THE ASSEMBLY DEMOLISHES PRIVILEGE
In the preceding chapter, stress has been laid on the economic causes
that had led to the rooting up of the Bourbons from Versailles; in this
one the political significance of the event must be accentuated. In
the history of the Revolution it is always so; the political and the
economic factors are constantly fusing the one in the other.
In a sense, what had happened was that the poor people, the democracy,
let us say, of Paris, had now got the King in the city and under their
influence; not only the King, but also the assembly,--for it had
followed Louis and was installed in a building adjacent to the
Tuileries. And the assembly became quickly conscious of the fact that
Paris was now unduly weighing on the representation of France, and
under the lead of Mirabeau attempted to assert itself. This was the
first feeble step towards the assumption of power that culminated three
years later in the appointment of {90} the Committee of Public Safety.
The assembly assumed a middle position between the King on the one hand
and the mob on the other. It voted the change of Louis' title from
King of France, by the grace of God, to King of the French, by virtue
of the Constitution; it repressed disorder by proclaiming martial law;
but in the continuation of its constitutional debates it asserted
unequivocally its middle-class composition. A handful of democrats,
Robespierre, Grégoire, and less than a dozen others, pleaded the rights
of the many, but the assembly declined to listen to them and confirmed,
by a nearly unanimous vote, the recommendations of its committees for
drawing up the declaration of rights and constitution. The greater
part of French citizens were thereby declared to have only passive, not
active rights, and were excluded from the franchise. The qualification
for voting was placed at the paying of taxes equal to 3 days' labour,
and for being a deputy paying in taxes one marc of silver, about 54
francs.
The outcry against this legislation was so loud, and so widespread, as
to show what genuine political aspirations were to be found in the mass
of the Parisian population. The greater part of that population was
excluded {91} from voting. For to say nothing of the fact that about
120,000 inhabitants were classed as paupers, it so happened that the
capitation tax had been remitted for a term of years, leaving only the
well-to-do shopkeeper, some part of the professional, and the
capitalist class on the voters' list. Workmen of the faubourg St.
Antoine signed a petition to be allowed to pay taxes so as to obtain a
vote. Robespierre, a narrow, prudish, jealous, puritanical but able
lawyer from Arras, with journalists like Desmoulins and Loustallot,
inveighed against what they described as iniquitous class legislation
that would have excluded from the councils of the French nation Jean
Jacques Rousseau and even that _pauvre sans culotte_ Jesus Christ. But
the assembly was obdurate, and, in fact, remained middle class in its
point of view all through the Revolution except when irresistible
pressure was brought to bear against it.
The journalists, however, tended far more rapidly towards democracy
than the deputies. Journalism had sprung from the events of July. The
pamphlets of Camille Desmoulins had, by a natural metamorphosis, become
journals after that date. Their popularity did not, however, attain
that of Loustallot's {92} _Révolutions de Paris_, of which one number
is said to have reached a circulation of 200,000. Marat's _Ami du
peuple_, first published in September, soon became the most formidable
organ of opinion, and remained so until the rise of Hébert and his
atrocious _Père Duchesne_, at a later period. These papers and their
editors played a great part, and will often be noticed, but for the
present all that need be said is that their rise at this period is one
of the symptoms of the tremendous change that had come over the city of
Paris.
Paris before 1789 was, in a sense, mediaeval, provincial. Although the
largest city of France, its capital, the centre of thought and art, the
resort of many French and foreign visitors, the city was still in a way
a local centre, and isolated, unrelated with the rest of France. The
Court did not reside there, the administration, especially of justice,
was in large measure decentralized, and Paris was the abode of the
Parisian almost in the same narrow sense that the province was the
abode of the provincial. But now all this was rapidly changing. The
arrival of the Court and of the National Assembly suddenly made of
Paris the heart of France. The fever of revolution made that heart
beat faster, and a rapid {93} current of the best life blood of the
nation began circulating from the provinces to Paris and from Paris
back again to the provinces, bringing energy and a broadening of
sympathy with it. And if a glance is taken at Europe during the same
period, during the twenty-five years that follow the outbreak of the
French Revolution, the same process may be seen at work, but on a
larger scale. The old stagnation, the feudal congestion of Germany and
Italy, the immobility of the population, is broken through, the old
barriers are shaken down; great centralized states send official,
economic, and national action sweeping back and forth; great armies
tramp through the whole breadth of Europe; roads are built in all
directions to facilitate their movements, people begin to know one
another, to mix, to form larger conceptions of humanity.
The most potent of the agencies that effected this change in Paris was
the direct work of the deputies themselves. The move to the capital
had been attended by the formation of several well-marked currents of
opinion among the deputies. One of these had been a movement of
protest,--of protest and in part of timidity. The violence and
compulsion applied to the King, and all that the removal to Paris
implied {94} under such circumstances, had led to the withdrawal of
about 200 members of the assembly. Of these Mounier was the chief; he
returned to his province of Dauphiné and attempted to provoke
constitutional action to free the King from the domination of Paris.
His efforts were unsuccessful and he eventually had to leave the
country. This group, however, of which Mounier was the boldest member,
represented merely a negative force, dispersion; another, equally
large, stood for something more concrete.
The Club Breton began to develop very rapidly after the removal to
Paris. Its members, styling themselves _Amis de la Constitution_,
eventually settled themselves in quarters conveniently near the palace
at the Jacobin monastery. Here the club quickly became a debating
association, and the headquarters of a party. Early in 1790 it began
to develop a system of affiliating clubs all through France, and by
August of that year had planted 150 Jacobin colonies in direct
correspondence with the mother society. By 1794 this number had grown
to a thousand, and Jacobinism had become a creed. But in 1789 and 1790
the Jacobins were as yet moderate in their views; they were the men who
wanted to create a {95} constitution under the monarchy; they were
presided during that period by such men as the Duc de Noailles, the Duc
d'Aiguillon, and Mirabeau.
Mirabeau stood out in the assembly as the one constructive statesman,
the one man who might bridge the gulf that still separated the deputies
from the responsibility of power and the practice of government. If a
constitutional or parliamentary ministry were possible, if both King
and assembly would recognise in that the practical step towards
re-establishing order and making reform effective, Mirabeau was the
necessary leader of such a ministry. In the period that followed the
arrival of the King in Paris he amply demonstrated both his
qualifications and his defects for such a position. Urgent questions
pressed the assembly from all sides, and in debating them Mirabeau took
a lion's share.
Finance was most urgent of all. Necker could do no more. A
fundamental remedy for the needs of the exchequer must be found. On
the 7th of October the assembly had voted that the Crown lands should
become the property of the nation, in return for which a civil list
would be assigned to the King. Three days later Talleyrand-Périgord,
the sceptical {96} but able Bishop of Autun, proposed that the property
of the Church should be similarly dealt with. This was, in one sense,
as the previous step had been, the assertion of the national interest
over the special privilege; in another sense it was merely one step
more in those numerous secularizations of Church property which the
utilitarian and unreligious 18th century had carried out. It was
proposed to take over for the use of the State all the property of the
Church and in return to pay salaries to its priests. This represented
the acquisition of real property valued at the capital sum of
2,100,000,000 of francs; but as it only brought in capital value, not
cash in hand, it did not afford any immediate relief for the needs of
the Government. Then another expedient was tried, the appeal for
patriotic gifts, and that, though it resulted in a good deal of
patriotic emotionalism, did little to fill the yawning gulf of
bankruptcy. Finally in December, drastic measures were taken. Some of
the State's payments were provisionally suspended; the sale of Church
and other lands to the value of 400 millions was ordered; a loan of 80
millions was sanctioned; and 400 millions of _assignats_ were issued.
The assignat in this first form was an {97} inchoate mortgage bond. It
bore interest; it was guaranteed by the State; it purported to be
secured in a general way on the national property; and it was to
circulate as money and to be accepted in payment for the national
lands. If it had been strictly secured, on a close valuation, and by a
registered claim against specified property, it would doubtless have
given a permanent support to the finances of the Government. As it was
it proved, at first, a successful step, and it was only by gradual
stages and from unwise measures that it eventually failed. In April
1790, assignats were made legal tender; a few months later they ceased
to bear interest,--in other words, though still bonds on their face
they really became paper money. In September 1790, another 800
millions were issued, and in June another 600, and in small
denominations, and from that moment they began to sink in value
rapidly. Until the month of January 1791 they stood at over 90; in
July 1791 they were at 87; during 1792-93, years of the greatest
crisis, they fell fast; in 1795 they had almost lost value and during
the Directoire period the assignat becomes almost worthless, one
recorded transaction giving 3,080 francs in paper for 20 in gold.
{98} Behind the financial policy of the assembly was Mirabeau. He had
long been connected with the bankers and promoters of Paris, had
produced pamphlets to serve their financial projects. The bond issues
of the assembly, and the probable sales of large blocks of real
property, were of great interest to these groups, and Mirabeau was
their natural connecting link with the assembly. He was the strongest
advocate of the assignat measures, and whatever interest his friends
took in them, it need not be doubted that he believed them salutary and
wise.
The Court in its new perplexity, helplessly entangled in Paris, having
learnt just a little from experience, now turned to Mirabeau for
assistance. He secretly advised that the King should take the
initiative, and should put forward the policy of a moderate
constitution on the English model with a responsible ministry. If this
brought on a conflict, or if his situation otherwise made it advisable
to leave Paris, he should seek refuge in the well-disposed province of
Normandy, and not with the army on the German frontier. The advice of
Mirabeau was not unsound, and it implied as a step the formation of a
Mirabeau, Necker, La Fayette ministry.
{99} But Mirabeau was too much handicapped by his past. The Assembly
viewed him with rooted suspicion and dislike, and for this reason the
Court could not have chosen a worse agent. At the end of November the
assembly voted decrees excluding its members from the King's ministry,
thus barring Mirabeau's path, and thus accentuating once more its own
destructive attitude towards the Government. If it would not
participate, even indirectly, in the executive, it was partly because
it was at heart anxious to pull that executive down to earth.
Notwithstanding this check, Mirabeau continued to impose on the
assembly by his tremendous personality and by his statesmanship. He
struggled hard in the early part of 1790 to bring the deputies into
line on a question of foreign affairs that then arose,--the Nootka
Sound question. This involved all the traditions of France's foreign
policy and her system of alliances, the _pacte de famille_; but the
assembly saw in it merely a text on which to formulate the limitations
it intended to impose on the royal power in the matter of foreign
relations. At this moment the Court had renewed its clandestine
communications with Mirabeau, there was even one secret {100} interview
between him and the Queen, and large sums were given him as payment for
his advice. These sums he squandered profusely, thus advertising a
fact that was already more than suspected by the public, and rapidly
destroying his hold on opinion.
The winter was a much milder one than the preceding, food was less
scarce, money more plentiful owing to the issue of assignats, public
confidence greatly increased. But the tension between the King and the
assembly did not relax; there was no serious attempt on either side to
take advantage of the improved situation for effecting a
reconciliation. The assembly legislated against the members of the
aristocracy who, following the example of the Comte d'Artois, had
emigrated. Instead of helping the Government to enforce police
measures that would have made their residence in France secure, it
decreed the confiscation of their rents unless they returned within
three months. This was the first of a long series of laws aimed
against the émigrés.
Turning from one privileged order to the other, the assembly continued
the attacks on the fabric of the Church which had been begun by the
churchmen themselves in August and October 1789. The surrender of the
tithes, (101) 70,000,000 francs annually, had told most heavily against
the poor country priest and in favour of the landowner, who bore the
burden of his salary. The taking over of the Church lands by the State
had been most felt by the higher ecclesiastics and the monastic orders.
In February 1790 the latter were suppressed, and their members were
relieved of their vows by the assembly, which had now frankly embarked
on an anti-clerical policy. It would not recognise of itself that it
was less representative of France in the matter of religion than in any
other; for it was the intellectual and professional class only, to
which nearly all the deputies belonged, that was Voltairian or
anti-Catholic, the mass of the people of France were still attached to
their ancient faith. During the protracted debates that took place on
the Church question in the spring of 1790, the assembly attempted
several times to evade the question of the Catholic members as to
whether or not it would recognise the existence of the Church. At
last, with great reluctance, in June, the assembly voted that the
Catholic religion was that of France; but it followed this up by
passing what was known as the _Constitution civile du clergé_. This
decree provided that all priests should receive their {102} salaries
from the State; that the old dioceses of France should be broken up and
made to fit the new departmental division that had supplanted the old
provincial one; that the bishop should be created by the vote of the
electors of his department; and that the Pope should exercise no
authority over bishops or priests.
It needs but little acquaintance with history to realize how wilfully
subversive this plan was. The maintenance of the clergy by the tithes,
placed it outside the sphere of Government control, and helped to
maintain the ancient Roman internationalism; whereas the breaking off
of the Pope's direct connection with the bishops was Gallicanism of the
most pronounced character. Pope Pius VI unequivocally declared that
the carrying through of any such law in France would amount to a
schism, and transmitted that opinion to Louis XVI.
The falseness of the King's position was made intolerable by the
dilemma in which he was now placed. There was as yet no formal
Constitution, only a revolutionary situation in which the assembly had
usurped a large part of the King's prerogative. It was, however,
virtually accepted by both sides that under the {103} constitution when
passed, the King should have the power of veto, and by tacit accord
that arrangement had been from the first put into force. The assembly
voted decrees and sent them to the King for his signature. But in
reality the veto, even before its strict constitutional existence, was
little more than a sham. The situation was revolutionary. Both
parties were hostile, and almost without exception every signature of
the King was an act of moral compulsion. Hitherto, however, his
acceptance of the situation had not involved more than bowing before a
political storm; now the matter was graver, the question was of schism,
and therefore of heresy.
Louis was a faithful believer in the Roman theology, as well as in the
divine right of kings, and he struggled hard to withhold his signature
from the civil constitution of the clergy. And when, after some weeks,
he finally gave in, it was under protest. From that moment he adopted
the attitude of the man acting under restraint who ascribes no binding
force to acts and deeds resulting from compulsion.
The acceptance of the civil constitution of the clergy by the King did
not conclude the matter. Furious protests arose. In the south {104}
of France, bishops, priests and national guards for some weeks
threatened an outbreak of religious war. The assembly met this
disorder more firmly than that proceeding from economic and political
reasons. Towards the close of the year it imposed on the clergy an
oath of adhesion to the civil constitution, and this only four bishops
were found to accept. In January 1791 elections were ordered for
filling the places of those members of the Church who had refused the
oath, and presently France found herself with two bodies of clergy,
official and non-official, constitutional and anti-constitutional.
To close a chapter dealing so largely with the destructive efforts of
the middle-class assembly against the prerogatives of the King and of
the two privileged orders, it may be noted that on the 19th of June,
1790, on the proposal of members of the nobility, all titles were
abolished. Hereafter Mirabeau is Honoré Riquetti, the _ci-devant_
Comte de Mirabeau; and Camille Desmoulins, prompt, picturesque and
impertinent, logically applies the process to the King himself and
rechristens Louis, _Mr. Capet l'aîné_.
{105}