The opposition of the clergy was not less decided though more discreet.

It naturally assumed the forms appropriate to the clerical body. When

the Parliament of Paris was exiled to Troyes and received the homage of

all the public bodies of that city, the Chapter of the Cathedral, as

the organ of the clergy, complimented the Parliament in the following

terms:--‘The vigour restored to the constitutional maxims of the

monarchy has succeeded in defeating the territorial subsidy, and you

have taught the Treasury to respect the sacred rights of property.’

‘The general mourning of the nation and your own removal from your

duties and from the bosom of your families were to us a poignant

spectacle, and whilst these august walls echoed the sounds of public

grief, we carried into the Sanctuary our private sorrow and our

prayers.’--(Official Papers, 1787.)

Wherever the three Orders combined in opposition, the clergy made

their appearance. Usually the Bishop spoke little, but he took the

chair which was offered him. The famous meeting at Romans, that which

protested with the greatest violence against the Edicts of May, was

alternately presided over by the Archbishop of Narbonne and the

Archbishop of Vienne.[118]

Generally speaking, parish priests were seen at all the meetings of the

Orders, where they took a lively and direct part in the debates.

At the outset of the struggle the middle classes had shown themselves

timid and irresolute. Yet it was on those classes especially that the

Government had relied for consolation in its distress, and for aid

without abandoning its ancient prerogatives: the propositions of the

Government had been framed with peculiar regard to the interests of the

middle classes and to their passions. Long habituated to obedience,

they did not engage without apprehension in a course of resistance.

Their opposition was tempered with caution. They still flattered the

power to which they were opposed, and acknowledged its rights while

they contested the use of them. They seemed partly seduced by its

favours, and ready to yield to the Government, provided some share of

government were bestowed on themselves. Even when they appeared to

direct, the middle classes never ventured to walk alone; impelled by an

internal heat which they did not care to show, they sought rather to

turn the passions of the upper classes to their own advantage than to

increase the violence of them. But as the struggle was prolonged the

_bourgeoisie_ became more excited, more animated, more bold, until it

outstripped the other classes, assumed the leading part and kept it,

until the People appeared upon the stage.

At this period of the contest not a trace is to be seen of a war of

classes. ‘All the Orders,’ said the Parliament of Toulouse, ‘breathe

nothing but concord, and their only ambition is to promote the common

happiness.’

A man, then unknown, but who afterwards became celebrated for his

talents and for his misfortunes, Barnave, in a paper written in defence

of the _Tiers-État_ pointed out this agreement of the three Orders, and

exclaimed, with the enthusiasm of the time, ‘Ministers of religion!

you obtained from the reverence of our forefathers the right to form

among yourselves the first Order of the State; you are an integral

part of the French Constitution, and you ought to maintain it. And

you, illustrious families! the monarchy has never ceased to flourish

under your protection; you created it at the cost of your blood, you

have many times saved it from the foreigner; save it now from internal

enemies. Secure to your children the splendid benefits your fathers

have handed down to you; the name of hero is not honoured under a

servile sky.’[119]

These sentiments might be sincere; one sole passion paramount to other

passions pervaded all classes, namely, a spirit of resistance to the

Government as the common enemy, a spirit of opposition throughout, in

small as well as in great affairs, which struck at everything, and

assumed all shapes, even those which disfigured it. Some, in order

to resist the Government, laid stress on what remained of old local

franchises. Here a man stood up for some old privilege of his class,

some secular right of his calling or his corporation; there, another

man, forgetting his grievances and animosity against the privileged

classes, denounced an edict which, he said, would reduce to nothing the

seignorial jurisdictions, and would thus _strip the nobles of all the

dignity of their fiefs_.

In this violent struggle every man grasped, as if by chance, the

weapon nearest at hand, even when it was the least suited to him. If

one took note of all the privileges, all the exclusive rights, all

the old municipal and provincial franchises which were at this epoch

claimed, asserted, and loudly demanded, the picture would be at once

very exact and very deceptive; it would appear as if the object of the

impending Revolution was not to destroy, but to restore, the old order

of society. So difficult is it for the individuals who are carried

along by one of the great movements of human society to distinguish

the true motive power amongst the causes by which they are themselves

impelled. Who would have imagined that the impulse which caused so

many traditional rights to be asserted was the very passion which was

leading irresistibly to their entire abolition?[120]

Now let us close our ears for a moment to these tumultuous sounds,

proceeding from the middle and upper classes of the nation, to catch,

if we may, some whisper beginning to make itself heard from the midst

of the People. No sign that I can discover from this distance of time

announced that the rural population was at all agitated. The peasant

plodded onwards in his wonted track. That vast section of the nation

was still neutral, and, as it were, unseen.[121]

Even in the towns the people remained a stranger to the excitement of

the upper classes, and indifferent to the stir which was going on above

its head. They listen; they watch, with some surprise, but with more

curiosity than anger. But no sooner did the agitation make itself felt

among them than it was found to have assumed a new character. When

the magistrates re-entered Paris in triumph, the people, which had

done nothing to defend these members of Parliament, arrested in their

places, gathered together tumultuously to hail their return.

I have said in another part of this book that nothing was more frequent

under the old _régime_ than riots. The Government was so strong that it

willingly allowed these transient ebullitions to have free scope. But

on this occasion there were numerous indications that a very different

state of things had begun. It was a time when everything old assumed

new features--riots like everything else. Corn-riots had perpetually

occurred in France; but they were made by mobs without order, object,

or consistence. Now, on the contrary, broke out insurrection, as we

have since so often witnessed it, with its tocsin, its nocturnal

cries, its sanguinary placards; a fierce and cruel apparition; a mob

infuriated, yet organised and directed to some end, which rushes at

once into civil war, and shatters every obstacle.

Upon the intelligence that the Parliament had prevailed, and that the

Archbishop of Sens retired from the Ministry, the populace of Paris

broke out in disorderly manifestations, burnt the minister in effigy,

and insulted the watch. These disturbances were, as usual, put down

by force; but the mob ran to arms, burnt the guard-houses, disarmed

the troops, attempted to set fire to the Hôtel Lamoignon, and was only

driven back by the King’s household troops. Such was the early but

terrible germ of the insurrections of the Revolution.[122]

The Reign of Terror was already visible in disguise. Paris, which

nowadays a hundred thousand men scarcely keep in order, was then

protected by an indifferent sort of police called the watch. Paris

had in it neither barracks nor troops. The household troops and the

Swiss Guards were quartered in the environs. This time the watch was

powerless.

In presence of so general and so novel an opposition, the Government

showed signs at first of surprise and of annoyance rather than of

defeat. It employed all its old weapons--proclamations, _lettres de

cachet_, exile--but it employed them in vain. Force was resorted to,

enough to irritate, not enough to terrify; moreover, a whole people

cannot be terrified. An attempt was made to excite the passions of the

multitude against the rich, the citizens against the aristocracy, the

lower magistrates against the courts of justice. It was the old game;

but this too was played in vain. New judges were appointed, but most

of the new magistrates refused to sit. Favours, money were proffered;

venality itself had given way to passion. An effort was made to divert

the public attention; but it remained concentrated. Unable to stop or

even to check the liberty of writing, the Government sought to use it

by opposing one press to another press. A number of little pamphlets

were published on its side, at no small cost.[123] Nobody read the

defence, but the myriad pamphlets that attacked it were devoured. All

these pamphlets were evolved from the abstract principles of Rousseau’s

_Contrat Social_. The Sovereign was to be a citizen king; every

infraction of the law was treason _against the nation_. Nothing in the

whole fabric of society was sound; the Court was a hateful den in which

famished courtiers devoured the spoils of the people.

At length an incident occurred which hurried on the crisis. The

Parliament of Dauphiny had resisted like all the other Parliaments,

and had been smitten like them all. But nowhere did the cause which

it defended find a more general sympathy or more resolute champions.

Mutual class grievances were there perhaps more intense than in any

other place; but the prevailing excitement lulled for a time all

private passions; and, whereas in most of the other provinces each

class carried on its warfare against the Government separately and

without combination, in Dauphiny they regularly constituted themselves

into a political body and prepared for resistance. Dauphiny had

enjoyed for ages its own States, which had been suspended in 1618,

but not abolished. A few nobles, a few priests, and a few citizens

having met of their own accord in Grenoble, dared to call upon the

nobility, the clergy, and the commons to meet as provincial Estates in

a country-house near Grenoble, named Vizille. This building was an old

feudal castle, formerly the residence of the Dukes of Lesdiguières, but

recently purchased by a new family, that of Périer, to whom it belongs

to this day. No sooner had they met in this place, than the three

Orders constituted themselves, and an air of regularity was thrown

over their irregular proceedings. Forty-nine members of the clergy

were present, two hundred and thirty-three members of the nobility,

three hundred and ninety-one of the commons. The members of the whole

meeting were counted; but not to divide the Orders, it was decided,

without discussion, that the president should be chosen from one of

the two higher Orders, and the secretary from the commons: the Count

de Morges was called to the chair, M. Mounier was named secretary.

The Assembly then proceeded to deliberate, and protested in a body

against the Édicts of May and the suppression of the Parliament. They

demanded the restoration of the old Estates of the province which had

been arbitrarily and illegally suspended; they demanded that in these

Estates a double number of representatives should be given to the

commons; they called for the prompt convocation of the States-General,

and decided that on the spot a letter should be addressed to the King

stating their grievances and their demands. This letter, couched in

violent language and in a tone of civil war, was in fact immediately

signed by all the members. Similar protests had already been made,

similar demands had been expressed with equal violence; but nowhere as

yet had there been so signal an example of the union of all classes.

‘The members of the nobility and the clergy,’ says the Journal of the

House, ‘were complimented by a member of the commons on the loyalty

with which, laying aside former pretensions, they had hastened to do

justice to the commons, and on their zeal to support the union of the

three Orders.’ The President replied that the peers would always

be ready to act with their fellow-citizens for the salvation of the

country.[124]

The Assembly of Vizille produced an amazing effect throughout France.

It was the last time that an event, happening elsewhere than in

Paris, has exercised a great influence on the general destinies of

the country. The Government feared that what Dauphiny had dared to

do might be imitated everywhere. Despairing at last of conquering

the resistance opposed to it, it declared itself beaten. Louis XVI.

dismissed his ministers, abolished or suspended his edicts, recalled

the Parliaments, and granted the States-General. This was not, it must

be well remarked, a concession made by the King on a point of detail,

it was a renunciation of absolute power; it was a participation in the

Government that he admitted and secured to the country by at length

conceding in earnest the States-General. One is astonished in reading

the writings of that time to find them speaking of a great revolution

already accomplished before 1789. It was in truth a great revolution,

but one destined to be swallowed up and lost in the immensity of the

Revolution about to follow.

Numerous indeed and prodigious in extent were the faults that had to

be committed to bring affairs to the state they then were in. But the

Government of Louis XVI., having allowed itself to be driven to such a

point, cannot be condemned for giving way. No means of resistance were

at its disposal. Material force it could not use, as the army lent a

reluctant, a nerveless support to its policy. The law it could not use,

for the courts of justice were in opposition. In the old kingdom of

France, moreover, the absolute power of the Crown had never had a force

of its own nor possessed instruments depending solely on itself. It had

never assumed the aspect of military tyranny; it was not born in camps

and never had recourse to arms. It was essentially a civil power, a

work not of violence but of art. This Government was so organised as

easily to overpower individual resistance, but its constitution, its

precedents, its habits, and those of the nation forbade it to govern

against a majority in opposition. The power of the Crown had only

been established by dividing classes, by hedging them round with the

prejudices, the jealousies, the hatreds, peculiar to each of them, so

as never to have to do with more than one class at once, and to bring

the weight of all the others to bear against it. No sooner had these

different classes, sinking for a moment the barriers by which they had

been divided, met and agreed upon a common resistance, though but for

a single day, than the absolute power of the Government was conquered.

The Assembly of Vizille was the outward and visible sign of this new

union and of what it might bring to pass. And although this occurrence

took place in the depths of a small province and in a corner of the

Alps, it thus became the principal event of the time. It exhibited

to every eye that which had been as yet visible but to few, and in a

moment it decided the victory.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] The Edicts of the 17th June, 1787, were:

1. For the free transport of grain.

2. To establish provincial assemblies.

3. For the commutation of forced labour.

4. A land subsidy.

5. A Stamp Act.

The Parliament accepted the three first, and resisted the two

last. When the importance of the Edict on Provincial Assemblies is

considered, which created new local powers, and comprised an immense

revolution in government and society, one cannot but be amazed at the

concurrence which existed, on this occasion, between the two most

ancient powers of the monarchy, the one to present, the other to

accept it. Nothing can show more forcibly to what a degree, amongst

this people, who were all perpetually engaged, even to the women, in

debating on government, the true science of human affairs was unknown,

and how the Government, which had plunged the nation in this ignorance,

had ended by sinking into the same darkness. This Edict completed the

destruction of the whole ancient political system of Europe, overthrew

at once whatever remained of feudal monarchy, substituted democracy for

aristocracy, the commonwealth for the Crown. I do not pronounce on the

value of this change. I merely affirm that it amounted to an immediate

and radical overthrow of all the old institutions of the realm, and

that if the Parliament and the King plunged together thus resolutely

on this course, it was because neither of them saw whither they were

going. Hand in hand they leapt into the dark.

[99] 16th July, 1787. The nation assembled in the States-General has

alone the right to grant subsidies to the King.

[100] Remonstrance of the Parliament of Paris, 24th July, 1787. Notes

taken from the official documents.

[101] Parliament of Grenoble, 5th January, 1678. ‘Despotic measures,’

said the Parliament of Besançon (1787), ‘are not more binding on

a nation than a military constitution, and cannot run against the

inalienable rights of the nation.’

[102] Remonstrance of the Parliament of Grenoble, 20th December, 1787.

[103] Remonstrance of the Parliament of Paris, 24th July, 1787.

[104] In the speech of M. de Simonville, of the 16th July, 1787,

delivered in the Parliament of Paris, he went back to 1301 to prove the

utility, necessity, and safety of the States-General. He spoke at the

same time of the Constitution, of patriotism, rights of the nation,

ministers of the altars, &c. (Official Documents.)

[105] Histoire du Gouvernement Français du 22 Février, 1787, au 31

Décembre.

[106] Parlement de Normandie, 1787.

[107] Parlement de Toulouse, 27 Août, 1787.

[108] Parlement de Besançon, 1787.

[109] A pamphlet entitled, ‘Réclamation du Tiers-État au Roi.’

[110] ‘Mémoire Apologétique,’ 1787.

[111] The word in the original is _évocation_. I have adopted the

English law term which most nearly approaches it.--_Trans._

[112] Remonstrances of the 4th January, 1788, and 4th May, 1788.

A pamphlet of the time, written in defence of the King, is a mere

diatribe against aristocracy. It was attributed to Lecesne des Maisons.

[113] The object of the Edicts, which were sent down to the Parliament

on the 8th May, 1788, is well known. The first and second of these

established a new order of judicature. Exceptional courts of justice

were abolished. Small courts were scattered over the country, which

have since become the French Courts of First Instance. Higher courts

were established to hear appeals, to sit on criminal cases, and on

civil cases under 20,000 livres in value: these were the germ of the

appeal courts of France; lastly, the Parliaments were to hear causes

in appeal of more than 20,000 livres value--but this was a needless

provision, and it has disappeared. Such was the reform comprised in the

two first edicts. The third contained reforms of equal importance, in

criminal and penal law. No capital executions were henceforth to take

place, without such a respite as would afford time for the exercise of

the prerogative of mercy: no coercive interrogatory was to be used:

the felon’s bench was abolished: no criminal sentence to be given

without reasons: compensation was to be awarded to those who should be

unjustly indicted. The fourth and fifth edicts related exclusively to

the Parliaments, and were designed to modify or rather to destroy them.

(See the ‘History of the Revolution,’ by Buchez and Roux.)

[114] These citations are from official documents.

[115] ‘Will posterity believe,’ said a pamphlet of the time, ‘that the

seditious views of the Parliaments are shared by princes of the blood,

by dukes, counts, marquises, and by spiritual as well as temporal

peers?’ (‘Lettres flamandes à un Ami.’)

[116] Letter of Charles R---- to the Commons of Brittany, 1788.

[117] Decree of September 25th, 1788. (Official documents). On the

occasion of the partial riot caused at Grenoble by the triumphant

return of the Parliament (October 12th, 1788), the army, instead of

repressing it, was incited by its own officers to take part in the

movement. ‘The officers of the regiment’ (said an eye-witness) ‘did

not show less ardour; they waited in a body on the First President to

express the joy they felt on his return. On this occasion we cannot

refuse ourselves the pleasure of paying them a tribute of praise. Their

prudence, their humanity, their patriotism have earned for them the

esteem of the city.’ I think Bernadotte was serving in this regiment.

[118] September 14th, 1788. The Archbishop, as chairman, alone signed

the letter written in the name of the three Orders which appears by its

style to have been drafted by Mounier, November 8th, 1788.

[119] Published between May 8th, 1788, and the Restoration of the

Parliaments.

[120] A single instance will suffice to show how the hatred of

despotism, and public or corporate interests, caused the very

principles of this Revolution to be repudiated by those who were to

be its champions. After the Edicts of May, 1788, the whole bar of the

Parliament of Aix signed a protest, in which the following sentences

occur: ‘Is uniformity in legislation so absolute a benefit? In a

vast monarchy, composed of several distinct populations, may not the

difference of manners and customs bring about some difference in the

laws? The customs and franchises of each province are the patrimony

of all the subjects of the Crown. It is proposed to degrade and

destroy the seignorial jurisdictions, which are the sacred heritage of

the nobility. What confusion! What disorder!’ This document was the

production of the great lawyer Portalis (afterwards one of the chief

authors of the Code Civil): it was signed by him, by Simeon, and by

eighty members of the Bar.

[121] Yet in a paper, published a short time before the convocation of

the States-General, the following lines occur: ‘In some provinces the

inhabitants of the country are persuaded that they are to pay no more

taxes, and that they will share among themselves the property of the

landowners. They already hold meetings to ascertain what these estates

are, and to adjust the distribution of them. The States-General are

expected only to give a shape to these aggressions.’ (‘Tableau Moral du

Clergé en France sur la fin du 18ème Siècle, 1789.’)

[122] 24th August, 1788. All the pamphlets of the time laid down a

theory of insurrection. ‘It is the business of the people to break the

fetters laid upon it. Every citizen is a soldier, &c.’ See ‘Remarks

on the Cabinet Order for suppressing discussions in opposition to the

Edicts of the 8th of May.’ (‘Bibliothèque,’ No. 595.)

[123] Some of the authors of these papers favourable to Government were

said to be Beaumarchais, the Abbé Maury, Linguet, the Abbé Mosellet,

&c. The Abbé Maury alone was said to be receiving a pension of 22,000

francs. (‘Lettres d’un Français rétiré à Londres,’ July 1788.)

[124] In the meetings which followed that of Vizille, and which took

place either at Grenoble or at St. Rambert or at Romans, the same union

was maintained and drawn closer. The nobility and the clergy steadily

demanded that the representatives of the commons should be doubled,

taxation made equal, and the votes taken individually. The commons

continued to express their gratitude. ‘I am instructed by my Order,’

said the Speaker of the Commons at one of these meetings (held at

Romans, September 15th, 1788), ‘to repeat our thanks; we shall never

forget your anxiety to do us justice.’ Similar compliments were renewed

at an Assembly, also held at Romans on November 2nd, 1788. In a letter

addressed to the Municipalities of Brittany, an inhabitant of Dauphiny

writes: ‘I have seen the clergy and the nobility renounce with a

fairness worthy of all respect their old pretensions in the States, and

unanimously acknowledge the rights of the Commons. I could no longer

doubt the salvation of the country.’ (‘Letters of Charles R---- to the

Municipality of Brittany.’)

CHAPTER IV.

THE PARLIAMENTS DISCOVER THAT THEY HAVE LOST ALL AUTHORITY, JUST WHEN

THEY THOUGHT THEMSELVES MASTERS OF THE KINGDOM.

When the Royal authority had been conquered, the Parliaments at first

conceived that the triumph was their own. They returned to the bench,

less as reprieved delinquents than as conquerors, and thought that they

had only to enjoy the sweets of victory.

The King, when he withdrew the edicts which had raised to the bench

new judges, ordered that at least the judgments and decrees of those

judges should be maintained. The Parliaments declared that whatever had

been adjudged without themselves was not adjudged at all. They summoned

before them the insolent magistrates who had presumed to aspire to

their seats, and, borrowing an old expression of mediæval law to meet

this novel incident, they _noted them infamous_. All France saw that

the King’s friends were punished for their fidelity to the Crown,

and learnt that henceforth safety was not to be found on the side of

obedience.

The intoxication of these magistrates may easily be understood. Louis

XIV. in all his glory had never been the object of more universal

adulation, if that word can be applied to immoderate praise prompted by

genuine and disinterested passions.

The Parliament of Paris, exiled to Troyes, was received in that

city by all the public bodies, which hastened to pay it the homage

due to the sovereign, and to utter to its face the most extravagant

compliments. ‘August senators!’ they said, ‘generous citizens! strict

and compassionate magistrates! you all deserve in every French heart

the title of fathers of your country. You are the consolation of

the nation’s ills. Your actions are sublime examples of energy and

patriotism. The French nation looks upon you with tenderness and

veneration.’ The Chapter of the Cathedral of Troyes, complimenting them

in the name of the Church, said: ‘Our country and our religion solicit

some durable monument of what you have done.’ Even the University

came forth, in gowns and square caps, to drawl out its homage in bad

Latin, ‘Illustrissimi Senatûs princeps, præsides insulati, Senatores

integerrimi! We share the general emotion, and we are here to express

our lively admiration of your patriotic heroism. Hitherto the highest

courage was that military valour which calls legions of heroes from

their homes; we now see the heroes of peace in the sanctuary of

justice; like those generous citizens who were the pride of Rome in

their day of triumph, you have earned a triumph which secures to you

immortal fame.’ The First President replied to all these addresses

curtly, like a sovereign, and assured the speakers of the good will of

his Court.

In several provinces the arrest or exile of the judges had provoked

riots. In all, their return gave rise to almost insane explosions

of popular rejoicing. At Grenoble, when the courier arrived, who

brought the news of the restoration of the Parliaments, he was carried

in triumph through the town, and overpowered with caresses and

acclamations; women, unable to reach his person, kissed his horse.

In the evening the whole town was spontaneously illuminated. All the

public bodies and guilds defiled before the Parliament, declaiming

bombastic compliments.

At Bordeaux on the same day there was a similar ovation. The people

took the horses from the carriage of the First President, and drew

him to his chambers. The judges who had obeyed the King’s orders were

hooted. The First President reprimanded them in public. In the midst of

this scene the oldest member of the Parliament exclaimed, ‘My children,

tell this to your descendants, that the remembrance of this day may

keep alive the fire of patriotism.’ He who said this was an aged man,

born ninety years before, whose youth had been spent under the reign

of Louis XIV. What changes may not take place in the opinions and

the language of a people within the lifetime of a man! They ended by

burning a cardinal in effigy on the market-place; which did not prevent

the clergy from singing a _Te Deum_. These events took place at the end

of October, 1788.

Suddenly the acclamations which surrounded the Parliaments ceased;

the enthusiasm dropped; silence and solitude gathered about them. Not

only were they the objects of public indifference, but all sorts of

charges were brought against them, the same which the Government had

vainly attempted to urge. The country was inundated with vituperative

pamphlets against them. ‘These judges,’ it was said in these pamphlets,

‘know nothing of politics; in reality they have only been aiming at

power. They are at one with the nobles and the priests, and as hostile

as these are to the commons, who constitute almost the entire nation.

They fancied that their attack on despotism would cause all this to

be forgotten; but, in asserting the rights of the nation, they have

allowed them to be questioned: those rights are derived from the Social

Contract; to discuss them, is to clothe them in the false colours of

voluntary concession. Indeed, the demands they made from the King

were in some respects excessive. They are an aristocracy of lawyers

who want to be masters of the King himself.’[125] Another pamphlet,

attributed to Volney, apostrophised them in these terms: ‘August body

of Magistrates! we are under sacred obligations to you which we do not

disown, but we cannot forget that during all these years that you have

represented the people, you have allowed it to be oppressed: you, the

teachers of the people, have allowed almost all the books calculated

to enlighten it to be burnt; and when you resisted despotism it was

because it was about to crush yourselves.’

Especially for the Parliament of Paris was the fall sudden and

terrible. How shall I describe the mighty void, the death-like silence

which encompassed that great Court, and its own sense of impotence

and despair, or the scornful vengeance of the Crown, when, in reply

to fresh remonstrances, Louis XVI. said, ‘I have no answer to make to

my Parliament or to its supplications: with the assembled nation I am

about to concert measures to consolidate for ever public order and the

prosperity of the kingdom’?

The same measure which recalled the Parliament to its hall of justice

restored d’Eprémenil to liberty. The reader will remember the dramatic

scene of his arrest, his address in the style of Regulus, the emotion

of the audience, and the immense popularity of the martyr. He was

confined in the Ile Ste. Marguérite, off Cannes: the warrant for his

discharge arrives, and he starts. On the road he is at first treated

as a great man, but as he proceeds the radiance that surrounded him

fades away: once at Paris, nobody cares about him, unless it be to cut

a joke. To descend thus from the sublime to the ridiculous, he had only

to post across the territory some two hundred leagues.

The Parliament, wretched at the discovery of its unpopularity,

endeavoured to regain the favour of the public. Recourse was had to

stirring means: the same language which had so often served to excite

the people in its favour was again employed. The cry for periodical

sessions of the States-General, for the responsibility of Ministers,

for personal freedom, for the liberty of the press: all was in vain.

The amazement of the judges was extreme: they were totally unable to

comprehend what was happening before their eyes. They continued to

speak of the _constitution_ to be defended, not seeing that this word

was popular enough when the constitution was opposed to the King,

but hateful to public opinion when it was opposed to equality. They

condemned a publication which attacked the old institutions of the

kingdom to be burnt by the common hangman, not perceiving that the ruin

of these institutions was precisely what was desired. They asked of one

another what could possibly have brought about such a change in the

public mind. They fancied they had a strength of their own, not being

aware that they had only been the blind auxiliaries of another power:

everything, as long as that power made them its instruments; nothing,

as soon as, being able to act on its own behalf, it ceased to need

their assistance. They did not see that the same wave which had driven

them along, and raised them so high, carried them back with it as it

retired.

Originally the Parliament consisted of jurists and advocates chosen by

the King from the ablest members of their profession. A path to honours

and to the highest offices of State was thus opened by merit to men

born in the humblest conditions of fortune. The Parliament was then,

with the Church, one of those powerful democratic institutions, which

were born and had implanted themselves on the aristocratic soil of the

Middle Ages.

At a later period the Crown, to make money, put up to sale the right

of administering justice. The Parliament was then filled by a certain

number of wealthy families, who considered the national judicature as

a privilege of their own, to be guarded from the intrusion of others

with increasing jealousy; they obeyed in this the strange impulse

which seemed to impel each particular body to dwindle more and more

into a small close aristocracy, at the very time when the opinions and

general habits of the nation caused society to incline more and more to

democracy.

Nothing certainly could be more opposed to the ideas of the time than

a judicial caste, exercising by purchase the whole jurisdiction of the

country. No practice, indeed, had been more often and more bitterly

censured, for a century past, than the sale of these offices. This

magistracy, vicious as it was in principle, had nevertheless a merit

which the better constituted tribunals of our own time do not always

possess. The judges were independent. They administered justice in

the name of the sovereign, but not in compliance with his will. They

obeyed no passions but their own.

When all the intermediate powers which might counter-balance or

attenuate the unlimited power of the King had been struck down, the

Parliament alone still remained firm. The Parliament could still speak

when all the world was silent, and maintain itself erect, for a time,

when all the world had long been forced to bow. The consequence was

that it became popular as soon as the Government was out of favour

with the nation. And when, for a moment, hatred of despotism had

become a fervent passion and a sentiment common to all Frenchmen, the

Parliaments appeared to be the sole remaining barrier against absolute

power. The defects which had been most blamed in them acted as a

sort of guarantee of their political honesty. Even their vices were

a protection, and their love of power, their presumption, and their

prejudices were arms which the nation used. But no sooner had absolute

power been definitely conquered, and the nation felt assured that it

could defend its own rights, than the Parliament again at once became

what it was before--an old, decrepit, and discredited institution; a

legacy of the Middle Ages, again exposed to the full tide of public

aversion. To effect its destruction, the King had only to endure its

triumph.

FOOTNOTE:

[125] See a pamphlet attributed to Serovan (1789), and entitled

‘Glose sur l’arrêté du Parlement’; and one entitled ‘Despotisme des

Parlements,’ published on the 25th September, 1788, after the decree

which suddenly made the Parliaments unpopular.

CHAPTER V.

ABSOLUTE POWER BEING SUBDUED, THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION

FORTHWITH BECAME MANIFEST.

The bond of a common passion had for an instant linked all classes

together. No sooner was that bond relaxed than they flew asunder, and

the veritable spirit of the Revolution, disguised before, was suddenly

unveiled. After the triumph which had been obtained over the King, the

next thing was to ascertain who should win the fruits of the victory;

the States-General having been conceded, who should predominate in that

assembly. The King could no longer refuse to convoke them; but he had

still the power to determine the form they were to assume. One hundred

and seventy-five years had elapsed since their last meeting. They had

become a mere indistinct tradition. None knew precisely what should be

the number of the deputies, the mutual relations of the three Orders,

the mode of election, the forms of deliberation. The King alone could

have settled these questions: he did not settle them. After having

allowed the disputed powers, which he sought to retain, to be snatched

away from him, he failed to use those which were not disputed.

M. de Brienne, the First Minister, had strange notions on this

subject, and caused his master to adopt a resolution unparalleled in

history. He regarded the questions, whether the electoral franchise

was to be universal or limited, whether the assembly was to be

numerous or restricted, whether the Orders were to be separated or

united, whether they were to be equal or unequal in their rights, as

a matter of erudition. Consequently an Order in Council commanded

all the constituted bodies of the realm to make researches as to the

structure of the old States-General and the forms used by them; and

added that ‘His Majesty invited all the learned persons of the kingdom,

more especially those who belonged to the Academy of Belles-lettres

and Antiquities, to address to the Keeper of the Seals papers and

information on this subject.’

Thus was the constitution of the country treated like an academical

essay, put up to competition. The call was heard. All the local powers

deliberated on the answer to be given to the King. All the corporate

bodies put in their claims. All classes endeavoured to rake up from the

ruins of the old States-General the forms which seemed best adapted

to secure their own peculiar interests. Every one had something to

say; and as France was the most literary country in Europe, there was

a deluge of publications. The conflict of classes was inevitable;

but that conflict, which should naturally have been reserved for the

States-General themselves, where it might have been kept within bounds

when it arose on given questions, finding a boundless field before it,

and being fed by general controversy, speedily assumed a degree of

strange boldness and excessive violence, to be accounted for by the

secret excitement of the public mind, but which no external symptom had

as yet prepared men for. Between the time when the King renounced his

absolute authority and the commencement of the elections about five

months elapsed. In this interval little was changed in the actual state

of things, but the movement which was driving the French nation to a

total subversion of society dashed onwards with increasing velocity.

At first nothing was talked of but the constitution of the

States-General; big books were hastily filled with crude erudition, in

which an attempt was made to reconcile the traditions of the Middle

Ages with the demands of the present time: then the question of the

old States-General was dropped. This heap of mouldy precedents was

flung aside, and it was asked what, on general and abstract principles,

the legislative power ought to be. At each step the horizon extended:

beyond the constitution of the legislature the discussion embraced the

whole framework of government: beyond the frame of government the whole

fabric of society was to be shaken to its foundations. At first men

spoke of a better ponderation of powers, a better adjustment of the

rights of classes, but soon they advanced, they hurried, they rushed

to pure democracy. At first Montesquieu was cited and discussed, at

last Rousseau was the only authority; he, and he alone, became and

was to remain the Teacher of the first age of the Revolution. The old

_régime_ was still in complete existence, and already the institutions

of England were deemed superannuated and inadequate. The root of

every incident that followed was implanted in men’s minds. Scarcely

an opinion was professed in the whole course of the Revolution which

might not already be traced in its germ: there was not an idea realised

by the Revolution, that some theory had not at once reached and even

surpassed.

‘In all things the majority of numbers is to give the law’: such

was the keynote of the whole controversy. Nobody dreamed that the

concession of political rights could be determined by any other element

than that of number. ‘What can be more absurd,’ exclaims a writer who

was one of the most moderate of the time, ‘than that a body which has

twenty millions of heads should be represented in the same manner as

one which has an hundred thousand?’[126] After having shown that there

were in France eighty thousand ecclesiastics and about a hundred and

twenty thousand nobles, Siéyès merely adds, ‘Compare this number of

these two hundred thousand privileged persons to that of twenty-six

million souls, and judge the question.’[127]

The most timid among the innovators of the Revolution, those who

wished that the reasonable prerogatives of the different Orders

should be respected, talked, nevertheless, as if there were neither

class nor Order, and still took the numerical majority[128] as

the sole basis of their calculations. Everybody framed his own

statistics, but all was statistical. ‘The relation of privileged

persons to those not privileged,’ said Lafon-Ladebat, ‘is as one to

twenty-two.’[129] According to the city of Bourg,[130] the commons

formed nineteen-twentieths of the population; according to the city

of Nîmes,[131] twenty-nine thirtieths. It was, as you see, a mere

question of figures. From this political arithmetic, Volney deduced,

as a natural consequence, universal suffrage;[132] Roederer, universal

eligibility;[133] Péthion, the unity of the assembly.[134]

Many of these writers, in drawing out their figures, knew nothing of

the quotient: and the calculation frequently led them beyond their

hopes, and even beyond their wishes.

The most striking thing, at this passionate epoch, was not so much

the passions which broke forth, as the power of the opinions that

prevailed; and the opinion that prevailed above all others was,

that not only there were no privileges, but even that there were no

private rights. Even those who professed the largest consideration for

privileges and private rights considered such privileges and rights as

wholly indefensible--not only those exercised in their own time, but

those existing at any time and in any country. The conception of a

temperate and ponderated Government, that is to say, of a Government

in which the different classes of society, and the different interests

which divide them, balance each other--in which men are weighed not

only as individuals, but by reason of their property, their patronage,

and their influence in the scale of the common weal,--these conceptions

were wanting in the mind of the multitude; they were replaced by the

notion of a crowd, consisting of similar elements, and they were

superseded by votes, not as the representatives of interests or of

persons, but of numerical force.[135]

Another thing well worthy of remark in this singular movement of the

mind, was its _pace_, at first so easy and regulated, at last so

headlong and impetuous. A few months’ interval marked this difference.

Read what was written in the first weeks of 1788 by the keenest

opponents of the old _régime_, you will be struck by the forbearance

of their language: then take the publications of the most moderate

reformers in the last five months of the same year, you will find them

revolutionary.

The Government had challenged discussion on itself: no bounds therefore

would be set to the theme. The same impulse which had been given to

opinions soon drove the passions of the nation with furious rapidity in

the same direction. At first the commons complained that the nobility

carried their rights too far. Later on, the existence of any such

rights was denied. At first it was proposed to share power with the

upper classes: soon all power was refused to them. The aristocracy was

to become a sort of extraneous substance in the uniform texture of the

nation. Some said the privileged classes were a hundred thousand, some

that they were five hundred thousand. All agreed in thinking that they

formed a mere handful, foreign to the rest of the nation, only to be

tolerated in the interest of public tranquillity. ‘Take away in your

imagination,’ said Rabaut Saint-Etienne, ‘the whole of the clergy--take

away even the whole nobility, there still remains the nation.’ The

commons were a complete social body: all the rest was vain superfluity:

not only the nobles had no right to be masters of the rest, they had

scarcely the right to be their fellow-citizens.

For the first time perhaps in the history of the world, the upper

classes had separated and isolated themselves to such a degree from all

other classes, that their members could be counted one by one and set

apart like sheep draughted from a flock: whilst the middle classes were

bent on _not_ mixing with the class above them, but, on the contrary,

stood carefully aloof from all contact. These two symptoms, had they

been understood, would have revealed the immensity of the Revolution

which was about to take place, or rather which was already made.

Now follow the movement of passion in the track of opinion. At first

hatred was expressed against privileges, none against persons. But

by degrees the tone becomes more bitter, emulation becomes jealousy,

enmity becomes detestation, a thousand conflicting associations are

piled together to form the mighty mass which a thousand arms are at

once to lift, and drop upon the head of the aristocracy so as to crush

it.

The privileged ranks were attacked in countless publications. They were

defended in so few, that it is somewhat difficult to ascertain what

was said in their favour. It may seem surprising that the assailed

classes, holding most of the great offices of State and owning a large

portion of the land of the country, should have found so few defenders,

though so many eloquent voices have pleaded their cause since they

have been conquered, decimated, ruined. But this is explained by the

extreme confusion into which the aristocracy was thrown, when the rest

of the nation, having proceeded for a time in the track marked out by

itself, suddenly turned against it. With astonishment, it perceived

that the opinions used to attack it were its own opinions. The notions

which compassed its annihilation were familiar to its own mind. What

had been the amusement of aristocratic leisure became a terrible

weapon against aristocratic society. In common with their adversaries,

these nobles were ready enough to believe that the most perfect form

of society would be that most nearly akin to the natural equality of

man; in which merit alone, and not either birth or fortune, should

determine rank; and in which government would be a simple contract,

and law the creation of a numerical majority. They knew nothing of

politics but what they had read in books, and in the same books; the

only difference was that one party was bent on trying a great social

experiment, which must be made at the expense of the other party. But,

though their interests were different, their opinions were the same:

those same patricians would have made the Revolution if they had been

born plebeians.

When therefore they suddenly found themselves attacked, they were

singularly embarrassed in their defence. Not one of them had ever

considered by what means an aristocracy may justify its privileges in

the eyes of the people. They knew not what to say in order to show how

it is that an aristocracy can alone preserve the people from oppression

of the Crown and the calamities of revolution, insomuch that the

privileges apparently established in the sole interest of those who

possess them do constitute the best security that can be found for

the tranquillity and prosperity even of those who are without them.

All these arguments which are so familiar to those who have a long

experience of public affairs, and who have acquired the science of

government, were to those nobles of France novel and unknown.

Instead of this, they spoke of the services which their forefathers

had rendered six hundred years ago; of the superstitious veneration

due to a past, which was now detested; of the necessity of a nobility

to uphold the honour of arms and the traditions of military valour. In

opposition to a proposal to admit the peasantry to the franchise in the

provincial assemblies, and even to preside over those bodies, M. de

Bazancourt, a Councillor of State, declared that the kingdom of France

was based upon honour and prerogative: so great was the ignorance

and so deep the obscurity in which absolute power had concealed the

real laws of society, even from the eyes of those to whom it was most

interested in making them known.

The language of the nobles was often arrogant, because they were

accustomed to be the first; but it was irresolute, because they doubted

of their own right. Who can depict the endless divisions in the bosom

of the assailed parties? The spirit of rivalry and contention raged

amongst those who were thus isolated themselves--the nobles against

the priests (the first voice raised to demand the confiscation of the

property of the clergy was that of a noble[136]), the priests against

the nobles, the lesser nobility against the great lords, the parish

priests against the bishops.[137]

The discussion roused by the King’s Edicts, after having run round

a vast circumference of institutions and laws, always ended at the

two following points, which practically expressed the objects of the

contest.

1. In the States-General, then about to meet, were the commons to have

a greater number of representatives than each of the two other Orders,

so that the total number of its deputies should be equal to those of

the nobility and clergy combined?

2. Were the Orders to deliberate together or separately?

This reduplication of the commons and the fusion of the three Orders in

one assembly appeared, at the time, to be things less novel and less

important than they were in reality. Some minor circumstances which had

long existed, or were then in existence, concealed their novelty and

their magnitude. For ages the provincial Estates of Languedoc had been

composed and had sat in this manner, with no other result than that of

giving to the middle class a larger share of public business, and of

creating common interests and greater facility of intercourse between

that class and the two higher Orders. This example had been copied,

subsequently, in the two or three provincial assemblies which were held

in 1779: instead of dividing the classes, it had been found to draw

them together.

The King himself appeared to have declared in favour of this system;

for he had just applied it to the provincial assemblies, which the last

edict had called into being in all the provinces having previously no

Estates of their own (1788). It was still imperfectly seen, without

a clear perception of the fact, that an institution which had only

modified the ancient constitution of the country, when established in

a single province, could not fail to bring about its total and violent

overthrow the moment it was applied to the whole State. It was evident

that the commons, if equal in number to the two other Orders in the

General Assembly of the nation, must instantly preponderate there;--not

as participating in their business, but as the supreme master of it.

For the commons would stand united between two bodies, not only divided

against each other, but divided against themselves--the commons having

the same interests, the same passions, the same object: the two other

Orders having different interests, different objects, and frequently

different passions: these having the current of public opinion in their

favour, those having it against them. This preference from without

could not fail to drive a certain number of nobles and priests to join

the commons; so that whilst it banded all the commons together, it

detached from the nobility and the clergy all those who were aiming at

popularity or seeking to track out a new road to power.

In the States of Languedoc it was common to see the commons forsake

their own body to vote with the nobles and the bishops, because the

established influence of aristocracy, still prevailing in their

opinions and manners, weighed upon them. But here, the reverse

necessarily occurred; and the commons necessarily found themselves in a

majority, although the number of their own representatives was the same.

The action of such a party in the Assembly could not fail to be, not

only preponderating, but violent; for it was sure to encounter there

all that could excite the passions of man. To bring parties to live

together in a conflict of opposite opinions is no easy task. But to

enclose in the same arena political bodies, already formed, completely

organised, each having its proper origin, its past, its traditions,

its peculiar usages, its spirit of union--to plant them apart, always

in presence of each other, and to compel them to carry on an incessant

debate, with no medium between them, is not to provoke discussion but

war.

Moreover, this majority, inflamed by its own passions and the passions

of its antagonists, was all powerful. Nothing could, I will not say

arrest, but retard its movements; for nothing remained to check it but

the power of the Crown, already disarmed, and inevitably destined to

yield to the strain of a single Assembly concentrated against itself.

This was not to transpose gradually the balance of power, but to upset

it. It was not to impart to the commons a share in the exorbitant

rights of the aristocracy, but suddenly to transfer unbounded power to

other hands--to abandon the guidance of affairs to a single passion,

a single idea, a single interest. This was not a reform, but a

revolution. Mounier, who, alone among the reformers of that time, seems

to have settled in his own mind what it was he wished to effect, and

what were the conditions of a regular and free government,--Mounier,

who in his plan of government had divided the three Orders, was

nevertheless favourable to this union of them, and for this reason:

that what was wanted before all things was an assembly to destroy the

remains of the old constitution, all special privileges, and all local

privileges, which could never be done with an Upper House composed of

the nobles and the clergy.

It would seem at any rate that the reduplication of the votes of the

commons and the fusion of the three Orders in one body must have been

questions inseparable from each other; for to what end should the

number of representatives of the commons be augmented, if that branch

of the Assembly was to debate and vote apart from the other two?

M. Necker thought proper to separate these questions. No doubt he

desired both the reduplication of the commons, and that the three

Orders should vote together. It is very probable that the King leaned

in the same direction. By the aristocracy he had just been conquered.

It was the aristocracy which pressed him hardest, which had roused the

other classes against the royal authority, and had led them to victory.

These blows had been felt, and the King had not sufficient penetration

to perceive that his adversaries would soon be compelled to defend him,

and that his friends would become his masters. Louis XVI. therefore,

like his minister, was inclined to constitute the States-General in the

manner which the commons desired. But they were afraid to go so far.

They stopped half-way, not from any clear perception of their danger,

but confused by the inarticulate clamour around them. What man or what

class has ever had the penetration to see when it became necessary to

come down from a lofty pinnacle, in order to avoid being hurled down

from it?

It was then decided that the commons should return twice as many

members as each of the other Orders, but the question of the vote in

common was left unsettled. Of all courses of action, this was certainly

the most dangerous.

Nothing contributes more to the maintenance of despotism than the

division and mutual rivalry of classes. Absolute power lives on them:

on condition, however, that these divisions are confined to a pacific

bitterness, that men envy their neighbours without excessive hatred,

and that these classes, though separated, are not in arms. But every

Government must perish in the midst of a violent collision of classes,

when once they have begun to make war on each other.

No doubt, it was very late in the day to seek to maintain the old

constitution of the States-General, even if it were reformed. But this

resolution, however rash, was supported by the law of the land, which

had still some authority. The Government had tradition in its favour,

and still had its hand upon the instrument of the law. If the double

number of the commons and the vote of the three Orders in common had

been conceded at once, no doubt a revolution would have been made,

but it would have been made by the Crown, which by pulling down these

old institutions itself might have deadened their fall. The upper

classes must have submitted to an inevitable necessity. Borne in by the

pressure of the Crown, simultaneously with that of the commons, they

would at once have acknowledged their inability to resist. Despairing

of their own ascendency, they would only have contended for equal

rights, and would have learnt the lesson of fighting to save something,

instead of fighting to retain everything.

Would it not have been possible to do throughout France what was

actually done by the Three Orders in Dauphiny? In that province the

Provincial Estates chose, by a general vote, the representatives of

the Three Orders to the States-General. Each Order in the provincial

State had been elected separately and stood for itself alone; but all

the Orders combined to name the deputies to the States-General, so that

every noble had commoners among his constituents, and every commoner

nobles. The three representations, though remaining distinct, thus

acquired a certain resemblance. Could not the same thing have been done

elsewhere than in Dauphiny? If the Orders had been constituted in this

manner, might they not have co-existed in a single Assembly without

coming to a violent collision?

Too much weight must not be given to these legislative expedients.

The ideas and the passions of man, not the mechanism of law, are the

motive force of human affairs. Doubtless whatever steps had at that

time been taken to form and regulate the Assemblies of the nation, it

may be thought that war would have broken forth in all its violence

between classes. Their animosities were perhaps already too fierce for

them to have worked in harmony, and the power of the King was already

too weak to compel them to agree. But it must be admitted that nothing

could have been done more calculated than what was done to render the

conflict between them instantaneous and mortal. Could the utmost art,

skill, and deliberate design have brought all this to pass more surely

than was actually done by inexperience and temerity? An opportunity

had been afforded to the commons to take courage, to prepare for

the encounter, and to count their numbers. Their moral ardour had

immoderately increased, and had doubled the weight of their party. They

had been allured by every hope; they were intimidated by every fear.

Victory had been flaunted before their eyes, not given, but they were

invited to seize it. After having left the two classes for five months

to exasperate their old hatreds, and repeat the long story of their

grievances, until they were inflamed against each other with furious

resentment, they were arrayed face to face, and the first question they

had to decide was one which included all other questions; on that issue

alone they might have settled at once, and in a single day, all their

quarrels.

What strikes one most in the affairs of the world is not so much the

genius of those who made the Revolution, because they desired it, as

the singular imbecility of those who made it without desiring it,--not

so much the part played by great men as the influence frequently

exercised by the smallest personages in history. When I survey the

French Revolution I am amazed at the immense magnitude of the event,

at the glare it has cast to the extremities of the earth, at the power

of it, which has more or less been felt by all nations. If I turn to

the Court, which had so great a share in the Revolution, I perceive

there some of the most trivial scenes in history--a king, who had no

greatness save that of his virtues, and those not the virtues of a

king; hairbrained or narrow-minded ministers, dissolute priests, rash

or money-seeking courtiers, futile women, who held in their hands the

destinies of the human race. Yet these paltry personages set going,

push on, precipitate prodigious events. They themselves have little

share in them. They themselves are mere accidents. They might almost

pass for primal causes. And I marvel at the Almighty Power which, with

levers as short as these, can set rolling the mass of human society.

FOOTNOTES:

[126] ‘Le Tiers-État au Roi,’ by M. Louchet, December 20th, 1788.

[127] ‘Qu’est-ce-que le Tiers?’ p. 53.

[128] Lacretelle, ‘Convocation des États-Généraux’; Bertrand de

Molleville,’ Observations adressées à l’Assemblée des Notables.’

[129] ‘Observations lues aux représentants du Tiers-État à Bordeaux,’

December, 1788.

[130] ‘Requête du Tiers-État de la ville de Bourg,’ December, 1788.

[131] ‘Délibérations de la ville de Nîmes en Conseil général.’

[132] ‘Des conditions nécessaires à la légalité des États-Généraux.’

[133] ‘De la députation aux États-Généraux.’

[134] ‘Avis aux Français,’ 1788. A pamphlet written in 1788, but full

of the true revolutionary spirit of 1792.

[135] Mounier himself was just as little able as the most violent

revolutionists, who were soon to appear, to conceive the idea of rights

derived from the past; of political usages and customs which are in

reality laws, though unwritten, and only to be touched with caution, of

interests to be respected and very gradually modified without causing

a rupture between that which has been and that which is to be--the

idea, in short, which is the first principle of practical and regular

political liberty. See Mounier’s ‘Nouvelles Observations sur les

États-Généraux.’

[136] The Marquis de Gouy d’Arcy in a ‘Mémoire au Roi en faveur de la

noblesse Française, par un patricien ami du peuple,’ 1788.

[137] This appears from a correspondence of M---- with M. Necker,

examined by me in the archives.

CHAPTER 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.

Almost all the institutions of the Middle Ages had a stamp of boldness

and truth. Those laws were imperfect, but they were sincere. They had

little art, but they had less cunning. They always gave all the rights

they seemed to promise. When the commons were convoked to form part

of the assemblies of the nation, they were at the same time invested

with unbounded freedom in making known their complaints and in sending

up their requests. In the cities which were to send deputies to the

States-General, the whole people was called upon to say what it thought

of the abuses to be corrected and the demands to be made. None were

excluded from the right of complaint, and any man might express his

grievance in his own way. The means were as simple as the political

device was bold. Down to the States-General of 1614, in all the towns,

and even in Paris, a large box was placed in the market-place, with

a slit in it, to receive the papers and opinions of all men, which

a committee sitting at the Hôtel de Ville was empowered to sift and

examine. Out of all these diverse remonstrances a bill was drawn

up, which expressed the public grievances and the complaint of each

individual.

The physical and social constitution of that time was based on such

deep and solid foundations, that this sort of public inquest could

take place without shaking it. There was no question of changing the

principle of the laws, but simply of putting them straight. Moreover,

what were then styled the commons were the burgesses of certain towns.

The people of the towns might enjoy an entire liberty in the expression

of their wrongs, because they were not in a condition to enforce

redress: they exercised without inconvenience that amount of democratic

freedom, because in all other respects the aristocracy reigned supreme.

The communities of the Middle Ages were aristocratic bodies, which

merely contained (and this contributed to their greatness) some small

fragments of democracy.

In 1789, the commons who were to be represented in the States-General

no longer consisted of the burgesses of the towns alone, as was the

case in 1614, but of twenty millions of peasants scattered over the

whole area of the kingdom. These had till then never taken any part

in public affairs. Political life was not to them even the casual

reminiscence of another age: it was, in all respects, a novelty.

Nevertheless, on a given day, the inhabitants of each of the rural

parishes of France, collected by the sound of the church bells on the

market-place in front of the church, proceeded, for the first time

since the commencement of the monarchy, to confer together in order to

draw up what was called the _cahier_ of their representatives.[138]

In all the countries in which political assemblies are chosen by

universal suffrage, no general election takes place which does not

deeply agitate the people, unless the freedom of voting be a lie. Here

it was not only a universal voting; it was a universal deliberation

and inquest. The matter in discussion was not some particular custom

or local interest; each member of one of the greatest nations in the

world was asked what he had to say against all the laws and all the

customs of his country. I think no such spectacle had been seen before

upon the earth. All the peasants of France set to work therefore, at

the same time, to consider among themselves and recapitulate all that

they had suffered, all they had to complain of. The spirit of the

Revolution which excited the citizens of the towns, rushed therefore

through a thousand rills, penetrated the rural population, which was

thus agitated in all its parts, and sunk to its very depths; but the

form it assumed was not entirely the same; its shape became peculiar

and appropriate to those just affected by it. In the cities, it was a

cry for rights to be acquired. In the country, men thought principally

of wants to be satisfied. All the large, general, and abstract theories

which filled the minds of the middle classes here took a concrete and

definite form.

When the peasants came to ask each other what they had to complain of,

they cared not for the balance of powers, the guarantees of political

freedom, the abstract rights of man or of citizens. They dwelt at once

on objects more special and nearer to themselves, which each of them

had had to endure. One thought of the feudal dues which had taken

half his last year’s crop; another of the days of forced labour on

which he had been compelled to work without wages. One spoke of the

lord’s pigeons, which had picked his seed from the ground before it

sprouted; another of the rabbits which had nibbled his green corn. As

their excitement grew by the mutual relation of their wretchedness,

all these different evils seemed to them to proceed, not so much

from institutions, as from that single person, who still called them

his subjects, though he had long ceased to govern them--who was the

creature of privileges without obligations, and retained none of his

political rights but that of living at their cost; and they more and

more agreed in considering _him_ as their common enemy.

Providence, which had resolved that the spectacle of our passions

and our calamities should be the lesson of the world, permitted the

commencement of the Revolution to coincide with a great scarcity and

an extraordinary winter. The harvest of 1788 was short, and the first

months of the winter of 1789 were marked by cold of unparalleled

severity--a frost, like that which is felt in the northern extremity of

Europe, hardened the earth to a great depth. For two months the whole

of France lay hidden under a thick fall of snow, like the steppes of

Siberia. The atmosphere was congealed, the sky dull and sad; and this

accident of nature gave a gloomier and fiercer tone to the passions of

man. All the grievances which might be urged against the institutions

of the country, and those who ruled by those institutions, were felt

more bitterly amidst the cold and want that prevailed; and when the

peasant left his scarcely burning hearth and his chill and naked abode,

with a famished and frozen family, to meet his fellows and discuss

their common condition of life, it cost him no effort to discover the

cause of all his calamities, and he fancied that he could easily, if he

dared, put his finger on the source of all his wrongs.

FOOTNOTE:

[138] For a fuller account of these Instructions, and a specimen of

them, see Note XLIV. in the Appendix.

CHAPTER VII.

HOW, ON THE EVE OF THE CONVOCATION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, THE MIND

OF THE NATION WAS MORE ENLARGED, AND ITS SPIRIT RAISED.

Two questions had thus far divided all classes--that of the

reduplication of the commons, and that of the voting of the Orders

in one body: the first was settled, the second was postponed. That

great Assembly which every man had regarded in his own heart as the

fulfilment of his hopes, and which all had demanded with equal fervour,

was about to meet. The event had long been anticipated. To the last

it seemed doubtful. It came at length. Preparation was passing into

reality, speech into action. At that solemn moment all paused to

consider the greatness of the undertaking--near enough to discern the

bearing of what was to be done, and to measure the effort which the

work required. Nobles, clergy, and citizens alike distinctly perceived

that the object was not to modify this or that law, but to remodel all

laws, to breathe a new spirit into them, to impart to all of them new

purposes and a new course. No one knew as yet exactly what would be

destroyed, or what would be created; but all felt that immense ruins

would be made, and immense structures raised. Nor was this the limit of

public confidence. None doubted that the destiny of mankind was engaged

in the work about to be accomplished.

Nowadays when the calamity of revolutions has rendered us so humble

that we scarcely believe ourselves worthy of the freedom enjoyed by

other nations, it is difficult to form a conception of the proud

anticipations of our sires. The literature of the time shows to our

amazement the vast opinions which the French of all ranks had at

that time conceived of their country and of their race. Amongst the

schemes of reform just brought to light, hardly any were formed on

the model of foreign imitation. They were not received as lessons

from the British constitution, or borrowed from the experience of

American democracy. Nothing was to be copied; nothing was to be done

that was not new. Everything was to be different and more perfect

than had been seen before. The confidence of the French in themselves

and in the superiority of their own reason was unbounded--a great

cause of their mistakes, but also of their inimitable energy. What was

applicable to themselves alone would be equally applicable to all men.

Not a Frenchman but was convinced that not only was the government

of France to be changed, but new principles of government were to be

introduced into the world, applicable to all the nations of the earth,

and destined to regenerate the sum of human affairs. Every man imagined

that he held in his hand not only the fate of his country, but that

of his species. All believed that there existed for mankind, whatever

might be their condition, but one sovereign method of government,

dictated by reason. The same institutions were held to be good for all

countries and for any people. Whatever government was not approved by

the human reason was to be destroyed and superseded by the logical

institutions to be adopted, first by the French, and afterwards by the

human race.

The magnitude, the beauty, and the risks of such an enterprise

captivated and ravished the imagination of the whole French people.

In presence of this immense design, each individual completely forgot

himself. The illusion lasted but for a moment, but that moment was

perhaps unexampled in the existence of any people. The educated classes

had nothing of the timorous and servile spirit which they have since

learnt from revolutions. For some time past they had ceased to fear the

power of the Crown; they had not yet learned to dread the power of the

people. The grandeur of their design rendered them intrepid. Reforms

already accomplished had caused a certain amount of private suffering;

to this they were resigned. The reforms which were inevitable must

alter the condition of thousands of human beings: that was not thought

of. The uncertainty of the future had already checked the course of

trade and paralysed the exertions of industry: neither privations nor

suffering extinguished their ardour. All these private calamities

disappeared, in the eyes even of those who suffered by them, in the

splendour of the common enterprise. The love of well-being, which

was one day to reign supreme over all other passions, was then but a

subordinate and feeble predilection. Men aimed at loftier pleasures.

Every man was resolved, in his heart, to sacrifice himself for so

great a cause, and to grudge neither his time, nor his property, nor

his life. I hasten to record these virtues of our forefathers, for the

present age, which is already incapable of imitating them, will soon be

incapable of understanding them.

At that time, the nation, in every rank, sought to be free. To

doubt its ability for self-government would have seemed a strange

impertinence, and no phrase-maker of that day would have dared to tell

the people that, for their own happiness and safety, their hands must

be tied and their authority placed in leading-strings. Ere they can

listen to such language, nations must be reduced to think more humbly

of themselves.

The passions which had just been so violently excited between the

various classes of society seemed of themselves to cool down at

the moment when for the first time in two centuries these classes

were about to act together. All had demanded with equal fervour the

restoration of the great Assembly then new born. Each of them saw in

that event the means of realising its fondest hopes. The States-General

were to meet at last! A common gladness filled those divided hearts,

and knit them together for an instant before they separated for ever.

All minds were struck by the peril of disunion. A sovereign effort was

made to agree. Instead of dwelling on the causes of difference, men

applied themselves to consider what all alike desired: the destruction

of arbitrary power, the self-government of the nation, the recognition

of the rights of every citizen, liberty of the press, personal freedom,

the mitigation of the law, a stronger administration of justice,

religious toleration, the abolition of restraint on labour and human

industry--these were all things demanded by all. This, at least, was

remembered: this was a ground of common rejoicing.

I think no epoch of history has seen, on any spot on the globe, so

large a number of men so passionately devoted to the public good, so

honestly forgetful of themselves, so absorbed in the contemplation of

the common interest, so resolved to risk all they cherished in life to

secure it. This it is which gave to the opening of the year 1789 an

incomparable grandeur. This was the general source of passion, courage,

and patriotism, from which all the great deeds of the Revolution took

their rise. The scene was a short one; but it will never depart from

the memory of mankind. The distance from which we look back to it is

not the only cause of its apparent greatness; it seemed as great to

all those who lived in it. All foreign nations saw it, hailed it, were

moved by it. There is no corner of Europe so secluded that the glow of

admiration and of hope did not reach it. In the vast series of memoirs

left to us by the contemporaries of the Revolution, I have met with

none in which the recollection of the first days of 1789 has not left

imperishable traces; everywhere it kindled the freshness, clearness,

and vivacity of the impressions of youth.

I venture to add that there is but one people on the earth which could

have played this part. I know my country--I know but too well its

mistakes, its faults, its foibles, and its sins. But I know, too, of

what it is capable. There are undertakings which the French nation can

alone accomplish; there are magnanimous resolutions which this nation

can alone conceive. France alone may, on some given day, take in hand

the common cause and stand up in defence of it; and if she be subject

to awful reverses, she has also moments of sublime enthusiasm which

bear her aloft to heights which no other people will ever reach.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.[139]

Note (I.)--Page 12, line 18.

THE POWER OF THE ROMAN LAW IN GERMANY.--THE MANNER IN WHICH IT HAD

SUPERSEDED THE GERMANIC LAW.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages the Roman law became the principal

and almost the sole study of the German legists; indeed, at this time,

most of them pursued their education out of Germany in the Italian

universities. These legists, though not the masters of political

society, were charged with the explanation and application of its

laws; and though they could not abolish the Germanic law, they altered

and disfigured it so as to fit into the frame of the Roman law.

They applied the Roman law to everything in the German institutions

that seemed to have the most remote analogy with the legislation of

Justinian; and they thus introduced a new spirit and new usage into

the national legislation; by degrees it was so completely transformed

that it was no longer recognisable, and in the seventeenth century, for

instance, it was almost unknown. It had been replaced by a nondescript

something, which was German indeed in name, but Roman in fact.

I find reason to believe that owing to these efforts of the legists,

the condition of ancient Germanic society deteriorated in many

respects, especially so far as the peasants were concerned; many of

those who had succeeded until then in preserving the whole or part of

their liberties or of their possessions, lost them at this period by

learned assimilations of their condition to that of the Roman bondsmen

or emphyteotes.

This gradual transformation of the national law, and the vain efforts

which were made to oppose it, may be clearly traced in the history of

Würtemberg.

From the origin of the county of that name in 1250, until the creation

of the duchy in 1495, the legislation was purely indigenous; it was

composed of customs and local laws made by the towns or by the Courts

of Seignory, and of statutes promulgated by the Estates; ecclesiastical

affairs alone were regulated by a foreign code, the canon law.

From 1495 the character of the legislation was changed: the Roman

law began to penetrate; the _doctors_, as they were called, those

who had studied law in the foreign schools, entered the Government

and possessed themselves of the direction of the superior courts.

During the whole of the first half of the sixteenth century political

society maintained the same struggle against them that was going on

in England at the same time, but with very different success. At

the diet of Tübingen in 1514, and at those which succeeded it, the

representatives of feudalism and the deputies of the towns made all

kinds of representations against that which was taking place; they

attacked the legists who were invading all the courts, and changing the

spirit or the letter of all customs and laws. The advantage at first

seemed on their side; they obtained from the Government the promise

that henceforth the high courts should be composed of honourable and

enlightened men chosen from among the nobility and the Estates of the

Duchy, and not of doctors, and that a commission composed of agents

of the Government, and of representatives of the estates, should draw

up the project of a code which might serve as a rule throughout the

country. These efforts were vain. The Roman law soon drove the national

law out of a great portion of the legislation, and even took root in

the very ground on which it still suffered this legislation to subsist.

This victory of a foreign over the indigenous law is ascribed by many

German historians to two causes:--1. To the movement which at that

period attracted all minds towards the languages and literature of

antiquity, and the contempt which this inspired for the intellectual

productions of the national genius. 2. To the idea which had always

possessed the whole of the Middle Ages in Germany, and which displays

itself even in the legislation of that period, that the Holy Empire was

the continuation of the Roman Empire, and that the legislation of the

former was an inheritance derived from the latter.

These causes, however, are not sufficient to explain why the same law

should at the same period have been introduced into the whole continent

of Europe. I believe that this arose from the fact that at this time

the absolute power of the sovereigns was everywhere established on the

ruins of the ancient liberties of Europe, and that the Roman law, a law

of servitude, was admirably fitted to second their views.

The Roman law which everywhere perfected civil society tended

everywhere to degrade political society, inasmuch as it was chiefly the

production of a highly civilised but much enslaved people. The kings

of Europe accordingly adopted it with eagerness, and established it

wherever they were the masters. Throughout Europe the interpreters of

this law became their ministers or their chief agents. When called on

to do so the legists even gave them the support of the law against the

law itself, and they have frequently done so since. Wherever there was

a sovereign who violated the laws we shall generally find at his side

a legist who assured him that nothing was more lawful, and who proved

most learnedly that his violence was just, and that the oppressed party

was in the wrong.

Note (II.)--Page 13, line 37.

THE TRANSITION FROM FEUDAL TO DEMOCRATIC MONARCHY.

As all monarchies had become absolute about the same period, it is

scarcely probable that this change of constitution was owing to any

particular circumstance which accidentally occurred at the same time

in every State, and we are led to the belief that all these similar

and contemporary events must have been produced by some general cause,

which simultaneously acted everywhere in the same manner.

This general cause was the transition from one state of society to

another, from feudal inequality to democratic equality. The nobility

was already depressed, and the people were not yet raised; the former

were brought too low, and the latter were not sufficiently high to

restrain the action of the ruling power. For a hundred and fifty years

kings and princes enjoyed a sort of golden age, during which they

possessed at once stability and unlimited power, two things which are

usually incompatible; they were as sacred as the hereditary chiefs of a

feudal monarchy, and as absolute as the rulers of a democratic society.

Note (III.)--Page 14, line 25.

DECAY OF THE FREE TOWNS OF GERMANY.--IMPERIAL TOWNS (REICHSTÄDTE).

According to the German historians the period of the greatest splendour

of these towns was during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They

were then the abode of wealth, of the arts and sciences--masters of the

commerce of Europe--the most powerful centres of civilisation. In the

north and in the south of Germany especially, they had ended by forming

independent confederations with the surrounding nobles, as the towns in

Switzerland had done with the peasants.

In the sixteenth century they still enjoyed the same prosperity, but

the period of their decay was come. The Thirty-years’ War hastened

their fall, and scarcely one of them escaped destruction and ruin

during that period.

Nevertheless, the Treaty of Westphalia mentions them positively, and

asserts their position as immediate States, that is to say, States

which depended immediately upon the Emperor; but the neighbouring

Sovereigns, on the one hand, and on the other the Emperor himself, the

exercise of whose power, since the Thirty-years’ War, was limited to

the lesser vassals of the empire, restricted their sovereignty within

narrower and narrower limits. In the eighteenth century fifty-one of

them were still in existence, they filled two benches at the Diet, and

had an independent vote there; but, in fact, they no longer exercised

any influence upon the direction of general affairs.

At home they were all heavily burdened with debts, partly because they

continued to be charged for the Imperial taxes at a rate suited to

their former splendour, and partly because their own administration

was extremely bad. It is very remarkable that this bad administration

seemed to be the result of some secret disease which was common to

them all, whatever might be the form of their constitution; whether

aristocratic or democratic it equally gave rise to complaints, which,

if not precisely similar, were equally violent; if aristocratic,

the Government was said to have become a coterie composed of a few

families: everything was done by favour and private interest; if

democratic, popular intrigue and venality appeared on every side.

In either case there were complaints of the want of honesty and

disinterestedness on the part of the Governments. The Emperor was

continually forced to interpose in their affairs, and to try to restore

order in them. Their population decreased, and distress prevailed

in them. They were no longer the abodes of German civilisation; the

arts left them, and went to shine in the new towns created by the

sovereigns, and representing modern society. Trade forsook them--their

ancient energy and patriotic vigour disappeared. Hamburg almost alone

still remained a great centre of wealth and intelligence, but this was

owing to causes quite peculiar to herself.

Note (IV.)--Page 19, line 14.

DATE OF THE ABOLITION OF SERFDOM IN GERMANY.

The following table will show that the abolition of serfdom in most

parts of Germany has taken place very recently. Serfdom was abolished--

1. In Baden, in 1783.

2. In Hohenzollern, in 1804.

3. In Schleswig and Holstein, in 1804.

4. In Nassau, in 1808.

5. In Prussia, Frederick William I. had done away with serfdom in

his own domains so early as 1717. The code of the Great Frederick,

as we have already seen, was intended to abolish it throughout the

kingdom, but in reality it only got rid of it in its hardest form,

the _leibeigenschaft_, and retained it in the mitigated shape of

_erbunterthänigkeit_. It was not till 1809 that it disappeared

altogether.

6. In Bavaria serfdom disappeared in 1808.

7. A decree of Napoleon, dated from Madrid in 1808, abolished it in the

Grand-duchy of Berg, and in several other small territories, such as

Erfurt, Baireuth, &c.

8. In the kingdom of Westphalia, its destruction dates from 1808 and

1809.

9. In the principality of Lippe Detmold, from 1809.

10. In Schomburg Lippe, from 1810.

11. In Swedish Pomerania, from 1810 also.

12. In Hessen Darmstadt, from 1809 and 1811.

13. Würtemberg, from 1817.

14. In Mecklenburg, from 1820.

15. In Oldenburg, from 1814.

16. In Saxony for Lusatia, from 1832.

17. In Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, only from 1833.

18. In Austria, from 1811. So early as in 1782 Joseph II. had

destroyed _leibeigenschaft_; but serfage in its mitigated form of

_erbunterthänigkeit_ lasted till 1811.

Note (V.)--Page 19, line 17.

A part of the countries which are now German, such as Brandenburg,

Prussia proper, and Silesia, were originally inhabited by a Slavonic

race, and were conquered and partially occupied by Germans. In those

countries serfdom had a far harsher aspect than in Germany itself, and

left far stronger traces at the end of the eighteenth century.

Note (VI.)--Page 20, line 11.

CODE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.

Amongst the works of Frederick the Great the least known, even in his

own country, and the least brilliant, is the Code drawn up under his

directions and promulgated by his successor. I do not know, however,

whether any of them throws more light upon the man himself and on his

time, or which more fully displays their reciprocal influence on each

other.

This code is a real constitution, in the sense usually attached to the

word; it undertakes to define not only the relations of the citizens to

one another, but also the relations between the citizens and the State:

it is at once a civil code, a criminal code, and a charter.

It rests, or appears to rest, on a certain number of general principles

expressed in a very philosophical and abstract form, and resembling in

many respects those which abound in the Declaration of the Rights of

Man in the French Constitution of 1791.

It proclaims that the good of the State and of its inhabitants is

the object of society and the limit of the law; that the laws cannot

restrict the liberty or the rights of citizens except for the sake of

public utility; that every member of the State is bound to labour for

the public good, according to his position and fortune; and that the

rights of individuals must give way to the interests of the public.

There is no mention of the hereditary right of the Sovereign and his

family, nor even of any private rights distinct from the rights of the

State. The name of the State is the only one used to designate royal

power.

On the other hand, much is said about the general rights of man: these

general rights of man are based on the natural liberty of each to

pursue his advantage, provided it be done without injury to the rights

of others. All actions not forbidden by the natural law, or by the

positive laws of the State, are permitted. Every inhabitant of the

State may demand from it protection for his person and property, and

has the right to defend himself by force if the State does not come to

his assistance.

After laying down these first great principles, the legislator, instead

of deducing from them, as in the code of 1791, the doctrine of the

sovereignty of the people and the organisation of a popular government

in a free state of society, turns shortly round and arrives at another

result equally democratic but by no means liberal; he looks upon the

sovereign as the sole representative of the State, and invests him

with all the rights that have been recognised as belonging to society.

In this code the sovereign is no longer the representative of God, he

is the representative of society, its agent and its servant, to use

Frederick’s own words printed in his works; but he alone represents

it, he alone wields its whole power. The head of the State, says the

Introduction, whose duty it is to bring forth the general good, which

is the sole object of society, is authorised to govern and direct all

the actions of individuals towards that end.

Among the chief duties of this all-powerful agent of society we find

the following: to preserve peace and public security at home, and to

protect every one against violence. Abroad it is for him to make peace

or war; he only is to make laws and enact general police regulations;

he alone possesses the right to pronounce pardons and to stop criminal

proceedings.

All associations that may exist in the State, and all public

establishments, are subject to his inspection and direction for the

sake of general peace and security. In order that the head of the

State may be enabled to fulfil these obligations, he must possess

certain revenues and profitable rights; accordingly he has the power of

taxing private fortunes and persons, their professions, their trades,

their produce, or their consumption. The orders given by the public

functionaries who act in his name are to be obeyed, like his own, in

all matters within the limits of their functions.

Beneath this perfectly modern head we shall presently see a thoroughly

Gothic body; Frederick only removed from it whatever stood in the way

of the action of his own power, and the result was a monster which

looked like a transition from one order of creation to another. In this

strange production Frederick exhibited as much contempt for logic as

care for his own power and anxiety not to place needless difficulties

in his own way by attacking that which was still strong enough to

defend itself.

The inhabitants of the rural districts, with the exception of a few

districts and a few places, were in a state of hereditary servitude,

which was not confined to the forced labour and services inherent to

the possession of certain estates, but which extended, as we have seen,

to the person of the possessor.

Most of the privileges of the owners of the soil were confirmed afresh

by the code; it may even be said that they were confirmed in opposition

to the code, since it states that where the local customs and the

new legislation differed the former were to be followed. It formally

declares that the State cannot destroy any of these privileges except

by purchasing them and the following forms of justice.

The code asserted, it is true, that serfage, properly so called

(_leibeigenschaft_), inasmuch as it established personal servitude,

was abolished, but the hereditary subjection which replaced it

(_erbunterthänigkeit_) was still a kind of servitude, as may be seen by

reading the text.

In the same code the burgher remained carefully separated from the

peasant; between the burghers and the nobility a sort of intermediate

class was recognised, composed of high functionaries who were not

noble, ecclesiastics, professors of learned schools, gymnasia and

universities.

Though apart from the rest of the burghers, these men were by no means

confounded with the nobles; they remained in a position of inferiority

towards them. They could not in general purchase noble estates

(_rittergüter_), or fill the highest places in the civil service.

Moreover, they were not _hoffähig_, that is to say, they could not be

presented at court except in very rare cases, and never with their

families. As in France, this inferiority was the more irksome, because

every day this class became more enlightened and influential, and the

burgher functionaries of the State, though they did not occupy the

most brilliant posts, already filled those in which the work was the

hardest and the most important. The irritation against the privileges

of the nobility, which was about to contribute so largely to the

French Revolution, prepared the way for the approbation with which it

was at first received in Germany. The principal author of the code,

nevertheless, was a burgher; but he doubtless followed the directions

of his master.