SHOWING THAT THE FRENCH PEOPLE WERE EXCITED TO REVOLT BY THE MEANS
TAKEN TO RELIEVE THEM.
As the common people of France had not appeared for one single moment
on the theatre of public affairs for upwards of one hundred and forty
years, no one any longer imagined that they could ever again resume
their position. They appeared unconscious, and were therefore believed
to be deaf; accordingly, those who began to take an interest in their
condition talked about them in their presence just as if they had not
been there. It seemed as if these remarks could only be heard by those
who were placed above the common people, and that the only danger to be
apprehended was that they might not be fully understood by the upper
classes.
The very men who had most to fear from the fury of the people declaimed
loudly in their presence on the cruel injustice under which the people
had always suffered. They pointed out to each other the monstrous vices
of those institutions which had weighed most heavily upon the lower
orders: they employed all their powers of rhetoric in depicting the
miseries of the common people and their ill-paid labour; and thus they
infuriated while they endeavoured to relieve them. I do not speak of
the writers, but of the Government, of its chief agents, and of those
belonging to the privileged class itself.
When the King, thirteen years before the Revolution, tried to abolish
the use of compulsory labour, he said, in the preamble to this decree,
‘With the exception of a small number of provinces (the _pays d’état_),
almost all the roads throughout the kingdom have been made by the
gratuitous labour of the poorest part of our subjects. Thus the whole
burden has fallen on those who possess nothing but their hands, and who
are interested only in a secondary degree in the existence of roads;
those really interested are the landowners, nearly all privileged
persons, whose estates are increased in value by the construction of
roads. By forcing the poor to keep them up unaided, and by compelling
them to give their time and labour without remuneration, they are
deprived of their sole resource against want and hunger, because they
are made to labour for the profit of the rich.’
When, at the same period, an attempt was made to abolish the
restrictions which the system of trading companies or guilds imposed
on artisans, it was proclaimed, in the King’s name, ‘that the right to
work is the most sacred of all possessions; that every law by which
it is infringed violates the natural rights of man, and is null and
void in itself; that the existing corporations are moreover grotesque
and tyrannical institutions, the result of selfishness, avarice, and
violence.’ Such words as these were dangerous, no doubt, but, what was
infinitely more so, was that they were spoken in vain. A few months
later the corporations and the system of compulsory labour were again
established.
It is said that Turgot was the Minister who put this language into the
King’s mouth, but most of Turgot’s successors made him hold no other.
When, in 1780, the King announced to his subjects that the increase of
the _taille_ would, for the future, be subject to public registration,
he took care to add, by way of commentary, ‘Those persons who are
subject to the _taille_, besides being harassed by the vexations
incident to its collection, have likewise hitherto been exposed to
unexpected augmentations of the tax, insomuch that the contributions
paid by the poorest part of our subjects have increased in a much
greater proportion than those paid by all the rest.’ When the King,
not yet venturing to place all the public burdens on an equal footing,
attempted at least to establish equality of taxation in those which
were already imposed on the middle class, he said, ‘His Majesty hopes
that rich persons will not consider themselves aggrieved by being
placed on the common level, and made to bear their part of a burden
which they ought long since to have shared more equally.’
But it was, above all, at periods of scarcity that nothing was left
untried to inflame the passions of the people far more than to provide
for their wants. In order to stimulate the charity of the rich,
one Intendant talked of ‘the injustice and insensibility of those
landowners who owe all they possess to the labours of the poor, and who
let them die of hunger at the very moment they are toiling to augment
the returns of landed property.’ The King, too, thus expressed himself
on a similar occasion: ‘His Majesty is determined to defend the people
against manœuvres which expose them to the want of the most needful
food, by forcing them to give their labour at any price that the rich
choose to bestow. The King will not suffer one part of his subjects to
be sacrificed to the avidity of the other.’
Until the very end of the monarchy the strife which subsisted among
the different administrative powers gave occasion for all sorts of
demonstrations of this kind; the contending parties readily imputed
to each other the miseries of the people. A strong instance of this
appeared in the quarrel which arose, in 1772, between the Parliament of
Toulouse and the King, with reference to the transport of grain. ‘The
Government, by its bad measures, places the poor in danger of dying of
hunger,’ said the Parliament. ‘The ambition of the Parliament and the
avidity of the rich are the cause of the general distress,’ retorted
the King. Thus both the parties were endeavouring to impress the minds
of the common people with the belief that their superiors are always to
blame for their sufferings.
These things are not contained in the secret correspondence of the
time, but in public documents which the Government and the Parliaments
themselves took care to have printed and published by thousands. The
King took occasion incidentally to tell very harsh truths both to his
predecessors and to himself. ‘The treasure of the State,’ said he on
one occasion, ‘has been burdened by the lavish expenditure of several
successive reigns. Many of our inalienable domains have been granted
on leases at nominal rents.’ On another occasion he was made to say,
with more truth than prudence, ‘The privileged trading companies mainly
owed their origin to the fiscal avidity of the Crown.’ Farther on,
he remarked that ‘if useless expenses have often been incurred, and
if the _taille_ has increased beyond all bounds, it has been because
the Board of Finance found an increase of the _taille_ the easiest
resource inasmuch as it was clandestine, and was therefore employed,
although many other expedients would have been less burdensome to our
people.’[77]
All this was addressed to the enlightened part of the nation, in
order to convince it of the utility of certain measures which private
interests rendered unpopular. As for the common people, it was assumed
that if they listened they did not understand.
It must be admitted that at the bottom of all these charitable feelings
there remained a strong bias of contempt for these wretched beings
whose miseries the higher classes so sincerely wished to relieve: and
that we are somewhat reminded, by this display of compassion, of the
notion of Madame Duchâtelet, who, as Voltaire’s secretary tells us, did
not scruple to undress herself before her attendants, not thinking it
by any means proved that lackeys are men. And let it not be supposed
that Louis XVI. or his ministers were the only persons who held the
dangerous language which I have just cited; the privileged persons, who
were about to become the first objects of the popular fury, expressed
themselves in exactly the same manner before their inferiors. It must
be admitted that in France the higher classes of society had begun to
pay attention to the condition of the poor before they had any reason
to fear them; they interested themselves in their fate at a time when
they had not begun to believe that the sufferings of the poor were
the precursors of their own perdition. This was peculiarly visible
in the ten years which preceded 1789; the peasants were the constant
objects of compassion, their condition was continually discussed, the
means of affording them relief were examined, the chief abuses from
which they suffered were exposed, and the fiscal laws which pressed
most heavily upon them were condemned; but the manner in which this
new-born sympathy was expressed was as imprudent as the long-continued
insensibility which had preceded it.
If we read the reports of the Provincial Assemblies which met in some
parts of France in 1779, and subsequently throughout the kingdom, and
if we study the other public records left by them, we shall be touched
by the generous sentiments expressed in them, and astonished at the
wonderful imprudence of the language in which they are expressed.
The Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy said, in 1787, ‘We have
too frequently seen the money destined by the King for roads serve
only to increase the prosperity of the rich without any benefit to
the people. It has often been employed to embellish the approach to
a country mansion instead of making a more convenient entrance to a
town or village.’ In the same assembly the Orders of nobility and
clergy, after describing the abuses of compulsory labour, spontaneously
offered to contribute out of their own funds 50,000 livres towards the
improvement of the roads, in order, as they said, that the roads of
the province might be made practicable without any further cost to the
people. It would probably have cost these privileged classes less to
abolish the compulsory system, and to substitute for it a general tax
of which they should pay their quota; but though willing to give up
the profit derived from inequality of taxation, they liked to maintain
the appearance of the privilege. While they gave up that part of their
rights which was profitable, they carefully retained that which was
odious.
Other assemblies, composed entirely of landowners exempt from the
_taille_, and who fully intended to continue so, nevertheless depicted
in the darkest colours the hardships which the _taille_ inflicted on
the poor. They drew a frightful picture of all its abuses, which they
circulated in all directions. But the most singular part of the affair
is that to these strong marks of the interest they felt in the common
people, they from time to time added public expressions of contempt
for them. The people had already become the object of their sympathy
without having ceased to be the object of their disdain.
The Provincial Assembly of Upper Guienne, speaking of the peasants
whose cause they so warmly pleaded, called them _coarse and ignorant
creatures, turbulent spirits, and rough and intractable characters_.
Turgot, who did so much for the people, seldom spoke of them
otherwise.[78]
These harsh expressions were used in acts intended for the greatest
publicity, and meant to meet the eyes of the peasants themselves. It
seemed as though the framers of them imagined that they were living
in a country like Galicia, where the higher classes speak a different
language from the lower, and cannot be understood by them. The
feudalists of the eighteenth century, who frequently displayed towards
the ratepayers and others who owed them feudal services, a disposition
to indulgence, moderation, and justice, unknown to their predecessors,
still spoke occasionally of ‘vile peasants.’ These insults seem to have
been ‘in proper form,’ as the lawyers say.
The nearer we approach towards 1789, the more lively and imprudent
does this sympathy with the hardships of the common people become. I
have held in my hands the circulars addressed by several Provincial
Assemblies in the very beginning of 1788 to the inhabitants of the
different parishes, calling upon them to state in detail all the
grievances of which they might have to complain.
One of these circulars is signed by an abbé, a great lord, three
nobles, and a man of the middle class, all members of the Assembly,
and acting in its name. This committee directed the Syndic of each
parish to convoke all the peasants, and to inquire of them what they
had to say against the manner in which the various taxes which they
paid were assessed and collected. ‘We are generally aware,’ they say,
‘that most of the taxes, especially the _gabelle_ and the _taille_,
have disastrous consequences for the cultivators, but we are anxious to
be acquainted with every single abuse.’ The curiosity of the Provincial
Assembly did not stop there; it investigated the number of persons in
the parish enjoying any privileges with respect to taxes, whether
nobles, ecclesiastics, or _roturiers_, and the precise nature of these
privileges; the value of the property of those thus exempted; whether
or not they resided on their estates; whether there was much Church
property, or, as the phrase then was, land in mortmain, which was out
of the market, and its value. All this even was not enough to satisfy
them; they wanted to be told the share of duties, _taille_, additional
dues, poll-tax, and forced labour-rate which the privileged class would
have to pay, supposing equality of taxation existed.
This was to inflame every man individually by the catalogue of his own
grievances; it pointed out to him the authors of his wrongs, emboldened
him by showing him how few they were in number, and fired his heart
with cupidity, envy, and hatred. It seemed as if the Jacquerie, the
Maillotins, and the Sixteen were totally forgotten, and that no one was
aware that the French people, which is the quietest and most kindly
disposed in the world, so long as it remains in its natural frame of
mind, becomes the most barbarous as soon as it is roused by violent
passions.
Unfortunately I have not been able to procure all the returns sent in
by the peasants in reply to these fatal questions; but I have found
enough to show the general spirit which pervaded them.
In these reports the name of every privileged person, whether of the
nobility or the middle class, is carefully mentioned; his mode of life
is frequently described, and always in an unfavourable manner. The
value of his property is curiously examined; the number and extent of
his privileges are insisted on at length, and especially the injury
they do to all the other inhabitants of the village. The bushels of
corn which have to be paid to him as dues are reckoned up; his income
is calculated in an envious tone--an income by which no one profits,
they say. The casual dues of the parish priest--his stipend, as it
was already called--are pronounced to be excessive; it is remarked
with bitterness that everything at church must be paid for, and that a
poor man cannot even get buried gratis. As to the taxes, they are all
unfairly assessed and oppressive; not one of them finds favour, and
they are all spoken of in a tone of violence which betrays exasperation.
‘The indirect taxes are detestable,’ they say; ‘there is not a
household in which the clerk of the excise does not come and search,
nothing is sacred from his eyes and hands. The registration dues are
crushing. The collector of the _taille_ is a tyrant, whose rapacity
leads him to avail himself of every means of harassing the poor. The
bailiffs are no better; no honest farmer can be secure from their
ferocity. The collectors are forced to ruin their neighbours in order
to avoid exposing themselves to the voracity of these despots.’
The Revolution not only announces its approach in this inquiry; it is
already there, speaking its own proper language and showing its face
without disguise.
Amid all the differences which exist between the religious Revolution
of the sixteenth century and the French Revolution of the eighteenth,
one contrast is peculiarly striking: in the sixteenth century most of
the great nobles changed their religion from motives of ambition or
cupidity; the people, on the contrary, from conviction and without any
hope of profit. In the eighteenth century the reverse was the case;
disinterested convictions and generous sympathies then agitated the
enlightened classes and incited them to revolution, while a bitter
feeling of their wrongs and an ardent desire to alter their position
excited the common people. The enthusiasm of the former put the last
stroke to inflaming and arming the rage and the desires of the latter.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] See Note LXX., Arbitrary Augmentation of Taxes.
[78] See Note LXXI., Manner in which Turgot spoke of the Country People.