The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789. Alexis de Tocqueville

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СКАЧАТЬ this right was unfrequent and mild; in Germany it was still universal and harsh.

      Nay more, many of the rights of feudal origin which were held in the utmost abhorrence by the last generation of Frenchmen, and which they considered as contrary not only to justice but to civilisation—such as tithes, inalienable rent-charges or perpetual dues, fines or heriots, and what were termed, in the somewhat pompous language of the eighteenth century, the servitude of the soil, might all be met with at that time, to a certain extent, in England, and many of them exist in England to this day. Yet they do not prevent the husbandry of England from being the most perfect and the most productive in the world, and the English people is scarcely conscious of their existence.

      How comes it then that these same feudal rights excited in the hearts of the people of France so intense a hatred that this passion has survived its object, and seems therefore to be unextinguishable? The cause of this phenomenon is, that, on the one hand, the French peasant had become an owner of the soil; and that, on the other, he had entirely escaped from the government of the great landlords. Many other causes might doubtless be indicated, but I believe these two to be the most important.

      If the peasant had not been an owner of the soil, he would have been insensible to many of the burdens which the feudal system had cast upon landed property. What matters tithe to a tenant farmer? He deducts it from his rent. What matters a rent-charge to a man who is not the owner of the ground? What matter even the impediments to free cultivation to a man who cultivates for another?

      On the other hand, if the French peasant had still lived under the administration of his landlord, these feudal rights would have appeared far less insupportable, because he would have regarded them as a natural consequence of the constitution of the country.

      When an aristocracy possesses not only privileges but powers, when it governs and administers the country, its private rights may be at once more extensive and less perceptible. In the feudal times, the nobility were regarded pretty much as the government is regarded in our own; the burdens they imposed were endured in consideration of the security they afforded. The nobles had many irksome privileges; they possessed many onerous rights; but they maintained public order, they administered justice, they caused the law to be executed, they came to the relief of the weak, they conducted the business of the community. In proportion as the nobility ceased to do these things, the burden of their privileges appeared more oppressive, and their existence became an anomaly.

      Picture to yourself a French peasant of the eighteenth century, or, I might rather say, the peasant now before your eyes, for the man is the same; his condition is altered, but not his character. Take him as he is described in the documents I have quoted—so passionately enamoured of the soil, that he will spend all his savings to purchase it, and to purchase it at any price. To complete this purchase he must first pay a tax, not to the government, but to other landowners of the neighbourhood, as unconnected as himself with the administration of public affairs, and hardly more influential than he is. He possesses it at last; his heart is buried in it with the seed he sows. This little nook of ground, which is his own in this vast universe, fills him with pride and independence. But again these neighbours call him from his furrow, and compel him to come to work for them without wages. He tries to defend his young crops from their game; again they prevent him. As he crosses the river they wait for his passage to levy a toll. He finds them at the market, where they sell him the right of selling his own produce; and when, on his return home, he wants to use the remainder of his wheat for his own sustenance—of that wheat which was planted by his hands, and has grown under his eyes—he cannot touch it till he has ground it at the mill and baked it at the bakehouse of these same men. A portion of the income of his little property is paid away in quit-rents to them also, and these dues can neither be extinguished nor redeemed.

      Whatever he does, these troublesome neighbours are everywhere on his path, to disturb his happiness, to interfere with his labour, to consume his profits; and when these are dismissed, others in the black garb of the Church present themselves to carry off the clearest profit of his harvest. Picture to yourself the condition, the wants, the character, the passions of this man, and compute, if you are able, the stores of hatred and of envy which are accumulated in his heart.16

      Feudalism still remained the greatest of all the civil institutions of France, though it had ceased to be a political institution. Reduced to these proportions, the hatred it excited was greater than ever; and it may be said with truth that the destruction of a part of the institutions of the Middle Ages rendered a hundred times more odious that portion which still survived.17

      CHAPTER II

SHOWING THAT ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRALISATION IS AN INSTITUTION ANTERIOR IN FRANCE TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1789, AND NOT THE PRODUCT OF THE REVOLUTION OR OF THE EMPIRE, AS IS COMMONLY SAID

      At a period when political assemblies still existed in France, I once heard an orator, in speaking of administrative centralisation, call it, ‘that admirable achievement of the Revolution which Europe envies us.’ I will concede the fact that centralisation is an admirable achievement; I will admit that Europe envies us its possession, but I maintain that it is not an achievement of the Revolution. On the contrary, it is a product of the former institutions of France, and, I may add, the only portion of the political constitution of the monarchy which survived the Revolution, inasmuch as it was the only one that could be made to adapt itself to the new social condition brought about by that Revolution. The reader who has the patience to read the present chapter with attention will find that I have proved to demonstration this proposition.

      I must first beg to be allowed to put out of the question what were called les pays d’état, that is to say, the provinces that managed their own affairs, or rather had the appearance, in part, of managing them. These provinces, placed at the extremities of the kingdom, did not contain more than a quarter of the total population of France; and there were only two among them in which provincial liberty possessed any real vitality. I shall revert to them hereafter, and show to what an extent the central power had subjected these very states to the common mould.18 But for the present I desire to give my principal attention to what was called in the administrative language of the day, les pays d’élection, although, in truth, there were fewer elections in them than anywhere else. These districts encompassed Paris on every side, they were contiguous, and formed the heart and the better part of the territory of France.

      To any one who may cast a glance over the ancient administration of the kingdom, the first impression conveyed is that of a diversity of regulations and authorities, and the entangled complication of the different powers. France was covered with administrative bodies and distinct officers, who had no connection with one another, but who took part in the government in virtue of a right which they had purchased, and which could not be taken from them; but their duties were frequently so intermingled and so nearly contiguous as to press and clash together within the range of the same transactions.

      The courts of justice took an indirect part in the legislative power, and possessed the right of framing administrative regulations which became obligatory within the limits of their own jurisdiction. Sometimes they maintained an opposition to the administration, properly so called, loudly blamed its measures and proscribed its agents. Police ordinances were promulgated by simple justices in the towns and boroughs where they resided.

      The towns had a great diversity of constitutions, and their magistrates bore different designations—sometimes as mayors, sometimes as consuls, or again as syndics, and derived their powers from different sources. Some were chosen by the king, others by the lord of the soil or by the prince holding the fief; some again were elected for a year by their fellow-citizens, whilst others purchased the right of governing them permanently.

      These different powers were the last remains of the ancient system; but something comparatively new or greatly modified had by degrees established itself among them, СКАЧАТЬ