."
Toward the period of the Eevolution the number of factories, manufactures, and blast-furnaces had become so great at Paris as to alarm the government. Indus- trial progress had aroused strange fears in the mind of officials. A decree of council in 1782 declares that "the king, fearing lest the rapid increase of factories should lead to so large a consumption of firewood as to deprive the city of its proper supply, prohibits the 100 THE OLD REGIME establishment of new works of this kind within fifteen leagues of the capital." No one suspected the real danger to be apprehended from the agglomeration of workmen.
It was thus that Paris became the mistress of France, and thus that the army that was to master Paris was mustered.
It is generally admitted nowadays, I believe, that administrative centralization and the omnipotence of Paris have had much to do with the fall of the various governments we have had during the last forty years. I shall have but little difficulty in proving that the ruin of the old monarchy was in a great measure due to the same causes, and that they exercised no small influence in bringing about that revolution which was the parent of all the others.
AND THE EEVOLUTION. 101 CHAPTER VIII.
THAT FRENCHMEN HAD GRO^VN MORE LIKE EACH OTHER THAN ANT OTHER PEOPLE.
THE careful student of the old regime in France soon meets with two apparently contradictory- facts.
It appears that every body in the upper and middle classes of society, the only classes which are heard of, is exactly like his neighbor.
At the same time, this homogeneous mass is split into an immense multitude of small bodies, and each body contains an exclusive set, which takes no concern for any interests but its own.
When I think of these infinite subdivisions, and the want of union and sympathy they must have pro- duced, I begin to understand how a great revolution could overthrow such a society, from top to bottom, in a moment. The shock must have leveled, at a blow, all party walls, and left behind it the most compact and homogeneous social body ever seen in the world.
I have already described how provincial peculiari- ties had gradually worn off. That change tended pow- erfully to assimilate the French people. National uni- ty loomed through the surviving distinctions of rank. The laws were uniform. As the eighteenth century advanced, the number of edicts, declarations, and Or- ders in Council, which applied the same rules with equal force to all parts of the kingdom, became larger 102 THE OLD REGIME and larger. Subjects as well as rulers entertained ideas of a general uniform system of legislation that should bear equally on all: this was a prominent fea- ture in all the schemes of reform which saw the light during the thirty years preceding the devolution. Two centuries before, the basis for such schemes may be said to have been wanting.
Not only had all the provinces grown like each oth- er, but the men also. A marked resemblance began to exist between men of all ranks and stations; or, at all events, among those who were not comprised in the class known as "the people."
This is clearly shown in the cahiers of the various classes presented in 1789. Their authors had evident- ly different interests to serve, but in all other respects they were alike.
At former meetings of the States-General, on the con- •trary, the interests of the middle classes were common to the nobility, their aims were the same, their inter- course free from antagonism; but they seemed to be two distinct races.
Time had maintained and occasionally aggravated the privileges which kept them apart, but in all other respects it had singularly labored to produce a resem- blance between them.
The impoverishment of the nobility had gone on steadily for several centuries. A man of rank ob- served sadly in 1755, " Notwithstanding their priv- ileges, the nobility are falling daily deeper into diffi- culties and destruction, while the Third Estate inherits their fortunes." No change had been made in the laws which protected the property of the aristocracy, AND THE EEVOLUTION. 103 or in their economical condition. Yet they grew poor- er every where as they lost their power.
One is almost inclined to fancy that human institu- tions, like the human body, contain, besides the par- ticular organs appointed to perform specific functions, a, central hidden force which is the vital principle. When this force is subdued, though the organs seem to act as usual, the whole machine langiiishes and dies. The French nobility stiU retained the use of entails (which, according to Burke, were more frequent and more binding in France than in England), laws of primogeniture, irredeemable ground-rents, and, gener- ally, the beneficial rights they derived from feudal cus- toms; they had been released from military service, but paid fewer taxes than ever, thus getting rid of the burden while they retained the privilege. They en- joyed, moreover, many other pecuniary advantages which their fathers had never had, and jet they grew poorer gradually as they mixed less in the theory and practice of government. It was their poverty which mainly led to the extensive subdivision of landed property that has already been noted. '^ Men of rank sold their land piecemeal to the peasantry, reserving nothing but seigniorial rents, which furnished a nom- inal, not a substantial competency. Several French provinces, such as Limousin, which Turgot describes, were full of petty impoverished noblemen, who had no land left, and who lived on the produce of seigniorial rights and ground-rents.
"In this province," said an intendant, "at the be- ginning of the century, there were several thousand noble families, but not fifteen out of the whole number 104 THE OLD EEGIME had an income of twenty thousand livres." I find a memorandum addressed by the intendant of Franche- Comte to his successor in 1750, in which it is said that " the nobility of this section of country are of high rank, but very poor, and as proud as they are poor. The contrast between their former and their present condition is humiliating. It is a very good plan to keep them poor, in order that they shall need our aid and serve our purposes. They have formed," he adds, "a society into which no one can obtain admission unless he can prove four quarterings. It is not incor- porated by letters patent; but it is tolerated, as it meets but once a year, and in the presence of the in- tendant. These noblemen h^r mass and dine togeth- er, after which they return home, some on their Eosi- nantes, some on foot. You will enjoy this comical assembly."
All over the Continent, in the countries where the feudal system was being displaced and no new aris- tocracy founded, as was the case in France, the nobil- ity were relapsing into poverty. Their decline was peculiarly marked among the German nations border- ing on the Ehine. England alone presented a con- trast. There the old noble families had not only kept, but largely increased their fortunes, and were the chiefs of the nation in wealth as well as in power. The new families which had grown up by their side competed with them, but could not surpass them in magnificence.
In France, the commoners {roturiers) inherited all the property lost by the nobility; they seemed to fatten on their substance. The laws did not hinder common- ers from ruining themselves, or help them to acquire AND THE REVOLUTION. 105 wealth; yet they did acquire it constantly, and be- came as rich or richer than men of rank. They often invested their means in the same kind of property as the nobles held; though usually residents of the city, they often owned country estates, and occasionally even seigniories.
Both classes were educated alike, and led similar lives, hence more 'points of resemblance. The com- moner was as well informed as the ilobleman, and had obtained his information from the same source. Both were equally and similarly enlightened; both had re- ceived the same theoretical and literary education. Paris had become the sole preceptor of France, and shaped all minds in the same form and mould.
There was, no doubt, at the close of the eighteenth century, a difference between the manners of the noble and the commoner, for nothing resists the leveling pro- cess so long as that superficial varnish called manners. But at bottom all the classes which ranked above the people were alike. Their ideas were the same; so were their habits, tastes, pleasures, books, and lan- guage. They differed in point of rights alone.
I doubt whether the same fact existed to the same extent in any other country. Common interests had closely knit together the various social classes in En- gland, but they differed widely in habits and ideas; for political liberty, so long enjoyed by that admira- ble power, though it unites men by close relations and mutual dependence, does not always assimilate them one to another; it is despotism which, in the long run, inevitably renders them mere duplicates one of the other, and types of selfishness. -.
E2 106 THE OLD REGIME CHAPTEE IX.
THAT THESE MEN, WHO WEKE SO ALIKE, WERE MORE DIVIDED THAN THEY HAD EVER BEEN INTO PETTY GROUPS, EACH INDEPENDENT OP AND INDIFFERENT TO THE OTHERS.
LET US now glance at the reverse of the picture, and see how these same Frenchmen, who had so many features in common, were, notwithstanding, split into more isolated groups than any other people or their own ancestry.
There is reason to believe that, at the time the feu- dal system was established in Europe, the class since known as the nobility did not form a casU^ but was composed originally of the chief men of the nation, thus forming a real aristocracy. That is a question which I do not purpose to discuss in this place. I merely observe that in the Middle Ages the nobility had become a caste; that is to say, its distinguishing mark was birth.
It resembled an aristocracy inasmuch as it was the governing body; but birth alone decided who should stand at the head of that body. All who were not of noble birth were excluded from its ranks, and filled a station in the state which might vary in dignity, but was always subordinate.
Wherever the feudal system took root in Europe, it led to the establishment of castes; in England alone it gave birth to an aristocracy.
I have always been surprised that a fact so strik- AND THE REVOLUTION. 107 ingly peculiar to England, and whicli is the only true key to the peculiarities of her laws, her spirit, and her history, should have obtained so little notice among philosophers and statesmen. Custom seems to have blinded the English to its importance. It has often been half noticed and half described, but never, I think, fully and clearly realized. Montesquieu, who visited Great Britain in 1739, certainly did write, "I am in a country which does not resemble the west of Eu- rope;" but he went no farther.
The contrast between England and the rest of Eu- rope arose, indeed, less from her Parliament, her lib- erty, her freedom of the press, and her jury system, than from another and more important peculiarity. England was the only country where castes had been not altered, but thoroughly abolished: noblemen and people engaged in the same avocations, entered the same professions, and, what is more significant, inter- married with each other. The daughter of the great- est nobleman in the land might marry, without dis- honor, a man of no hereditary rank.
If you want to ascertain whether castes, and the ideas, habits, and barriers to which they give rise, are really abolished in any nation, look at the marriages which take place there. There you will find the de- cisive test. Sixty years of democracy have not whol- ly effaced privileges of caste in France; old families, mixed and confounded with new ones in every thing else, still scorn connection with them by marriage.
It has often been said that the English nobility were more prudent, more skillful, more open than the nobility of any other country. The truth is, that there 108 THE OLD REGIME had not "been, for a long period of time, any nobility at all in England, in the old circumscribed meaning of the word.
The revolution which destroyed it is lost in the night of time, but the English tongue is a surviving witness of the change. Many centuries since, the meaning of the word "gentleman" changed in En- gland, and the word " roturier" ceased to exist. When Moliere wrote Tartuffe in 1664, it would have been impossible to give a literal English version of the line, " Et tel que Ton le voit, il est bon gentilhomme."
Language can be made to throw farther light on the science of history. Follow, for instance, the meanings of the word gentleman throughout its career. Our word " gentilhomme" was its father. As distinctions of classes became less marked in England, its signifi- cation widened. Century after century, it was applied to lower and lower classes in the social scale. The English at last bore it with them to America, where it was indiscriminately applied to all classes. Its his- tory is, in fact, that of democracy.