Thougli frequently intolerant, and sometimes obsti- nately wedded to their ancient privileges, the clergy gave proof on that occasion that they were as resolute foes to despotism and as stanch friends of civil and political liberty as the nobility or the Third Estate/^ They demanded that individual liberty should be se- cured, not by promises, but by a proceeding analogous in character to the writ of habeas corpus. They called for the destruction of state prisons, the abolition of unconstitutional courts and evocations, public debates, an irremovable judiciary; the distribution of offices among all classes of citizens, and the adoption of merit as the sole test of eligibility; a less oppressive and less ignominious recruiting system, to admit of no exemp- tions; the commutation of all feudal rights, which, they said, being part of the feudal system, were inim- ical to liberty; free labor; the abolition of inland cus- tom-houses; an increase in the number of private schools, until there was one, and that a free school, in each parish; lay charitable institutions, such as work- houses, in the rural districts; all sorts of encourage- ments to agriculture.
So far as politics proper were concerned, they pro- claimed loudly that to the nation alone belonged the indefeasible and inalienable right of making laws and imposing taxes. JSTo Frenchman, they said, can be compelled to pay a tax which he did not vote either in person or by representative. They demanded free elections and annual meetings of the States-General, declared that it was their office to discuss all great public measures in presence of the nation, to make general laws which no special customs or privileges 144 THE OLD REGIME could defeat, to vote supplies, and control even the king's houseliold. Thej insisted on the inviolability of the persons of deputies and the responsibility of min- isters. They also demanded the establishment of pro- vincial assemblies in every province and municipalities in every city. Of divine right not one word said they.
I doubt whether, on the whole, even taking into account the startling vices of some of its members, the world ever saw a more remarkable body than the Catholic clergy at the time the Revolution broke out. They were enlightened; they were national; their private virtues were not more striking than their pub- lic qualities; and yet they were largely endowed with faith, sufficient to bear them up against persecution. I began to study the old regime full of prejudice against the clergy; I have ended my task, and feel nothing but respect for them. They had no faults, in truth, but those which are inseparable from all corporations, whether political or religious, when they are solidly built and qlosely knit together, namely, a tendency to extension, an intolerant spirit, and an instinctive, and occasionally a blind devotion to the special interests of the corporate body.
Nor were the middle classes of the old regime less superior to their modem successors in point of inde- pendence and spirit. Many of the very vices of their organization led to this result. It has already been mentioned that they were even more given to place- hunting, and that there were more places within their reach than there are now; but mark the difference be- tween the two. Government could neither give nor take away these places. They increased the dignity AND THE REVOLUTION. 145 of their incumbents, without in any way rendering them slaves to the ruling power. Thus the very cause of the servility of so many men to-day was formerly the most powerful motive for independence and self- respect.
The immunities which, unhappily, divided the mid- dle and lower classes, converted the former into a spe- cies of sham aristocracy, and armed it occasionally with pride and a spirit of resistance worthy of the genuine. The public good was often forgotten in the little pri- vate cliques which they formed; but the clique in- terests never. ^ There were common privileges, there was a corporate dignity to be defended, and there was no chance of concealment for the complaisant coward. People were, so to speak, actors on a very small but uncommonly conspicuous stage, with the same audi- ence always before them, and always ready to applaud or hiss.
The art of stifling the sound of resistance was not brought to such perfection as it has been since. France was not so well deafened as it is in our day. It was, on the contrary, well adapted for the transmission of sound, and, though no political liberty could be seen, one had only to speak loud to be heard at a great dis- tance.
The oppressed were secured a hearing in the courts of justice. The political and administrative institu- tions of the country were those of a despotism, but we were still a free people in our courts of law. The ad- ministration of justice under the old regime was cum- brous, complicated, slow, and costly — grave faults, no doubt; but it was never servile to the supreme power; G 146 THE OLD REGIME and this is the very worst form of venality. That cap- ital vice, which not only corrupts the jndge, but soon infects the whole body of the people, was unknown in the old courts. Judges were not only irremovable, but looked for no promotion; both conditions are essential to independence, for the power of punishing may be dispensed with if that of rewarding be retained.
True, the royal authority had stripped the common courts of their jurisdiction over cases in which the gov- ernment was interested, but it had not stripped them of their terrors. They might be prevented from judg- ing cases, but they could not be hindered from receiv- ing complaints and expressing their opinions. And as the judicial idiom had preserved the plain simplicity of the old French tongue, which called things by their right names, it was not uncommon for judges to quali- fy the measures of the government with such epithets as arbitrary and despotic. 3^ The irregular interference of the courts in the administration of government, which often proved a hindrance to the transaction of business, occasionally served as a safeguard of liberty; the greater evil was limited by the lesser.
In the heart of the magistracy and around it, the new ideas of the day had not wholly crushed out the vigorous habits of thought of olden time. No doubt the Parliaments thought more,of themselves than of the public good; but still, when it was necessary to defend their independence and their honor, they were always intrepid, and gave heart to all who surrounded them.
When the Parliament of Paris was dissolved in 1770, every one of the magistrates who composed it submit- ted to the loss of rank and power rather than yield to AND THE REVOLUTION. 147 the king. More than this: courts of another kind, such as the Court of Aids {cour des aides), which were neither assailed nor menaced, voluntarily exposed them- selves to the same fate when that fate had become a matter of certainty. Nor was even this all. The lead- ing advocates who had practiced before the Parliament spontaneously shared its fate. They resigned glory and profit, and preferred silence to pleading before a dishonored magistracy. I know of nothing grander than this in the history of any free people; and yet this took place in the eighteenth century, close to Louis the Fifteenth's court.
The nation had borrowed many habits from the courts. It was from the courts that we learned the only portion of the education of a free people which we owe to the old regime, that is to say, the principle that all decisions should be preceded by discussion, and sub- ject to appeal; the use of publicity, and the love of forms. The government itself had borrowed largely from the language and usages of the courts. The king felt bound to assign reasons for his edicts; the Coun- cil's Orders were preceded by long preambles, in- tendants notified the public of their ordinances by the ministry of bailiffs. All the old administrative bodies, such as the Treasury Board, and the select-men, trans- acted business publicly, and heard rival petitioners or applicants by counsel. All their habits and forms were so many barriers against the arbitrary power of the sovereign. But the people proper, especially in the rural districts, had no means of resisting oppression except by violence.
Most of the means of defense I have just pointed 148 THE OLD EEGIME out were beyond their reach; no one could avail him- self of them unless his position in society was such that he could make himself seen and heard. But out- side the ranks of the people, any one in France who had the courage might, if he chose, yield a condition- ed obedience, and resist even while he yielded.
The king addressed the nation in the language of a chief, not a master. At the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., the monarch declared in the pre- amble of an edict, "We glory in commanding a free and generous nation." One of his ancestors had ex- pressed the same idea in older style, when, on thank- ing the States-General for the boldness of their remon- strances, he exclaimed, " We had rather speak to free- men than to slaves."
The men of the eighteenth century were strangers to that passionate love for ease which is the mother of servitude; which, equally tame and tenacious, com- bines with several of the private virtues, such as fam- ily affection, regular habits, respect for religion, luke- warm but assiduous devotional habits; which toler- ates honesty, and justifies heroism, and is remarkably successful in producing respectable men and cowardly citizens. They were better and worse.
The French of those days loved merriment and adored pleasure; their habits were perhaps more ir- regular, their passions and ideas more disorderly than those of their descendants, but they were strangers to the modern and decent sensuality of our day. Per- sons in the higher classes sought ornament rather than comfort, honor rather than money. Comfort did not even absorb the attention of the middle classes; more AND THE KEVOLUTION. 149 delicate and higher enjoyments were constantly sought in preference. Money was never the great end of life. ''I know my countrymen," proudly wrote a contem- porary; " skilled in melting and scattering the metals, they are not calculated to worship them, and are quite prepared to return to their old idols, valor, glory, and, I will add, magnanimity."
Care must be taken not to measure the baseness of men by their degree of submission to the sovereign power: that gauge would be a false one. Submissive as the men of the old regime were to the will of the king, they were strangers to submission of another kind; they had not learned to bow the knee to ille- gitimate or disputed authority, which inspires not hon- or, but contempt, and secures submission through the fear of injury or the hope of reward. That degrading- form of servitude was unknown in olden time. The king inspired feelings such as no absolute monarch of later times has ever been able to awaken, and which the Eevolution so thoroughly uprooted that we can hardly understand them. They loved him like a fa- ther, and respected him as they respected their God. When they submitted to his arbitrary commands, it was less from compulsion than from love, and their soul often remained their own, even in a state of com- plete subjection. For them, the greatest evil of obe- dience was constraint; it is the least in our time. The greatest evil now is the servility which prompts obedi- ence. Let us beware how we despise our ancestors; we have no right to do so. Would to God that we could recover, even with their faults and their prejudices, a little of theu' greatness.
150 THE OLD REGIME It would tlien "be an error to consider the old re- gime as a period of servility and dependence. There was much more liberty then than there is now,^ ^ but it was an irregular and intermittent kind of liberty, bound up with the class system and notions of privi- leges and exemptions — a sort of liberty which encour- aged rebellion against law as well as against oppres- sion, and always left a portion of the people destitute of the most natural and obvious safeguards. Yet, stunted and deformed as it was, it was fertile. It was to that liberty that so many individuals owed the pres- ervation of their natural character, with its color and outline, when centralization was laboring to reduce the character of the whole nation to a dead level and one uniform line. It was that which kept self-respect alive, and often raised the love of glory above all other pas- sions. It was that which formed those vigorous souls, those proud and bold geniuses, whose appearance on the scene we are soon to witness, and who made the French Revolution alike the admiration and the terror of subsequent generations. It would be strange in- deed if such masculine virtues as theirs had been brought to light in a land where liberty was unknown.
But if this disorderly and unwholesome sort of liber- ty prepared the French to overthrow despotism, it un- fitted them, to an unexampled degree, perhaps, for re- placing it by the peaceful and free government of law.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 151 CHAPTER Xn.
HOW THE COTJTDITION OF THE FRENCH PEASAJJTRY WAS WORSE i:> SOME RESPECTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THAN IT HAB BEEN IN THE THIRTEENTH, NOTWITHSTANDING THE PROGRESS OF CIV- ILIZATION, IN the eighteenth centiuy, the French peasantry were no longer a prey to small feudal despots. They rarely suffered violence at the hands of govern- ment. They enjoyed civil liberty and possessed land; but they were shunned hj all the other classes of socie- ty and led a life of unexampled isolation. The conse- quences of this new and singTdar form of oppression deserve to be examined separately and with some at- tention.
At the very beginning of the seventeenth century, Henry TV. complained, says Perefix, that the nobility were deserting the rural districts. The desertion had become general by the middle of the eighteenth: all the documents of the time — treatises on political economy, intendants' correspondence, reports of agricultural soci- eties— concur in deploring the fact. It is, moreover, indisputably proved by the capitation registers. The capitation-tax was levied at the actual place of resi- dence of the taxable: all the great and a portion of the lesser nobility paid it at Paris.
'No men of rank remained in the country districts but those whose means did not allow them to move. A man of this class was strangely situate among the 152 THE OLD KEGIME peasantry. He Was no longer their ruler, and had no reasons for conciliating, or aiding, or guiding them, while, on the other hand, he did not share their burdens, and consequently felt no sympathy for sufferings which did not afflict him, or for wrongs to which he was a stranger. Though they had ceased to be his subjects, he had not become their fellow-citizen. The position is without parallel in history.
There resulted from it a sort of absenteeism of heart, if I may use the expression, which was even more ef- fective than absenteeism of body. The man of rank who resided on his estate often thought and acted as his steward would have done in his absence. He viewed his tenants merely in the light of debtors, and rigorously exacted from them his full due according to law, thus rendering the remains of the feudal system harder to bear than its entirety had formerly been.^ ^ He was often in involved and needy circumstances, and lived meanly in his chateau, his main thought be- ing how he could save money for the winter at Paris. With their peculiar directness of mind, the people gave him the name of the least of all birds of prey; they called him the hobby.
There were individual exceptions, ot course; but history regards classes only. No one denies that there were at this time many rich landowners who concerned themselves for the welfare of the peasantry, without being compelled to do so by duty or interest; but these were rebels against the law of their condition, which, in spite of themselves, enjoined indifference on the one side and hatred on the other.
It has been common to ascribe the general desertion AND THE REVOLUTION. 153 of the country parts by tKe nobility to tlie policy of particular kings or ministers: some have traced it to Richelieu, others to Louis XIV. During the last three centuries of the monarchy it certainly was the aim of the monarchs to keep the nobility apart from the peo- ple, and to attract the former to the court. That aim was pursued with especial vigor in the seventeenth cen- tury, when the nobility were still feared by the kings. One of the questions addressed to intendants was, "Do the noblemen of your province prefer remaining there, or leaving their homes?" The answer of one intendant regretted that in his province men of rank preferred the company of mere peasants to the society of the court and their duty to the king. The prov- ince of which this was said was Anjou, which after- ward became La Vendee. These noblemen, who were said to be slow to perform their duty to the king, were the only ones who defended the French monarchy in the field, and died for it; they owed this glorious dis- tinction solely to their influence over the peasantry, among whom they were censured for preferring to re- side.
Care must be taken, however, not to ascribe the migration of the nobility into the capital to the direct influence of this or that king. The true and principal cause of the phenomenon lay not in the policy of in- ' dividuals, but in the slow, unceasing operation of in- stitutions; this is proved by the utter incapacity of the government to arrest the mischief, when in the eighteenth century it was so minded. When the no- bility lost, irretrievably, their political rights, and the local franchises were taken away, the migration be- G2 154 THE OLD regimp: came universal. No stimulus was required to wean the nobles from the country; they had no wish to stay there: rural life had no charms for them.
What I have said of the nobility applies equally to rich landowners in general. Centralization stripped the rural districts of their rich and enlightened inhab- itants. I might explain how, moreover, it prevented agriculture from arriving at perfection; for, as Mon- tesquieu profoundly observes, "The. yield of land de- pends less on its fertility than on the freedom of its ^ occupants." But I do not wish to digress.
We have seen already how the middle classes de- serted the country parts and took refuge in cities. Nothing is better established by the documents of "the old regime. One rarely sees, say they,- more than one generation of rich peasants. The moment a farmer acquires a little property, he takes his son from the plow, sends him into the city, and buys him some small office. Hence arose the strange dislike which farmers even still seem to feel for the calling which has enriched them. The effect has outlived the cause.
In fact, the only well-bred man, or, as the English would say, the only gentleman who lived permanently among the peasantry, and associated with them, was the parish curate; and the curate would have become the master of the rural classes, in spite of Yoltaire, had he not been so notoriously connected v/ith the po- litical hierarchy, whose odium he shared together with its privileges. '^ The peasant, then, was widely separated from the upper classes of society. He was kept aloof from all who could help or guide him. The higher his fellows AND THE JiEVOLUTION. 155 rose in influence and station, the more they avoided him. He seemed to have been picked out of the whole nation, and set aside.
No such state of things existed in any other great nation of civilized Europe, nor had it been of long duration in France. The peasant of the fourteenth century was liable to more oppression, but he had bet- ter claims to assistance. If the aristocracy tyrannized over him occasionally, they never abandoned him.
Villages in the eighteenth century were assemblages of poor, ignorant, and coarse persons; with unskilled magistrates, universally despised; with a syndic who could not read; with a collector who could not add up the accounts on which his neighbors' and his own for- tune depended. Their old seigniors, despoiled of their authority, had come to consider it degrading to be con- cerned in their government. They viewed the distri- bution of the taille, the militia levy, the reg-ulation of coTvees, as servile duties only fit for a syndic. No one but the central power paid any attention to village affairs; and, as it was distant, and had nothing to fear from the villagers, it noticed them no further than was necessary to get money from them.
See, now, what became of this forsaken class, over which no.one tried to tyrannize, but which no one tried to aid or enlighten.
The weightiest of the feudal burdens had certainly been lightened or removed, but they had been succeed- ed by others perhaps even more oppressive. Peasants were relieved from many grievances which had afflicted their ancestors, but they endured sufferings which the latter had never known.
156 THE OLD EEGIME It is notorious that the increase of the taille — tenfold in two centuries — fell wholly on the agricultural class- es. A word must be said here of the manner in which it was levied in the country, in order to show what bar- barous laws may be established or maintained in a civ- ilized age, when the leading minds of the nation have no personal interest in changing them.
I find a sketch of the taille, in a confidential circular of the comptroller-general to the intendants, dated 1772. It is a masterpiece of accuracy and brevity. " In the greater part of the kingdom," says the minister, "the taille is arbitrarily distributed and levied, under a joint and several responsibility, on the persons of taxables and not on property; it varies constantly in conse- quence of the fluctuations in the means of those who pay it." That is the w^iole story; impossible to sketch with more art the lucrative evil.
The sum to be paid by each parish was fixed year- ly. As the minister observed, it varied incessantly, so that the farmer could never tell how much he would have to pay from year to year. In each parish a peas- ant was chosen at haphazard every year, and appoint- ed collector; it was his business to distribute the tax among his fellow-parishioners.
I promised to describe the office of collector. Listen to the Provincial Assembly of Guienne: it is an impar- tial witness, being wholly composed of persons who are exempt in virtue of royal appointments. It declared in 1779: " As no one is willing to take the office of collector, it must be held alternately by every one.. Hence the tax is levied every year by a new collector, about whose capacity and honesty no inquiry is made.
AND THE KEVOLUTION. 157 The tax levy is what might be expected: it bears the mark of the collector's fears, his weaknesses, or his vices. How could it be otherwise? He is wholly in the dark. Who can tell the exact income of his neigh- bor, or the proportion it bears to that of others? Yet the collector is bound to decide the exact amount of each; and for the proceeds of the tax his property and his person are liable. He usually loses half his time, for two years, in running after the tax-payers. Those who can not read are obliged to find a neighbor to take their place."
A short while before, Turgot had said of another province, " The post of collector often drives its incum- bent to despair, and nearly always ruins him. In eacK village, all the families in easy circumstances are thus successively reduced to poverty."
The unfortunate individual was, however, armed with prodigious power — a tyrant as well as a martyr. While he was ruining himself, he held the fortune of every one else in his hands. In the language of the provincial assembly, "Family affection, personal friend- ships and spites, a desire for vengeance, a wish to con- ciliate, fears of displeasing a rich man who has work to give — all these render it almost impossible that he can discharge his duties justly." Fear often made the collector pitiless. In some parishes he did not show his face without a band of bailiffs and followers at his back. "Unless he is backed by bailiffs," writes an intendant in 1764, "the taxables will not pay." "At Villefranche alone," says the provincial assembly quoted above, " six hundred bailiffs and followers are always kept on foot."® 158 THE OLD EEGIME 158 THE OLD EEGIME To escape this violent and arbitrary taxation, the French peasant of the eighteenth century imitated the Jew of the Middle Ages. He assumed the garb of poverty if he was accidentally in easy circumstances; the idea of a competency terrified him. I find this proved by a document which does not date from Gui- enne, but from a hundred leagues from thence. The Agricultural Society of Maine announced in its report of 1761 that it had intended to distribute cattle as prizes, but had " abandoned the design from apprehen- sions that the distribution of such prizes might awaken jealousies which the arbitrary mode of distributing the taxes might enable defeated competitors to gratify in future years."
This system of taxation trained every one, in fact, to spy out his neighbors, and denounce to the collector their progress toward affluence: all were educated to be informers and natural enemies. What more would one expect to hear of the dominions of a rajah of Hin- dostan?
There were parts of France, however, where the taxes were uniform and mild; these were some of the jpays d'etatsS It is true that these provinces had re- served the right of taxing themselves. In Languedoc, for instance, the taille bore wholly on landed property, and did not vary with the owner's means. Every thirty years the whole province was divided into three classes of lands, according to fertility, and the propor- tion to be borne by each estate was carefully fixed and recorded in a register. Every one knew beforehand precisely how much he had to pay. If he failed to pay, he, or rather his land, was alone responsible. If he felt AND THE EEVOLUTION. 159 aggrieved by the levy, lie had the right of demanding a comparison of his quota with that of any other resi- dent of the parish he chose to select, by the process we now call an " appeal for proportionate equality."
It will be seen that this system is precisely the one which we pursue to-day; it has been extended to the whole country without alteration. It is worthy of remark, that while we have borrowed from the old re- gime the form of our public administration, we have abstained from imitating it in other respects. Our administrative methods are copied from those of the old provinces. We have taken the machine, but re- jected its product.
-^ The habitual poverty of the country people had given rise to maxims well calculated to keep them poor. Hichelieu, in his Political Testament, says, " If the people were well off, it would be difficult to restrain them within legal bounds." Eulers in the eighteenth century did not go quite so far, but they believed the peasant would not work without the spur of need; misery appeared to them the only safeguard against idleness. I have heard the very same theory advanced in reference to the negroes in our colonies. So gen- eral has this belief been, that most political economists have felt it necessary to refute it at length.
It is well known that the primitive object of the taille was to enable the king to hire soldiers in lieu of the nobles and vassals who were bound to service; yet in the seventeenth century the military service was again exacted, as has been mentioned, under the name of militia, and this time the burden fell wholly upon the people, and almost exclusively on the peasantry.
160 THE OLD REGIME 160 THE OLD REGIME That militia duty was often strenuously refused or evaded is well established by the immense number of police reports referring to the apprehension of refrac- tory militia-men or deserters that are to be found in every intendant's office. It was, it seems, the most odious of all the burdens that were laid on the peas- antry. They fled into the woods to avoid serving, or resisted the levies with force of arms. This appears surprising in view of the ease with which a system of compulsory conscription is enforced to-day.