CHAPTER I.

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THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION OF 1789

And the Causes Which Led to That Event

by

ALEXIS de TOCQUEVILLE

Member of the French Academy

Translated by Henry Reeve, D.C.L.

Third Edition

London

John Murray, Albemarle Street

1888

Printed by

Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square

London

CONTENTS.

PAGE

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION [5]

PRELIMINARY NOTICE [9]

_BOOK I._

CHAPTER

I. Opposing Judgments passed on the French Revolution at its

Origin 1

II. The Fundamental and Final Object of the Revolution was not,

as has been supposed, the destruction of Religious

Authority and the weakening of Political Power 5

III. Showing that the French Revolution was a Political

Revolution which followed the course of Religious

Revolutions, and for what Reasons 9

IV. Showing that nearly the whole of Europe had had precisely

the same Institutions, and that these Institutions were

everywhere falling to pieces 12

V. What was the peculiar scope of the French Revolution 16

_BOOK II._

I. Why Feudal Rights had become more odious to the People in

France than in any other country 19

II. Showing that Administrative Centralisation is an

Institution anterior in France to the Revolution of 1789,

and not the product of the Revolution or of the Empire,

as is commonly said 28

III. Showing that what is now called Administrative Tutelage was

an Institution in France anterior to the Revolution 36

IV. Administrative Jurisdiction and the Immunity of Public

Officers are Institutions of France anterior to the

Revolution 45

V. Showing how Centralisation had been able to introduce

itself among the ancient Institutions of France, and to

supplant without destroying them 50

VI. The Administrative Habits of France before the Revolution 54

VII. Of all European Nations France was already that in which

the Metropolis had acquired the greatest preponderance

over the Provinces, and had most completely absorbed the

whole Empire 63

VIII. France was the Country in which Men had become the most

alike 67

IX. Showing how Men thus similar were more divided than ever

into small Groups, estranged from and indifferent to each

other 71

X. The Destruction of Political Liberty and the Estrangement

of Classes were the causes of almost all the disorders

which led to the Dissolution of the Old Society of France 84

XI. Of the Species of Liberty which existed under the Old

Monarchy, and of the Influence of that Liberty on the

Revolution 94

XII. Showing that the Condition of the French Peasantry,

notwithstanding the progress of Civilisation, was

sometimes worse in the Eighteenth Century than it had

been in the Thirteenth 105

XIII. Showing that towards the Middle of the Eighteenth Century

Men of Letters became the leading Political Men of

France, and of the effects of this occurrence 119

XIV. Showing how Irreligion had become a general and dominant

passion amongst the French of the Eighteenth Century, and

what influence this fact had on the character of the

Revolution 128

XV. That the French aimed at Reform before Liberty 136

XVI. Showing that the Reign of Louis XVI. was the most

prosperous epoch of the old French Monarchy, and how this

very prosperity accelerated the Revolution 146

XVII. Showing that the French People were excited to revolt by

the means taken to relieve them 155

XVIII. Concerning some practices by which the Government completed

the Revolutionary Education of the People of France 162

XIX. Showing that a great Administrative Revolution had preceded

the Political Revolution, and what were the consequences

it produced 166

XX. Showing that the Revolution proceeded naturally from the

existing State of France 175

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.

On the Pays d’États, and especially on the Constitutions of

Languedoc 182

_BOOK III._

I. Of the violent and undefined Agitation of the Human Mind at

the moment when the French Revolution broke out 192

II. How this vague perturbation of the Human Mind suddenly

became in France a positive passion, and what form this

passion at first assumed 201

III. How the Parliaments of France, following precedent,

overthrew the Monarchy 205

IV. The Parliaments discover that they have lost all Authority,

just when they thought themselves masters of the Kingdom 224

V. Absolute Power being subdued, the true spirit of the

Revolution forthwith became manifest 229

VI. The preparation of the instructions to the Members of the

States-General drove the conception of a Radical

Revolution home to the mind of the People 240

VII. How, on the Eve of the Convocation of the National

Assembly, the mind of the Nation was more enlarged, and

its spirit raised 243

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 247

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

An interval of about seventeen years has elapsed since the first

publication of this book in France, and of the translation of it, which

appeared simultaneously, in England. The English version has not been

republished, and has long been out of print. But the work itself has

retained a lasting place in the political literature of Europe.

The historical events which have occurred since the date of its first

publication have again riveted the attention of every thinking man on

the astonishing phenomena of the French Revolution, which has resumed

in these later days its mysterious and destructive course; and a deeper

interest than ever seems to attach itself to the first causes of this

long series of political and social convulsions, which appear to be as

far as ever from their termination.

Nor is this interest confined to the state of France alone; for at each

succeeding period of our contemporary annals the operation and effects

of the same causes may be traced in other countries, and the principles

which the author of this book discerned with unerring sagacity derive

fresh illustrations every day from the course of events both abroad and

at home.

For this reason, mainly, this translation is republished at the present

time, in the hope that it may be read by men of the younger generation,

who were not in being when it first appeared, and that some of those

who read it before may be led by the light of passing events to read

it again. For I venture to say that in no other work on the French

Revolution has the art of scientific analysis been applied with equal

skill to the genesis of these great changes: no other writer has so

skilfully traced the continuous operation of the causes, long anterior

to the Revolution itself, which have gradually reduced one of the

greatest monarchies of Europe to its present condition.

Are we to learn from this stern lesson of experience that the hopes

of progress are closely united to the germs of dissolution, and that

the great transformation hailed with so much enthusiasm eighty-four

years ago was but the prelude of a final catastrophe; that the nation

which was the first to plunge into this new order of things, by

the destruction of all that it once loved and revered, is also the

first to make manifest its fatal results; and that the last results

of civilisation are no preservative against the decline of empires?

These pages may suggest such reflections, for if the vices and abuses

of political society in France before the Revolution were, in some

measure, peculiar to herself, the elements of destruction which the

Revolution let loose upon the world are common to all civilised nations.

In the present edition, moreover, it appeared to be desirable to make

a considerable addition to the volume published in 1856. At the time

of his death in the spring of 1859, M. de Tocqueville had made some

progress in the continuation of his work, though his labour advanced

very slowly, from the minute and conscientious care with which he

conducted his researches and elaborated his thoughts. Seven chapters

of the new volume were, however, found among his papers by his friend

and literary executor, M. Gustave de Beaumont, in a state approaching

to completeness; and these posthumous chapters were published in the

seventh volume of the collected edition of M. de Tocqueville’s works.

They have not before been translated, and they are, I believe, but

little known in this country.

These chapters are not inferior, I think, to any of the works of their

author in originality and interest; and they have the merit of bringing

down his Survey of the State of France before the Revolution to the

very moment which preceded the convocation of the States-General.

I have therefore included these posthumous chapters in the present

edition, and they form a Third Book, in addition to the two books of

the original volume.

HENRY REEVE.

_April 1873._

PRELIMINARY NOTICE

The book I now publish is not a history of the French Revolution; that

history has been written with too much success for me to attempt to

write it again. This volume is a study on the Revolution.

The French people made, in 1789, the greatest effort which was ever

attempted by any nation to cut, so to speak, their destiny in halves,

and to separate by an abyss that which they had heretofore been from

that which they sought to become hereafter. For this purpose they took

all sorts of precautions to carry nothing of their past with them into

their new condition; they submitted to every species of constraint in

order to fashion themselves otherwise than their fathers were; they

neglected nothing which could efface their identity.

I have always thought that they had succeeded in this singular attempt

much less than was supposed abroad, and less than they had at first

supposed themselves. I was convinced that they had unconsciously

retained from the former state of society most of the sentiments, the

habits, and even the opinions, by means of which they had effected the

destruction of that state of things; and that, without intending it,

they had used its remains to rebuild the edifice of modern society,

insomuch that, fully to understand the Revolution and its work, we must

forget for an instant that France which we see before us, and examine

in her sepulchre that France which is no more. This is what I have

endeavoured to do; but I have had more difficulty than I could have

supposed in accomplishing this task.

The first ages of the French Monarchy, the Middle Ages, and the Revival

of Letters have each given rise to vast researches and profound

disquisitions which have revealed to us not only the events of those

periods of history, but the laws, the customs, and the spirit of the

Government and the nation in those eras. But no one has yet taken the

trouble to investigate the eighteenth century in the same manner and

with the same minuteness. We suppose that we are thoroughly conversant

with the French society of that date, because we clearly distinguish

whatever glittered on its surface; we possess in detail the lives

of the most eminent persons of that day, and the ingenuity or the

eloquence of criticism has familiarised us with the compositions of the

great writers who adorned it. But as for the manner in which public

affairs were carried on, the practical working of institutions, the

exact relation in which the different classes of society stood to each

other, the condition and the feelings of those classes which were as

yet neither seen nor heard beneath the prevailing opinions and manners

of the country,--all our ideas are confused and often inaccurate.

I have undertaken to reach the core of this state of society under

the old monarchy of France, which is still so near us in the lapse of

years, but concealed from us by the Revolution.

For this purpose I have not only read over again the celebrated books

which the eighteenth century produced, I have also studied a multitude

of works less known and less worthy to be known, but which, from the

negligence of their composition, disclose, perhaps, even better than

more finished productions, the real instincts of the time. I have

applied myself to investigate thoroughly all the public documents by

which the French may, at the approach of the Revolution, have shown

their opinions and their tastes. The regular reports of the meetings

of the States, and subsequently of the Provincial Assemblies, have

supplied me with a large quantity of evidence. I have especially

made great use of the Instructions drawn up by the Three Orders in

1789. These Instructions, which form in the original a long series of

manuscript volumes, will remain as the testament of the old society of

France, the supreme record of its wishes, the authentic declaration of

its last intentions. Such a document is unique in history. Yet this

alone has not satisfied me.

In countries in which the Administrative Government is already

powerful, there are few opinions, desires, or sorrows--there are few

interests or passions--which are not sooner or later stripped bare

before it. In the archives of such a Government, not only an exact

notion of its procedure may be acquired, but the whole country is

exhibited. Any stranger who should have access to all the confidential

correspondence of the Home Department and the Prefectures of France

would soon know more about the French than they know themselves. In the

eighteenth century the administration of the country, as will be seen

from this book, was highly centralised, very powerful, prodigiously

active. It was incessantly aiding, preventing, permitting. It had much

to promise--much to give. Its influence was already felt in a thousand

ways, not only on the general conduct of affairs, but on the condition

of families and the private life of every individual. Moreover, as this

administration was without publicity, men were not afraid to lay bare

before its eyes even their most secret infirmities. I have spent a

great deal of time in studying what remains of its proceedings, both at

Paris and in several provinces.[1]

There, as I expected, I have found the whole structure of the old

monarchy still in existence, with its opinions, its passions, its

prejudices, and its usages. There every man spoke his mind and

disclosed his innermost thoughts. I have thus succeeded in acquiring

information on the former state of society, which those who lived in it

did not possess, for I had before me that which had never been exposed

to them.

As I advanced in these researches I was surprised perpetually to find

again in the France of that time many of the characteristic features of

the France of our own. I met with a multitude of feelings which I had

supposed to be the offspring of the Revolution--a multitude of ideas

which I had believed to originate there--a multitude of habits which

are attributed to the Revolution alone. Everywhere I found the roots

of the existing state of French society deeply imbedded in the old

soil. The nearer I came to 1789, the more distinctly I discerned the

spirit which had presided over the formation, the birth, and the growth

of the Revolution; I gradually saw the whole aspect of the Revolution

uncovered before me; already it announced its temperament--its

genius--itself. There, too, I found not only the reason of what it

was about to perform in its first effort, but still more, perhaps, an

intimation of what it was eventually to leave behind it. For the French

Revolution has had two totally distinct phases: the first, during which

the French seemed eager to abolish everything in the past; the second,

when they sought to resume a portion of what they had relinquished.

Many of the laws and political practices of the old monarchy thus

suddenly disappeared in 1789, but they occur again some years later, as

some rivers are lost in the earth to burst forth again lower down, and

bear the same waters to other shores.

The peculiar object of the work I now submit to the public is to

explain why this great Revolution, which was in preparation at the same

time over almost the whole continent of Europe, broke out in France

sooner than elsewhere; why it sprang spontaneously from the society it

was about to destroy; and, lastly, how the old French Monarchy came to

fall so completely and so abruptly.

It is not my intention that the work I have commenced should stop

short at this point. I hope, if time and my own powers permit it, to

follow, through the vicissitudes of this long Revolution, these same

Frenchmen with whom I have lived so familiarly under the old monarchy,

and whom that state of society had formed--to see them modified and

transformed by the course of events, but without changing their nature,

and constantly appearing before us with features somewhat different,

but ever to be recognised.

With them I shall proceed to review that first epoch of 1789, when

the love of equality and that of freedom shared their hearts--when

they sought to found not only the institutions of democracy, but

the institutions of freedom--not only to destroy privileges, but to

acknowledge and to sanction rights: a time of youth, of enthusiasm, of

pride, of generous and sincere passion, which, in spite of its errors,

will live for ever in the memory of men, and which will still long

continue to disturb the slumbers of those who seek to corrupt or to

enslave them.

Thus rapidly following the track of this same Revolution, I shall

attempt to show by what events, by what faults, by what miscarriages,

this same French people was led at last to relinquish its first aim,

and, forgetful of freedom, to aspire only to become the equal servants

of the World’s Master--how a Government, stronger and far more absolute

than that which the Revolution had overthrown, grasped and concentrated

all the powers of the nation, suppressed the liberties which had

been so dearly bought, putting in their place the counterfeit of

freedom--calling ‘sovereignty of the people’ the suffrages of electors

who can neither inform themselves nor concert their operations, nor,

in fact, choose--calling ‘vote of taxes’ the assent of mute and

enslaved assemblies; and while thus robbing the nation of the right of

self-government, of the great securities of law, of freedom of thought,

of speech, and of the pen--that is, of all the most precious and the

most noble conquests of 1789--still daring to assume that mighty name.

I shall pause at the moment when the Revolution appears to me to have

nearly accomplished its work and given birth to the modern society

of France. That society will then fall under my observation: I shall

endeavour to point out in what it resembles the society which preceded

it, in what it differs, what we have lost in this immense displacement

of our institutions, what we have gained by it, and, lastly, what may

be our future.

A portion of this second work is sketched out, though still unworthy to

be offered to the public. Will it be given me to complete it? Who can

say? The destiny of men is far more obscure than that of nations.

I hope I have written this book without prejudice, but I do not profess

to have written it without passion. No Frenchman should speak of his

country and think of this time unmoved. I acknowledge that in studying

the old society of France in each of its parts I have never entirely

lost sight of the society of more recent times. I have sought not only

to discover the disease of which the patient died, but also the means

by which life might have been preserved. I have imitated that medical

analysis which seeks in each expiring organ to catch the laws of life.

My object has been to draw a picture strictly accurate, and at the

same time instructive. Whenever I have met amongst our progenitors

with any of those masculine virtues which we most want and which we

least possess--such as a true spirit of independence, a taste for

great things, faith in ourselves and in a cause--I have placed them in

relief: so, too, when I have found in the laws, the opinions, and the

manners of that time traces of some of those vices which after having

consumed the former society of France still infest us, I have carefully

brought them to the light, in order that, seeing the evil they have

done us, it might better be understood what evils they may still

engender. To accomplish this object I confess I have not feared to

wound either persons, or classes, or opinions, or recollections of the

past, however worthy of respect they may be. I have done so often with

regret, but always without remorse. May those whom I have thus perhaps

offended forgive me in consideration of the honest and disinterested

object which I pursue.

Many will perhaps accuse me of showing in this book a very unseasonable

love of freedom--a thing for which it is said that no one any longer

cares in France.

I shall only beg those who may address to me this reproach to consider

that this is no recent inclination of my mind. More than twenty years

ago, speaking of another community, I wrote almost textually the

following observations.

Amidst the darkness of the future three truths may be clearly

discovered. The first is, that all the men of our time are impelled

by an unknown force which they may hope to regulate and to check, but

not to conquer--a force which sometimes gently moves them, sometimes

hurries them along, to the destruction of aristocracy. The second is,

that of all the communities in the world those which will always be

least able permanently to escape from absolute government are precisely

the communities in which aristocracy has ceased to exist, and can never

exist again. Lastly, the third is, that despotism nowhere produces

more pernicious effects than in these same communities, for more than

any other form of government despotism favours the growth of all the

vices to which such societies are specially liable, and thus throws an

additional weight on that side to which, by their natural inclination,

they were already prone.

Men in such countries, being no longer connected together by any

ties of caste, of class, of corporation, of family, are but too

easily inclined to think of nothing but their private interests,

ever too ready to consider themselves only, and to sink into the

narrow precincts of self, in which all public virtue is extinguished.

Despotism, instead of combating this tendency, renders it irresistible,

for it deprives its subjects of every common passion, of every mutual

want, of all necessity of combining together, of all occasions of

acting together. It immures them in private life: they already tended

to separation; despotism isolates them: they were already chilled in

their mutual regard; despotism reduces them to ice.

In such societies, in which nothing is stable, every man is incessantly

stimulated by the fear of falling and by eagerness to rise; and as

money, while it has become the principal mark by which men are classed

and distinguished, has acquired an extraordinary mobility, passing

without cessation from hand to hand, transforming the condition of

persons, raising or lowering that of families, there is scarcely a

man who is not compelled to make desperate and continual efforts to

retain or to acquire it. The desire to be rich at any cost, the love of

business, the passion of lucre, the pursuit of comfort and of material

pleasures, are therefore in such communities the prevalent passions.

They are easily diffused through all classes, they penetrate even to

those classes which had hitherto been most free from them, and would

soon enervate and degrade them all, if nothing checked their influence.

But it is of the very essence of despotism to favour and extend that

influence. These debilitating passions assist its work: they divert and

engross the imaginations of men away from public affairs, and cause

them to tremble at the bare idea of a revolution. Despotism alone can

lend them the secrecy and the shade which put cupidity at its ease, and

enable men to make dishonourable gains whilst they brave dishonour.

Without despotic government such passions would be strong: with it they

are sovereign.

Freedom alone, on the contrary, can effectually counteract in

communities of this kind the vices which are natural to them, and

restrain them on the declivity along which they glide. For freedom

alone can withdraw the members of such a community from the isolation

in which the very independence of their condition places them by

compelling them to act together. Freedom alone can warm and unite them

day by day by the necessity of mutual agreement, of mutual persuasion,

and mutual complaisance in the transaction of their common affairs.

Freedom alone can tear them from the worship of money, and the petty

squabbles of their private interests, to remind them and make them

feel that they have a Country above them and about them. Freedom alone

can sometimes supersede the love of comfort by more energetic and more

exalted passions--can supply ambition with larger objects than the

acquisition of riches--can create the light which enables us to see and

to judge the vices and the virtues of mankind.

Democratic communities which are not free may be rich, refined,

adorned, magnificent, powerful by the weight of their uniform mass;

they may contain many private merits--good fathers of families, honest

traders, estimable men of property; nay, many good Christians will be

found there, for their country is not of this world, and the glory of

their faith is to produce such men amidst the greatest depravity of

manners and under the worst government. The Roman Empire in its extreme

decay was full of such men. But that which, I am confident, will never

be found in such societies is a great citizen, or, above all, a great

people; nay, I do not hesitate to affirm that the common level of the

heart and the intellect will never cease to sink as long as equality of

conditions and despotic power are combined there.

Thus I thought and thus I wrote twenty years ago. I confess that since

that time nothing has occurred in the world to induce me to think or to

write otherwise. Having expressed the good opinion I had of Freedom at

a time when Freedom was in favour, I may be allowed to persist in that

opinion though she be forsaken.

Let it also be considered that even in this I am less at variance with

most of my antagonists than perhaps they themselves suppose. Where

is the man who, by nature, should have so mean a soul as to prefer

dependence on the caprices of one of his fellow-creatures to obedience

to laws which he has himself contributed to establish, provided that

his nation appear to him to possess the virtues necessary to use

freedom aright? There is no such man. Despots themselves do not deny

the excellence of freedom, but they wish to keep it all to themselves,

and maintain that all other men are utterly unworthy of it. Thus it

is not on the opinion which may be entertained of freedom that this

difference subsists, but on the greater or the less esteem we may have

for mankind; and it may be said with strict accuracy that the taste

a man may show for absolute government bears an exact ratio to the

contempt he may profess for his countrymen. I pause before I can be

converted to that opinion.

I may add, I think, without undue pretensions, that the volume now

published is the product of very extended labours. Sometimes a short

chapter has cost me more than a year of researches. I might have

surcharged my pages with notes, but I have preferred to insert them

in a limited number at the end of the volume, with a reference to the

pages of the text to which they relate. In these notes the reader will

find some illustrations and proofs of what I have advanced. I could

largely augment the quantity of them if this book should appear to

require it.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] I have more especially used the archives of some of the great

Intendancies, particularly that of Tours, which are very complete and

relate to a very extensive district placed in the centre of France, and

peopled by a million of inhabitants. My thanks are due to the young

and able keeper of these records, M. Grandmaison. Other districts,

amongst them that of the Île-de-France, have shown me that business was

transacted in the same manner in the greater part of the kingdom.

STATE OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE

BEFORE THE

REVOLUTION OF 1789.

_BOOK I._

CHAPTER I.

OPPOSING JUDGMENTS PASSED ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AT ITS ORIGIN.

Nothing is better fitted to give a lesson in modesty to philosophers

and statesmen than the history of the French Revolution; for never were

there events more important, longer in ripening, more fully prepared,

or less foreseen.

The great Frederick himself, with all his genius, failed to perceive

what was coming, and was almost in contact with the event without

seeing it. Nay, more, he even acted in the spirit of the Revolution

beforehand, and was in some sort its precursor, and already its

agent; yet he did not recognise its approach, and when at length

it made its appearance, the new and extraordinary features which

were to distinguish its aspect, amidst the countless crowd of human

revolutions, still passed unheeded.

The curiosity of all other countries was on the stretch. Everywhere

an indistinct conception arose amongst the nations that a new period

was at hand, and vague hopes were excited of great changes and

reforms; but no one as yet had any suspicion of what the Revolution

was really to become. Princes and their ministers lacked even the

confused presentiment by which the masses were agitated; they beheld

in the Revolution only one of those periodical disorders to which the

constitutions of all nations are subject, and of which the only result

is to open fresh paths for the policy of their neighbours. Even when

they did chance to express a true opinion on the events before them,

they did so unconsciously. Thus the principal sovereigns of Germany

assembled at Pillnitz in 1791, proclaimed indeed that the danger which

threatened royalty in France was common to all the established powers

of Europe, and that all were threatened by the same peril; but in fact

they believed nothing of the kind. The secret records of the period

prove that they held this language only as a specious pretext to cover

their real designs, or at least to colour them in the eyes of the

multitude.

As for themselves, they were convinced that the French Revolution was

an accident merely local and temporary, which they had only to turn to

good account. With this notion they laid plans, made preparations, and

contracted secret alliances; they quarrelled among themselves for the

division of their anticipated spoils; split into factions, entered into

combinations, and were prepared for almost every event, except that

which was impending.

The English indeed, taught by their own history and enlightened by

the long practice of political freedom, perceived dimly, as through a

thick veil, the approaching spectre of a great revolution; but they

were unable to distinguish its real shape, and the influence it was so

soon to exercise upon the destinies of the world and upon their own

was unforeseen. Arthur Young, who travelled over France just as the

Revolution was on the point of breaking out, and who regarded it as

imminent, so entirely mistook its real character, that he thought it

was a question whether it would not increase existing privileges. ‘As

for the nobility and clergy,’ says he, ‘if this Revolution were to make

them still more preponderant, I think it would do more harm than good.’

Burke, whose genius was illuminated by the hatred with which the

Revolution inspired him from its birth, Burke himself hesitated, for a

moment uncertain, at the sight. His first prediction was that France

would be enervated, and almost annihilated by it. ‘France is, at

this time, in a political light, to be considered as expunged out of

the system of Europe; whether she could ever appear in it again as a

leading power, was not easy to determine; but at present he considered

France as not politically existing; and, most assuredly, it would take

up much time to restore her to her former active existence. _Gallos

quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus_, might possibly be the language

of the rising generation.’[2]

The judgment of those on the spot was not less erroneous than that

of distant observers. On the eve of the outbreak of the Revolution,

men in France had no distinct notion of what it would do. Amidst the

numerous instructions to the delegates of the States General I have

found but two which manifest some degree of apprehension of the people.

The fears expressed all relate to the preponderance likely to be

retained by royalty, or the Court, as it was still called. The weakness

and the short duration of the States General were a source of anxiety,

and fears were entertained that they might be subjected to violence.

The nobility were especially agitated by these fears. Several of their

instructions provide, ‘The Swiss troops shall take an oath never to

bear arms against the citizens, not even in case of riot or revolt.’

Only let the States General be free, and all abuses would easily be

destroyed; the reform to be made was immense, but easy.

Meanwhile the Revolution pursued its course. By degrees the head

of the monster became visible, its strange and terrible aspect was

disclosed; after destroying political institutions it abolished civil

institutions also; after changing the laws it changed the manners, the

customs, and even the language of France; after overthrowing the fabric

of government it shook the foundations of society, and rose against

the Almighty himself. The Revolution soon overflowed the boundaries

of France with a vehemence hitherto unknown, with new tactics, with

sanguinary doctrines, with _armed opinions_--to use the words of

Pitt--with an inconceivable force which struck down the barriers of

empires, shattered the crowns of Europe, trampled on its people,

though, strange to say, it won them to its cause; and, as all these

things came to pass, the judgment of the world changed. That which at

first had seemed to the princes and statesmen of Europe to be one of

the accidents common in the life of a nation, now appeared to them an

event so unprecedented, so contrary to all that had ever happened in

the world, and, at the same time, so wide-spread, so monstrous, and

so incomprehensible, that the human mind was lost in amazement at the

spectacle. Some believed that this unknown power, which nothing seemed

to foster or to destroy, which no one was able to check, and which

could not check itself, must drive all human society to its final and

complete dissolution. Many looked upon it as the visible action of the

devil upon earth. ‘The French Revolution has a Satanic character,’ says

M. de Maistre, as early as 1797. Others, on the contrary, perceived

in it a beneficent design of Providence to change the face not only

of France but of the world, and to create, as it were, a new era of

mankind. In many writers of that time may be seen somewhat of the

religious terror which Salvian felt at the incursion of the Barbarians.

Burke, reverting to his first impressions, exclaimed, ‘Deprived of

the old government, deprived in a manner of all government, France,

fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators, might have appeared more

likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition

of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them

all; but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen

a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise

than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued

the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end unappalled by

peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common

means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it

was possible she could at all exist,’ etc.[3]

And was the event really as extraordinary as it appeared to those

who lived at the time when it took place? Was it so unprecedented,

so utterly subversive, so pregnant with new forms and ideas as they

imagined it to be? What was the real meaning, the real character--what

have been the permanent effects of this strange and terrible

Revolution? What did it, in reality, destroy, and what has it created?

The proper moment for examining and deciding these questions seems now

to have arrived, and we are now standing at the precise point whence

this vast phenomenon may best be viewed and judged. We are far enough

removed from the Revolution to be but slightly touched by the passions

which blinded those who brought it about, and we are near enough to it

to enter into the spirit which caused these things to happen. Ere long

this will have become more difficult; for as all great revolutions,

when successful, sweep away the causes which engendered them, their

very success serves to render them unintelligible to later generations.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Burke’s speech on the Army estimates, 1790.

[3] Letters on a Regicide Peace.

CHAPTER II.

THE FUNDAMENTAL AND FINAL OBJECT OF THE REVOLUTION WAS NOT, AS HAS

BEEN SUPPOSED, THE DESTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AND THE

WEAKENING OF POLITICAL POWER.

One of the first acts of the French Revolution was to attack the

Church; and amongst all the passions born of the Revolution the first

to be excited and the last to be allayed were the passions hostile

to religion. Even when the enthusiasm for liberty had vanished, and

tranquillity had been purchased at the price of servitude, the nation

still revolted against religious authority. Napoleon, who had succeeded

in subduing the liberal spirit of the French Revolution, made vain

efforts to restrain its antichristian spirit; and even in our own time

we have seen men who thought to atone for their servility towards the

meanest agents of political power by insolence towards God, and who

whilst they abandoned all that was most free, most noble, and most

lofty in the doctrines of the Revolution, flattered themselves that

they still remained true to its spirit by remaining irreligious.

Nevertheless it is easy now to convince ourselves that the war waged

against religions was but one incident of this great Revolution, a

feature striking indeed but transient in its aspect, a passing result

of the ideas, the passions, and special events which preceded and

prepared it, and not an integral part of its genius.

The philosophy of the eighteenth century has rightly been looked upon

as one of the chief causes of the Revolution, and it is quite true that

this philosophy was profoundly irreligious. But we must be careful to

observe that it contains two distinct and separable parts.

One of these relates to all the new or newly revived opinions

concerning the condition of society, and the principles of civil

and political laws, such, for instance, as the natural equality of

mankind, and the abolition of all privileges of caste, of class, of

profession, which is the consequence of that equality; the sovereignty

of the people, the omnipotence of social power, the uniformity of laws.

All these doctrines were not only causes of the French Revolution,

they were its very substance: of all its effects they are the most

fundamental, the most lasting, and the most true, as far as time is

concerned.

In the other part of their doctrines the philosophers of the eighteenth

century attacked the Church with the utmost fury; they fell foul of

her clergy, her hierarchy, her institutions, her dogmas; and, in order

more surely to overthrow them, they endeavoured to tear up the very

foundations of Christianity. But as this part of the philosophy of the

eighteenth century arose out of the very abuses which the Revolution

destroyed, it necessarily disappeared together with them, and was as

it were buried beneath its own triumph. I will add but one word to

make myself more fully understood, as I shall return hereafter to this

important subject: it was in the character of a political institution,

far more than in that of a religious doctrine, that Christianity had

inspired such fierce hatreds; it was not so much because the priests

assumed authority over the concerns of the next world, as because they

were landowners, landlords, tithe-owners, and administrators in this

world; not because the Church was unable to find a place in the new

society which was about to be constituted, but because she filled the

strongest and most privileged place in the old state of society which

was doomed to destruction.

Observe how the progress of time has made and still makes this

truth more and more palpable day by day. In the same measure that

the political effects of the Revolution have become more firmly

established, its irreligious results have been annihilated; in the same

measure that all the old political institutions which the Revolution

attacked have been entirely destroyed--that the powers, the influences,

and the classes which were the objects of its especial hostility have

been irrevocably crushed, until even the hatred they inspired has begun

to lose its intensity--in the same measure, in short, as the clergy has

separated itself more and more from all that formerly fell with it, we

have seen the power of the Church gradually regain and re-establish its

ascendency over the minds of men.

Neither must it be supposed that this phenomenon is peculiar to France;

there is hardly any Christian church in Europe that has not recovered

vitality since the French Revolution.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the democratic state of society

is necessarily hostile to religion: nothing in Christianity, or even

in Catholicism, is absolutely opposed to the spirit of this form of

society, and many things in democracy are extremely favourable to it.

Moreover, the experience of all ages has shown that the most living

root of religious belief has ever been planted in the heart of the

people. All the religions which have perished lingered longest in that

abode, and it would be strange indeed if institutions which tend to

give power to the ideas and passions of the people were, as a permanent

and inevitable result, to lead the minds of men towards impiety.

What has just been said of religious, may be predicated even more

strongly of social, authority.

When the Revolution overthrew at once all the institutions and all

the customs which up to that time had maintained certain gradations

in society, and kept men within certain bounds, it seemed as if the

result would be the total destruction not only of one particular

order of society, but of all order: not only of this or that form of

government, but of all social authority; and its nature was judged to

be essentially anarchical. Nevertheless, I maintain that this too was

true only in appearance.

Within a year from the beginning of the revolution, Mirabeau wrote

secretly to the King: ‘Compare the new state of things with the old

rule; there is the ground for comfort and hope. One part of the acts

of the National Assembly, and that the more considerable part, is

evidently favourable to monarchical government. Is it nothing to be

without parliaments? without the _pays d’état_? without a body of

clergy? without a privileged class? without a nobility? The idea

of forming a single class of all the citizens would have pleased

Richelieu; this equality of the surface facilitates the exercise of

power. Several successive reigns of an absolute monarchy would not have

done as much for the royal authority as this one year of revolution.’

Such was the view of the Revolution taken by a man capable of guiding

it.

As the object of the French Revolution was not only to change an

ancient form of government, but also to abolish an ancient state of

society, it had to attack at once every established authority, to

destroy every recognised influence, to efface all traditions, to create

new manners and customs, and, as it were, to purge the human mind of

all the ideas upon which respect and obedience had hitherto been based.

Thence arose its singularly anarchical character.

But, clear away the ruins, and you behold an immense central power,

which has attracted and absorbed into unity all the fractions of

authority and influence which had formerly been dispersed amongst a

host of secondary powers, orders, classes, professions, families and

individuals, and which were disseminated throughout the whole fabric

of society. The world had not seen such a power since the fall of the

Roman Empire. This power was created by the Revolution, or rather it

arose spontaneously out of the ruins which the Revolution had left.

The governments which it founded are more perishable, it is true, but

a hundred times more powerful than any of those which it overthrew; we

shall see hereafter that their fragility and their power were owing to

the same causes.

It was this simple, regular, and imposing form of power which Mirabeau

perceived through the dust and rubbish of ancient, half-demolished

institutions. This object, in spite of its greatness, was still

invisible to the eyes of the many, but time has gradually unveiled

it to all eyes. At the present moment it especially attracts the

attention of rulers: it is looked upon with admiration and envy not

only by those whom the Revolution has created, but by those who are

the most alien and the most hostile to it; all endeavour, within their

own dominions, to destroy immunities and to abolish privileges. They

confound ranks, they equalise classes, they supersede the aristocracy

by public functionaries, local franchises by uniform enactments, and

the diversities of authority by the unity of a Central Government.

They labour at this revolutionary task with unwearied industry, and

when they meet with occasional obstacles, they do not scruple to copy

the measures as well as the maxims of the Revolution. They have even

stirred up the poor against the rich, the middle classes against

the nobility, the peasants against their feudal lords. The French

Revolution has been at once their curse and their instructor.

CHAPTER III.

SHOWING THAT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION WAS A POLITICAL REVOLUTION WHICH

FOLLOWED THE COURSE OF RELIGIOUS REVOLUTIONS, AND FOR WHAT REASONS.

All mere civil and political revolutions have had some country for

their birth-place, and have remained circumscribed within its limits.

The French Revolution, however, had no territorial boundary--far from

it; one of its effects has been to efface as it were all ancient

frontiers from the map of Europe. It united or it divided mankind

in spite of laws, traditions, characters, and languages, turning

fellow-countrymen into enemies, and foreigners into brothers; or

rather, it formed an intellectual country common to men of every

nation, but independent of all separate nationalities.

We should search all the annals of history in vain for a political

revolution of the same character; that character is only to be found in

certain religious revolutions. And accordingly it is to them that the

French Revolution must be compared, if any light is to be thrown upon

it by analogy.

Schiller remarks, with truth, in his ‘History of the Thirty Years’

War,’ that the great Reformation of the sixteenth century had the

effect of bringing together nations which scarcely knew each other, and

of closely uniting them by new sympathies. Thus it was that Frenchmen

warred against Frenchmen, while Englishmen came to their assistance;

men born on the most distant shores of the Baltic penetrated into the

very heart of Germany in order to defend Germans of whose existence

they had never heard until then. International wars assumed something

of the character of civil wars, whilst in every civil war foreigners

were engaged. The former interests of every nation were forgotten

in behalf of new interests; territorial questions were succeeded

by questions of principle. The rules of diplomacy were involved in

inextricable confusion, greatly to the horror and amazement of the

politicians of the time. The very same thing happened in Europe after

1789.

The French Revolution was then a political revolution, which in its

operation and its aspect resembled a religious one. It had every

peculiar and characteristic feature of a religious movement; it

not only spread to foreign countries, but it was carried thither

by preaching and by propaganda. It is impossible to conceive a

stranger spectacle than that of a political revolution which inspires

proselytism, which its adherents preach to foreigners with as much

ardour and passion as they have shown in enacting it at home. Of

all the new and strange things displayed to the world by the French

Revolution, this assuredly is the newest. On penetrating deeper into

this matter, we shall most likely discover that this similarity of

effects must be produced by a latent similarity of causes.

The general character of most religions is, that they deal with man

by himself, without taking into consideration whatever the laws, the

traditions, and the customs of each country may have added to his

original nature. Their principal aim is to regulate the relations of

man towards God, and the rights and duties of men towards each other,

independently of the various forms of society. The rules of conduct

which they inculcate apply less to the man of any particular country

or period than to man as a son, a father, a servant, a master, or a

neighbour. Being thus based on human nature itself, they are applicable

to all men, and at all times, and in all places. It is owing to this

cause that religious revolutions have so often spread over such vast

spheres of action, and have seldom been confined, like political

revolutions, to the territory of a single nation, or even of a single

race. If we investigate this subject still more closely, we shall find

that the more any religion has possessed the abstract and general

character to which I refer, the wider has it spread, in spite of all

differences of laws, of climate, and of races.

The pagan religions of antiquity, which were all more or less bound up

with the political constitution or the social condition of each nation,

and which displayed even in their dogmas a certain national, and even

municipal, character, seldom spread beyond their own territorial

limits. They sometimes engendered intolerance and persecution, but

proselytism was to them unknown. Accordingly there were no great

religious revolutions in Western Europe previous to the introduction

of Christianity, which easily broke through barriers that had been

insurmountable to the pagan religions, and rapidly conquered a large

portion of the human race. It is no disrespect to this holy religion to

say, that it partly owed its triumph to the fact that it was more free

than any other faith from everything peculiar to any one nation, form

of government, social condition, period, or race.

The French Revolution proceeded, as far as this world is concerned,

in precisely the same manner that religious revolutions proceed with

regard to the next; it looked upon the citizen in the abstract,

irrespective of any particular society, just as most religions look

upon man in general independently of time or country. It did not

endeavour merely to define what were the especial rights of a French

citizen, but what were the universal duties and rights of all men in

political matters. It was by thus recurring to that which was least

peculiar and, we might almost say, most _natural_ in the principles

of society and of government that the French Revolution was rendered

intelligible to all men, and could be imitated in a hundred different

places.

As it affected to tend more towards the regeneration of mankind than

even towards the reform of France, it roused passions such as the most

violent political revolutions had never before excited. It inspired a

spirit of proselytism and created the propaganda. This gave to it that

aspect of a religious revolution which so terrified its contemporaries,

or rather, we should say, it became a kind of new religion in itself--a

religion, imperfect it is true, without a God, without a worship,

without a future life, but which nevertheless, like Islam, poured forth

its soldiers, its apostles, and its martyrs over the face of the earth.

It must not, however, be imagined that the mode of operation pursued

by the French Revolution was altogether without precedent, or that all

the ideas which it developed were entirely new. In every age, even in

the depths of the Middle Ages, there had been agitators who invoked the

universal laws of human society in order to subvert particular customs,

and who have attempted to oppose the constitutions of their own

countries with weapons borrowed from the natural rights of mankind. But

all these attempts had failed; the firebrand which ignited Europe in

the eighteenth century had been easily extinguished in the fifteenth.

Revolutions are not to be produced by arguments of this nature until

certain changes have already been effected in the condition, the

habits, and the manners of a nation, by which the minds of men are

prepared to undergo a change.

There are periods in which men differ so completely from each other,

that the notion of a single law applicable to all is entirely

incomprehensible to them. There are others in which it is sufficient to

show to them from afar off the indistinct image of such a law in order

to make them recognise it at once, and hasten to adopt it.

The most extraordinary phenomenon is not so much that the French

Revolution should have pursued the course it did, and have developed

the ideas to which it gave rise, but that so many nations should have

reached a point at which such a course could be effectually employed

and such maxims be readily admitted.

CHAPTER IV.

SHOWING THAT NEARLY THE WHOLE OF EUROPE HAD HAD PRECISELY THE SAME

INSTITUTIONS, AND THAT THESE INSTITUTIONS WERE EVERYWHERE FALLING TO

PIECES.

The tribes which overthrew the Roman Empire, and which in the end

formed all the modern nations of Europe, differed among each other in

race, in country, and in language; they only resembled each other in

barbarism. Once established in the dominions of the empire they engaged

in a long and fierce struggle, and when at length they had gained a

firm footing they found themselves divided by the very ruins they had

made. Civilisation was almost extinct, public order at an end, the

relations between man and man had become difficult and dangerous, and

the great body of European society was broken up into thousands of

small distinct and hostile societies, each of which lived apart from

the rest. Nevertheless certain uniform laws arose all at once out of

the midst of this incoherent mass.

These institutions were not copied from the Roman legislation;[4]

indeed they were so much opposed to it that recourse was had to the

Roman law to alter and abolish them. They have certain original

characteristics which distinguish them from all other laws invented by

mankind. They corresponded to each other in all their parts, and, taken

together, they formed a body of law so compact that the articles of

our modern codes are not more perfectly coherent; they were skilfully

framed laws intended for a half-savage state of society.

It is not my purpose to inquire how such a system of legislation could

have arisen, spread, and become general throughout Europe. But it

is certain that in the Middle Ages it existed more or less in every

European nation, and that in many it prevailed to the exclusion of

every other.

I have had occasion to study the political institutions of the Middle

Ages in France, in England, and in Germany, and the further I proceeded

in my labours the more was I astonished at the prodigious similarity

which existed amongst all these various sets of laws; and the more did

I wonder how nations so different, and having so little intercourse,

could have contrived laws so much alike. Not but they continually and

almost immeasurably differ in their details and in different countries,

but the basis is invariably the same. If I discovered a political

institution, a law, a fixed authority, in the ancient Germanic

legislation, I was sure, on searching further, to find something

exactly analogous to it in France and in England. Each of these three

nations helped me more fully to understand the others.

In all three the government was carried on according to the same

maxims, political assemblies were formed out of the same elements, and

invested with the same powers. Society was divided in the same manner,

and the same gradation of classes subsisted in each; in all three the

position of the nobles, their privileges, their characteristics, and

their disposition were identical; as men they were not distinguishable,

but rather, properly speaking, the same men in every place.

The municipal constitutions were alike; the rural districts were

governed in the same manner. The condition of the peasantry differed

but little; the land was owned, occupied, and tilled after the same

fashion, and the cultivators were subjected to the same burthens.

From the confines of Poland to the Irish Channel, the Lord’s estate,

the manorial courts, the fiefs, the quit-rents, feudal service,

feudal rights, and the corporations or trading guilds, were all

alike. Sometimes the very names were the same; and what is still

more remarkable, the same spirit breathes in all these analogous

institutions. I think I may venture to affirm, that in the fourteenth

century the social, political, administrative, judicial, economical,

and literary institutions of Europe were more nearly akin to each other

than they are at the present time, when civilisation appears to have

opened all the channels of communication, and to have levelled every

obstacle.

It is no part of my scheme to relate how this ancient constitution of

Europe gradually became wasted and decayed; it is sufficient to remark

that in the eighteenth century it was everywhere falling into ruin.[5]

On the whole, its decline was less marked in the east than in the west

of the continent; but on all sides old age and decrepitude were visible.

The progress of this gradual decay of the institutions of the Middle

Ages may be followed in the archives of the different nations. It

is well known that each manor kept rolls called _terriers_, in

which from century to century were recorded the limits of fiefs

and the quit-rents, the dues, the services to be rendered, and the

local customs. I have seen rolls of the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries which are masterpieces of method, perspicuity, concision,

and acuteness. The further we advance towards modern times the more

obscure, ill-digested, defective, and confused do they become, in spite

of the general progress of enlightenment. It seems as if political

society became barbarous, while civil society advances towards

civilisation.

Even in Germany, where the ancient constitution of Europe had preserved

many more of its primitive features than in France, some of the

institutions which it had created were already completely destroyed.

But we shall not be so well able to appreciate the ravages of time when

we take into account what was gone, as when we examine the condition of

what was left.

The municipal institutions which in the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries had raised the chief towns of Germany into rich and

enlightened small republics, still existed in the eighteenth; but they

were a mere semblance of the past. Their ancient traditions seemed to

continue in force; the magistrates appointed by them bore the same

titles and seemed to perform the same functions; but the activity, the

energy, the municipal patriotism, the manly and prolific virtues which

they formerly inspired, had disappeared. These ancient institutions

appeared to have collapsed without losing the form that distinguished

them.[6]

All the powers of the Middle Ages which where still in existence

seemed to be affected by the same disease; all showed symptoms of

the same languor and decay. Nay more, whatever was mixed up with

the constitution of that time, and had retained a strong impression

of it, even without absolutely belonging to those institutions, at

once lost its vitality. Thus it was that the aristocracy was seized

with senile debility; even political freedom, which had filled the

preceding centuries with its achievements, seemed stricken with

impotency wherever it preserved the peculiar characteristics impressed

upon it by the Middle Ages. Wherever the Provincial Assemblies had

maintained their ancient constitution unchanged, they checked instead

of furthering the progress of civilisation; they seemed insensible and

impervious to the new spirit of the times. Accordingly the hearts of

the people turned from them towards their sovereigns. The antiquity

of these institutions had not made them venerable: on the contrary,

the older they grew the more they fell into discredit; and, strangely

enough, they inspired more and more hatred in proportion as their

decay rendered them less capable of mischief. ‘The actual state of

things,’ said a German writer, who was a friend and contemporary of

the period anterior to the French Revolution, ‘seems to have become

generally offensive to all, and sometimes contemptible. It is strange

to see with what disfavour men now look upon all that is old. New

impressions creep into the bosom of our families and disturb their

peace. Our very housewives will no longer endure their ancient

furniture.’ Nevertheless, at this time Germany, as well as France,

enjoyed a high state of social activity and constantly increasing

prosperity. But it must be borne in mind that all the elements of life,

activity and production, were new, and not only new, but antagonistic

to the past.

Royalty no longer had anything in common with the royalty of the Middle

Ages, it enjoyed other prerogatives, occupied a different place, was

imbued with a different spirit, and inspired different sentiments; the

administration of the State spread in all directions upon the ruins of

local authorities; the organised array of public officers superseded

more and more the government of the nobles. All these new powers

employed methods and followed maxims which the men of the Middle Ages

had either not known or had condemned; and, indeed, they belong to a

state of society of which those men could have formed no idea.

In England, where, at the first glance, the ancient constitution of

Europe might still seem in full vigour, the case is the same. Setting

aside the ancient names and the old forms, in England the feudal system

was substantially abolished in the seventeenth century; all classes of

society began to intermingle, the pretensions of birth were effaced,

the aristocracy was thrown open, wealth was becoming power, equality

was established before the law, public employments were open to all,

the press became free, the debates of Parliament public; every one of

them new principles, unknown to the society of the Middle Ages. It is

precisely these new elements, gradually and skilfully incorporated

with the ancient constitution of England, which have revived without

endangering it, and filled it with new life and vigour without

destroying the ancient forms. In the seventeenth century England was

already quite a modern nation, which had still preserved, and, as it

were, embalmed some of the relics of the Middle Ages.

This rapid view of the state of things beyond the boundaries of France

was essential to the comprehension of what is about to follow; for

no one who has seen and studied France only, can ever--I venture to

affirm--understand anything of the French Revolution.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] See Note I., on the Power of the Roman Law in Germany.

[5] See Note II., on the passage from Feudal to Democratic Monarchy.

[6] See Note III., on the Decay of the Free Towns of Germany.

CHAPTER V.

WHAT WAS THE PECULIAR SCOPE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

The preceding pages have had no other purpose than to throw some light

on the subject in hand, and to facilitate the solution of the questions

which I laid down in the beginning, namely, what was the real object

of the Revolution? What was its peculiar character? For what precise

reason it was made, and what did it effect?

The Revolution was not made, as some have supposed, in order to destroy

the authority of religious belief. In spite of appearances, it was

essentially a social and political Revolution; and within the circle

of social and political institutions it did not tend to perpetuate

and give stability to disorder, or (as one of its chief adversaries

had said) to methodise anarchy; but rather to increase the power

and the rights of public authority. It was not destined (as others

have believed) to change the whole character which civilisation had

previously assumed, to check its progress, or even essentially to

alter any of the fundamental laws upon which human society in Western

Europe is based. If we divest it of all the accidental circumstances

which altered its aspect in different countries and at various times,

and consider only the Revolution itself, we shall clearly perceive

that its only effect has been to abolish those political institutions

which during several centuries had been in force among the greater part

of the European nations, and which are usually designated as feudal

institutions, in order to substitute a more uniform and simple state of

society and politics, based upon an equality of social condition.

This was quite sufficient to constitute an immense revolution, for

not only were these ancient institutions mixed up and interwoven with

almost all the religious and political laws of Europe, but they had

also given rise to a crowd of ideas, sentiments, habits, and manners

which clung around them. Nothing less than a frightful convulsion could

suddenly destroy and expel from the social body a part to which all its

organs adhered. This made the Revolution appear even greater than it

really was; it seemed to destroy everything, for what it did destroy

was bound up with, and formed, as it were, one flesh with everything in

the social body.

However radical the Revolution may have been, its innovations were,

in fact, much less than has been commonly supposed, as I shall show

hereafter. What may truly be said is, that it entirely destroyed, or is

still destroying (for it is not at an end), every part of the ancient

state of society that owed its origin to aristocratic and feudal

institutions--everything in any way connected with those institutions,

or in any degree, however slight, imbued with their spirit. It spared

no part of the old world, save such as had always been foreign to

those institutions, or could exist apart from them. Least of all was

the Revolution a fortuitous event. It took the world by surprise, it

is true, but it was not the less the completion of a long process,

the sudden and violent termination of a work which had successively

passed before the eyes of ten generations. If it had not taken place,

the old social structure would equally have fallen sooner in one place

and later in another--only it would have crumbled away by degrees

instead of falling with a crash. The Revolution effected on a sudden

and by a violent and convulsive effort, without any transition, without

forethought, without mercy, that which would have happened little by

little if left to itself. This was its work.

It is surprising that this view of the subject, which now seems so

easy to discern, should have been so obscured and confused even to the

clearest perceptions.

‘Instead of redressing their grievances,’ says Burke of the

representatives of the French nation, ‘and improving the fabric of

their state, to which they were called by their monarch and sent by

their country, they were made to take a very different course. They

first destroyed all the balances and counterpoises which serve to

fix the State and to give it a steady direction, and which furnish

sure correctives to any violent spirit which may prevail in any of

the orders. These balances existed in the oldest constitution and in

the constitution of all the countries in Europe. These they rashly

destroyed, and then they melted down the whole into one incongruous,

ill-connected mass.’[7]

Burke did not perceive that he had before his eyes the very Revolution

which was to abolish the ancient common law of Europe; he could not

discern that this and no other was the very question at issue.

But why, we may ask, did this Revolution, which was imminent throughout

Europe, break out in France rather than elsewhere, and why did it there

display certain characteristics which have appeared nowhere else, or

at least have appeared only in part? This second question is well

worthy of consideration, and the inquiry will form the subject of the

following book.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] Burke’s speech on the Army Estimates, 1790.

_BOOK II._

CHAPTER I.

WHY FEUDAL RIGHTS HAD BECOME MORE ODIOUS TO THE PEOPLE IN FRANCE THAN

IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.

It must at first sight excite surprise that the Revolution, whose

peculiar object it was, as we have seen, everywhere to abolish

the remnant of the institutions of the Middle Ages, did not break

out in the countries in which these institutions, still in better

preservation, caused the people most to feel their constraint and their

rigour, but, on the contrary, in the countries where their effects were

least felt; so that the burden seemed most intolerable where it was in

reality least heavy.

In no part of Germany, at the close of the eighteenth century, was

serfdom as yet completely abolished,[8] and in the greater part of

Germany the people were still literally _adscripti glebæ_, as in the

Middle Ages. Almost all the soldiers who fought in the armies of

Frederic II. and of Maria Theresa were in reality serfs.[9] In most

of the German States, as late as 1788, a peasant could not quit his

domain, and if he quitted it he might be pursued in all places wherever

he could be found, and brought back by force. In that domain he lived

subject to the seignorial jurisdiction which controlled his domestic

life and punished his intemperance or his sloth. He could neither

improve his condition, nor change his calling, nor marry without the

good pleasure of his master. To the service of that master a large

portion of his time was due. Labour rents (_corvées_) existed to their

full extent, and absorbed in some of these countries three days in the

week. The peasant rebuilt and repaired the mansion of the lord, carted

his produce to market, drove his carriage, and went on his errands.

Several years of the peasant’s early life were spent in the domestic

service of the manor-house. The serf might, however, become the owner

of land, but his property always remained very incomplete. He was

obliged to till his field in a certain manner under the eye of the

master, and he could neither dispose of it nor mortgage it at will.

In some cases he was compelled to sell its produce; in others he was

restrained from selling it; his obligation to cultivate the ground was

absolute. Even his inheritance did not descend without deduction to his

offspring; a fine was commonly subtracted by the lord.

I am not seeking out these provisions in obsolete laws. They are to be

met with even in the Code framed by Frederic the Great and promulgated

by his successor at the very time of the outbreak of the French

Revolution.[10]

Nothing of the kind had existed in France for a long period of time.

The peasant came, and went, and bought, and sold, and dealt, and

laboured, as he pleased. The last traces of serfdom could only be

detected in one or two of the eastern provinces annexed to France by

conquest; everywhere else the institution had disappeared; and indeed

its abolition had occurred so long before that even the date of it was

forgotten. The researches of archæologists of our own day have proved

that as early as the thirteenth century serfdom was no longer to be met

with in Normandy.

But in the condition of the people in France another and a still

greater revolution had taken place. The French peasant had not only

ceased to be a serf; he had become an Owner of Land. This fact is still

at the present time so imperfectly established, and its consequences,

as will presently be seen, have been so remarkable, that I must be

permitted to pause for a moment to examine it.

It has long been believed that the subdivision of landed property in

France dates from the Revolution of 1789, and was only the result of

that Revolution. The contrary is demonstrable by every species of

evidence.

Twenty years at least before that Revolution, Agricultural Societies

were in existence which already deplored the excessive subdivision of

the soil. ‘The division of inheritances,’ said M. de Turgot, about the

same time, ‘is such that what sufficed for a single family is shared

among five or six children. These children and their families can

therefore no longer subsist exclusively by the land.’ Necker said a

few years later that there was in France an _immensity_ of small rural

properties.

I have met the following expressions in a secret Report made

to one of the provincial Intendants a few years before the

Revolution:--‘Inheritances are divided in an equal and alarming

manner, and as every one wishes to have something of everything, and

everywhere, the plots of land are infinitely divided and perpetually

subdivided.’ Might not this sentence have been written in our days?

I have myself taken the infinite pains to reconstruct, as it were,

the survey of landed property as it existed in France before the

Revolution, and I have in some cases effected my object. In pursuance

of the law of 1790, which established the land-tax, each parish had

to frame a return of the landed properties then existing within

its boundaries. These returns have for the most part disappeared;

nevertheless I have found them in a few villages, and by comparing

them with the rolls of the present holders, I have found that, in

these villages, the number of landed proprietors at that time amounted

to one-half, frequently to two-thirds, of their present number: a

fact which is the more remarkable if it be remembered that the total

population of France has augmented by more than one-fourth since that

period.

Already, as at the present time, the love of the peasant for property

in land was intense, and all the passions which the possession of the

soil has engendered in his nature were already inflamed. ‘Land is

always sold above its value,’ said an excellent contemporary observer;

‘which arises from the passion of all the inhabitants to become owners

of the soil. All the savings of the lower orders which elsewhere are

placed out at private interest, or in the public securities, are

intended in France for the purchase of land.’

Amongst the novelties which Arthur Young observed in France, when he

visited that country for the first time, none struck him more than the

great division of the soil among the peasantry. He averred that half

the soil of France belonged to them in fee. ‘I had no idea,’ he often

says, ‘of such a state of things;’ and it is true that such a state of

things existed at that time nowhere but in France, or in the immediate

neighbourhood of France.

In England there had been peasant landowners, but the number of them

had already considerably decreased. In Germany there had been at all

times and in all parts of the country a certain number of peasant

freeholders, who held portions of the soil in fee. The peculiar and

often eccentric laws which regulated the property of these peasants are

to be met with in the oldest of the Germanic customs; but this species

of property was always of an exceptional character, and the number of

these small proprietors was very limited.[11]

The districts of Germany in which, at the close of the eighteenth

century, the peasants were possessed of land and lived almost as

freely as in France, lay on the banks of the Rhine.[12] In those same

districts the revolutionary passions of France spread with the utmost

velocity, and have always been most intense. The tracts of Germany

which remained, on the contrary, for the longest time inaccessible to

these passions, are those where no such tenures of land had yet been

introduced. The observation deserves to be made.

It is, then, a vulgar error to suppose that the subdivision of landed

property in France dates from the Revolution. This state of things is

far older. The Revolution, it is true, caused the lands of the Church

and a great portion of the lands of the nobility to be sold; but if any

one will take the trouble, as I have sometimes done, to refer to the

actual returns and entries of these sales, it will be seen that most

of these lands were purchased by persons who already held other lands;

so that though the property changed hands, the number of proprietors

increased far less than is supposed. There was already an _immensity_

of these persons, to borrow the somewhat ambitious but, in this case,

not inaccurate expression of M. Necker.

The effect of the Revolution was not to divide the soil, but to

liberate it for a moment. All these small landowners were, in reality,

ill at ease in the cultivation of their property, and had to bear many

charges or easements on the land which they could not shake off.

These charges were no doubt onerous.[13] But the cause which made

them appear insupportable was precisely that which might have seemed

calculated to diminish the burden of them. The peasants of France

had been released, more than in any other part of Europe, from the

government of their lords, by a revolution not less momentous than that

which had made them owners of the soil.

Although what is termed in France the Ancien Régime is still very near

to us, since we live in daily intercourse with men born under its

laws, that period seems already lost in the night of time. The radical

revolution which separates us from it has produced the effect of ages:

it has obliterated all that it has not destroyed. Few persons therefore

can now give an accurate answer to the simple question--How were the

rural districts of France administered before 1789? And indeed no

answer can be given to that question with precision and minuteness,

without having studied, not books, but the administrative records of

that period.

It is often said that the French nobility, which had long ceased to

take part in the government of the State, preserved to the last the

administration of the rural districts--the Seigneurs governed the

peasantry. This again is very like a mistake.

In the eighteenth century all the affairs of the parish were managed by

a certain number of parochial officers, who were no longer the agents

of the manor or domain, and whom the Lord no longer selected. Some of

these persons were nominated by the Intendant of the province, others

were elected by the peasants themselves. The duty of these authorities

was to assess the taxes, to repair the church, to build schools,

to convoke and preside over the vestry or parochial meeting. They

attended to the property of the parish and determined the application

of it--they sued and were sued in its name. Not only the lord of the

domain no longer conducted the administration of these small local

affairs, but he did not even superintend it. All the parish officers

were under the government or the control of the central power, as we

shall show in a subsequent chapter. Nay, more, the Seigneur had almost

ceased to act as the representative of the Crown in the parish, or as

the channel of communication between the King and his subjects. He

was no longer expected to apply in the parish the general laws of the

realm, to call out the militia, to collect the taxes, to promulgate the

mandates of the sovereign, or to distribute the bounty of the Crown.

All these duties and all these rights belonged to others. The Seigneur

was in fact no longer anything but an inhabitant of the parish,

separated by his own immunities and privileges from all the other

inhabitants. His rank was different, not his power. _The Seigneur is

only the principal inhabitant_ was the instruction constantly given by

the Provincial Intendants to their Sub-delegates.

If we quit the parish, and examine the constitution of the larger

rural districts, we shall find the same state of things. Nowhere did

the nobles conduct public business either in their collective or their

individual capacity. This was peculiar to France. Everywhere else

the characteristic features of the old feudal society were partially

preserved: the possession of the soil and the government of those who

dwelt on the soil were still commingled.

England was administered as well as governed by the chief owners of the

soil. Even in those parts of Germany, as in Prussia and in Austria,

in which the reigning princes had been most successful in shaking

off the control of the nobles in the general affairs of the state,

they had left to that class, to a great degree, the administration of

rural affairs, and though the landed proprietor was, in some places,

controlled by the Government, his authority had nowhere been superseded.

To say the truth, the French nobility had long since lost all hold on

the administration of public affairs, except on one single-point, that

namely of justice. The principal nobles still retained the right of

having judges who decided certain suits in their name, and occasionally

established police regulations within the limits of their domain; but

the power of the Crown had gradually cut down, limited, and subdued

this seignorial jurisdiction to such a degree that the nobles who still

exercised it regarded it less as a source of authority than as a source

of income.

Such had been the fate of all the peculiar rights of the French

nobility. The political element had disappeared; the pecuniary element

alone remained, and in some instances had been largely increased.

I speak at this moment of that portion of the beneficial privileges of

the aristocracy, which were especially called by the name of feudal

rights, since they were the privileges which peculiarly touched the

people.

It is not easy to ascertain in what these rights did precisely still

consist in 1789, for the number of them had been great, their diversity

amazing, and many of these rights had already vanished or undergone a

transformation; so that the meaning of the terms by which they were

designated was perplexing even to contemporaries, and is become obscure

to us. Nevertheless by consulting the works of the domanial jurists

of the eighteenth century, and from attentive researches into local

customs, it will be found that all the rights still in existence at

that time may be reduced to a small number of leading heads; all the

others still subsisted, it is true, but only in isolated cases.

The traces of seignorial labour-rents (_corvées_) may almost everywhere

be detected, but they were already half extinguished. Most of the tolls

on roads had been reduced or abolished; yet there were few provinces

in which some such tolls were not still to be met with. Everywhere too

Seigneurs levied dues on fairs and markets. Throughout France they

had the exclusive right of sporting. Generally they alone could keep

dovecotes and pigeons; almost everywhere the peasant was compelled

to grind at the seignorial mill, and to crush his grapes in the

seignorial wine-press. A very universal and onerous seignorial right

was that of the fine called _lods et ventes_, paid to the lord every

time lands were bought or sold within the boundaries of his manor. All

over the country the land was burdened with quit-rents, rent-charges,

or dues in money or in kind, due to the lord from the copyholder,

and not redeemable by the latter. Under all these differences one

common feature may be traced. All these rights were more or less

connected with the soil or with its produce; they all bore upon him who

cultivates it.[14]

The spiritual lords of the soil enjoyed the same advantages; for

the Church, which had a different origin, a different purpose, and

a different nature from the feudal system, had nevertheless at last

intimately mingled itself with that system; and though never completely

incorporated with that foreign substance, it had struck so deeply into

it as to be incrusted there.[15]

Bishops, canons, and incumbents held fiefs or charges on the land in

virtue of their ecclesiastical functions. A convent had generally the

lordship of the village in which it stood. The Church held serfs in

the only part of France in which they still existed: it levied its

labour-rents, its due on fairs and markets; it had the common oven, the

common mill, the common wine-press, and the common bull. Moreover, the

clergy still enjoyed in France, as in all the rest of Christendom, the

right of tithe.[16]

But what I am here concerned to remark is, that throughout Europe at

that time the same feudal rights--_identically the same_--existed, and

that in most of the continental states they were far more onerous than

in France. I may quote the single instance of the seignorial claim for

labour: in France this right was unfrequent and mild; in Germany it was

still universal and harsh.

Nay more, many of the rights of feudal origin which were held in the

utmost abhorrence by the last generation of Frenchmen, and which they

considered as contrary not only to justice but to civilisation--such

as tithes, inalienable rent-charges or perpetual dues, fines or

heriots, and what were termed, in the somewhat pompous language of

the eighteenth century, _the servitude of the soil_, might all be met

with at that time, to a certain extent, in England, and many of them

exist in England to this day. Yet they do not prevent the husbandry

of England from being the most perfect and the most productive in the

world, and the English people is scarcely conscious of their existence.

How comes it then that these same feudal rights excited in the hearts

of the people of France so intense a hatred that this passion has

survived its object, and seems therefore to be unextinguishable? The

cause of this phenomenon is, that, on the one hand, the French peasant

had become an owner of the soil; and that, on the other, he had

entirely escaped from the government of the great landlords. Many other

causes might doubtless be indicated, but I believe these two to be the

most important.

If the peasant had not been an owner of the soil, he would have been

insensible to many of the burdens which the feudal system had cast upon

landed property. What matters tithe to a tenant farmer? He deducts it

from his rent. What matters a rent-charge to a man who is not the owner

of the ground? What matter even the impediments to free cultivation to

a man who cultivates for another?

On the other hand, if the French peasant had still lived under the

administration of his landlord, these feudal rights would have appeared

far less insupportable, because he would have regarded them as a

natural consequence of the constitution of the country.

When an aristocracy possesses not only privileges but powers, when

it governs and administers the country, its private rights may be at

once more extensive and less perceptible. In the feudal times, the

nobility were regarded pretty much as the government is regarded in

our own; the burdens they imposed were endured in consideration of the

security they afforded. The nobles had many irksome privileges; they

possessed many onerous rights; but they maintained public order, they

administered justice, they caused the law to be executed, they came to

the relief of the weak, they conducted the business of the community.

In proportion as the nobility ceased to do these things, the burden of

their privileges appeared more oppressive, and their existence became

an anomaly.

Picture to yourself a French peasant of the eighteenth century, or,

I might rather say, the peasant now before your eyes, for the man is

the same; his condition is altered, but not his character. Take him

as he is described in the documents I have quoted--so passionately

enamoured of the soil, that he will spend all his savings to purchase

it, and to purchase it at any price. To complete this purchase he must

first pay a tax, not to the government, but to other landowners of the

neighbourhood, as unconnected as himself with the administration of

public affairs, and hardly more influential than he is. He possesses it

at last; his heart is buried in it with the seed he sows. This little

nook of ground, which is his own in this vast universe, fills him with

pride and independence. But again these neighbours call him from his

furrow, and compel him to come to work for them without wages. He tries

to defend his young crops from their game; again they prevent him. As

he crosses the river they wait for his passage to levy a toll. He finds

them at the market, where they sell him the right of selling his own

produce; and when, on his return home, he wants to use the remainder

of his wheat for his own sustenance--of that wheat which was planted

by his hands, and has grown under his eyes--he cannot touch it till he

has ground it at the mill and baked it at the bakehouse of these same

men. A portion of the income of his little property is paid away in

quit-rents to them also, and these dues can neither be extinguished nor

redeemed.

Whatever he does, these troublesome neighbours are everywhere on his

path, to disturb his happiness, to interfere with his labour, to

consume his profits; and when these are dismissed, others in the black

garb of the Church present themselves to carry off the clearest profit

of his harvest. Picture to yourself the condition, the wants, the

character, the passions of this man, and compute, if you are able, the

stores of hatred and of envy which are accumulated in his heart.[17]

Feudalism still remained the greatest of all the civil institutions of

France, though it had ceased to be a political institution. Reduced

to these proportions, the hatred it excited was greater than ever;

and it may be said with truth that the destruction of a part of the

institutions of the Middle Ages rendered a hundred times more odious

that portion which still survived.[18]

FOOTNOTES:

[8] See Note IV., Date of Abolition of Serfdom in Germany.

[9] See Note V.

[10] See Note VI.

[11] See Note VII., Peasant Lands in Germany.

[12] See Note VIII., Nobility and Lands on the Rhine.

[13] See Note IX., Effect of Usury Laws on Land.

[14] See Note X., Abuse of Feudal Rights.

[15] See Note XI., Ecclesiastical Feudal Rights.

[16] See Note XII., Rights of the Abbey of Cherbourg.

[17] See Note XIII., Irritation caused to the Peasantry by Feudal

Rights, and especially by the Feudal Rights of the Clergy.

[18] See Note XIV., Effect of Feudalism on state of Real Property.