Party, as the term is used in the constitutional vocabulary, was not
yet developed; and no organisation possessed the alternate power of
presenting ministers to the Crown. The main lines that divided opinion
came to light in the debates of September, and the Assembly fell into
factions that were managed by their clubs. The President held office
for a fortnight, and each new election indicated the movement of
opinion, the position of parties, the rise of reputations. The united
Assembly did honour to the acceding orders. The first presidents were
prelates and men of rank. Out of six elections only one fell to a
commoner, until the end of September, when the leader of the Liberal
Conservatives, Mounier, was chosen, at what proved a moment of danger.
In the same way, the thirty chairmen of the Bureaux were, with
scarcely an exception, always taken from the clergy or the nobles.
As Mounier, with his friends, had dominated in the constitutional
committee of thirty, and was now paramount in the new committee of
eight, there was some prospect of a coalition, by which, in return for
their aid in carrying the English model, the nobles would obtain easy
terms in the liquidation of privilege. That is the parliamentary
situation. That is the starting-point of the transactions that we have
now to follow.
During the days spent in making terms between the king, the Assembly,
and the capital, the provinces were depending on Paris for news, for
opinions, and direction. They were informed that the Parisians had
made themselves masters of the royal fortress, and had expelled the
royal authority; that the king and the Assembly had accepted and
approved the action; that there was no executive ministry, either old
or new; and that the capital was providing for its own security and
administration. The towns soon had imitations of the disorders that
had been so successful, and quickly repressed them; for the towns were
the seat of the middle class, the natural protectors of acquired
property, and defenders of order and safety. In country districts the
process of disintegration was immediate, the spontaneous recovery was
slow. For the country was divided between the nobles who were rich,
and their dependents who were poor. And the poverty of one class was
ultimately due to innumerable devices for increasing the wealth of the
other. And now there was nobody in authority over them, nobody to keep
peace between them.
The first effect of the taking of the Bastille, the effacement of
royalty, the suspension of the ministerial office, was the rising of
the cottage against the castle, of the injured peasant against the
privileged landlord, who, apart from any fault of his own, by
immemorial process of history and by the actual letter of the law, was
his perpetual and inevitable enemy. The events of the week between
July 11 and 17 proclaimed that the authorised way to obtain what you
wanted was to employ the necessary violence. If it was thorough and
quick enough, there would be no present resistance, and no subsequent
complaint. And if there was some excess in the way of cruelty and
retribution, it was sure of amnesty on the ground of intolerable
provocation and of suffering endured too long. The king had accepted
his own humiliation as if it had been as good as due to him. He could
not do more for others than for himself. His brief alliance with the
aristocracy was dissolved. He was powerless for their defence, as they
were for their own. By their formal act of submission to the Assembly
on July 16, they acknowledged that their cause was lost with the
Bastille. They neglected to make terms with the enemy at their homes.
The appalling thing in the French Revolution is not the tumult but the
design. Through all the fire and smoke we perceive the evidence of
calculating organisation. The managers remain studiously concealed and
masked; but there is no doubt about their presence from the first.
They had been active in the riots of Paris, and they were again active
in the provincial rising. The remnant of the upper classes formed a
powerful minority at Versailles; and if they acted as powerful
minorities do, if they entered into compacts and combinations, they
could compound for the loss of fiscal immunity by the salvation of
social privilege. The people would continue to have masters--masters,
that is, not of their own making. They would be subject to powers
instituted formerly, whilst the Government itself obtained its
credentials for the day, and there would still be an intermediate body
between the nation and the sovereign. Wealth artificially constituted,
by means of laws favouring its accumulation in a class, and
discouraging its dispersion among all, would continue to predominate.
France might be transformed after the likeness of England; but the
very essence of the English system was liberty founded on inequality.
The essence of the French ideal was democracy, that is, as in America,
liberty founded on equality. Therefore it was the interest of the
democratic or revolutionary party that the next step should be taken
after the manner of the last, that compulsion, which had answered so
well with the king, should be tried on the nobles, that the methods
applied at Paris should be extended to the Provinces, for there the
nobles predominated. A well-directed blow struck at that favoured and
excepted moment, when the country was ungoverned, might alter for
ever, and from its foundation, the entire structure of society.
Liberty had been secured; equality was within reach. The political
revolution ensured the prompt success of the social revolution. Such
an opportunity of suppressing compromise, and sweeping the historical
ruin away, had never been known in Europe.
While the local powers were painfully constituting themselves, there
was a priceless interval for action. The king had given way to the
middle class; the nobles would succumb to the lower, and the rural
democracy would be emancipated like the urban. This is the second
phase of that reign of terror which, as Malouet says, began with the
Bastille. Experience had shown the efficacy of attacking castles
instead of persons, and the strongholds of feudalism were assailed
when the stronghold of absolutism had fallen.
It is said that one deputy, Duport, a magistrate of the parliament of
Paris, had 400,000 francs to spend in raising the country against the
nobles at the precise moment of their weakness. The money was scarcely
needed, for the rioters were made to believe that they were acting in
obedience to the law. One of their victims wrote, August 3, to
Clermont Tonnerre that they were really sorry to behave in that way
against good masters, but they were compelled by imperative commands
from the king. He adds that seven or eight castles in his
neighbourhood were attacked by their vassals, all believing that the
king desired it. The charters and muniments were the main object of
pillage and destruction, for it was believed that claims which could
not be authenticated could not be enforced. Often the castle itself
was burnt with the parchments it contained, and some of the owners
perished.
The disorders raged in many parts of France. A district east and
south-east of the centre suffered most. Those provinces had continued
long to be parts of the Empire; and we shall see hereafter what that
implies. The peasants of Eastern France rose up in arms to overthrow
the ancient institutions of society, which the peasants of the West
gave their lives to restore.
Rumours of all this desolation soon penetrated to the Assembly, and on
August 3 it was officially reported that property was at the mercy of
gangs of brigands, that no castle, no convent, no farm-house was safe.
A committee moved to declare that no pretext could justify the
refusal to pay the same feudal dues as before. Duport proposed that
the motion be sent back to the Bureaux. The Assembly came to no
conclusion. In truth, the thing proposed was impossible. The Commons,
who now prevailed, could not, after sitting three months, re-impose,
even provisionally, burdens which were odious, which their
Instructions condemned, and which they all knew to be incapable of
defence. There had been time to provide: the crisis now found them
unprepared. The Court advised the nobles that nothing could save them
but a speedy surrender. They also were informed, by Barere; that some
of his friends intended to move the abolition of fiscal and feudal
privilege. They replied that they would do it themselves. Virieu, who
afterwards disappeared in a sortie, during the siege of Lyons, said to
a friend: "There are only two means of calming an excited populace,
kindness and force. We have no force; we hope to succeed by kindness."
They knew that precious time had been lost, and they resolved that the
surrender should be so ample as to be meritorious. It was to be not
the redress of practical grievances, but the complete establishment of
the new principle, equality.
At a conference held on the evening of August 3 it was agreed that the
self-sacrifice of the ancient aristocracy of France, and the
institution in its place of a society absolutely democratic, should be
made by the Duke d'Aiguillon, the owner of vast domains, who was about
to forfeit several thousands a year. But on August 4 the first to
speak was Noailles; then d'Aiguillon, followed by a deputy from
Brittany. You cannot repress violence, said the Breton, unless you
remove the injustice which is the cause of it. If you mean to proclaim
the Rights of Man, begin with those which are most flagrantly
violated. They proposed that rights abandoned to the State should be
ceded unconditionally, and that rights abandoned to the people should
be given up in return for compensation. They imagined that the
distinction was founded on principle; but nobody ever ascertained the
dividing line between that which was property and that which was
abuse. The want of definiteness enabled the landlords afterwards to
attempt the recovery of much debatable ground, and involved, after
long contention, the ultimate loss of all.
The programme was excessively complicated, and required years to be
carried out. The nobles won the day with their demand to be
compensated; but Duport already spoke the menacing words: "Injustice
has no right to subsist, and the price of injustice has no right to
subsist." The immensity of the revolution, which these changes
implied, was at once apparent. For it signified that liberty, which
had been known only in the form of privilege, was henceforward
identified with equality. The nobles lost their jurisdiction; the
corporation of judges lost their right of holding office by purchase.
All classes alike were admitted to all employments. When privilege
fell, provinces lost it as well as orders. One after the other,
Dauphine, Provence, Brittany, Languedoc, declared that they renounced
their historic rights, and shared none but those which were common to
all Frenchmen. Servitude was abolished; and on the same principle,
that all might stand on the same level before the law, justice was
declared gratuitous.
Lubersac, bishop of Chartres, the friend and patron of Sieyes, moved
the abolition of the game laws, which meant the right of preserving on
another man's land. It was a right which necessarily followed the
movement of that night; but it led men to say that the clergy gave
away generously what belonged to somebody else. It was then proposed
that the tithe should be commuted; and the clergy showed themselves as
zealous as the laity to carry out to their own detriment the doctrine
that imposed so many sacrifices.
The France of history vanished on August 4, and the France of the new
democracy took its place. The transfer of property from the upper
class to the lower was considerable. The peasants' income was
increased by about 60 per cent. Nobody objected to the tremendous
loss, or argued to diminish it. Each class, recognising what was
inevitable, and reconciled to it, desired that it should be seen how
willingly and how sincerely it yielded. None wished to give time for
others to remind them of inconsistency, or reserve, or omission, in
the clean sweep they had undertaken to make. In their competition
there was hurry and disorder. One characteristic of the time was to be
unintelligent in matters relating to the Church, and they did not know
how far the clergy was affected by the levelling principle, or that in
touching tithe they were setting an avalanche in motion. At one
moment, Lally, much alarmed, had passed a note to the President
begging him to adjourn, as the deputies were losing their heads. The
danger arose, as was afterwards seen, when the Duke du Chatelet
proposed the redemption of tithe.
The nobles awoke next day with some misgiving that they had gone too
far, and with some jealousy of the clergy, who had lost less, and who
had contributed to their losses. On August 7 Necker appeared before
the Assembly and exposed the want of money, and the need of a loan,
for the redistribution of property on August 4 did nothing to the
immediate profit of the Exchequer. But the clergy, vying with their
rivals in generosity, had admitted the right of the nation to apply
Church property to State uses.
On the following day the Marquis de Lacoste proposed that the new debt
should be paid out of the funds of the clergy, and that tithe should
be simply abolished. He expressed a wish that no ecclesiastic should
be a loser, and that the parish clergy should receive an accession of
income. The clergy offered no resistance, and made it impossible for
others to resist. They offered to raise a loan in behalf of the State;
but it was considered that this would give them a position of undue
influence, and it would not have satisfied the nobles, who saw the way
to recover from the clergy the loss they had sustained. In this debate
the Abbe Sieyes delivered his most famous speech. He had no
fellow-feeling with his brethren, but he intended that the tithe
should enrich the State. Instead of that it was about to be given
back to the land, and the landowners would receive a sum of nearly
three millions a year, divided in such a way that the richest would
receive in proportion to his wealth. It would indemnify the laity. Not
they, but the clergy, were now to bear the charge of August 4. There
was one deputy who would be richer by 30,000 francs a year upon the
whole transaction. The landlords who had bought their estates subject
to the tithe had no claim to receive it. As all this argument was
heard with impatience, Sieyes uttered words that have added no little
to his moral stature: "They fancy that they can be free and yet not be
just!" He had been, for three months, the foremost personage in the
nation. He was destined in after years, and under conditions strangely
altered, to be once more the dictator of France. More than once,
without public favour, but by mere power of political thinking, he
governed the fortunes of the State. He never again possessed the heart
of the people.
The Assembly deemed it a good bargain to restore the tithe to the
land; and the clergy knew so well that they had no friends that, on
August 11, they solemnly renounced their claim. In this way the
Assembly began the disendowment of the Church, which was the primitive
cause of the Reign of Terror and the Civil War.
All these things are an episode. The business of the Assembly, from
the end of July, was the Constitution. The first step towards it was
to define the rights for which it exists. Such a declaration,
suggested by America, had been demanded by the electors in several of
the instructions, and had been faithfully reproduced by Mounier, July
9. It appeared, on the following day, that Lafayette had already got
the required document in his pocket. Another text was produced, ten
days later, by Sieyes, and another by Mounier, which was a revision of
Lafayette's. Several more came out soon after.
On July 27 the archbishop of Bordeaux, in laying down the outline of
the new institutions, observed that it was necessary to found them on
principles defined and fixed. On the same day Clermont Tonnerre
brought forward his analysis of the available ideas contained in the
instructions. He went at once to the heart of the matter. Some
instructions, he said, contemplated no more than the reform of
existing institutions, with the maintenance of controlling tradition
and the historic chain. Others conceived an entirely new system of
laws and government. The distinction between the two was this, that
some required a code of principles which must be the guide in
preparing the Constitution; the others wished for no such assistance,
but thought it possible to bind past and future together. The main
conflict was between the authority of history and the Rights of Man.
The Declaration was the signal of those who meant to rescue France
from the ancestors who had given it tyranny and slavery as an
inheritance. Its opponents were men who would be satisfied with good
government, in the spirit of Turgot and the enlightened reformers of
his time, who could be happy if they were prosperous, and would never
risk prosperity and peace in the pursuit of freedom.
Those who imagined that France possessed a submerged Constitution that
might be extracted from her annals had a difficult task. Lanjuinais
desired to sail by a beacon and to direct the politics of 1789 by a
charter of 864. There was a special reason, less grotesque than the
archaeology of Lanjuinais, which made men averse to the Declaration.
Liberty, it was said, consists in the reign of the national will, and
the national will is known by national custom. Law ought to spring
from custom, and to be governed by it, not by independent, individual
theory that defies custom. You have to declare the law, not to make
it, and you can only declare what experience gives you. The best
government devised by reason is less free than a worse government
bequeathed by time. Very dimly, ideas which rose to power in other
days and evolved the great force of nationality, were at work against
a system which was to be new and universal, renouncing the influence
both of time and place. The battle was fought against the men of the
past, against a history which was an unbroken record of the defeat
and frustration of freedom. But the declaration of rights was more
needful still against dangers on the opposite side, those that were
coming more than those that were going out. People were quite resolved
to be oppressed no more by monarchy or aristocracy, but they had no
experience or warning of oppression by democracy. The classes were to
be harmless; but there was the new enemy, the State.
No European knew what security could be needed or provided for the
individual from the collected will of the people. They were protected
from government by authority or by minority; but they made the
majority irresistible, and the _plebiscite_ a tyranny.
The Americans were aware that democracy might be weak and
unintelligent, but also that it might be despotic and oppressive. And
they found out the way to limit it, by the federal system, which
suffers it to exist nowhere in its plenitude. They deprived their
state governments of the powers that were enumerated, and the central
government of the powers that were reserved. As the Romans knew how
monarchy would become innocuous, by being divided, the Americans
solved the more artful problem of dividing democracy into two.
Many Frenchmen were convinced that Federalism would be the really
liberal policy for them. But the notion was at once pushed aside by
Mounier, and obtained no hearing. And the division of powers, which he
substituted, was rejected in its turn. They would not admit that one
force should be checked and balanced by another. They had no resource
but general principles, to abolish the Past and secure the Future. By
declaring them, they raised up an ideal authority over the government
and the nation, and established a security against the defects of the
Constitution and the power of future rulers. The opponents of the
Declaration fought it on the proposal to add a declaration of duties.
The idea was put forward by the most learned of the deputies, the
Jansenist Camus, and the clergy supported him with energy. The
Assembly decided that a system of rights belonged to politics, and a
system of duties to ethics, and rejected the motion, on the morning of
the 4th of August, by 570 to 433.
This was the deciding division on the question of the Rights of Man.
After some days, absorbed by the crisis of aristocracy, the distracted
and wearied Assembly turned again from the excitement of facts and
interests to the discussion of theory. A new committee of five was
appointed to revise the work of the committee of eight, which dealt
with the entire Constitution.
On August 17 Mirabeau reported their scheme. His heart was not in it;
and he resented the intrusion of hampering generalities and moralities
into the difficult experimental science of government. He advised that
the Constitution should be settled first, that the guide should follow
instead of preceding. The Assembly rejected the proposals of its
committees, and all the plans which were submitted by the celebrities.
The most remarkable of these was by Sieyes, and it met with favour;
but the final vote was taken on a less illustrious composition, which
bore no author's name. The selected text was less philosophical and
profound, and it roused less distant echoes than its rival; but it was
shorter, and more tame, and it was thought to involve fewer doubtful
postulates, and fewer formidable consequences. Between the 20th and
26th of August it was still further abridged, and reduced from
twenty-four propositions to the moderate dimension of seventeen. These
omissions from a document which had been preferred to very remarkable
competitors are the key to the intentions of the National Assembly,
and our basis of interpretation.
The original scheme included a State Church. This was not adopted. It
distinguished the inequality of men from the equality of rights. This
was deemed self-evident and superfluous. It derived the mutual rights
of men from their mutual duties--and this terrestrial definition also
disappeared, leaving the way open to a higher cause. The adopted code
was meagre and ill-composed, and Bentham found a malignant pleasure
in tearing it to pieces. It is, on the whole, more spiritual than the
one on which it was founded, and which it generally follows; and it
insists with greater energy on primitive rights, anterior to the State
and aloof from it, which no human authority can either confer or
refuse. It is the triumphant proclamation of the doctrine that human
obligations are not all assignable to contract, or to interest, or to
force.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man begins with an appeal to heaven,
and defines them in the presence, and under the auspices, of Almighty
God. The Preamble implies that our duties towards Him constitute our
rights towards mankind, and indicates the divine origin of Law,
without affirming it. The Declaration enumerates those rights which
are universal, which come from nature, not from men. They are four:
Liberty, Property, Security, and Self-defence. Authorities are
constituted, and laws are made, in order that these original,
essential, and supreme possessions of all mankind may be preserved.