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.
France had long been the most literary of all the nations of Europe;
although her literary men had never exhibited such intellectual powers
as they displayed about the middle of the eighteenth century, or
occupied such a position as that which they then assumed. Nothing of
the kind had ever been seen in France, or perhaps in any other country.
They were not constantly mixed up with public affairs as in England: at
no period, on the contrary, had they lived more apart from them. They
were invested with no authority whatever, and filled no public offices
in a society crowded with public officers; yet they did not, like the
greater part of their brethren in Germany, keep entirely aloof from
the arena of politics and retire into the regions of pure philosophy
and polite literature. They busied themselves incessantly with matters
appertaining to government, and this was, in truth, their special
occupation. Thus they were continually holding forth on the origin and
primitive forms of society, the primary rights of the citizen and of
government, the natural and artificial relations of men, the wrong or
right of customary laws, and the principles of legislation. While they
thus penetrated to the fundamental basis of the constitution of their
time, they examined its structure with minute care and criticised its
general plan. All, it is true, did not make a profound and special
study of these great problems: the greater part only touched upon them
cursorily, and as it were in sport: but they all dealt with them more
or less. This species of abstract and literary politics was scattered
in unequal proportions through all the works of the period; from the
ponderous treatise to the popular song, not one of them but contained
some grains of it.
As for the political systems of these writers, they varied so greatly
one from the other that any attempt to reconcile them, or to form any
one theory of government out of them, would be an impracticable task.
Nevertheless, by discarding matters of detail, so as to get at the
first leading ideas, it may be easily discovered that the authors of
these different systems agreed at least in one very general notion,
which all of them seem to have alike conceived, and which appears to
have pre-existed in their minds before all the notions peculiar to
themselves and to have been their common fountain-head. However widely
they may have diverged in the rest of their course, they all started
from this point. They all agreed that it was expedient to substitute
simple and elementary rules, deduced from reason and natural law, for
the complicated traditional customs which governed the society of their
time. Upon a strict scrutiny it may be seen that what might be called
the political philosophy of the eighteenth century consisted, properly
speaking, in this one notion.
These opinions were by no means novel; for three thousand years they
had unceasingly traversed the imaginations of mankind, though without
being able to stamp themselves there. How came they at last to take
possession of the minds of all the writers of this period? Why, instead
of progressing no farther than the heads of a few philosophers, as had
frequently been the case, had they at last reached the masses, and
assumed the strength and the fervour of a political passion to such a
degree, that general and abstract theories upon the nature of society
became daily topics of conversation, and even inflamed the imaginations
of women, and of the peasantry? How was it that literary men,
possessing neither rank, nor honours, nor fortune, nor responsibility,
nor power, became, in fact, the principal political men of the day, and
even the only political men, inasmuch as whilst others held the reins
of government, they alone grasped its authority?
A few words may suffice to show what an extraordinary and terrible
influence these circumstances, which apparently belong only to the
history of French literature, exercised upon the Revolution, and even
upon the present condition of France.
It was not by chance that the philosophers of the eighteenth century
thus coincided in entertaining notions so opposed to those which
still served as bases to the society of their time: these ideas had
been naturally suggested to them by the aspect of the society which
they had all before their eyes. The sight of so many unjust or absurd
privileges, the burden of which was more and more felt whilst their
cause was less and less understood, urged, or rather precipitated,
the minds of one and all towards the idea of the natural equality of
man’s condition. Whilst they looked upon so many strange and irregular
institutions, born of other times, which no one had attempted either
to bring into harmony with each other or to adapt to modern wants,
and which appeared likely to perpetuate their existence though they
had lost their worth, they learned to abhor what was ancient and
traditional, and naturally became desirous of re-constructing the
social edifice of their day upon an entirely new plan--a plan which
each one traced solely by the light of his reason.[70]
These writers were predisposed, by their own position, to relish
general and abstract theories upon the subject of government, and
to place in them the blindest confidence. The almost immeasurable
distance in which they lived from practical duties afforded them no
experience to moderate the ardour of their character; nothing warned
them of the obstacles which the actual state of things might oppose
to reforms, however desirable. They had no idea of the perils which
always accompany the most needful revolutions; they had not even a
presentiment of them, for the complete absence of all political liberty
had the effect of rendering the transaction of public affairs not only
unknown to them, but even invisible. They were neither employed in
those affairs themselves, nor could they see what those employed in
them were doing. They were consequently destitute of that superficial
instruction which the sight of a free community, and the tumult of
its discussions, bestow even upon those who are least mixed up with
government. Thus they became far more bold in innovation, more fond
of generalising and of systems, more disdainful of the wisdom of
antiquity, and still more confident in their individual reason, than is
commonly to be seen in authors who write speculative books on politics.
The same state of ignorance opened to them the ears and hearts of the
people. It may be confidently affirmed that if the French had still
taken part, as they formerly had done, in the States-General, or if
even they had found a daily occupation in the administration of the
affairs of the country in the assemblies of their several provinces,
they would not have allowed themselves to be inflamed as they were by
the ideas of the writers of the day, since they would have retained
certain habits of public business which would have preserved them from
the evils of pure theory.
Had they been able, like the English, gradually to modify the spirit of
their ancient institutions by practical experience without destroying
them, they would perhaps have been less inclined to invent new ones.
But there was not a man who did not daily feel himself injured in
his fortune, in his person, in his comfort, or his pride by some old
law, some ancient political custom, or some other remnant of former
authority, without perceiving at hand any remedy that he could himself
apply to his own particular hardship. It appeared that the whole
constitution of the country must either be endured or destroyed.
The French, however, had still preserved one liberty amidst the
ruin of every other: they were still free to philosophise almost
without restraint upon the origin of society, the essential nature of
governments, and the primordial rights of mankind.
All those who felt themselves aggrieved by the daily application of
existing laws were soon enamoured of these literary politics. The same
taste soon reached even those who by nature or by their condition
of life seemed the farthest removed from abstract speculations.
Every tax-payer wronged by the unequal distribution of the _taille_
was fired by the idea that all men ought to be equal; every little
landowner devoured by the rabbits of his noble neighbour was delighted
to be told that all privileges were, without distinction, contrary to
reason. Every public passion thus assumed the disguise of philosophy;
all political action was violently driven back into the domain of
literature; and the writers of the day, undertaking the guidance of
public opinion, found themselves at one time in that position which the
heads of parties commonly hold in free countries. No one in fact was
any longer in a condition to contend with them for the part they had
assumed.
An aristocracy in all its vigour not only carries on the affairs of
a country, but directs public opinion, gives a tone to literature,
and the stamp of authority to ideas; but the French nobility of the
eighteenth century had entirely lost this portion of its supremacy;
its influence had followed the fortunes of its power; and the position
it had occupied in the direction of the public mind had been entirely
abandoned to the writers of the day, to occupy as they pleased. Nay
more, this very aristocracy whose place they thus assumed, favoured
their undertaking. So completely had it forgotten the fact that general
theories, once admitted, inevitably transform themselves in time into
political passions and deeds, that doctrines the most adverse to the
peculiar rights, and even to the existence, of the nobility were looked
upon as ingenious exercises of the mind; the nobles even shared as
a pleasant pastime in these discussions, and quietly enjoyed their
immunities and privileges whilst they serenely discussed the absurdity
of all established customs.
Astonishment has frequently been expressed at the singular blindness
with which the higher classes under the old monarchy of France thus
contributed to their own ruin. But whence could they have become
more enlightened? Free institutions are not less necessary to show
the greater citizens their perils than to secure to the lesser their
rights. For more than a century since the last traces of public life
had disappeared in France, no shock, no rumour had ever warned those
most directly interested in the maintenance of the ancient constitution
that the old building was tottering to its fall. As nothing had changed
in its external aspect, they imagined that everything had remained
the same. Their minds were thus bounded by the same horizon at which
that of their fathers had stopped. In the public documents of the
year 1789 the nobility appears to have been as much preoccupied with
the idea of the encroachments of the royal power as it could possibly
have been in those of the fifteenth century. On the other hand, the
unfortunate Louis XVI. just before his own destruction by the incursion
of democracy, still continued (as has been justly remarked by Burke)
to look upon the aristocracy as the chief rival of the royal power,
and mistrusted it as much as if he was still living in the days of the
_Fronde_. The middle and lower classes on the contrary were in his
eyes, as in those of his forefathers, the surest support of the throne.
But that which must appear still more strange to men of the present
day--men who have the shattered fragments of so many revolutions
before their eyes--is the fact, that not the barest notion of a
violent revolution ever entered into the minds of the generation which
witnessed it. Such a notion was never discussed, for it was never
conceived. Those minor shocks which the exercise of political liberty
is continually imparting to the best constituted societies, serve
daily to call to mind the possibility of an earthquake, and to keep
public vigilance on the alert; but in the state of society of France
in the eighteenth century, on the brink of this abyss, nothing had yet
indicated that the fabric leaned.
On examining with attention the Instructions drawn up by the three
Orders before their convocation in 1789--by all the three, the nobility
and clergy, as well as the _Tiers-État_--noting _seriatim_ all the
demands made for the changes of laws or customs, it will be seen with
a sort of terror, on terminating this immense labour, and casting up
the sum total of all these particular requirements, that what was
required is no less than the simultaneous and systematic abolition of
every law and every usage current throughout the country; and that
what was impending must be one of the most extensive and dangerous
revolutions that ever appeared in the world. Yet the very men who were
so shortly to become its victims knew nothing of it. They fancied that
the total and sudden transformation of so ancient and complicated a
state of society was to be effected, without any concussion, by the
aid and efficacy of reason alone; and they fatally forgot that maxim
which their forefathers, four hundred years before, had expressed in
the simple and energetic language of their time: ‘_Par requierre de
trop grande franchise et libertés chet-on en trop grande servaige._’
(By requiring too great liberty and franchise, men fall into too great
servitude.)
It was not surprising that the nobility and middle classes, so long
excluded from all public action, should have displayed this strange
inexperience; but what astonishes far more is, that the very men who
had the conduct of public affairs, the ministers, the magistrates,
and the Intendants, should not have evinced more foresight. Many of
them, nevertheless, were very clever men in their profession, and were
thoroughly possessed of all the details of the public administration
of their time; but in that great science of government, which teaches
the comprehension of the general movement of society, the appreciation
of what is passing in the minds of the masses, and the foreknowledge
of the probable results--they were just as much novices as the people
itself. In truth, it is only the exercise of free institutions that can
teach the statesman this principal portion of his art.
This may easily be seen in the Memoir addressed by Turgot to the
King in 1775, in which, among other matters, he advised his Majesty
to summon a representative assembly, freely elected by the whole
nation, to meet every year, for six weeks, about his own person, but
to grant it no effective power. His proposal was, that this assembly
should take cognisance of administrative business, but never of the
government--should offer suggestions rather than express a will--and,
in fact, should be commissioned to discuss laws, but not to make them.
‘In this wise,’ said the Memoir, ‘the royal power would be enlightened,
but not thwarted, and public opinion contented without danger: for
these assemblies would have no authority to oppose any indispensable
operation; and if, which is most improbable, they should not lend
themselves to this duty, his Majesty would still be the master to do as
he pleases.’
It was impossible to show greater ignorance of the true bearing of
such a measure, and of the spirit of the times. It has frequently
happened, it is true, that towards the end of a revolutionary period,
such a proposal as that made by Turgot has been carried into effect
with impunity, and that a shadow of liberty has been granted without
the reality. Augustus made the experiment with success. A nation
fatigued by a prolonged struggle may willingly consent to be duped in
order to obtain repose; and history shows that enough may then be done
to satisfy it, by collecting from all parts of the country a certain
number of obscure or dependent individuals, and making them play
before it the part of a political assembly for the wages they receive.
There have been several examples of the kind. But at the commencement
of a revolution such experiments always fail; they inflame, without
satisfying the people. This truth, known to the humblest citizen of a
free country, was not known to Turgot, great administrator as he was.
If now it be taken into consideration that this same French nation, so
ignorant of its own public affairs, so utterly devoid of experience,
so hampered by its institutions, and so powerless to amend them, was
also in those days the most lettered and witty nation of the earth, it
may readily be understood how the writers of the time became a great
political power, and ended by being the first power in the country.
In England those who wrote on the subject of government were connected
with those who governed; the latter applied new ideas to practice--the
former corrected or controlled their theories by practical observation.
But in France the political world remained divided into two separate
provinces, with no mutual intercourse. One portion governed; the other
established abstract principles on which all government ought to be
founded. Here measures were taken in obedience to routine; there
general laws were propounded, without even a thought as to the means of
their application. These kept the direction of affairs; those guided
the intelligence of the nation.
Above the actual state of society--the constitution of which was still
traditional, confused, and irregular, and in which the laws remained
conflicting and contradictory, ranks sharply sundered, the conditions
of the different classes fixed whilst their burdens were unequal--an
imaginary state of society was thus springing up, in which everything
appeared simple and co-ordinate, uniform, equitable, and agreeable to
reason. The imagination of the people gradually deserted the former
state of things in order to seek refuge in the latter. Interest was
lost in what was, to foster dreams of what might be; and men thus dwelt
in fancy in this ideal city, which was the work of literary invention.
The French Revolution has been frequently attributed to that of
America. The American Revolution had certainly considerable influence
upon the French; but the latter owed less to what was actually done in
the United States than to what was thought at the same time in France.
Whilst to the rest of Europe the Revolution of America still only
appeared a novel and strange occurrence, in France it only rendered
more palpable and more striking that which was already supposed to
be known. Other countries it astonished; to France it brought more
complete conviction. The Americans seemed to have done no more than
execute what the literary genius of France had already conceived; they
gave the substance of reality to that which the French had excogitated.
It was as if Fénelon had suddenly found himself in Salentum.
This circumstance, so novel in history, of the whole political
education of a great people being formed by its literary men,
contributed more than anything perhaps to bestow upon the French
Revolution its peculiar stamp, and to cause those results which are
still perceptible.
The writers of the time not only imparted their ideas to the people
who effected the Revolution, but they gave them also their peculiar
temperament and disposition. The whole nation ended, after being so
long schooled by them, in the absence of all other leaders and in
profound ignorance of practical affairs, by catching up the instincts,
the turn of mind, the tastes, and even the humours of those who wrote;
so that, when the time for action came, it transported into the arena
of politics all the habits of literature.
A study of the history of the French Revolution will show that it
was carried on precisely in that same spirit which has caused so
many abstract books to be written on government. There was the same
attraction towards general theories, complete systems of legislation,
and exact symmetry in the laws--the same contempt of existing
facts--the same reliance upon theory--the same love of the original,
the ingenious, and the novel in institutions--the same desire to
reconstruct, all at once, the entire constitution by the rules of
logic, and upon a single plan, rather than seek to amend it in its
parts. The spectacle was an alarming one; for that which is a merit
in a writer is often a fault in a statesman: and the same things
which have often caused great books to be written, may lead to great
revolutions.
Even the political language of the time caught something of the tone in
which the authors spoke: it was full of general expressions, abstract
terms, pompous words, and literary turns. This style, aided by the
political passions which it expressed, penetrated through all classes,
and descended with singular facility even to the lowest. Considerably
before the Revolution, the edicts of Louis XVI. frequently spoke
of the law of nature and the rights of man; and I have found
instances of peasants who, in their memorials called their neighbours
‘fellow-citizens,’ their _Intendant_ ‘a respectable magistrate,’ their
parish-priest ‘the minister of the altar,’ and God ‘the Supreme Being,’
and who wanted nothing but spelling to become very indifferent authors.
These new qualities became so completely incorporated with the old
stock of the French character, that habits resulting only from this
singular education have frequently been attributed to the natural
disposition of the French. It has been asserted that the taste, or
rather the passion, which the French have displayed during the last
sixty years for general ideas and big words in political discussion,
arose from some characteristic peculiar to the French race, which has
been somewhat pedantically called ‘the genius of France,’ as if this
pretended characteristic could suddenly have displayed itself at the
end of the last century, after having remained concealed during the
whole history of the country.
It is singular that the French have preserved the habits which they had
derived from literature, whilst they have almost entirely lost their
ancient love of literature itself. I have been frequently astonished in
the course of my own public life, to see that men who had never read
the works of the eighteenth century, or of any other, and who had a
great contempt for authors, nevertheless so faithfully retain some of
the principal defects which were displayed before their birth by the
literary spirit of that day.
FOOTNOTE:
[70] See Note LXIV.