he was an admirer of the British model; but the king would not hear of
going to school to the people whom he had so recently defeated, and
who owed their disgrace as much to political as to military
incapacity. Consequently Necker repressed his zeal in politics, and
was not eager for the States-General. They would never have been
wanted, he said, if he had been called to succeed Calonne, and had had
the managing of the Notables. He was glad now that they should serve
to bring the entire property of the country, on equal terms, under the
tax-gatherer, and if that could have been effected at once, by an
overwhelming pressure of public feeling, his practical spirit would
not have hungered for further changes.
The _Third_ Estate was _Invoked_ for a _great fiscal_ operation. If it
brought the upper class to the necessary sense of their own
obligations and the national claims, that was enough for the keeper of
the purse, and he would have deprecated the intrusion of other
formidable and absorbing objects, detrimental to his own. Beyond that
was danger, but the course was clear towards obtaining from the
greater assembly what he would have extracted from the less if he had
held office in 1787. That is the secret of Necker's unforeseen
weakness in the midst of so much power, and of his sterility when the
crisis broke and it was discovered that the force which had been
calculated equal to the carrying of a modest and obvious reform was as
the rush of Niagara, and that France was in the resistless rapids.
Everything depended on the manner in which the government decided that
the States should be composed, elected, and conducted. To pronounce on
this, Necker caused the Notables to be convoked again, exposed the
problem, and desired their opinion. The nobles had been lately active
on the side of liberal reforms, and it seemed possible that their
reply might relieve him of a dreaded responsibility and prevent a
conflict. The Notables gave their advice. They resolved that the
Commons should be elected, virtually, by universal suffrage without
conditions of eligibility; that the parish priests should be electors
and eligible; that the lesser class of nobles should be represented
like the greater. They extended the franchise to the unlettered
multitude, because the danger which they apprehended came from the
middle class, not from the lower. But they voted, by three to one,
that each order should be equal in numbers. The Count of Provence, the
king's next brother, went with the minority, and voted that the
deputies of the Commons should be as numerous as those of the two
other orders together. This became the burning question. If the
Commons did not predominate, there was no security that the other
orders would give way. On the other hand, by the important innovation
of admitting the parish clergy, and those whom we should call
provincial gentry, a great concession was made to the popular element.
The antagonism between the two branches of the clergy, and between the
two branches of the _noblesse_, was greater than that between the
inferior portion of each and the Third Estate, and promised a
contingent to the liberal cause. It turned out, at the proper time,
that the two strongest leaders of the democracy were, one, an ancient
noble; the other, a canon of the cathedral of Chartres. The Notables
concluded their acceptable labours on December 12. On the 5th the
magistrates who formed the parliament of Paris, after solemnly
enumerating the great constitutional principles, entreated the king to
establish them as the basis of all future legislation. The position of
the government was immensely simplified. The walls of the city had
fallen, and it was doubtful where any serious resistance would come
from.
Meantime, the agitation in the provinces, and the explosion of pent-up
feeling that followed the unlicensed printing of political tracts,
showed that public opinion moved faster than that of the two great
conservative bodies. It became urgent that the Government should come
to an early and resolute decision, and should occupy ground that might
be held against the surging democracy. Necker judged that the position
would be impregnable if he stood upon the lines drawn by the Notables,
and he decided that the Commons should be equal to either order
singly, and not jointly to the two. In consultation with a
statesmanlike prelate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, he drew up and
printed a report, refusing the desired increase. But as he sat
anxiously watching the winds and the tide, he began to doubt; and when
letters came, warning him that the nobles would be butchered if the
decision went in their favour, he took alarm. He said to his friends,
"If we do not multiply the Commons by two, they will multiply
themselves by ten." When the Archbishop saw him again at Christmas,
Necker assured him that the Government was no longer strong enough to
resist the popular demand. But he was also determined that the three
houses should vote separately, that the Commons should enjoy no
advantage from their numbers in any discussion where privilege was at
stake, or the interest of classes was not identical. He hoped that the
nobles would submit to equal taxation of their own accord, and that he
would stand between them and any exorbitant claim of equal political
power.
On December 27 Necker's scheme was adopted by the Council. There was
some division of opinion; but the king overruled it, and the queen,
who was present, showed, without speaking, that she was there to
support the measure. By this momentous act Lewis XVI., without being
conscious of its significance, went over to the democracy. He said, in
plain terms, to the French people: "Afford me the aid I require, so
far as we have a common interest, and for that definite and
appropriated assistance you shall have a princely reward. For you
shall at once have a constitution of your own making, which shall
limit the power of the Crown, leaving untouched the power and the
dignity and the property of the upper classes, beyond what is
involved in an equal share of taxation." But in effect he said; "Let
us combine to deprive the aristocracy of those privileges which are
injurious to the Crown, whilst we retain those which are offensive
only to the people." It was a tacit compact, of which the terms and
limits were not defined; and where one thought of immunities, the
other was thinking of oppression. The organisation of society required
to be altered and remodelled from end to end to sustain a constitution
founded on the principle of liberty. It was no arduous problem to
adjust relations between the people and the king. The deeper question
was between the people and the aristocracy. Behind a political reform
there was a social revolution, for the only liberty that could avail
was liberty founded on equality. Malouet, who was at this moment
Necker's best adviser, said to him: "You have made the Commons equal
in influence to the other orders. Another revolution has to follow,
and it is for you to accomplish it--the levelling of onerous
privilege." Necker had no ambition of the kind, and he distinctly
guarded privilege in all matters but taxation.
The resolution of the king in Council was received with loud applause;
and the public believed that everything they had demanded was now
obtained, or was at least within reach. The doubling of the Commons
was illusory if they were to have no opportunity of making their
numbers tell. The Count of Provence, afterwards Lewis XVIII., had
expressly argued that the old States-General were useless because the
Third Estate was not suffered to prevail in them. Therefore he urged
that the three orders should deliberate and vote as one, and that the
Commons should possess the majority. It was universally felt that this
was the real meaning of the double representation, and that there was
a logic in it which could not be resisted. The actual power vested in
the Commons by the great concession exceeded their literal and legal
power, and it was accepted and employed accordingly.
The mode of election was regulated on January 24. There were to be
three hundred deputies for the clergy, three hundred for the nobles,
six hundred for the Commons. There were to be no restrictions and no
exclusions; but whereas the greater personages voted directly, the
vote of the lower classes was indirect; and the rule for the Commons
was that one hundred primary voters chose an elector. Besides the
deputy, there was the deputy's deputy, held in reserve, ready in case
of vacancy to take his place. It was on this peculiar device of
eventual representatives that the Commons relied, if their numbers had
not been doubled. They would have called up their substitutes. The
rights and charters of the several provinces were superseded, and all
were placed on the same level.
A more sincere and genuine election has never been held. And on the
whole it was orderly. The clergy were uneasy, and the nobles more
openly alarmed. But the country in general had confidence in what was
coming; and some of the most liberal and advanced and outspoken
manifestations proceeded from aristocratic and ecclesiastical
constituencies. On February 9 the Venetian envoy reports that the
clergy and nobles are ready to accept the principle of equality in
taxation. The elections were going on for more than two months, from
February to the beginning of May.
In accordance with ancient custom, when a deputy was a plenipotentiary
more than a representative, it was ordained that the preliminary of
every election was the drawing up of instructions. Every corner of
France was swept and searched for its ideas. The village gave them to
its elector, and they were compared and consolidated by the electors
in the process of choosing their member. These instructions, the
characteristic bequest to its successors of a society at the point of
death, were often the work of conspicuous public men, such as Malouet,
Lanjuinais, Dupont, the friend of Turgot and originator of the
commercial treaty of 1786; and one paper, drawn up by Sieyes, was
circulated all over France by the duke of Orleans.
In this way, by the lead which was taken by eminent and experienced
men, there is an appearance of unanimity. All France desired the
essential institutions of limited monarchy, in the shape of
representation and the division of power, and foreshadowed the charter
of 1814. There is scarcely a trace of the spirit of departing
absolutism; there is not a sign of the coming republic. It is agreed
that precedent is dead, and the world just going to begin. There are
no clear views on certain grave matters of detail, on an Upper House,
Church and State, and primary education. Free schools, progressive
taxation, the extinction of slavery, of poverty, of ignorance, are
among the things advised. The privileged orders are prepared for a
vast surrender in regard to taxes, and nobody seems to associate the
right of being represented in future parliaments with the possession
of property. On nine-tenths of all that is material to a constitution
there is a general agreement. The one broad division is that the
Commons wish that the States-General shall form a single united
Assembly, and the other orders wish for three. But on this supreme
issue the Commons are all agreed, and the others are not. An ominous
rift appears, and we already perceive the minority of nobles and
priests, who, in the hour of conflict, were to rule the fate of
European society. From all these papers, the mandate of united France,
it was the function of true statesmanship to distil the essence of a
sufficient freedom.
These instructions were intended to be imperative. Nine years before,
Burke, when he retired from the contest at Bristol, had defined the
constitutional doctrine on constituency and member; and Charles Sumner
said that he legislated when he made that speech. But the ancient
view, on which instructions are founded, made the deputy the agent of
the deputing power, and much French history turns on it. At first the
danger was unfelt; for the instructions were often compiled by the
deputy himself, who was to execute them. They were a pledge even more
than an order.
The nation had responded to the royal appeal, and there was agreement
between the offer and the demand. The upper classes had opposed and
resisted the Crown; the people were eager to support it, and it was
expected that the first steps would be taken together. The comparative
moderation and serenity of the Instructions disguised the unappeasable
conflict of opinion and the furious passion that raged below.
The very cream of the upper and middle class were elected; and the
Court, in its prosperous complacency, abandoned to their wisdom the
task of creating the new institutions and permanently settling the
financial trouble. It persisted in non-interference, and had no policy
but expectation. The initiative passed to every private member. The
members consisted of new men, without connection or party
organisation. They wanted time to feel their way, and missed a
moderator and a guide. The governing power ceased, for the moment, to
serve the supreme purpose of government; and monarchy transformed
itself into anarchy to see what would come of it, and to avoid
committing itself on either side against the class by which it was
always surrounded or the class which seemed ready with its alliance.
The Government renounced the advantage which the elections and the
temperate instructions gave them; and in the hope that the elect would
be at least as reasonable as the electors, they threw away their
greatest opportunity. There was a disposition to underrate dangers
that were not on the surface. Even Mirabeau, who, if not a deep
thinker, was a keen observer, imagined that the entire mission of the
States-General might have been accomplished in a week. Few men saw the
ambiguity hidden in the term Privilege, and the immense difference
that divided fiscal change from social change. In attacking feudalism,
which was the survival of barbarism, the middle class designed to
overthrow the condition of society which gave power as well as
property to a favoured minority. The assault on the restricted
distribution of power involved an assault on the concentration of
wealth. The connection of the two ideas is the secret motive of the
Revolution. At that time the law by which power follows property,
which has been called the most important discovery made by man since
the invention of printing, was not clearly known. But the underground
forces at work were recognised by the intelligent conservatives, and
they were assuming the defensive, in preparation for the hour when
they would be deserted by the king. It was therefore impossible that
the object for which the States-General were summoned should be
attained while they were divided into three. Either they must be
dissolved, or the thing which the middle-class deputies could not
accomplish by use of forms would be attempted by the lower class,
their masters and employers, by use of force.
Before the meeting Malouet once more approached the minister with
weighty counsel. He said: "You now know the wishes of France; you know
the instructions, you do not know the deputies. Do not leave all
things to the arbitrament of the unknown. Convert at once the demands
of the people into a constitution, and give them force of law. Act
while you have unfettered power of action. Act while your action will
be hailed as the most magnificent concession ever granted by a monarch
to a loyal and expectant nation. To-day you are supreme and safe. It
may be too late to-morrow."
In particular, Malouet advised that the Government should regulate the
verification of powers, leaving only contested returns to the judgment
of the representatives. Necker abided by his meditated neutrality, and
preferred that the problem should work itself out with entire freedom.
He would not take sides lest he should offend one party without being
sure of the other, and forfeit his chance of becoming the accepted
arbitrator. Whilst, by deciding nothing, he kept the enemy at bay, the
upper classes might yet reach the wise conclusion that, in the midst
of so much peril to royalty and to themselves, it was time to place
the interest of the state before their own, and to accept the duties
and the burdens of undistinguished men.
Neither party could yield. The Commons could not fail to see that time
was on their side, and that, by compelling the other orders to merge
with them, they secured the downfall of privilege and played the game
of the court. The two other orders were, by the imperative mandate of
many constituencies, prohibited from voting in common. Their
resistance was legitimate, and could only be overcome by the
intervention either of the Crown or the people. Their policy might
have been justified if they had at once made their surrender, and had
accomplished with deliberation in May what had to be done with tumult
in August. With these problems and these perils before them, the
States-General met on that memorable 5th of May. Necker, preferring
the abode of financiers, wished them to meet at Paris; and four or
five other places were proposed. At last the king, breaking silence,
said that it could be only at Versailles, on account of his hunting.
At the time he saw no cause for alarm in the proximity of the capital.
Since then, the disturbances in one or two places, and the open
language of some of the electors, had begun to make him swerve.
On the opening day the queen was received with offensive silence; but
she acknowledged a belated cheer with such evident gladness and with
such stately grace that applause followed her. The popular groups of
deputies were cheered as they passed--all but the Commons of Provence,
for they had Mirabeau among them. He alone was hissed. Two ladies who
watched the procession from the same window were the daughter of
Necker and the wife of the Foreign Minister, Montmorin. One thought
with admiration that she was a witness of the greatest scene in modern
history; and the other was sad with evil forebodings. Both were right;
but the feeling of confidence and enthusiasm pervaded the crowd. Near
relations of my own were at Rome in 1846, during the excitement at the
reforms of the new Pope, who, at that moment, was the most popular
sovereign in Europe. They asked an Italian lady who was with them why
all the demonstrations only made her more melancholy. She answered:
"Because I was at Versailles in 1789."
Barentin, the minister who had opposed Necker's plans and viewed the
States-General with apprehension and disgust, spoke after the king. He
was a French judge, with no heart for any form of government but the
ancient one enjoyed by France. Nevertheless he admitted that joint
deliberation was the reasonable solution. He added that it could only
be adopted by common consent; and he urged the two orders to sacrifice
their right of exemption. Necker perplexed his hearers by receding
from the ground which the Chancellor had taken. He assured the two
orders that they need not apprehend absorption in the third if, while
voting separately, they executed the promised surrender. He spoke as
their protector, on the condition that they submitted to the common
law, and paid their taxes in arithmetical proportion. He implied, but
did not say, that what they refused to the Crown would be taken by the
people. In his financial statement he under-estimated the deficit, and
he said nothing of the Constitution. The great day ended badly. The
deputies were directed to hand in their returns to the Master of
Ceremonies, an official of whom we shall soon see more. But the Master
of Ceremonies was not acceptable to the Commons, because he had
compelled them to withdraw, the day before, from their places in the
nave of the church. Therefore the injunction was disregarded; and the
verification of powers, which the Government might have regulated, was
left to the deputies themselves, and became the lever by which the
more numerous order overthrew the monarchy, and carried to an end, in
seven weeks, the greatest constitutional struggle that has ever been
fought out in the world by speech alone.
IV
THE MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL
The argument of the drama which opened on May 6, 1789, and closed on
June 27, is this:--The French people had been called to the enjoyment
of freedom by every voice they heard--by the king; by the notables,
who proposed unrestricted suffrage; by the supreme judiciary, who
proclaimed the future Constitution; by the clergy and the aristocracy,
in the most solemn pledges of the electoral period; by the British
example, celebrated by Montesquieu and Voltaire; by the more cogent
example of America; by the national classics, who declared, with a
hundred tongues, that all authority must be controlled, that the
masses must be rescued from degradation, and the individual from
constraint.
When the Commons appeared at Versailles, they were there to claim an
inheritance of which, by universal consent, they had been wrongfully
deprived. They were not arrayed against the king, who had been already
brought to submission by blows not dealt by them. They desired to make
terms with those to whom he was ostensibly opposed. There could be no
real freedom for them until they were as free on the side of the
nobles as on that of the Crown. The modern absolutism of the monarch
had surrendered; but the ancient owners of the soil remained, with
their exclusive position in the State, and a complicated system of
honours and exactions which humiliated the middle class and pauperised
the lower. The educated democracy, acting for themselves, might have
been content with the retrenchment of those privileges which put them
at a disadvantage. But the rural population were concerned with every
fragment of obsolete feudalism that added to the burden of their
lives.
The two classes were undivided. Together they had elected their
deputies, and the cleavage between the political and the social
democrat, which has become so great a fact in modern society, was
scarcely perceived. The same common principle, the same comprehensive
term, composed the policy of both. They demanded liberty, both in the
State and in society, and required that oppression should cease,
whether exercised in the name of the king or in the name of the
aristocracy. In a word, they required equality as well as liberty, and
sought deliverance from feudalism and from absolutism at the same
time. And equality was the most urgent and prominent claim of the two,
because the king, virtually, had given way, but the nobles had not.
The battle that remained to be fought, and at once commenced, was
between the Commons and the nobles; that is, between people doomed to
poverty by the operation of law, and people who were prosperous at
their expense. And as there were men who would perish from want while
the laws remained unchanged, and others who would be ruined by their
repeal, the strife was deadly.
The real object of assault was not the living landlord, but the
unburied past. It had little to do with socialism, or with high rents,
bad times, and rapacious proprietors. Apart from all this was the hope
of release from irrational and indefensible laws, such as that by
which a patrician's land paid three francs where the plebeian's paid
fourteen, because one was noble and the other was not, and it was an
elementary deduction from the motives of liberal desire.
The elections had made it unexpectedly evident that when one part of
territorial wealth had been taken by the State, another would be taken
by the people; and that a free community, making its own laws, would
not submit to exactions imposed of old by the governing class on a
defenceless population. When the notables advised that every man
should have a vote, this consequence was not clear to them. It was
perceived as things went on, and no provision for aristocratic
interests was included in the popular demands.