THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
209. When we meet the words "French Revolution," they are pretty sure to
call up before our mind's eye the guillotine and its hundreds of
victims, the storming of the Bastile, the Paris mob shouting the
Marseillaise hymn as they parade the streets with heads of unfortunate
"aristocrats" on their pikes. Every one knows something of this terrible
episode in French history. Indeed, it has made so deep an impression on
posterity that we sometimes forget that the Reign of Terror was _not_
the French Revolution. Mere disorder and bloodshed never helped mankind
along; and the Revolution must assuredly have produced some great and
lasting alteration in France and in Europe to deserve to be ranked--as
it properly is--with the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, as one
of the three most momentous changes of the last six hundred years. The
Reign of Terror was, in fact, only a sequel to the _real_ Revolution.
[Sidenote: The _Ancien Régime_.]
The French Revolution, in the truest sense of the term, was a great and
permanent reform, which did away with many absurd and vexatious laws and
customs, and with abuses of which the whole nation was heartily tired,
from the king down to the humblest peasant. Whenever a Frenchman, in the
eighteenth century, seriously considered the condition of his country,
most of the institutions in the midst of which he lived appeared to him
to be _abuses_, contrary to reason and humanity. These vicious
institutions,--relics of bygone times and outlived conditions,--which
the Revolution destroyed forever, are known by the general name _Ancien
Régime_, that is, "the old system." Whole volumes have been written
about the causes of the French Revolution. The real cause is, however,
easily stated; the old system was bad, and almost every one, both high
and low, had come to realize that it was bad, and consequently the
French did away with it and substituted a modern and more rational order
for the long-standing disorder.
[Sidenote: France not a well-organized state in the eighteenth century.]
Of the evils which the Revolution abolished, none was more important
than the confusion due to the fact that France was not in the eighteenth
century a well-organized, homogeneous state whose citizens all enjoyed
the same rights and privileges. A long line of kings had patched it
together, adding bit by bit as they could. By conquest and bargain, by
marrying heiresses, and through the extinction of the feudal dynasties,
the original restricted domains of Hugh Capet about Paris and Orleans
had been gradually increased by his descendants until, when Louis XVI
came to the throne in 1774, he found himself ruler of practically the
whole territory which makes up France to-day.
Some of the districts which the kings of France brought under their
sway, like Languedoc, Provence, Brittany, and Navarre, were considerable
states in themselves, each with its own laws, customs, and system of
government. When these provinces had come, at different times, into the
possession of the king of France, he had not changed their laws so as to
make them correspond with those of his other domains. He was satisfied
if his new provinces paid their due share of the taxes and treated his
officials with respect. In some cases the provinces retained their local
assemblies, and controlled, to a certain extent, their own affairs. The
provinces into which France was divided before the Revolution were not,
therefore, merely artificial divisions created for the purposes of
administrative convenience, like the modern French departments,[376] but
represented real historical differences.
[Sidenote: Various systems of law.]
While in a considerable portion of southern France the Roman law still
prevailed, in the central parts and in the west and north there were no
less than two hundred and eighty-five different local codes of law in
force; so that one who moved from his own to a neighboring town might
find a wholly unfamiliar legal system.
[Illustration: The Provinces of France in the Eighteenth Century,
showing Interior Customs Lines]
[Sidenote: Interior customs lines.]
Neither was France commercially a single state. The chief customs duties
were not collected upon goods as they entered French territory from a
foreign country; for the customs lines lay within France itself, so that
the central provinces about Paris were cut off from the outlying ones as
from a foreign land.[377] A merchant of Bordeaux sending goods to Paris
would have to see that the duties were paid on them as they passed the
customs line, and, conversely, a merchant of Paris would have to pay a
like duty on commodities sent to places without the line.
[Sidenote: Inequalities of taxation illustrated by the salt tax.]
The monstrous inequalities in levying one of the oldest and heaviest of
the taxes, i.e., the salt tax, still better illustrates the strange
disorder that existed in France in the eighteenth century. The
government raised this tax by monopolizing the sale of salt and then
charging a high price for it. There would have been nothing remarkable
in this had the same price been charged everywhere, but as it was, the
people in one town might be forced to pay thirty times as much as their
neighbors in an adjacent district. The accompanying map shows how France
was arbitrarily divided. To take a single example: at Dijon, a certain
amount of salt cost seven francs; a few miles to the east, on entering
Franche-Comté, one had to pay, for the same amount, twenty-five francs;
to the north, in Burgundy, fifty-eight francs; to the south, in the
region of the little salt tax, twenty-eight francs; while still farther
off, in Gex, there was no tax whatever. The government had to go to
great expense to guard the boundary lines between the various districts,
for there was every inducement to smugglers to carry salt from those
parts of the country where it was cheap into the land of the great salt
tax.
[Sidenote: The privileged classes.]
210. Besides these unfortunate local differences, there were class
differences which caused great discontent. All Frenchmen did not enjoy
the same rights as citizens. Two small but very important classes, the
nobility and the clergy, were treated differently by the state from the
rest of the people. They did not have to pay one of the heaviest of the
taxes, the notorious _taille_, and on one ground or another they escaped
other burdens which the rest of the citizens bore. For instance, they
were not required to serve in the militia or help build the roads.
[Illustration: Map showing the Amount paid in the Eighteenth Century for
Salt in Various Parts of France[378]]
[Sidenote: The Church.]
We have seen how great and powerful the mediæval Church was. In France,
as in other Catholic countries of Europe, it still retained in the
eighteenth century a considerable part of the power that it had
possessed in the thirteenth, and it still performed important public
functions. It took charge of education and of the relief of the sick and
the poor. It was very wealthy and is supposed to have owned one fifth of
all the land in France. The clergy still claimed, as Boniface VIII had
done, that their property, being dedicated to God, was not subject to
taxation. They consented, however, to help the king from time to time by
a "free gift," as they called it. The church still collected the tithes
from the people, and its vast possessions made it very independent.
Those who did not call themselves Roman Catholics were excluded from
some of the most important rights of citizenship. Since the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes no Protestant could be legally married or have
the births of his children registered, or make a legal will.
[Sidenote: The clergy.]
A great part of the enormous income of the church went into the pockets
of the higher clergy, the bishops, archbishops, and abbots. These were
appointed by the king,[379] often from among his courtiers, and they
paid but little attention to their duties as officers of the church and
were generally nothing but "great lords with a hundred thousand francs
income." While they amused themselves at Versailles, the real work was
performed--and well performed--by the lower clergy, who often received
scarcely enough to keep soul and body together. We shall see that, when
the Revolution began, the parish priests sided with the people instead
of with their ecclesiastical superiors.[380]
[Sidenote: The privileges of the nobility.]
The privileges of the nobles, like those of the clergy, had originated
in the mediæval conditions described in an earlier chapter.[381] A
detailed study of their rights would reveal many survivals of the
conditions which prevailed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when
the great majority of the people were serfs living upon the manors.
While serfdom had largely disappeared in France long before the
eighteenth century, and the peasants were generally free men who owned
or rented their land, the lords still enjoyed the right to collect a
variety of time-honored dues from the inhabitants living within the
limits of the former manors.
The privileges and dues enjoyed by the nobles varied greatly in
different parts of France. It was quite common for the noble landowner
to have a right to a certain portion of the peasants' crops;
occasionally he could collect a toll on sheep and cattle driven past his
house. In some cases the lord maintained, as he had done in the Middle
Ages, the only mill, wine press, or oven within a certain district, and
could require every one to make use of these and pay him a share of the
product. Even when a peasant owned his land, the neighboring lord
usually had the right to exact one fifth of its value every time it was
sold. The nobles, too, enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of the hunt.
The game which they preserved for their amusement often did great damage
to the crops of the peasants, who were forbidden to interfere with
hares, deer, pigeons, etc.
All these privileges were vestiges of the powers which the nobles had
enjoyed when they ruled their estates as feudal lords. Louis XIV had, as
we know, induced them to leave their domains and gather round him at
Versailles, where all who could afford it lived for at least part of the
year. The higher offices in the army were reserved for the nobles, as
well as the easiest and most lucrative places in the church and about
the king's person.[382]
[Sidenote: The third estate.]
211. Everybody who did not belong to either the clergy or nobility was
regarded as being of the _third estate_. The third estate was therefore
nothing more than the nation at large, which was made up in 1789 of
about twenty-five million souls. The privileged classes can scarcely
have counted altogether more than two hundred and seventy thousand
individuals. A great part of the third estate lived in the country and
tilled the soil. Most historians have been inclined to make out their
condition as very bad indeed. They were certainly oppressed by an
abominable system of taxation and were irritated by the dues which they
had to pay to the lords. They also suffered frequently from local
famines. Yet there is no doubt that the evils of their situation have
been greatly exaggerated. When Thomas Jefferson traveled through France
in 1787 he reports that the country people appeared to be comfortable
and that they had plenty to eat. Arthur Young, a famous English traveler
who has left us an admirable account of his journeys in France during
the years 1787-1789, found much prosperity and contentment, although he
gives, too, some forlorn pictures of destitution.
[Sidenote: Favorable situation of the peasant in France compared with
other countries.]
[Sidenote: Rapid increase of population in the eighteenth century.]
The latter have often been unduly emphasized by historical writers; for
it has commonly been thought that the Revolution was to be explained by
the misery and despair of the people who could tolerate the old system
no longer. If, however, instead of comparing the situation of the French
peasant under the old régime with that of an English or American farmer
to-day, we contrast his position with that of his fellow-peasant in
Prussia, Austria, or Italy, it will be clear that in France the
agricultural classes were really much better off than elsewhere on the
continent. In Prussia, for example, the peasants were still serfs: they
had to work three whole days in each week for their lord; they could not
marry or dispose of their land without his permission. Moreover, the
fact that the population of France had steadily increased from seventeen
million after the close of the wars of Louis XIV to about twenty-five
million at the opening of the Revolution, indicates that the general
condition of the people was improving rather than growing worse.
[Sidenote: Popular discontent, not the exceptionally miserable
condition of the French people, accounts for the Revolution.]
The real reason why France was the first among the European countries to
carry out a great reform and do away with the irritating survivals of
feudalism was not that the nation was miserable and oppressed above all
others, but that it was sufficiently free and enlightened to realize the
evils and absurdities of the old régime. Mere oppression and misery does
not account for a revolution, there must also be active _discontent_;
and of that there was a great abundance in France, as we shall see. The
French peasant no longer looked up to his lord as his ruler and
protector, but viewed him as a sort of legalized robber who demanded a
share of his precious harvest, whose officers awaited the farmer at the
crossing of the river to claim a toll, who would not let him sell his
produce when he wished, or permit him to protect his fields from the
ravages of the pigeons which it pleased the lord to keep.[383]
[Sidenote: France still a despotism in the eighteenth century.]
212. In the eighteenth century France was still the despotism that Louis
XIV had made it.[384] Louis XVI once described it very well in the
following words: "The sovereign authority resides exclusively in my
person. To me solely belongs the power of making the laws, and without
dependence or coöperation. The entire public order emanates from me, and
I am its supreme protector. My people are one with me. The rights and
interests of the nation are necessarily identical with mine and rest
solely in my hands." In short, the king still ruled "by the grace of
God," as Louis XIV had done. He needed to render account to no man for
his governmental acts; he was responsible to God alone. The following
illustrations will make clear the dangerous extent of the king's power.
[Sidenote: The king's control of the government funds.]
In the first place, it was he who levied each year the heaviest of the
taxes, the hated _taille_, from which the privileged classes were
exempted. This tax brought in about one sixth of the whole revenue of
the state. The amount collected was kept secret, and no report was made
to the nation of what was done with it or with any other part of the
king's income. Indeed, no distinction was made between the king's
private funds and the state treasury, whereas in England the monarch was
given a stated allowance. The king of France could issue as many drafts
payable to bearer as he wished; the royal officials must pay all such
orders and ask no questions. Louis XV is said to have spent no less than
seventy million dollars in this fashion in a single year.
[Sidenote: _Lettres de cachet._]
But the king not only controlled his subjects' purses; he had a terrible
authority over their persons as well. He could issue orders for the
arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of any one he pleased. Without trial
or formality of any sort, a person might be cast into a dungeon for an
indefinite period, until the king happened to remember him again or was
reminded of him by the poor man's friends. These notorious orders of
arrest were called _lettres de cachet_, i.e., sealed letters. They were
not difficult to obtain for any one who had influence with the king or
his favorites, and they furnished a particularly easy and efficacious
way of disposing of an enemy. These arbitrary orders lead one to
appreciate the importance of the provision of Magna Carta which
establishes that "no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned except by the
lawful sentence of his peers and in accordance with the law of the
land." Some of the most distinguished men of the time were shut up by
the king's order, often on account of books or pamphlets written by them
which displeased the king or those about him. The distinguished
statesman, Mirabeau, was imprisoned several times through _lettres de
cachet_ obtained by his father as a means of checking his reckless
dissipation.[385]
[Sidenote: Limitations placed upon the power of the French king.]
213. Yet, notwithstanding the seemingly unlimited powers of the French
king, and in spite of the fact that France had no written constitution
and no legislative body to which the nation sent representatives, the
monarch was by no means absolutely free to do just as he pleased. He had
not the time nor inclination to carry on personally the government of
twenty-five million subjects, and he necessarily and willingly left much
of the work to his ministers and the numerous public officials, who were
bound to obey the laws and regulations established for their control and
guidance.
[Sidenote: The _parlements_ and their protests.]
Next to the king's council the most important governmental bodies were
the higher courts of law, the _parlements_. These resembled the English
Parliament in almost nothing but name. The French _parlements_--of which
the most important one was at Paris and a dozen more were scattered
about the provinces--did not, however, confine themselves strictly to
the business of trying lawsuits. They claimed, and quite properly, that
when the king decided to make a new law he must send it to them to be
registered, else they would have no means of knowing just what the law
was of which they were to be the guardians. Now, although they
acknowledged that the right to make the laws belonged to the monarch,
they nevertheless often sent a "protest" to the king instead of
registering a law of which they disapproved. They would urge that the
ministers had abused His Majesty's confidence. They would see, too, that
their protest was printed and sold on the streets at a penny or two a
copy, so that people should get the idea that the _parlement_ was
defending the nation against the oppressive measures of the king's
ministers.
When the king received one of these protests two alternatives were open
to him. He might recall the distasteful decree altogether or modify it
so as to suit the court; or he could summon the _parlement_ before him
and in a solemn session (called a _lit de justice_) command it with his
own mouth to register the law in its books. The _parlement_ would then
reluctantly obey, but as the Revolution approached it began to claim
that a decree registered against its will was not valid.
[Sidenote: The _parlements_ help to prepare the way for the
Revolution.]
Struggles between the _parlements_ and the ministers were very frequent
in the eighteenth century. They prepared the way for the Revolution,
first, by bringing important questions to the attention of the people;
for there were no newspapers and no parliamentary or congressional
debates to enable the public to understand the policy of the government.
Secondly, the _parlements_ not only frankly criticised the proposed
measures of the king and his ministers, but they familiarized the nation
with the idea that the king was not really at liberty to alter what they
called "the fundamental laws" of the state. By this they meant that
there was an unwritten constitution, of which they were the guardians
and which limited the king's power. In this way they promoted the
growing discontent with a government which was carried on in secret, and
which left the nation at the mercy of the men in whom the king might for
the moment repose confidence.
[Sidenote: Public opinion.]
It is a great mistake to suppose that public opinion did not exercise a
powerful check upon the king, even under the autocratic old régime. It
was, as one of Louis XVI's ministers declared, "an invisible power
which, without treasury, guards, or an army, ruled Paris and the
court,--yes, the very palace of the king." The latter half of the
eighteenth century was a period of outspoken and acrid criticism of the
whole existing social and governmental system. Reformers, among whom
many of the king's ministers were counted, loudly and eloquently
discussed the numerous abuses and the vicious character of the
government, which gradually came to seem just as bad to the people of
that day as it would to us now.
[Sidenote: Discussion of public questions.]
Although there were no daily newspapers to discuss public questions,
large numbers of pamphlets were written and circulated by individuals
whenever there was an important crisis, and they answered much the same
purpose as the editorials in a modern newspaper. These pamphlets and the
books of the time sometimes treated the government, the clergy, or the
Catholic religion, with such open contempt, that the king, the clergy,
or the courts felt it necessary to prevent their circulation. The
_parlement_ of Paris now and then ordered some offensive writing to be
burned by the common hangman. Several distinguished writers were even
imprisoned for expressing themselves too freely, and some booksellers
and printers banished. But the attempted suppression of free discussion
seemed an outrage to the more thoughtful among the public, and rather
promoted than prevented the consideration of the weaknesses of the
church and of the king's government.
[Illustration: Voltaire]
[Sidenote: Voltaire, 1694-1778.]
214. By far the most conspicuous and important reformer of the
eighteenth century was Voltaire (1694-1778), who was born twenty years
before Louis XIV died, and yet lived to see Louis XVI mount the throne.
"When the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed
in men's minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of
the great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival
of Learning or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of
this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious
era" (Morley). To understand Voltaire and the secret of his fame would
be to understand France before the Revolution. His mission was to exalt
and popularize reason; and since a great part of the institutions of his
day were not based upon reason, but upon mere tradition, and were
utterly opposed to common sense, "the touch of reason was fatal to the
whole structure, which instantly began to crumble."
[Sidenote: Voltaire's wide influence and popularity.]
Voltaire had little respect for the past which had bequeathed to France
her disorderly government and, above all, her church. His keen eye was
continually discovering some new absurdity in the existing order, which,
with incomparable wit and literary skill, he would expose to his eager
readers. He was interested in almost everything; he wrote histories,
dramas, philosophic treatises, romances, epics, and innumerable letters
to his innumerable admirers. He was a sort of intellectual arbiter of
Europe, such as Petrarch and Erasmus had been. The vast range of his
writings enabled him to bring his bold questionings to the attention of
all sorts and conditions of men,--not only to the general reader, but
even to the careless playgoer.
[Sidenote: Voltaire's attack upon the church.]
While Voltaire was successfully inculcating free criticism in general,
he led in a relentless attack upon the most venerable, probably the most
powerful, institution in France, the Roman Catholic church. The absolute
power of the king did not greatly trouble him, but the church, with, as
he deemed, its deep-seated opposition to a free exercise of reason and
its hostility to reform, seemed to him fatally to block all human
progress. He was wont to close his letters with the exhortation, "Crush
the infamous thing." The church, as it fully realized, had never
encountered a more deadly enemy. Not only was Voltaire supremely
skillful in his varied methods of attack, but there were thousands of
both the thoughtful and the thoughtless ready to applaud him; for many
had reached the same conclusions, although they might not be able to
express their thoughts so persuasively as he. Voltaire repudiated the
beliefs of the Protestant churches as well as of the Roman church. He
was, however, no atheist, as his enemies--and they have been many and
bitter--have so often asserted. He believed in God, and at his country
home near Geneva he dedicated a temple to Him. Like many of his
contemporaries he was a deist, and held that God had revealed Himself in
nature and in our hearts, not in Bible or church.
Were there space at command a great many good things and plenty of bad
ones might be told of this extraordinary man. He was often superficial
in his judgments, and sometimes jumped to unwarranted conclusions. He
saw only the evil in the church, and seemed incapable of understanding
all that it had done for mankind during the bygone ages. He maliciously
attributed to evil motives teachings which were accepted by the best and
loftiest of men. He bitterly ridiculed even the holiest and purest
aspirations, along with the alleged deceptions of the Jesuits and the
quarrels of the theologians. He could, however, fight bravely against
wrong and oppression.[386] The abuses against which he fought were in
large part abolished by the Revolution. It is extremely unfair to notice
only his mistakes and exaggerations, as many writers, both Catholic and
Protestant, have done, for he certainly did more than any one else to
prepare the way for the great and permanent reform of the church, as a
political and social institution, in 1789-1790.
[Sidenote: Rousseau, 1712-1778.]
Next to Voltaire the writer who did most to cultivate discontent was
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). His famous little treatise, _The
Social Contract_, takes up the great question, By what right does one
man rule over others? The book opens with the words: "Man is born free
and yet is now everywhere in chains. One man believes himself the master
of others and yet is after all more of a slave than they. How did this
change come about? I do not know. What can render it legitimate? I
believe that I can answer that question." It is, Rousseau declares, the
will of the people that renders government legitimate. The real
sovereign is the people. Although they may appoint a single person, a
king, to manage the government for them, they should make the laws,
since it is they who must obey them. We shall find that the first French
constitution accepts Rousseau's doctrine and defines law as "the
expression of the general will,"--not the will of a king reigning by the
grace of God.
[Sidenote: Montesquieu.]
Montesquieu, the most profound of the political writers of the
eighteenth century, did his part in opening the eyes of thoughtful
Frenchmen to the disadvantages of their government by his eulogy of the
limited monarchy of England. He pointed out that the freedom which
Englishmen enjoyed was due to the fact that the three powers of
government--legislative, executive, and judicial--were not as in France
in the same hands. Parliament made the laws, the king executed them, and
the courts, independent of both, saw that they were observed. He
believed that the English would lose their liberties so soon as these
powers fell under the control of one person or body of persons. This
principle of "the separation of powers" is now recognized in many modern
governments, notably in that of the United States.
[Sidenote: The new science of political economy.]
215. About the middle of the eighteenth century the science of political
economy was born. Scholars began to investigate far more thoroughly than
ever before the sources and distribution of the wealth of the nation.
The unjust system of taxation, which tended to exempt the richer classes
from their just share of the public burdens; the wasteful and irritating
methods of collecting the taxes; the interior customs lines, preventing
the easy passage of goods from one part of France to another; the
extravagance of the king's household; the pensions granted to
undeserving persons; every evil of the bungling, iniquitous old régime
was brought under the scrutiny of the new thinkers, who tested the
existing system by the light of reason and the welfare of the great mass
of the people.
[Sidenote: Economists argue against government restrictions on trade and
manufacture.]
The economists wrote treatises on taxation, scattered pamphlets about,
and conducted a magazine or two. They not only brought the existing
economic evils home to the intelligent reader, but suggested remedies
for them.
The French government had been in the habit of regulating well-nigh
everything. In order that the goods that were produced in France might
find a ready sale abroad, the government fixed the quality and width of
the cloth which might be manufactured and the character of the dyes
which should be used.[387] The king's ministers kept a constant eye upon
the dealers in grain and breadstuffs, forbidding the storing up of these
products or their sale outside a market. In this way they had hoped to
prevent speculators from accumulating grain in times of scarcity in
order to sell it at a high rate.
It was now pointed out that these government restrictions produced some
very bad results. They failed to prevent famine, and in the case of
industry they discouraged new inventions and the adoption of better
methods. The economists claimed that it would be far better to leave the
manufacturer to carry on his business in his own way. They urged the
king to adopt the motto, _laissez faire_, "Let things alone," if he
would see his realms prosper.[388]
[Accession of Louis XVI.]
216. In 1774 the old king, Louis XV, died after a long and disgraceful
reign. His unsuccessful wars had brought France to the verge of
bankruptcy, and his ministers had been unable to meet the obligations of
the government. The taxes were already so oppressive as to arouse great
discontent, and yet the government was running behind seventy million
dollars a year. His grandson and successor, Louis XVI (1774-1793), was a
young man of excellent intentions. He was only twenty, and his wife,
the beautiful Marie Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa, was still
younger. The new king almost immediately summoned Turgot, the ablest of
the economists, and placed him in the most important of the government
offices, that of controller general.
[Sidenote: Turgot controller general, 1774-1776.]
Turgot was an experienced government official as well as a scholar. For
thirteen years he had been the king's representative in Limoges, one of
the least prosperous portions of France. There he had had ample
opportunity to see the vices of the prevailing system of taxation. He
had made every effort to induce the government to better its methods,
and had tried to familiarize the people with the principles of political
economy. Consequently, when he was put in charge of the nation's
finances, it seemed as if he and the conscientious young king might find
some remedy for the long-standing abuses.
[Sidenote: Turgot advocates economy.]
The first and most natural measure was economy, for only in that way
could the government be saved from bankruptcy, and the burden of
taxation be lightened. Turgot felt that the vast amount spent in
maintaining the luxury of the royal court at Versailles should be
reduced. The establishments of the king, the queen, and the princes of
the blood royal cost the state annually toward twelve million dollars.
Then the French king had long been accustomed to grant "pensions" in a
reckless manner to his courtiers, and this required nearly twelve
million dollars more. Any attempt, however, to reduce this amount would
arouse the immediate opposition of the courtiers, and it was the
courtiers who really governed France. They had every opportunity to
influence the king's mind against a man whose economies they disliked.
They were constantly about the monarch from the moment when he awoke in
the morning until he went to bed at night; therefore they had an obvious
advantage over the controller general, who only saw him in business
hours.[389]
Although the privileged class so stoutly opposed Turgot's reforms that
he did not succeed in abolishing the abuses himself,[390] he did a great
deal to forward their destruction not many years after his retirement.
Immediately after coming into power he removed a great part of the
restrictions on the grain trade. He prefaced the edict with a very frank
denunciation of the government's traditional policy of preventing
persons from buying and selling their grain when and where they wished.
He showed that this did not obviate famines, as the government hoped
that it might, and that it caused great loss and hardship. If the
government would only let matters alone the grain would always go to
those provinces where it was most needed, for there it would bring the
best price. Turgot seized this and every similar opportunity to impress
important economic truths upon the minds of the people.[391]
[Sidenote: Turgot's position.]
An Italian economist, when he heard of Turgot's appointment, wrote to a
friend in France as follows: "So Turgot is controller general! He will
not remain in office long enough to carry out his plans. He will punish
some scoundrels; he will bluster about and lose his temper; he will be
anxious to do good, but will run against obstacles and rogues at every
turn. Public credit will fall; he will be detested; it will be said that
he is not fitted for his task. Enthusiasm will cool; he will retire or
be sent off, and we shall have a new proof of the mistake of filling a
position like his in a monarchy like yours with an upright man and a
philosopher."
[Sidenote: Turgot dismissed, May 1776.]
The Italian could not have made a more accurate statement of the case
had he waited until after the dismissal of Turgot, which took place in
May, 1776, much to the satisfaction of the court. The king, although
upright and well-intentioned, was not fond of the governmental duties
to which Turgot was always calling his attention. It was much the
easiest way to let things go along in the old way; for reforms not only
required much extra work, but they also forced him to refuse the
customary favors to those around him. The discontent of his young queen
or of an intimate companion outweighed the woes of the distant peasant.
[Sidenote: Necker succeeds Turgot.]
[Sidenote: Necker's financial report.]
217. Necker, who after a brief interval succeeded Turgot, contributed to
the progress of the coming revolution in two ways. He borrowed vast sums
of money in order to carry on the war which France, as the ally of the
United States, had undertaken against England. This greatly embarrassed
the treasury later and helped to produce the financial crisis which was
the immediate cause of the Revolution. Secondly, he gave the nation its
first opportunity of learning what was done with the public funds, by
presenting to the king (February, 1781) a _report_ on the financial
condition of the kingdom; this was publicly printed and eagerly read.
There the people could see for the first time how much the _taille_ and
the salt tax actually took from them, and how much the king spent on
himself and his favorites.[392]
[Sidenote: Calonne, controller general, 1783-1787.]
[Sidenote: Calonne informs the king that France is on the verge of
bankruptcy, August, 1786.]
Necker was soon followed by Calonne, who may be said to have
precipitated the momentous reform which constitutes the French
Revolution. He was very popular at first with king and courtiers, for he
spent the public funds far more recklessly than his predecessors. But,
naturally, he soon found himself in a position where he could obtain no
more money. The _parlements_ would consent to no more loans in a period
of peace, and the taxes were as high as it was deemed possible to make
them. At last Calonne, finding himself desperately put to it, informed
the astonished king that the state was on the verge of bankruptcy and
that in order to save it a radical reformation of the whole public order
was necessary. This report of Calonne's may be taken as the beginning
of the French Revolution, for it was the first of the series of events
that led to the calling of a representative assembly which abolished the
old régime and gave France a written constitution.
General Reading.--For general conditions in France before the
Revolution, LOWELL, _Eve of the French Revolution_ (Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., $2.00). MACLEHOSE, _The Last Days of the French
Monarchy_ (The Macmillan Company, $2.25). DE TOCQUEVILLE, _State of
Society in France before the Revolution of 1789_ (John Murray,
$3.00), a very remarkable work. TAINE, _The Ancient Régime_ (Henry
Holt & Co., $2.50) contains excellent chapters on the life at the
king's court and upon the literature of the period. ARTHUR YOUNG,
_Travels in France in 1787-1789_ (The Macmillan Company, $1.00),
very interesting and valuable. For Turgot's reforms, STEPHENS,
_Life and Writings of Turgot_ (Longmans, Green & Co., $4.50),
containing translations from Turgot's writings. MONTESQUIEU, _The
Spirit of Laws_ (The Macmillan Company, 2 vols., $2.00). ROUSSEAU,
_The Social Contract_ (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25, or Charles
Scribner's Sons, $1.00). _Translations and Reprints,_ Vol. VI, No.
1, gives short extracts from some of the most noted writers of the
eighteenth century. In Vol. V, No. 2, of the same series, may be
found a "Protest of the Cour des Aides," one of the higher courts
of France, issued in 1775, which casts a great deal of light upon
the evils of the old régime. John Morley has written a number of
works upon France before the Revolution: _Voltaire, Rousseau_, 2
vols., _Diderot and the Encyclopædists_, 2 vols. (The Macmillan
Company, $1.50 a volume).