SHOWING THAT WHAT IS NOW CALLED ADMINISTRATIVE TUTELAGE WAS AN
INSTITUTION IN FRANCE ANTERIOR TO THE REVOLUTION.
In France municipal freedom outlived the feudal system. Long after
the landlords were no longer the rulers of the country districts,
the towns still retained the right of self-government. Some of the
towns of France continued down to nearly the close of the seventeenth
century to form, as it were, small democratic commonwealths, in which
the magistrates were freely elected by the whole people and were
responsible to the people--in which municipal life was still public and
animated--in which the city was still proud of her rights and jealous
of her independence.
These elections were generally abolished for the first time in 1692.
The municipal offices were then what was called put up to sale (_mises
en offices_ was the technical expression), that is to say, the King
sold in each town to some of the inhabitants the right of perpetually
governing all their townsmen.
This measure cost the towns at once their freedom and their well-being;
for if the practice of the sale of commissions for a public employment
sometimes proved useful in its effects when applied to the courts
of justice--since the first condition of the good administration of
justice is the complete independence of the judge--this system never
failed to be extremely mischievous whenever it was applied to posts of
administrative duty, which demand, above all things, responsibility,
subordination, and zeal. The Government of the old French monarchy was
perfectly aware of the real effects of such a system. It took great
care not to adopt for itself the same mode of proceeding which it
applied to the towns, and scrupulously abstained from putting up to
sale the commissions of its own Intendants and Sub-delegates.
And it well deserves the whole scorn of history that this great
change was accomplished without any political motive. Louis XI. had
curtailed the municipal liberties of the towns, because he was alarmed
by their democratic character;[22] Louis XIV. destroyed them under
no such fears. The proof is that he restored these rights to all the
towns which were rich enough to buy them back again. In reality, his
object was not to abolish them, but to traffic in them; and if they
were actually abolished, it was, without meaning it, by a mere fiscal
expedient. The same thing was carried on for more than eighty years.
Seven times within that period the Crown resold to the towns the right
of electing their magistrates, and as soon as they had once more tasted
this blessing, it was snatched away to be sold to them once more. The
motive of the measure was always the same, and frequently avowed. ‘Our
financial necessities,’ says the preamble to an edict of 1722, ‘compel
us to have recourse to the most effectual means of relieving them.’
The mode was effectual, but it was ruinous to those who bore this
strange impost. ‘I am struck with the enormity of the sums which have
been paid at all times to purchase back the municipal offices,’ writes
an Intendant to the Comptroller-General in 1764. ‘The amount of these
sums spent in useful improvements would have turned to the advantage of
the town, which has, on the contrary, felt nothing but the weight of
authority and the privileges of these offices.’ I have not detected a
more shameful feature in the whole aspect of the government of France
before the Revolution.
It seems difficult to say with precision at the present time how the
towns of France were governed in the eighteenth century; for, besides
that the origin of the municipal authorities fluctuated incessantly,
as has just been stated, each town still preserved some fragments of
its former constitution and its peculiar customs. There were not,
perhaps, two towns in France in which everything was exactly similar;
but this apparent diversity is fallacious, and conceals a general
resemblance.[23]
In 1764 the Government proposed to make a general law on the
administration of the towns of France, and for this purpose it caused
reports to be sent in by the Intendants of the Crown on the existing
municipal government of the country. I have discovered a portion
of the results of this inquiry, and I have fully satisfied myself
by the perusal of it that the municipal affairs of all these towns
were conducted in much the same manner. The distinctions are merely
superficial and apparent--the groundwork is everywhere the same.
In most instances the government of the towns was vested in two
assemblies. All the great towns were thus governed, and some of the
small ones. The first of these assemblies was composed of municipal
officers, more or less numerous according to the place. These formed
the executive body of the community, the corporation or _corps de la
ville_, as it was then termed. The members of this body exercised
a temporary power, and were elected when the King had restored the
elective power, or when the town had been able to buy up its offices.
They held their offices permanently upon a certain payment to the
Crown, when the Crown had appropriated the patronage and succeeded
in disposing of it by sale, which was not always the case; for this
sort of commodity declined in value precisely in proportion to the
increasing subordination of the municipal authority to the central
power. These municipal officers never received any stipend, but they
were remunerated by exemptions from taxation and by privileges. No
regular gradation of authority seems to have been established among
them--their administration was collective. The mayor was the president
of the corporation, not the governor of the city.
The second assembly, which was termed the general assembly, or as we
should say in England the _livery_, elected the corporation, wherever
it was still subject to election, and always continued to take a part
in the principal concerns of the town.
In the fifteenth century this general assembly frequently consisted of
the whole population. ‘This custom,’ said one of the authors of these
Reports, ‘was consistent with the popular spirit of our forefathers.’
At that time the whole people elected their own municipal officers;
this body was sometimes consulted by the corporation, and to this body
the corporation was responsible. At the end of the seventeenth century
the same state of things might sometimes be met with.
In the eighteenth century the people acting as a body had ceased
to meet in this general assembly; it had by that time become
representative. But, it must be carefully remarked, that this body was
no longer anywhere elected by the bulk of the community, or impressed
with its spirit. It was invariably composed of _notables_, some of whom
sat there in virtue of a personal right; others were deputed by guilds
or companies, from which each of them received imperative instructions.
As this century rolled on, the number of these notables sitting in
virtue of their own right augmented in the popular assembly; the
delegates of the working guilds fell away or disappeared altogether.
They were superseded by the delegates of the great companies, or,
in other words, the assembly contained only burgesses and scarcely
any artisans. Then the citizens, who are not so easily imposed on
by the empty semblance of liberty as is sometimes supposed, ceased
everywhere to take an interest in the affairs of the town, and lived
like strangers within their own walls. In vain the civic magistrates
attempted from time to time to revive that civic patriotism which
had done so many wonders in the Middle Ages. The people remained
deaf. The greatest interests of the town no longer appeared to affect
the citizens. They were asked to give their suffrages when the vain
counterfeit of a free election had been retained; but they stood aloof.
Nothing is more frequent in history than such an occurrence. Almost
all the princes who have destroyed freedom have attempted at first to
preserve the forms of freedom, from Augustus to our own times; they
flattered themselves that they should thus combine the moral strength
which public assent always gives, with the conveniences which absolute
power can alone offer. But almost all of them have failed in this
endeavour, and have soon discovered that it is impossible to prolong
these false appearances where the reality has ceased to exist.
In the eighteenth century the municipal government of the towns of
France had thus everywhere degenerated into a contracted oligarchy.
A few families managed all the public business for their own private
purposes, removed from the eye of the public, and with no public
responsibility. Such was the morbid condition of this administration
throughout the whole of France. All the Intendants pointed it out; but
the only remedy they suggested was the increased subjection of the
local authorities to the Central Government.
In this respect, however, it was difficult for success to be more
complete. Besides the Royal edicts, which from time to time modified
the administration of all the towns in France, the local by-laws of
each town were frequently overruled by Orders in Council, which were
not registered--passed on the recommendation of the Intendants, without
any previous inquiry, and sometimes without the citizens of the towns
themselves knowing anything of the matter.[24]
‘This measure,’ said the inhabitants of a town which had been affected
by a decree of this nature, ‘has astonished all the orders of the city,
who expected nothing of the kind.’
The towns of France at this period could neither establish an octroi on
articles of consumption, nor levy a rate, nor mortgage, nor sell, nor
sue, nor farm their property, nor administer that property, nor even
employ their own surplus revenues, without the intervention of an Order
in Council, made on the report of the Intendant. All their public works
were executed in conformity to plans and estimates approved by the
Council. These works were adjudged to contractors before the Intendant
or his Sub-delegates, and were generally intrusted to the engineers or
architects of the State.
These facts will doubtless excite the surprise of those who suppose
that the whole present condition of France is a novelty.
But the Central Government interfered more directly in the municipal
administration of the towns than even these rules would seem to
indicate; its power was far more extended than its right to exercise it.
I meet with the following passage in a circular instruction, addressed
about the middle of the last century by a Comptroller-General to all
the Intendants of the Kingdom: ‘You will pay particular attention
to all that takes place in the municipal assemblies. You will take
care to have a most exact report of everything done there and of all
the resolutions taken, in order to transmit them to me forthwith,
accompanied with your own opinion on the subject.’
In fact it may be seen, from the correspondence of the Intendant with
his subordinate officers, that the Government had a finger in all
the concerns of every town, the least as well as the greatest. The
Government was always consulted--the Government had always a decided
opinion on every point. It even regulated the public festivities,
ordered public rejoicings, caused salutes to be fired, and houses to
be illuminated. On one occasion I observe that a member of the burgher
guard was fined twenty livres by the Intendant for having absented
himself from a _Te Deum_.
The officers of these municipal corporations had therefore arrived at a
becoming sense of their own insignificance. ‘We most humbly supplicate
you, Monseigneur’ (such was the style in which they addressed the
King’s Intendant), ‘to grant us your good-will and protection. We will
endeavour not to show ourselves unworthy of them by the submission we
are ready to show to all the commands of your Greatness.’ ‘We have
never resisted your will, Monseigneur,’ was the language of another
body of these persons, who still assumed the pompous title of Peers of
the City.
Such was the preparation of the middle classes for government, and of
the people for liberty.
If at least this close dependence of the towns on the State had
preserved their finances! but such was not the case. It is sometimes
argued that without centralisation the towns would ruin themselves. I
know not how that may be, but I know that in the eighteenth century
centralisation did not prevent their ruin. The whole administrative
history of that time is replete with their embarrassments.
If we turn from the towns to the villages, we meet with different
powers and different forms of government, but the same dependence.[25]
I find many indications of the fact, that in the Middle Ages the
inhabitants of every village formed a community distinct from the Lord
of the soil. He, no doubt, employed the community, superintended it,
governed it; but the village held in common certain property, which was
absolutely its own; it elected its own chiefs, and administered its
affairs democratically.
This ancient constitution of the parish may be traced in all the
nations in which the feudal system prevailed, and in all the countries
to which these nations have carried the remnants of their laws. These
vestiges occur at every turn in England, and the system was in full
vigour in Germany sixty years ago, as may be demonstrated by reading
the code of Frederic the Great. Even in France in the eighteenth
century, some traces of it were still in existence.
I remember that, when I proceeded, for the first time, to ascertain
from the archives of one of the old Intendancies of France, what was
meant by a _parish_ before the Revolution, I was surprised to find in
this community, so poor and so enslaved, several of the characteristics
which had struck me long ago in the rural townships of the United
States, and which I had then erroneously conceived to be a peculiarity
of society in the New World. Neither in the one nor in the other
of these communities is there any permanent representation or any
municipal body, in the strict sense of that term; both the one and
the other were administered by officers acting separately under the
direction of the whole population. In both, meetings were held from
time to time, at which all the inhabitants, assembled in one body,
elected their own magistrates and settled their principal affairs.
These two parishes, in short, are as much alike as that which is living
can be like that which is dead.
Different as have been the destinies of these two corporate beings,
their birth was in fact the same.
Transported at once to regions far removed from the feudal system, and
invested with unlimited authority over itself, the rural parish of the
Middle Ages in Europe is become the township of New England. Severed
from the lordship of the soil, but grasped in the powerful hand of
the State, the rural parishes of France assumed the form I am about to
describe.
In the eighteenth century the number and the name of the parochial
officers varied in the different provinces of France. The ancient
records show that these officers were more numerous when local life
was more active, and that they diminished in number as that life
declined. In most of the parishes they were, in the eighteenth century,
reduced to two persons--the one named the ‘Collector,’ the other most
commonly named the ‘Syndic.’ Generally, these parochial officers were
either elected, or supposed to be so; but they had everywhere become
the instruments of the State rather than the representatives of the
community. The Collector levied the _taille_, under the direct orders
of the Intendant. The Syndic, placed under the daily direction of
the Sub-delegate of the Intendant, represented that personage in all
matters relating to public order or affecting the Government. He became
the principal agent of the Government in relation to military service,
to the public works of the State, and to the execution of the general
laws of the kingdom.
The Seigneur, as we have already seen, stood aloof from all these
details of government; he had even ceased to superintend them, or to
assist in them; nay more, these duties, which had served in earlier
times to keep up his power, appeared unworthy of his attention in
proportion to the progressive decay of that power. It would at last
have been an offence to his pride to require him to attend to them. He
had ceased to govern; but his presence in the parish and his privileges
effectually prevented any good government from being established in the
parish in place of his own. A private person differing so entirely from
the other parishioners--so independent of them, and so favoured by the
laws--weakened or destroyed the authority of all rules.
The unavoidable contact with such a person in the country had driven
into the towns, as I shall subsequently have occasion to show, almost
all those inhabitants who had either a competency or education, so
that none remained about the Seigneur but a flock of ignorant and
uncultivated peasants, incapable of managing the administration of
their common interests. ‘A parish,’ as Turgot had justly observed, ‘is
an assemblage of cabins, and of inhabitants as passive as the cabins
they dwell in.’
The administrative records of the eighteenth century are full of
complaints of the incapacity, indolence, and ignorance of the parochial
collectors and syndics. Ministers, Intendants, Sub-delegates, and even
the country gentlemen, are for ever deploring these defects; but none
of them had traced these defects to their cause.
Down to the Revolution the rural parishes of France had preserved in
their government something of that democratic aspect which they had
acquired in the Middle Ages. If the parochial officers were to be
elected, or some matter of public interest to be discussed, the village
bell summoned the peasants to the church-porch, where the poor as well
as the rich were entitled to present themselves. In these meetings
there was not indeed any regular debate or any decisive mode of voting,
but every one was at liberty to speak his mind; and it was the duty
of the notary, sent for on purpose, and operating in the open air, to
collect these different opinions and enter them in a record of the
proceedings.
When these empty semblances of freedom are compared with the total
impotence which was connected with them, they afford an example, in
miniature, of the combination of the most absolute government with some
of the forms of extreme democracy; so that to oppression may be added
the absurdity of affecting to disguise it. This democratic assembly of
the parish could indeed express its desires, but it had no more power
to execute its will than the corporate bodies in the towns. It could
not speak until its mouth had been opened, for the meeting could not be
held without the express permission of the Intendant, and, to use the
expression of those times, which adapted their language to the fact,
‘_under his good pleasure_.’ Even if such a meeting were unanimous, it
could neither levy a rate, nor sell, nor buy, nor let, nor sue, without
the permission of the King’s Council. It was necessary to obtain a
minute of Council to repair the damage caused by the wind to the church
steeple, or to rebuild the falling gables of the parsonage. The rural
parishes most remote from Paris were just as much subject to this rule
as those nearest to the capital. I have found records of parochial
memorials to the Council for leave to spend twenty-five livres.
The inhabitants had indeed, commonly, retained the right of electing
their parochial magistrates by universal suffrage; but it frequently
happened that the Intendant designated to this small electoral body a
candidate who never failed to be returned by a unanimity of suffrages.
Sometimes, when the election had been made by the parishioners
themselves, he set it aside, named the collector and syndic of his
own authority, and adjourned indefinitely a fresh election. There are
thousands of such examples.
It is difficult to conceive a more cruel fate than that of these
parochial officers. The lowest agent of the Central Government, the
Sub-delegate, bent them to every caprice. Often they were fined,
sometimes imprisoned; for the securities which elsewhere defended the
citizens against arbitrary proceedings had ceased to exist for them: ‘I
have thrown into prison,’ said an Intendant in 1750, ‘some of the chief
persons in the villages who grumbled, and I have made these parishes
pay the expense of the horsemen of the patrol. By these means they have
been easily checkmated.’ The consequence was, that these parochial
functions were not considered as honours, but as burdens to be evaded
by every species of subterfuge.
Yet these last remnants of the ancient parochial government were still
dear to the peasantry of France; and even at the present day, of all
public liberties the only one they thoroughly comprehend is parochial
freedom. The only business of a public nature which really interests
them is to be found there. Men, who readily leave the government of the
whole nation in the hand of a master, revolt at the notion of not being
able to speak their mind in the administration of their own village. So
much weight is there yet in forms the most hollow.
What has been said of the towns and parishes of France may be extended
to almost all the corporate bodies which had any separate existence and
collective property.
Under the social condition of France anterior to the Revolution of
1789, as well as at the present day, there was no city, town, borough,
village, or hamlet in the kingdom--there was neither hospital, church
fabric, religious house, nor college, which could have an independent
will in the management of its private affairs, or which could
administer its own property according to its own choice. Then, as now,
the executive administration therefore held the whole French people
in tutelage; and if that insolent term had not yet been invented, the
thing itself already existed.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] See Note XVIII., Spirit of the Government of Louis XI.
[23] See Note XIX., Administration of a French Town in the Eighteenth
Century.
[24] See Note XX.
[25] See Note XXI., Administration of a Village in the Eighteenth
Century.