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.
The political preponderance of capital cities over the rest of the
empire is caused neither by their situation, their size, nor their
wealth, but by the nature of the government. London, which contains
the population of a kingdom, has never hitherto exercised a sovereign
influence over the destinies of Great Britain. No citizen of the United
States ever imagined that the inhabitants of New York could decide
the fate of the American Union. Nay more, no one even in the State of
New York conceives that the will of that city alone could direct the
affairs of the nation. Yet New York at this moment numbers as many
inhabitants as Paris contained when the Revolution broke out.
At the time of the wars of religion in France Paris was thickly peopled
in proportion to the rest of the kingdom as in 1789. Nevertheless, at
that time it had no decisive power. At the time of the Fronde Paris was
still no more than the largest city in France. In 1789 it was already
France itself.
As early as 1740 Montesquieu wrote to one of his friends, ‘Nothing is
left in France but Paris and the distant provinces, because Paris has
not yet had time to devour them.’ In 1750 the Marquis de Mirabeau, a
fanciful but sometimes deep thinker, said, in speaking of Paris without
naming it: ‘Capital cities are necessary; but if the head grows too
large, the body becomes apoplectic and the whole perishes. What then
will be the result, if by giving over the provinces to a sort of direct
dependence, and considering their inhabitants only as subjects of the
Crown of an inferior order, to whom no means of consideration are left
and no career for ambition is open, every man possessing any talent is
drawn towards the capital!’ He called this a kind of silent revolution
which must deprive the provinces of all their men of rank, business,
and talent.
The reader who has followed the preceding chapters attentively already
knows the causes of this phenomenon; it would be a needless tax on his
patience to enumerate them afresh in this place.
This revolution did not altogether escape the attention of the
Government, but chiefly by its physical effect on the growth of the
city. The Government saw the daily extension of Paris and was afraid
that it would become difficult to administer so large a city properly.
A great number of ordinances issued by the Kings of France, chiefly
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were destined to put a
stop to the growth of the capital. These sovereigns were concentrating
the whole public life of France more and more in Paris or at its gates,
and yet they wanted Paris to remain a small city. The erection of new
houses was forbidden, or else commands were issued that they should be
built in the most costly manner and in unattractive situations which
were fixed upon beforehand. Every one of these ordinances, it is true,
declares, that in spite of all preceding edicts Paris had continued to
spread. Six times during the course of his reign did Louis XIV., in the
height of his power, in vain attempt to check the increase of Paris;
the city grew continually in spite of all edicts. Its political and
social preponderance increased even faster than its walls, not so much
owing to what took place within them as to the events passing without.
During this period all local liberties gradually became extinct, the
symptoms of independent vitality disappeared. The distinctive features
of the various provinces became confused, and the last traces of the
ancient public life were effaced. Not that the nation was falling into
a state of languor; on the contrary, activity everywhere prevailed;
but the motive principle was no longer anywhere but in Paris. I will
cite but one example of this from amongst a thousand. In the reports
made to the Minister on the condition of the bookselling trade, I find
that in the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth,
many considerable printing offices existed in provincial towns which
are now without printers, or where the printers are without work. Yet
there can be no doubt that many more literary productions of all kinds
were published at the end of the eighteenth century than during the
sixteenth; but all mental activity now emanated from the centre alone;
Paris had totally absorbed the provinces. At the time when the French
Revolution broke out, this first revolution was fully accomplished.
The celebrated traveller Arthur Young left Paris soon after the
meeting of the States-General, and a few days before the taking of the
Bastille; the contrast between that which he had just seen in the city
and that which he found beyond its walls filled him with surprise. In
Paris all was noise and activity; every hour produced a fresh political
pamphlet; as many as ninety-two were published in a week. ‘Never,’
said he, ‘did I see such activity in publishing, even in London.’ Out
of Paris all seemed inert and silent; few pamphlets and no newspapers
were printed. Nevertheless, the provinces were agitated and ready for
action, but motionless; if the inhabitants assembled from time to time,
it was in order to hear the news which they expected from Paris. In
every town Young asked the inhabitants what they intended to do? ‘The
answer,’ he says, ‘was always the same: “Ours is but a provincial town;
we must wait to see what will be done at Paris.” These people,’ he
adds, ‘do not even venture to have an opinion until they know what is
thought at Paris.’
Nothing was more astonishing than the extraordinary ease with which
the Constituent Assembly destroyed at a single stroke all the ancient
French provinces, many of which were older than the monarchy, and then
divided the kingdom methodically into eighty-three distinct portions,
as though it had been the virgin soil of the New World. Europe was
surprised and alarmed by a spectacle for which it was so little
prepared. ‘This is the first time,’ said Burke, ‘that we have seen men
tear their native land in pieces in so barbarous a manner.’ No doubt
it appeared like tearing in pieces living bodies, but, in fact, the
provinces that were thus dismembered were only corpses.
While Paris was thus finally establishing its supremacy externally, a
change took place within its own walls equally deserving the notice
of history. After having been a city merely of exchange, of business,
of consumption, and of pleasure, Paris had now become a manufacturing
town; a second fact, which gave to the first a new and more formidable
character.
The origin of this change was very remote; it appears that even during
the Middle Ages Paris was already the most industrious as well as the
largest city of the kingdom. This becomes more manifest as we approach
modern times. In the same degree that the business of administration
was brought to Paris, industrial affairs found their way thither. As
Paris became more and more the arbiter of taste, the sole centre of
power and of the arts, and the chief focus of national activity, the
industrial life of the nation withdrew and concentrated itself there in
the same proportion.
Although the statistical documents anterior to the Revolution are, for
the most part, deserving of little confidence, I think it may safely
be affirmed that, during the sixty years which preceded the French
Revolution, the number of artisans in Paris was more than doubled;
whereas during the same period the general population of the city
scarcely increased one third.
Independently of the general causes which I have stated, there were
other very peculiar causes which attracted working men to Paris from
all parts of France, and agglomerated them by degrees in particular
quarters of the town, which they ended by occupying almost exclusively.
The restrictions imposed upon manufactures by the fiscal legislation
of the time were lighter at Paris than anywhere else in France;
it was nowhere so easy to escape from the tyranny of the guilds.
Certain faubourgs, such as the Faubourg St. Antoine, and of the
Temple specially, enjoyed great privileges of this nature. Louis XVI.
considerably enlarged these immunities of the Faubourg St. Antoine,
and did his best to gather together an immense working population
in that spot, ‘being desirous,’ said that unfortunate monarch, in
one of his edicts, ‘to bestow upon the artisans of the Faubourg St.
Antoine a further mark of our protection, and to relieve them from the
restrictions which are injurious to their interests as well as to the
freedom of trade.’
The number of workshops, manufactories, and foundries had increased
so greatly in Paris, towards the approach of the Revolution, that the
Government at length became alarmed at it. The sight of this progress
inspired it with many imaginary terrors. Amongst other things, we find
an Order in Council, in 1782, stating that ‘the King, apprehending
that the rapid increase of manufactures would cause a consumption of
wood likely to become prejudicial to the supply of the city, prohibits
for the future the creation of any establishment of this nature within
a circuit of fifteen leagues round Paris.’ The real danger likely to
arise from such an agglomeration gave no uneasiness to any one.
Thus then Paris had become the mistress of France, and the popular
army which was destined to make itself master of Paris was already
assembling.
It is pretty generally admitted, I believe, now, that administrative
centralisation and the omnipotence of Paris have had a great share
in the overthrow of all the various governments which have succeeded
one another during the last forty years. It will not be difficult to
show that the same state of things contributed largely to the sudden
and violent ruin of the old monarchy, and must be numbered among the
principal causes of that first Revolution which has produced all the
succeeding ones.