As we pass from political and administrative questions to social and economical ones, the difficulty of an amicable arrangement is seen to increase. All agree that property is sacred; but the greater part of the nation is firmly persuaded that privilege must be destroyed; and in a vast number of cases, privilege is property. This difficulty will not stand long in the way of the Commons of France. It is just where privilege has this private character that it is the most odious to some classes of the population. The possession of land is connected with feudal obligations of all sorts; a violent separation must be made between them. The services to be rendered by the tenant to the landlord may be the most important part of the latter's ownership; and by the system of tenure maintained for centuries over the greater part of Christendom, every landholder has been some one's tenant. With the exception of a very few sovereign princes there has been no man in possession of an acre of land who has not rendered therefor, theoretically if not practically, some rent or service. The service might be merely nominal; in the case of noble lands in the eighteenth century, it generally was so; but nominal or real, the right to exact it was some one's property. If such a right did not put money in his purse, it yet added to his dignity and self-satisfaction. But such rights as this had come to be looked on with deep distrust by a large part of the French nation. Ideas of independence and of the abstract rights of man had struck deep root. It was felt that land should be owned absolutely,—by allodial possession, as the phrase is. The feudal services, in fact, were often more onerous to those who paid them than they were beneficial to those who received them. It was time that they should be abolished. Those which were purely honorific, although valued by the nobility, who possessed them, outraged the sense of equality in the nation. They were felt to be badges and marks of the inferiority of the tenant to the landlord, of the poor to the rich. There is but one king, and we cannot all be noble, but let every man hold his farm in peace; such was the impatient cry of the common people. The feudal rights, which are merely honorific, offend man as man; some of them are degrading, some ridiculous. They must be abolished as fast as possible.[Footnote:T., Aix en Provence,A. P., i. 697, Section 8.T., Draguignan,A, P., iii. 260. Chérest (ii. 424) points out that the cahiers of the districts (baillages) are more moderate than those of the villages in matters concerning feudal rights, and thinks that this moderation was assumed from politic motives, not to frighten the privileged orders too much at this stage. But it seems improbable that such a piece of policy could have been so widely practiced.]
Relief from the operation of one set of privileges, neither strictly pecuniary nor entirely honorific, was almost unanimously demanded by the farmers. These were the rights of the nobles concerning the preservation of game, and the cognate right of keeping pigeons. The country-folk speak of doves as "the scourge of laborers," and ask that they may be destroyed, or at least shut up during seed-time and harvest. One gentleman answers with the remonstrance that, being very warm, they are used in medicine, but that sparrows devour every year a bushel of grain apiece, and that each village should be obliged to kill a certain quantity of them. The peasants ask that wild boars and rabbits be alike destroyed. The royal preserves are particularly hated by all the agricultural population living near Paris. Land naturally of the first class is said to be made almost worthless by the abundance of the game. The hare feeds on the tender shoots of the growing grain. The partridge half destroys the wheat. Rabbits and other vermin browse on the vines, fruit-trees, and vegetables. Farmers are not allowed to destroy weeds for fear of disturbing game. Mounted keepers ride all over the fields, trampling down the crops. The king is begged to reduce his preserves, in so far as he can do so without interfering with his own amusement, or even to suppress them altogether.[Footnote:T., Pecqueuse (Paris,extra muros),A. P., v. 11, Section 36.T., Alençon,A. P., i. 719, ch. viii. Section 3. Exmes,A. P., i. 728, Sections 20, 21. Verneuil,A. P., i. 731, Section 44. Seigneur de Pierrefitte,A. P., v. 19, Section 16. Port au Pecq (Paris,ex. m.),A. P., v. 12, Section 18. Plaisir (Paris,ex. m.)A. P.v. 25. Amont-Gray,A. P., i. 780. Périgny en Brie (Paris,ex. m.)A. P., v. 14, Sections 5-11, and many others.]
As for the feudal rights which brought in money to their owners, it was generally felt, at least by the Commons, that they must be redeemable; that the persons liable to pay on their account must be allowed to buy them off by the payment of a certain sum down, where the ownership was true and fair. Here, however, a great trouble seemed likely to arise from an important divergence of ideas. The French nobles believed, as the vast mass of property holders has believed in all ages, that prescription or ancient use was sufficient evidence of property. If it could be shown that a man, or his predecessors in title, had held a certain piece of land or a certain right over the land of another, from time immemorial, or for a very long time, nothing more was needed to establish his property. Unless this theory be admitted, at least to some extent, it would seem that all rights of property must perish. In respect therefore to land in actual possession the French nation held firmly to prescription. But in respect to those more subtle rights in land which had been enormously favored by the feudal system, another theory came in. Those rights were thought in the eighteenth century to be unnatural in themselves, and therefore abusive. It was believed, moreover, that many of them had been usurped without reason or justice. [Footnote:T., Béarn,A. P., vi. 500. Rennes,A. P., v. 546.] It was commonly held by the Third Estate that unless an express charter or agreement could be shown establishing such rights, they should be abolished without compensation, and that some of them were so unjust and objectionable that not even an agreement or a charter could sanction them. Such were many feudal payments and monopolies; common bulls, common ovens, rights to labor and to services. Such above all, where it lingered, was serfdom.[Footnote: For the desire to retain feudal rights, seeN., Condom,A. P., iii. 38, Section 5.N., Dax,A. P., iii. 94, Section 21.N., Etain,A. P., ii. 215, Section 10.N., Bas Vivarais,A. P., vi. 180, Section 19. For the desire to abolish them,T., Avesnes, A. P., ii. 153, Sections 34-40.T., Bar-le-duc,A. P., ii. 200, Sections 49, 50.T., Beaujolais,A. P., ii. 285, Section 22.T., Cambrai,A. P., ii. 520, Sections 14-16.C., Clermont en Beauvoisis,A. P., ii. 746.T., Crépy,A. P., iii. 74, Section 21.T., Linas,A. P., iv. 649, Section 17.T., Ploermel,A. P., v. 379, Sections 14-20 (a very full exposition), and many others.]
When we pass from the property of private persons to that of clerical corporations, whether sole or aggregate, we find the case still stronger. It has been said that the greater number of the cahiers of the clergy were composed under the prevailing influence of the parish priests. These men felt themselves to be wronged in the distribution of church property. They thought it outrageous that the working part of the clergy should receive but a pittance, while useless drones fattened in idleness.[Footnote:C., Paroisse de St. Paul,A. P., v. 270, Section 11.] Their proposals were radical. They would take from the few who had much and give to the many who had little. The salaries of those who ministered in parishes should be increased, by fixing a minimum, and the money should come out of the pockets of abbots, chapters, and monasteries. Not only are future appointments to be made so as to favor the parish priests, but for their benefit the present incumbents of fat livings are to be dispossessed. The schemes for this purpose were not identical everywhere, but the spirit was the same throughout the popular part of the order.
While the Third Estate agreed with the Clergy in wishing to readjust clerical incomes, an attack was made in some quarters on the payment of the tithe itself. This, however, was not general. The people were willing to pay a reasonable tithe, although some of them would have preferred that the priests should receive salaries, paid from the product of ordinary taxation. Compulsory fees for religious ceremonies, such as weddings and funerals, were very unpopular. It was repeatedly asked that such fees should be abolished, when the incomes of the priests were made sufficient.[Footnote: Poncins, 179.T., Ploermel,A. P., v. 380, Section 22. Soissy-sous-Etoiles,A. P., v. 121, Section 16.]
Thus the cahiers do not attack the right of property in the abstract; on the contrary, they maintain it. But they shake its foundations by blows aimed at vested rights and at prescription.
The question of taxation is postponed in the cahiers to that of constitutional rights. But financial necessities were the very cause of the existence of the Estates General, the opportunity for all reforms. On the most important principle of taxation the country was almost unanimous. Thenceforth the burdens were to be borne by all. Only here and there did some privileged body contend for old immunities, some chapter put in a claim that the Clergy should still pay only in the form of a voluntary gift. The privileged orders generally relinquish their freedom from taxation. Sometimes they applaud themselves for so doing. The Clergy, in many cases, undertake to bear their share of taxation only on condition that their corporate debt shall be made a part of the debt of the nation.
The Third Estate, on the other hand, maintains that it is but fair and right that all citizens shall be taxed alike. Its cahiers demand as a right what those of the higher orders offer as a gift.[Footnote: A few cahiers of the Nobility request that a certain part of the property of poor nobles be exempt from taxation.N., Clermont-Ferrand,A. P., ii. 767, Section 23.N., Bas Limousin,A. P., iii. 538, Section 14]
As to the method of taxation to be employed there was some approach to agreement. Many of the old taxes were utterly condemned, at least in their old forms. The salt tax was to be equalized, if it were not entirely done away. The monopoly of tobacco, that "article of first necessity," was to receive the same treatment. Many demands were made concerning the excise on wine. "We find it hard to believe," cry the people of the village of Pavaut, "that all this multitude of duties goes into the king's strong-box; we rather believe that it serves to fatten those who are at the head of the excise; and that at the expense of the poor vine-dresser." All the taxes were to be converted as fast as possible into one on land and one on personal property. But the minds of the reformers had not grasped the real difficulties of the subject. They were in that stage of thought in which great questions are answered off-hand because the thinker has not fully apprehended them. Should the personal tax be based on capital or on incomes, and how should these be ascertained? It is far easier to formulate general principles of taxation than to apply them successfully.[Footnote: Salt and tobacco,T., Perche,A. P., v. 327, Section 38. Loisail,A. P.v. 334, Section 7. Wine, Pavaut,A. P., v. 9.]
A common demand is for the taxation of luxuries, such as servants, carriages, or dogs. The people of Segonzac propose a charge on rouge, "which destroys beauty," and strike at a fashionable folly of the day by suggesting a special payment by those "who allow themselves to wear two watches." This is perhaps not the place to mention the proposal to impose an additional tax on persons of both sexes who are unmarried after "a certain age." The great movement from the country to the cities was already exciting alarm. The people of Albret think that a tax on luxuries will have the double advantage of weighing on the richest and least useful citizens, and of sending the population back to the country from the cities, which will receive just limits. And the people of Domfront speak of Paris as an "awful chasm," in which the wealth, population, and morals of the provinces are swallowed up together. [Footnote: Taxation of luxuries in general,C., Douai,A. P., iii. 174, Section 19.N., Alençon,A. P., i. 715.C., Amiens,A. P., i. 735.T., Aix,A. P., i. 696.T., Laugon,A. P., ii. 270, Sections 26, 27, and many others. Bachelors,T., Rennes,A. P., v. 544, Section 115. Vicheray,A. P., vi. 24, Section 30. Cities,T., Albret,A. P., i. 706, Section 38. Domfront,A. P., i. 724, Section 14.]
Theoretical attacks on luxury are common in all ages, and not very significant. Far more so are proposals for progressive taxation. These are of occasional occurrence in the cahiers. The Third Estate of Rennes, whose cahier is considered typical of the more revolutionary aspirations of the times, asks that "the tax on persons shall be established and assessed with reference to their powers, so that he that is twice as well off as the well to do people of his class shall pay three times the tax, and so following." The spirit of this demand is more clear than its application. The town of Bellocq, in the province of Béarn, is more explicit. It would pay the public debt by a special tax, justly assessed, first on farmers general and other collectors of the revenue, who have made fortunes quickly for themselves and their relations, by money drawn from the nation; next on all persons who have an income exceeding two hundred pistoles, whether from lands, contracts, or manufactures; then on the feoffees of tolls, where the amount of the tolls is more than double the rent paid for them; and lastly, if the above do not suffice, it is proposed to obtain a sum of money by seizing a part of all articles of luxury and superfluity, wherever found; and it is explained that the plate of the rich and the ornaments of churches are especially intended.[Footnote:A. P., ii. 275, Section 42n.]
The financial scheme outlined in the cahiers is, in the main, as follows. As soon as the constitution shall have been settled, the deputies shall call on the royal ministers for accounts and estimates. The latter shall be furnished in two parts. First shall come those for the necessary, current expenses of the government, including those of the king and his family and court, to be maintained in a style suitable to the splendor of a great monarchy. It shall then be considered what economies can be introduced into every department. Among these economies, the suppression or reduction of extravagant pensions, especially of such as are bestowed for mere favor, and not for service to the state, shall take a prominent place. When the estimates have been duly considered, special appropriations shall be made by the Estates, and ministers shall be held to a strict responsibility in expending them.
Next, concerning the debts of the state, a separate and detailed account shall be rendered to the Estates General. This also shall be scrutinized, the justice of the various claims considered, and means provided for their gradual payment. It is taken for granted that, henceforth, the French nation is usually to live within its income; but if debts are contracted at any time, special provision must be made for the repayment of principal and interest.[Footnote:N., Amont,A. P., i. 766.N., Agenois,A. P., i. 682.]
Having considered the general matters of constitutional government, law, property, and taxation, we may pass to those questions which more particularly interested one of the great orders of the state, or on which the opinions of one order might be expected to differ from those of another. In general policy the clergy agreed with the nobility and the Third Estate, but in some matters they differed. Yet the differences were greater in degree than in kind. I mean that the clergy, as was natural, had most to say about ecclesiastical, religious, and moral questions, and differed from the nobility and the commons more by the relative prominence which it gave to these, than by the nature of its opinions concerning them.
The Roman Catholic and Apostolic Religion is the religion of the state; and the public worship of no other shall be allowed in France. This was the universal demand of the clergy, and in it the other orders usually acquiesced. As for the granting of civil rights to those who are not Catholic, the clergy is of opinion that quite enough, perhaps too much, has already been done in that direction. Such rights as have already been granted must be limited and defined, and a stop put to the encroachments of heresy. Sometimes the lay orders would go farther in toleration. One cahier of the nobility proposes a military cross for distinguished Protestant officers, another that non-Catholics may be electors, but not elected, to the Estates General. The inhabitants of some of the central provinces would restore the property of exiles for religion's sake to their families. The people of one quarter of Paris would allow the free worship of all religions. Expressions of approval of the recent concession of a civil status to Protestants are not unusual in the cahiers. But the country and all the orders are undoubtedly and overwhelmingly Catholic.[Footnote: For toleration, Bellocq,A. P., ii. 276, Section 59. N., Agen,A. P., i. 684, Section 14.T., Perigord,A. P., v. 343, Section 45.T., Poitou,A. P., v. 414. Vouvant,A. P., v. 427, Section 18. T. Paris-Theatins,A. P., v. 316, Section 29.T., Montargis,A. P., iv. 23, Section 10.]
The clergy asks that the observance of Sundays and holidays be enforced. The Third Estate, in some places, thinks that there are too many holidays already. It would abolish many of them, transferring their religious observances to the Sunday to which they fall nearest. [Footnote:T., St. Pierre-le-Moutier,A. P., v. 640, Section 63.T., Paris-hors-les-murs,A. P., 241, Section 2.]
In regard to the liberty of the press the clergy is at variance with the other orders. It would maintain a stricter censorship than heretofore, and is inclined to attribute all the immorality of the age to the unbridled license of authors. The nobility and the Third Estate, on the other hand, would generally allow the press to be free, but would exact responsibility on the part of authors and printers, one or both of whom should always be required to sign their publications. Thus anonymous libels should no longer be suffered to appear, and bad books generally should bring down punishment on their authors.
The cahiers of the clergy, more, perhaps, than any others, insist on the importance of education; and the ecclesiastics generally wish to control it themselves. Here the commons sometimes go farther than they; asking that all monks and nuns be obliged to give free instruction.[Footnote:C., Aix,A. P., i. 692, Section 6.C., Labourt, iii.A. P., 424, Section 27. Ornans,A. P., iii. 172, Section 4.T., Douai,A. P., iii. 181, Sections 28, 29.]
As for the administration of their own order the clergy, under the lead of the parish priests, demand extensive reforms. There must be no more absenteeism; no bishops and abbots drawing large incomes and amusing themselves in Paris or Versailles. There must be no more pluralities, which are contrary to the decrees of the Council of Trent. Promotion must be thrown open to the parochial clergy. Faithful clergymen must be provided for in their old age. Frequent synods and provincial councils must be held. The laity agree with the clergy in calling for these reforms, and would in many cases go a great way in the suppression and consolidation of monasteries.[Footnote: Poncins, 190,A. P.,passim.N., Agenois,A. P., i. 682, Section 8.]
Both clergy and laity are intensely Gallican. They do not wish to pay tribute to Rome, but desire that the church of France shall preserve her privileges and immunities. Dispensations for the marriage of relatives should, they think, be granted by French bishops, and the fees payable therefor should be kept in the country. Annats, or payments to the Pope on the occasion of appointment to French benefices, should be discontinued. An importance far beyond what their amount alone would seem to justify was attached in French minds to these payments to the Holy See. They were repugnant to the national sense of dignity. In some places the idea that the church of France was to govern herself went so far as to threaten orthodoxy. The clergy of the province of Poitou ask for the composition by the French bishops, "who would doubtless think proper to consult the universities," of a body of theology, "divested of all useless questions," which shall be exclusively taught in all seminaries, schools, and monasteries. We have here an instance of that impatience of all complicated and difficult thought, of that simple faith that all questions admit of short and sensible answers, which characterized the eighteenth century. The clergy of Poitou ask also for a great and little catechism, common to all dioceses. "Uniform instruction throughout all the Gallican Church," they say, "would have so many advantages that the bishops will not fail to apply themselves to obtain it. A common breviary and a common liturgy would be equally desirable."[Footnote:A. P., v. 391, Section 19.]
The election of bishops is asked for in several cahiers, and many parishes wish to elect their priests. These requests were not as radical as they may now seem to have been,—at least they did not interfere with the prerogatives of Rome,—for the bishops in France were nominated by the crown, as they still are by the French government, and the appointment of the priests, then in France as now in England, was often in the hands of lay patrons.[Footnote: Poncins, 168.]
The French nation in general wished to retain its nobility as a distinct part of the state. In but few cahiers do we find so much as a hint of the suppression of the order.[Footnote: Poncins, 111. Hippean, p. x., etc. My own study of the cahiers confirms this opinion. See, however, a long, argumentative article in the cahier of the Third Estate of Rennes,A. P., v. 540, Sections 48-50. See also that of Bellocq,A. P., ii. 276, Section 61.T.Aix.A P., i. 697. Villiers-sur-Marne,A. P., v. 216. Carri,A. P., vi. 280 Section 35, etc.] The Third Estate would, however, reduce the advantage of the nobility to little more than a distinction and a political weight. The nobles, being in numbers perhaps one hundredth part of the nation, are to be allowed one quarter of the representatives in the Estates General and in the Provincial Estates. They are to have a large share of honors, offices, and emoluments. Their order is to be made more exclusive than it has been. Nobility is no longer to be bought and sold, but shall be accorded only for merit or long service, perhaps only on the nomination of the Provincial Estates. Except in the most democratic cahiers, these concessions are not disputed.
On the other hand, the Commons ask for a share of the chances hitherto reserved for the nobles. The exclusive right held by the upper order, of serving as judges in the higher courts of justice, or as officers in the army, is to disappear. To the latter right the nobles strongly cling. The career of arms, they say, is their natural, their only vocation. In some cases, however, they ask to be allowed to practice other means of earning a livelihood without derogating from their nobility. But they join with the other orders in the cry for reforms in the army. [Footnote:T., Perche,A. P., 326, Section 17.N., Agenois,A. P., i. 683, Section 14]
The general irritation caused by the new military regulations has been noticed in another chapter. The cahiers unanimously give it voice. The French soldier shall no longer be insulted with blows. The organization of the army shall be amended. It must not be subjected "to the versatility of the spirit of system and to the caprice of ministers." Many are the requests that the soldier be better treated. Not a few, that his necessary leisure be turned to good account by employment in road-building or in other public works.[Footnote:N., Ponthieu,A. P., v. 434, Sections 40-42.T., Perche,A. P., v. 326, Section 19. Soldiers to work on roads, etc., Poncins, 212. Arles,A. P., ii. 61, Section 3.T., Bourbonnais,A. P., ii. 449, Section vi., 1.N., Chateau-Thierry,A. P., ii. 665, Section 56.T., Étampes,A. P., iii. 287, Section 12, etc.] More numerous, perhaps, are those for fairness of promotion. It was in this matter that the poorer nobility was most bitter in its jealousy of the great court families. With but one path for their ambition, the country nobles saw their way blocked by the glittering figures of men no better born than themselves. The wrinkled old soldier, descended from Crusaders, personally distinguished in twenty battles, stood on his wounded legs and presented his halberd as a captain at fifty; while a Noailles, or a Carignan, with no more quarterings and no service at all, perhaps hardly a Frenchman and only twenty years old, but with a duke for an uncle, or a queen's favorite for a sister, pranced on his managed charger at the head of the regiment as its colonel. Nor was this all. The worthy veteran might, on some trifling quarrel, be deprived of the rank he had won with his sweat and his blood, and sent back to his paternal hawk's nest, a broken and disgraced man. The cahiers demand that there shall be no more dismissals without trial; and many of them ask that particular cases of hardship may be rectified. For now the world is to be set right again; commissions and appointments to the military school are to be fairly distributed; promotion is to be by merit and term of service; and the loyal nobility of France is once more to be the bulwark of an adored king and a grateful nation.
* * * * *
The Commons also have their particular wishes. They desire not only to be rid of feudal oppression, but of administrative regulations. These are sometimes so combined with privileges, or with taxation, that it is not easy to distinguish their cause. The fishermen of Albret, for instance, ask to be allowed to use any kind of boat that may suit their convenience.[Footnote:A. P., i. 706, Section 57.] We can only guess why any one should have interfered with their boats. Was it a corporation of boat-builders having a monopoly that restricted them, or was it only the paternal fussiness of Continental police regulations?
In matters of commerce the national feeling was far from unanimous. Most of the cahiers asked that trade be free within the kingdom; although some of the border provinces, which had enjoyed a comparatively free trade with Germany and had been cut off from France, preferred the maintenance of that state of things,[Footnote: Alsace, Lorraine, and the Three Bishoprics. Poncins, 282, Mathieu, 441.C., Verdun,A. P., vi. 130.] and although the retention of theoctrois, or custom-houses at the town gates, was sometimes contemplated. Uniformity of weights and measures was also desired; but was sometimes asked for in a half hopeless tone, as if so great a change could hardly be expected. The request was made that all loans with interest be not considered usurious; a request resisted in some cases by the clergy, which clung to the old laws of usury. The abolition of monopolies is generally called for; certain odious restrictions, such as the mark on leather and on iron, are condemned, but rather as taxes than as commercial regulations. On economic questions the nation has no very fixed opinions, nor have definite parties been formed. Free trade and free manufactures commend themselves to the ear; but regulations as to quality and protection against English competition may be highly desirable. Agriculture needs more hands, and is the first, the most necessary, the noblest of arts. Furnaces and foundries use wood, and make fuel dear. Trade should be entirely free,—but peddlers are nuisances, and interfere with regular shop-keepers. Manufactures are a source of wealth,—but dangerous unless well managed; none of them should be established without the consent of the Provincial Estates. If only our king and "his august companion" would wear none but French stuffs, and set a fashion that way, our languishing factories would soon be active again.[Footnote: Concerning usury,T., Agenois,A. P., i. 690.T., Comminges,A. P., iii 27, Section 24. St-Jean-des-Agneaux,A. P., iii. 65, Section 4.C., N., andT., Dôle,A. P., iii. 152, Section 14; 158, Section 57; 165, Section xiv. 6. Paris, St. Eustache,A. P., v. 304, Section 52.C., Soûle, v. 774, Section 17, etc. See alsoN., Agenois,A. P., i. 684, Section 7.T., Paris,A. P., v. 285, Sections 3, 4, andn.]
Certain demands of the cahiers excite surprise by their frequent recurrence. Among them is that for the more severe treatment of bankrupts, who were able in old France to evade the law of the land and even to take sanctuary. Some cahiers go so far as to ask that those convicted of fraud be made habitually to wear a green cap in public, or that they be whipped, or sent to the galleys for life, or even put to death.[Footnote: Poncins, 285.T., Pont-à-Mousson,A. P., ii. 232, Section 11.N., Lille,A. P., iii. 531, Section 54.T., Lyon,A. P., iii. 613.T., Mantes et Meulan,A. P., iii. 672, Section ix. 2.C., Lille,A. P., iii. 524, Sections 35, 37.]
All orders ask for the suppression of begging. The demand is commonly accompanied by one looking to some humane provision for the poor, sometimes by a request for a regular poor-law, or even for regulation of wages. The people of the parish of Pecqueuse ask that there be public works always going on, where the poor may earn wages calculated on the price of grain; and, what is more significant, the Third Estate of Paris makes a similar request for public work-shops.[Footnote:A. P., v. 11, Sections 17, 18.A. P., v. 287, Section 28.] Yet the universal cry for the suppression of mendicity, and the form in which it was made, show that begging was considered a great evil on its own account, whether mendicant monks or less authorized persons were the beggars. The begging monks, indeed, were either to be abolished, or their maintenance in their own monasteries was to be provided for in the general readjustment of ecclesiastical benefices.
Another common request is that letters in the post-office be not tampered with. All readers who are familiar with the history, and particularly with the diplomatic history of the last century, know how common was the practice of breaking open and taking copies of political correspondence. The letters of Franklin and Silas Deane, and of many less prominent persons, were continually opened in the mail, both in France and in England. Regular ambassadors were driven to the habitual use of bearers of dispatches; and even these might be waylaid and robbed, by the agents of friendly governments disguised as highwaymen. [Footnote: Ciphers were in common use, and governments employed decipherers. Great skill had been attained in opening letters and closing them again so that they might not appear to have been tampered with. "This institution, if well directed, has the property of serving as a compass to those who hold the reins of government," writes, with a fine jumbling of metaphors, one who has been a clerk in the post-office. Sorel, i. 77. TheFacsimiles of MSS. in European Archives relating to America, now in process of publication by Stevens, furnish numerous examples of these practices.] But it is astonishing to find that the evil had gone so far as to excite the fears of private persons for the maintenance of that privacy of which all decent Frenchmen, with their strong feeling of the sanctity of the family and their great dread of ridicule, are peculiarly jealous.[Footnote:T., Agenois,A. P., i. 690.]
Again, the frequent recurrence of the request for the restraint of quack doctors is somewhat surprising. The need of competent surgeons and midwives was much felt in the country, and recourse was had to the Estates General to provide them. In calling for legislation to prohibit quackery and to forbid lotteries, the people asked to be protected against themselves, any extravagant theories of the liberty of man to the contrary notwithstanding.[Footnote: Quack doctors,C., Nemours,A. P., iv. 108, Section 31. Cormeilles-en-Parisis,A. P., iv. 463, Section 17.N., Troyes,A. P., vi. 79, Section 80.T., Chalons-sur-Marne,A. P., ii. 595, Section 24.]
Such were the desires of the French nation in the spring of 1789. In them we may note several important points of agreement. First, government by the nation and the king together. France was still to be a monarchy; not a republic, open or disguised; but it was to be a limited and not an absolute monarchy. In this all the orders were agreed, and the king, by the mere summoning of the Estates General, as well as by his whole attitude, seemed to acquiesce.
Then, the desires of the nation included a diminution of the privileges of the upper orders, not a complete abolition of them. Like all Catholics, Frenchmen wished to leave the control of religious affairs largely in the hands of the clergy. To the nobility, all but a few extremists were willing to concede many privileges, honors, and advantages.
But while retaining a government of limited monarchy and moderate aristocracy, the nation in all its branches had determined that public burdens and public benefits should be more equally divided than they had ever been before. Proportionate equality of taxation, and a chance to rise—these the Commons were determined to have, and the higher orders were ready to concede.
In another feeling all France shared. Churchmen, nobles, and common people alike dreaded and hated the little ring of courtiers. These had grown great on the substance of the nation. They should be restrained hereafter, and obliged as far as possible to surrender their ill-gotten gains.
And all men wanted administrative reforms. The courts of justice, the army, the finances, were to be put in order and improved. Here all agreed as to the end sought, and if there was much difference of opinion as to the methods, parties had not yet formed, nor had feeling run very high on these subjects.
What, then, were the dangers threatening France? They were to be looked for in the very magnitude of the changes proposed, changes which could not fail to startle and alarm all Europe. They were to be seen in the opposition of the nobles, who were ready to give up much, but were asked to give up more. They were to be feared most of all in a monarch so weak and an administration so faulty, that the first attempt at reform was likely to destroy them altogether.
* * * * *
France had become a despotism in the attempt to escape from mediaeval anarchy. What she asked of her kings was security from external enemies, and good government at home. The first of these they had given her. No country in Europe was more respected and feared. In spite of occasional and temporary reverses, her borders had been enlarged from reign to reign, and her fields, for nearly three centuries, had seldom been trodden by foreign armies.
Within the country the house of Capet had been partially successful. It had put down armed opposition, it had taken away the power of the feudal nobility, it had maintained tolerable security against violent crime. But here its zeal had slackened. Civilization was advancing rapidly, and the French internal government was not keeping pace with it.
This better performance of its external than of its internal tasks is almost inevitable in a despotism. To protect his country, and to add to it, is the obvious duty and the natural ambition of a despot. His dignity is concerned; his pride is flattered by success; and whether he has succeeded or failed is obvious to himself and to every one else. To control and improve the internal administration is a hard and ungrateful labor, in which mistakes are sure to occur; and the greatest and truest reform when accomplished will injure and displease some persons. The most beneficent improvements are sometimes those which involve the most labor and bring the least reputation.
Moreover, it is not the people who surround kings that are chiefly benefited by the good administration of a country. Courtiers are likely to be interested in abuses, and in the absence of a free press courtiers are the public of monarchs. If we compare the facilities possessed by Louis XVI. for ascertaining the true condition of his country with those possessed by the sovereigns of our own day, an emperor of Germany or of Austria, or even a Russian Czar, we shall find that the king of France was far worse off than they are. There were no undisputed national accounts or statistics in France. There was no serious periodical press in any country, watching events and collecting facts. There were no newspapers endeavoring at once to direct and to be directed by public opinion. True, the satirists were everywhere, with their epigrams and their songs; but who can form a policy by listening to the jeers of the splenetic?
The absolute monarchy, therefore, while it protected the French nation, was failing to secure to it the reasonable and civilized government to which it felt itself to be entitled. It was failing partly from lack of information, but largely also from lack of will. The kings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had beaten down the power of the nobility and of the Parliaments; the kings of the eighteenth century shrank before the influence of the very bodies which their ancestors had defeated. It is vain to try to eliminate the personal element from history. France would have been a very different country in 1789 from what she was, had Louis XV. and Louis XVI. been strong and able men. The education of a prince is not necessarily enfeebling. Perhaps the commonest vice of despots is willfulness; but the last absolute king of France might have known a far happier fate if he had had a little more of it.
The French government was not aristocratic. There was no class in the country, unless it were the clergy, that was in the habit of exercising important political rights. But the nobility comprised all those men and all those families which were trained to occupy high administrative place. The secretaries of state, the judges of the higher courts, the officers in the army, were noblemen. The order also included a large proportion of the educated men and the possessors of a considerable part of the wealth of the country. It was, therefore, a true power, which might appropriately be considered. Moreover, it was popularly supposed to have political rights, although in fact these were mostly obsolete. Could a good deal of weight have been given, for a time at least, to the nobility, the result would probably have been favorable to the national order and prosperity.
Government, to be stable, should represent the true forces of the state. In a country where all men are of the same race, and where a large portion of the population has some property and some education, numbers should be given weight in government; for the simple reason that, in such a country, many men are stronger than a few, and may choose to use their strength rather than that a few should govern them. What a large majority of the people desires, it can enforce. It is often agreed, in favor of peace and to end controversy, that what a small majority decides shall be taken as decided for all. On this agreement rests the legitimacy of democracy. The compromise is an arbitrary one in itself, but reasonable and sensible; and in a nation that has a good deal of practical good sense, a feeling of loyalty may gather about it. But sensible and practical as it may be, it remains a compromise after all. There is no divine right in one half the voters plus one. Some other proportion may be, and often is agreed on; or some compromise entirely different may be found to be more in accordance with the national will.
In old France the conditions required for democratic government were but partially fulfilled. The population was fairly homogeneous. Property and education were more or less diffused. But of political experience there was little, and the democratic compromise, to be thoroughly successful, requires a great deal. It was rightly felt that a proper regard was not had to the desires of the more numerous part of the inhabitants of the country; that a few persons had privileges far beyond their public deserts or their true powers; but how was this state of things to be remedied? What new relations were to take the place of the old? No actual compromise had been effected, and the idea of the rights of a majority, with the limitations to which those rights are subject, was not clearly defined in men's minds.
A government should represent the sense of duty of a country. All men believe that something better is imaginable than that which exists, and that the better things would be attainable if only men would act as they ought. Most men strive somewhat to improve their own condition and conduct. Every man believes at least that others should do so. But in making laws men are trying to regulate the conduct of others, and are willing, therefore, that the laws should be a little nearer to their ideals than their own practice is. All sensible men believe that they ought to obey the laws, and that if they suffer for not doing so their suffering is righteous. This opinion is one of the forces in the world that makes for good.
Now what were the qualities considered really moral and desirable by the Frenchmen of 1789, and how far did the government of the Bourbons tend toward them? The duty first recognized by the whole country was patriotism. The love of France has never grown cold in French hearts. It is needless to insist on this, for no one who has ever met a Frenchman worthy of the name, or read a French book of any value, can doubt it. With all its noble and all its petty incidents, patriotism is a French virtue.
Under the kings of France its aspirations were satisfied. The country was great and glorious.
That loyalty was held to be a duty will perhaps be less generally recognized, but I think that enough has been written in this book to show it. The evidence of the cahiers is chiefly on that side. Most Frenchmen believed that a king should govern, and that they had a good and well-meaning king. Toward him their hearts were still warm and their sense of duty alive. He was misled, thwarted, overruled, by selfish and designing courtiers. If he could but have his way all would be well. Only a very few persons had eyes strong enough to see that they were worshiping a stuffed scarecrow. A man inside those clothes could really have led them.
Next among the ideals of France, and far above loyalty in many bosoms, came liberty and equality. They were not very clearly comprehended. By liberty was chiefly meant a share of political power; few Frenchmen believed then, or ever have believed, in letting every man do what seemed good in his eyes. Such a theory of liberty does not take a very strong hold on a race so sociable as theirs; nor does such unbridled liberty seem consistent with civilization to men accustomed to the rigid system of Continental police. Equality of rights was an ideal, but most people in France were not prepared to demand its entire carrying out. Equality of property and of enjoyment many persons, especially such as considered themselves Philosophers,—persons who had read Rousseau or Montesquieu,—considered desirable; but no one of any weight had the most distant intention of trying to bring about such a state of things in the work-a-day world. Communistic schemes were not quite unknown in the eighteenth century, but they belong to the nineteenth.[Footnote: See for eighteenth century communism the curious essay of Morelly.]
With the general growth of comfort, with the general hope of an improved world,humanity, the hatred of seeing others suffer, had begun to bestir itself. For many ages people had believed that another life, and not this one, was really to be considered. Kind-hearted men had tried to draw souls to heaven, stern men to drive them thither. The effort had absorbed the energy and enthusiasm of a great proportion of those persons who were willing to think of anything but their own concerns. But in the eighteenth century heaven was clouded. Men's eyes were fixed on a promised land nearer their own level. This world, which was known by experience to be but too often a vale of tears, was soon, very soon, by the operation of the fashionable philosophy, to be turned into something like a paradise. To bring about so desirable a condition of things, the tears must be stopped at their source. Nor was this all. The world had acquired a new interest. It was capable of improvement. Hope in temporal matters had led to Faith,—Faith in progress and happiness here below. The new direction given to Faith and Hope was followed by Charity. The task of relieving human pain was fairly undertaken. Sickness and insanity were better cared for; torture was abolished, punishment lightened. In these matters the government rather followed than led the popular aspirations. In its general inefficiency, it came halting behind the good intentions of the people.
The virtues toward which the government of old France tried to lead the French nation were not, as we have seen, exactly the virtues toward which the national conscience led. The government upheld loyalty and humanity, and the people agreed with it; the government upheld a centralized despotism and privileges, and the popular conscience called for liberty and equality. In religion there was both agreement and divergence. The country, in spite of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, believed itself to be fervently Catholic; but its ideal of Catholicism was of a reformed and regenerated type; while that maintained by the government was corrupt and lifeless in high places. The country wanted provincial councils, resident bishops, a purified church.
And in so far as the ideals of the government differed from those of the people, the monarchy did not stand for something nobler and higher than the moral forces that attacked it. The French nation was in fact better than its government, more honest and more generous. The country priests were more self-devoted than the bishops who ruled over them; the poorer nobles were more public-spirited and more moral than the favored nobility of the court; the citizens of the Third Estate conducted their private business more honorably than the administration conducted the business of the country.
If the stability and legitimacy of government depend on its correspondence with the real powers of the nation and with the national conscience, the functions of government embrace something harder to attain even than this agreement. No sovereign power, be it that of an autocrat on his throne or of a nation in its councils, can directly carry out the policy which it desires to adopt. The sovereign must act through agents; and on the proper selection of these the success of his undertakings will largely depend. Jurists must draft the laws, judges must interpret them, officers must enforce obedience. Generals, commanding soldiers, must defend the land. Engineers must construct forts and roads; marine architects must furnish plans for practical ship-builders. Financiers must devise schemes of taxation, to be submitted to the sovereign; collectors of various kinds must levy the taxes on the people. All these should be experts, trained to do their especial work. The choice of experts, then, is one of the most important functions of government.
In this respect the administration of King Louis XVI. and his immediate predecessor was usually, although not uniformly bad. The army and navy, until the last years of disorganization, were reasonably efficient, the naval engineers in particular being the best then at work in the world. The civil and criminal laws were chaotic, more from a defect of legislation than of administration. Old privileges and anomalies were supported by the government, but good jurists and magistrates were produced. Those lawyers can hardly have been incompetent in whose school were trained the framers of the Code Napoleon, the model of modern Europe. Internal order and police were maintained with a thoroughness that was remarkable in an age when the possession of a good horse put the highwayman very nearly on an equality with the officer. The worst experts employed by the government appear to have been those connected with taxation and expenditure, from the Controller of the Finances to the last clerk in the Excise. The schemes of most of them were blundering, their actions were too often dishonest. They never reached the art of keeping accurate accounts.
The condition of the people of France, both in Paris and in the provinces, was far less bad than it is often represented to have been. The foregoing chapters should have given the impression of a great, prosperous, modern country. The face of Europe has changed since 1789 more through the enormous number and variety of mechanical inventions that have marked the nineteenth century than through a corresponding increase in mental or moral growth. While production and wealth have advanced by strides, education has taken a few faltering steps forward. Pecuniary honesty has probably increased, honesty and industry being the virtues especially fostered by commerce and manufactures. Bigotry, the unwillingness to permit in others thought and language unpalatable to ourselves, has become less virulent, but has not disappeared. It is shown alike by the church and by her enemies. Yet the tone of controversy has softened even in France. There are fewer Voltairean sneers, fewer episcopal anathemas. Humanity has been growing; the rich and prosperous becoming more alive to the suffering around them. But it is the material progress that is most striking, after all. The poor are better off than they were a hundred years ago, and the rich also. The minimum required by custom for the decent support of life has risen. The earners of wages are better housed, fed, and clothed in return for fewer hours of labor. In France, as in the world, there are many more things to divide, and things are, on the whole, more evenly divided.
If we compare the France of 1789 no longer with the France of 1892, but with the other countries of Continental Europe as they were in the days preceding the great Revolution, we find that she was worse governed than a few of them. The administration of Prussia while the great King Frederick sat on the throne was probably better than that of France. After his death it rapidly fell off, until a series of defeats had been earned by mis-government at Berlin. In a few of the smaller states, such as Holland, the Swiss cantons, or Tuscany, the citizen was perhaps better governed than in France. But in general, life and property appear to have been less safe beyond the French border than within it. A small despotism, when it is bad, is more searching and interfering than a large one. The lords of France were tyrannous enough at times, but there were always courts of law and a royal court above them, and appeals for justice, although doubtful, might yet be attempted with a hope of success.
The intellectual leadership of France in Europe was very clearly marked under Louis XV. French was unquestionably the language of the well-born and the witty as it was the favorite language of the learned all over the Continent. The reputation of Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, and Rousseau, was distinctly European. Frederick of Prussia was glad to compose his academy at Berlin of second-rate French men of letters, and to make his own attempts at literary distinction in the French language. Smaller German princes modeled their courts on that of Versailles, and ruined themselves in palaces and gardens that were distant copies of those of that famous suburb. This spirit lasted well down to 1789, although the masterpieces of Lessing were already twenty years old, and those of Goethe and Schiller had begun to appear.
But while France was great, prosperous, and growing, and a model to her neighbors, she was deeply discontented. The condition of other countries was less good than hers, but the minds of the people of those countries had not risen above their condition. France had become conscious that her government did not correspond to her degree of civilization. The fact was emphasized in the national mind by the mediocrity of Louis XV. as a sovereign and by the utter incompetence of his well-meaning successor. In hands so feeble, the smallest excess of expenditure over income was important as a symptom of weakness, and for many years the deficit had in fact been increasing. The financial situation gave the nation a ground of attack against its government; it was not the cause of the Revolution, but its occasion. All the machinery of the state needed to be inspected, repaired, or renewed. The people entered into the task with good will, and the warmest interest. But they were entirely without experience. They knew and believed that old forms were to be respected as far as might be compatible with new conditions; they thought that the improvements needed were so obvious that nothing but fairness was required to recognize them. In their ignorance of the working of popular assemblies they supposed them to be inspired with wisdom and virtue beyond that of the individuals who compose them.
This is a mistake not likely to occur to any one who has experience of public meetings; but among the twelve hundred deputies to the Estates General, and among their constituents all over France, no one had much experience. A hundred and forty Notables, in 1787 and 1788, had deliberated on public questions; but their work had been done principally in committee, and their conclusions were without binding force on anybody, their functions being merely advisory. A good many delegates had been members of provincial assemblies or provincial estates; but these, in most of the provinces, had met but a few times, and their powers had been very limited. Such assemblies could do some good, and were carefully hedged from doing much harm. As training for membership in a body which was to discuss all sorts of questions and possess almost absolute power, experience among the Notables or in the provincial assemblies and estates, although valuable, was insufficient, and comparatively few of the members had even so much. Nor was foreign example of avail. No great scholar had published in French a study of the parliamentary history of England, nor were Frenchmen prepared to profit by English experience. Absolute right, according to his own ideas, was what every man expected to obtain.
A public body, although less wise than the best of its members, has one great advantage over a natural person, and experience has taught the nations that have made self-government successful to profit by this advantage. A public body may be so tied by its own rules that it can act but slowly. Thus the hot desire of to-day may be moderated by the cool reflection of to-morrow. To this end are arranged the three readings of bills and the various other dilatory devices of most parliaments and congresses. But when great constitutional changes are to be attempted, such measures as these are insufficient. Great changes should be introduced one by one, separately debated and fought over. Elections should be repeated during the process; much time should be allowed and many tedious forms observed. Under these circumstances the legislature may be no wiser than a common man, but how often would a common man do anything very foolish if he took several years to think about it?
The French assembly did not and could not take the necessary time and precautions. The country was seething and bubbling. The deputies were honest and patriotic. They were generally men of local reputation who had pushed themselves forward by political agitation and by activity in the elections. It is probable that the proportion of violent men among them was larger than in the nation, for they were chosen in a time of excitement, when violence of thought and language was likely to be popular; yet the assembly comprised also most of the truly distinguished men in France. What was wanting was not natural ability, but experience, calmness, and patience.
It is not the purpose of this book to follow them in their great undertaking. They accomplished for France much that was good; they prepared the way for much that was evil. Enough if the condition of the country before the great Revolution began has been here set down.
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