functions which they have personally or corporately exercised” they “shall be prosecuted as disturbers of the peace, and condemned as rebels against the law,” deprived of all rights as active citizens, and declared incompetent to hold any public office. This is the penalty already inflicted on the nonjuring bishop who persists in considering himself a bishop, who ordains priests and who issues a pastoral letter. Such is soon to be the penalty inflicted on the nonjuring curé who presumes to hear confession or officiate at a mass.[75] On the other hand, all citizens who refuse to take the prescribed oath, all electors, municipal officers, judges and administrative agents, shall lose their right of suffrage, have their functions revoked, and be declared incompetent for all public duties.[76] The result is that scrupulous Catholics are excluded from every administrative post, from all elections, and especially from ecclesiastical elections; from which it follows that, the stronger one’s faith the less one’s share in the choice of a priest.[77] — What an admirable law, that which, under the pretext of doing away with ecclesiastical abuses, places the faithful, lay or clerical, outside the pale of the law!
This soon becomes apparent. One hundred and thirty four archbishops, bishops, and coadjutors refuse to take the oath; there are only four of them who do so, three of whom, MM. de Talleyrand, de Jarente, and de Brienne, are unbelievers and notorious for their licentiousness; the others are influenced by their consciences, above all, by their esprit de corps and a point of honor. Most of the curés rally around this staff of officers. In the diocese of Besançon,[78] out of fourteen hundred priests, three hundred take the oath, a thousand refuse it, and eighty retract. In the department of Doubs, only four consent to swear. In the department of Lozère, there are only “ten out of two hundred and fifty.” It is stated positively,” writes the best informed of all observers that everywhere in France two-thirds of the ecclesiastics have refused the oath, or have only taken it with the same reservations as the Bishop of Clermont.”
Thus, out of seventy thousand priests, forty-six thousand are turned out of office, and the majority of their parishioners are on their side. This is apparent in the absence of electors convoked to replace them: at Bordeaux only four hundred and fifty came to the poll out of nine hundred, while elsewhere the summons brings together only “a third or a quarter” In many places there are no candidates, or those elected decline to accept. They are obliged, in order to supply their places, to hunt up unfrocked monks of a questionable character. There are two parties, after this, in each parish; two faiths, two systems of worship, and permanent discord. Even when the new and the old curés are accommodating, their situations bring them into conflict. To the former the latter are “intruders.” To the latter the former are ” refractories.” By virtue of his being a guardian of souls, the former cannot dispense with telling his parishioners that the intruder is excommunicated, that his sacraments are null or sacrilegious, and that it is a sin to attend his mass. By virtue of his being a public functionary, the latter does not fail to write to the authorities that the ” refractory ” entraps the faithful, excites their consciences, saps the Constitution, and that he ought to be put down by force. In other words, the former draws everybody away from the latter, while the latter sends the gendarmes against the former, and persecution begins. – In a strange reversal, it is the majority which undergoes persecution, and the minority which carries it out. The mass of the constitutional curé is, everywhere, deserted.[79] In La Vendée there are ten or twelve present in the church out of five or six hundred parishioners; on Sundays and holidays whole villages and market- towns travel from one to two leagues off to attend the orthodox mass, the villagers declaring that “if the old curé can only be restored to them, they will gladly pay a double tax.” In Alsace, “nine tenths, at least, of the Catholics refuse to recognize the legally sworn priests.” The same spectacle presents itself in Franche-Comté, Artois, and in ten of the other provinces. — Finally, as in a chemical composition, the analysis is complete. Those who believe, or who recover their belief, are ranged around the old curé; all who, through conviction or tradition, hold to the sacraments, all who, through faith or habit, wish or feel a need to attend the mass. The auditors of the new curé consist of unbelievers, deists, the indifferent members of the clubs and of the administration, who resort to the church as to the Hôtel-de-ville or to a popular meeting, not through religious but through political zeal, and who support the “intruder” in order to sustain the Constitution. All this does not secure to him very fervent followers, but it provides him with very zealous defenders; and, in default of the faith which they do not possess, they give the force which is at their disposal. All means are proper against an intractable bishop or curé; not only the law which they aggravate through their forced interpretation of it and through their arbitrary verdicts, but also the riots which they stir up by their instigation and which they sanction by their toleration.[80] He is driven out of his parish, consigned to the county town, and kept in a safe place. The Directory of Aisne denounces him as a disturber of the public peace, and forbids him, under severe penalties, from administering the sacraments. The municipality of Cahors shuts up particular churches and orders the nonjuring ecclesiastics to leave the town in twenty-four hours. The electoral corps of Lot denounces them publicly as “ferocious brutes,” incendiaries, and provokers of civil war. The Directory of the Bas-Rhin banishes them to Strasbourg or to fifteen leagues from the frontier. At Saint-Leon the bishop is forced to fly. At Auch the archbishop is imprisoned; at Lyons M. de Boisboissel, grand vicar, is confined in Pierre- Encize, for having preserved an archiepiscopal mandate in his house; brutality is everywhere the minister of intolerance. A certain cure of Aisne who, in 1789, had fed two thousand poor, having presumed to read from his pulpit a pastoral charge concerning the observance of Lent, the mayor seizes him by the collar and prevents him from going to the altar; “two of the National Yeomanry” draw their sabers on him, and forthwith lead him away bareheaded, not allowing him to return to his house, and drive him to a distance of two leagues by beat of drum and under escort. At Paris, in the church of Saint- Eustache, the curé is greeted with outcries, a pistol is pointed at his head, he is seized by the hair, struck with fists, and only reaches the sacristy through the intervention of the National Guard. In the church of the Théatins, rented by the orthodox with all legal formality, a furious band disperses the priests and their assistants, upsets the altar and profanes the sacred vessels. A placard, posted up by the department, calls upon the people to respect the law, “I saw it,” says an eye-witness, “torn down amidst imprecations against the department, the priests, and the devout. One of the chief haranguers, standing on the steps terminated his speech by stating that schism ought to be stopped at any cost, that no worship but his should be allowed, that women should be whipped and priests knocked on the head.” And, in fact, “a young lady accompanied by her mother is whipped on the steps of the church.” Elsewhere nuns are the sufferers, even the sisters of Saint-Vincent de Paul; and, from April, 1793, onward; the same outrages on modesty and against life are propagated from town to town. At Dijon, rods are nailed fast to the gates of all the convents; at Montpellier, two or three hundred ruffians, armed with large iron–bound sticks, murder the men and outrage the women. — Nothing remains but to put the gangsters under the shelter of an amnesty, which is done by the Constituent Assembly, and to legally sanction the animosity of local administrations, which is done by the Legislative Assembly.[81] Henceforth the nonjuring ecclesiastics are deprived of their sustenance; they are declared ” suspected of revolt against the law and of evil intentions against the country.” – Thus, says a contemporary Protestant, “on the strength of these suspicions and these intentions, a Directory, to which the law interdicts judicial functions, may arbitrarily drive out of his house the minister of a God of peace and charity, grown gray in the shadow of the altar” Thus, “everywhere, where disturbances occur on account of religious opinions, and whether these troubles are due to the frantic scourgers of the virtuous sisters of charity or to the ruffians armed with cow-hides who, at Nîmes and Montpellier, outrage all the laws of decorum and of liberty for six whole months, the non-juring priests are to be punished with banishment. Torn from their families whose means of living they share, they are sent away to wander on the highways, abandoned to public pity or ferocity the moment any scoundrel chooses to excite a disturbance that he can impute to them.” – Thus we see approaching the revolt of the peasantry, the insurrections of Nîmes, Franche-Comté, la Vendée and Brittany, emigration, transportation; imprisonment, the guillotine or drowning for two thirds of the clergy of France, and likewise for myriads of the loyal, for husbandmen, artisans, day-laborers, seamstresses, and servants, and the humblest among the lower class of the people. This is what the laws of the Constituent Assembly are leading to. — In the institution of the clergy, as in that of the nobles and the King, it demolished a solid wall in order to dig through it an open door, and it is nothing strange if the whole structure tumbles down on the heads of its inmates. The true course was to respect, to reform, to utilize rank and corporations: all that the Assembly thought of was the abolition of these in the name of abstract equality and of national sovereignty. In order to abolish these it executed, tolerated, or initiated all the attacks on persons and on property. Those it is about to commit are the inevitable result of those which it has already committed; for, through its Constitution, bad is changed to worse, and the social edifice, already half in ruins through the clumsy havoc that is effected in it, will fall in completely under the weight of the incongruous or extravagant constructions which it proceeds to extemporize.
___________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] Cf. “The Ancient Régime,” books I. and V.
[2] Perhaps we are here at the core of why all regimes end up becoming corrupt, inefficient and sick; their leaders take their privileges for granted and become more and more inattentive to the work which must be done if the people are to be kept at work and possible adversaries kept under control. (SR.)
[3] A special tax paid the king by a plebeian owning a fief. (TR)
[4] The right to an income from trust funds. (SR.)
[5] Arthur Young, I. 209, 223. “If the communes steadily refuse what is now offered to them, they put immense and certain benefits to the chance of fortune, to that hazard which may make posterity curse instead of bless their memories as real patriots who had nothing in view but the happiness of their country.
[6] According to valuations by the Constituent Assembly, the tax on real estate ought to bring 240,000,000 francs, and provide one-fifth of the net revenue of France, estimated at 1,200,000,000. Additionally, the personal tax on movable property, which replaced the capitation, ought to bring 60,000,000. Total for direct taxation, 300,000,000, or one-fourth — that is to say, twenty-five per cent, of the net revenue.– If the direct taxation had been maintained up to the rate of the ancient régime (190,000,000, according to Necker’s report in May, 1689), this impost would only have provided one-sixth of the net revenue, or sixteen percent.
[7] Dumont, 267. (The words of Mirabeau three months before his death:) “Ah, my friend, how right we were at the start when we wanted to prevent the commons from declaring themselves the National Assembly! That was the source of the evil. They wanted to rule the King, instead of ruling through him.”
[8] Gouverneur Morris, April 29, 1789 (on the principles of the future constitution), “One generation at least will be required to render the public familiar with them.”
[9] Cf. “The Ancient Régime,” book II, ch. III.
[10] French women did not obtain the right to vote until 1946. (SR.)
[11] According to Voltaire (“L’Homme aux Quarante Écus”), the average duration of human life was only twenty-three years.
[12] Mercure, July 6, 1790. According to the report of Camus (sitting of July 2nd), the official total of pensions amounted to thirty-two millions; but if we add the gratuities and allowances out of the various treasuries, the actual total was fifty-six millions.
[13] I note that today in 1998, 100 years after Taine’s death, Denmark, my country, has had total democracy, that is universal suffrage for women and men of 18 years of age for a considerable time, and a witty author has noted that the first rule of our unwritten constitution is that “thou shalt not think that thou art important”. I have noted, however, that when a Dane praises Denmark and the Danes even in the most excessive manner, then he is not considered as a chauvinist but admired as being a man of truth. In spite of the process of ‘democratization’ even socialist chieftains seem to favor and protect their own children, send them to good private schools and later abroad to study and help them to find favorable employment in the party or with the public services. A new élite is thus continuously created by the ruling political and administrative upper class. (SR.).
[14] The Ancient Régime,” p.388, and the following pages.-” Le Duc de Broglie,” by M. Goizot, p. 11. (Last words of Prince Victor de Broglie, and the opinions of M. d’Argenson.)
[15] De Ferrières, I. p.2.
[16] Moniteur, sitting of September 7, 1790, I. 431-437. Speeches, of MM. de Sillery, de Lanjuinais, Thouret, de Lameth, and Rabaut- Saint-Etienne. Barnave wrote in 1791: “It was necessary to be content with one single chamber; the instinct of equality required it. A second Chamber would have been the refuge of the aristocrats.”
[17] Lenin should later create an elite, an aristocracy which, under his leadership was to become the Communist party. Lenin could not have imagined or at least would not have been concerned that the leadership of this party would fall into the hands of tyrants later, under the pressure of age and corruption, to be replaced by the KGB and later the FSB. (SR.)
[18] “De Bouillé,” p. 50: “All the old noble families, save two or three hundred, were ruined.”
[19] Cf. Doniol, “La Révolution et la Féodalité.”
[20] Moniteur, sitting of August 6, !789. Speech of Duport: “Whatever is unjust cannot last. Similarly, no compensation for these unjust rights can be maintained.” Sitting of February 27, 1790. M. Populus: “As slavery could not spring from a legitimate contract, because liberty cannot be alienated, you have abolished without indemnity hereditary property in persons.” Instructions and decree of June 15-19, 1791: “The National Assembly has recognized in the most emphatic manner that a man never could become the proprietor of another man, and consequently, that the rights which one had assumed to have over the person of the other, could not become the property of the former.” Cf. the diverse reports of Merlin to the Committee of Feudality and the National Assembly.
[21] Duvergier, “Collection des Lois et Décrets.” Laws of the 4-11 August, 1789; March 15-28, 1790; May 3-9, 1790; June 15-19, 1791.
[22] Agrier percières — terms denoting taxes paid in the shape of shares of produce. Those which follow: lods, rentes, quint, requint belong to the taxes levied on real property. [Tr.]
[23] Doniol (“Noveaux cahiers de 1790”). Complaints of the copy- holders of Rouergues and of Quercy, pp. 97-105.
[24] See further on, book III. ch. II. § 4 and also ch. III.
[25] Moniteur, sitting of March 2, 1790. Speech by Merlin: “The peasants have been made to believe that the annulation of the banalities (the obligation to use the public mill, wine-press, and oven, which belonged to the noble) carried along with it the loss to the noble of all these; the peasants regarding themselves as proprietors of them.”
[26] Moniteur; sitting of June 9, !790. Speech of M. Charles de Lameth — Duvergier (laws of June 19-23 1790; September 27 and October 16, 1791).
[27] Sauzay, V. 400 -410.
[28] Duvergier, laws of June 15-19, 1791; of June 18 -July 6, 1792; of August 25-28, 1792.
[29] “Institution du Droit Français,” par Argou, I.103. (He wrote under the Regency.) “The origin of most of the feoffs is so ancient that, if the seigneurs were obliged to produce the titles of the original concession to obtain their rents, there would scarcely be one able to produce them. This deficiency is made up by common law.”
[30] Duvergier (laws of April 8-15, 1791; March 7-11; October 26, 1791; January 6-10, 1794). — Mirabeau had already proposed to reduce the disposable portion to one-tenth.
[31] See farther on, book III, ch. III.
[32] Mercure, September 10, 1791. Article by Mallet du Pan. – Ibid. October 15, 1791.
[33] Should Hitler or Lenin have read and understood the consequences of these events they would have deduced that given the command from official sources or recognized leaders ordinary people all over the world could easily be tempted to attack any group, being it Jews, Protestants, Hindus or foreigners. (SR.)
[34] “Archives Nationales,” II. 784. Letters of M. de Langeron, October 16 and 18, 1789. — Albert Babeau, “Histoire de Troyes,” letters addressed to the Chevalier de Poterats , July, 1790. — “Archives Nationales,” papers of the Committee on Reports, bundle 4, letter of M. le Belin-Chatellenot to the to the President of the National Assembly, July 1, 1791. — Mercure, October 15, 1791. Article by Mallet du Pan: “Such is literally the language of these emigrants; I do not add a word.” – Ibid. May 15, 1790. Letter of the Baron de Bois d’Aizy, April 29,1790, demanding a decree of protection fur the nobles. “We shall know (then) whether we are outlawed or are of any account in the rights of man written out with so much blood, or whether, finally, no other option is left to us but that of carrying to distant skies the remains of our property and our wretched existence.”
[35] Mercure, October 15, 1791, and September 10, 1791. Read the admirable letter of the Chevalier de Mesgrigny, appointed colonel during the suspension of the King, and refusing his new rank.
[36] Cf. the “Mémoires” of M. de Boustaquet, a Norman gentleman.
[37] Cf. “The Ancient Régime,” books I. and II.
[38] Boivin- Champeaux, “Notice Historique sur la Révolution dans le Département de L’Eure,” the register of grievances. In 1788, at Rouen, there was not a single profession made by men. In the monastery of the Deux-Amants the chapter convoked in 1789 consisted of two monks. — “Archives Nationales,” papers of the ecclesiastic committee, passim.
[39] “Apologie de l’État Religieux” (1775), with statistics. Since 1768 the decline is “frightful.” “It is easy to foresee that in ten or twelve years most of the regular bodies will be absolutely extinct, or reduced to a state of feebleness akin to death.”
[40] Sanzay, I. 224 (November, 1790). At Besançon, out of 266 monks, “79 only showed any loyalty to their engements or any affection for their calling.” Others preferred to abandon it, especially all the Dominicans but five, all but one of the bare footed Carmelites, and all the Grand Carmelites. The same disposition is apparent throughout the department, as, for instance, with the Benedictines of Cluny except one, all the Minimes but three, all the Capuchins but five, the Bernandins, Dominicans, and Augustins, all preferring to leave. — Montalembert, “Les Moines d’Occident,” introduction, pp. 105-164. Letter of a Benedictine of Saint-Germain-des-Prés to a Benedictine of Vannes. “Of all the members of your congregation which come here to lodge, I have scarcely found one capable of edifying us. You may probably say the same of those who came to you from our place.” — Cf. in the “Mémoires” of Merlin de Thionville the description of the Chartreuse of Val St. Pierre.
[41] Ch. Guerin, “Revue des Questions Historiques” (July 1, 1875; April 1, 1876). — Abbé Guettée, “Histoire de l’Eglise de France,” XII, 128. (“Minutes of the meeting of l’Assemblée du Clergé,” in 1780.) — “Archives nationales,” official reports and memorandums of the States-General in 1789. The most obnoxious proceeding to the chiefs of the order is the postponement of the age at which vows may be taken, it being, in their view, the ruin of their institutions. — “The Ancient Régime,” p. 403.
[42] In order for a modern uninstructed non-believing reader to understand the motivation which moved thousands of self-less sisters and brothers to do their useful and kind work read St. Matthew chapter 25, verses 31 to 46 where Jesus predicts how he will sit in judgment on mankind and separate the sheep from the goats. (SR.)
[43] “The Ancient Régime,” P.33 — Cf. Guerin “The monastery of the Trois-Rois, in the north of Franche-Comté, founded four villages collected from foreign colonists. It is the only center of charity and civilization in a radius of three leagues. It took care of two hundred of the sick in a recent epidemic; it lodges the troops which pass from Alsace into Franche-Comté, and in the late hailstorm it supplied the whole neighborhood with food.”
[44] Moniteur, sitting of February 13,1790. (Speech of the Abbé de Montesquiou). — Archives Nationales,” papers of the Ecclesiastical Committee, DXIX. 6, Visitation de Limoges, DXIX. 25, Annonciades de Saint-Denis; ibid. Annonciades de Saint Amour, Ursulines d’Auch, de Beaulieu, d’Eymoutier, de la Ciotat, de Pont Saint-Esprit, Hospitalières d’Ernée, de Laval; Sainte Claire de Laval, de Marseilles, etc. ”
[45] Sauzay, I. 247. Out of three hundred and seventy-seven nuns at Doubs, three hundred and fifty-eight preferred to remain as they were, especially at Pontarlier, all the Bernardines, Annonciades, and Ursulines; at Besançon, all the Carmelites, the Visitandines, the Annonciades, the Clarisses, the Sisters of Refuge, the Nuns of the Saint-Esprit and, save one, all the Benedictine Nuns.
[46] “Archives Nationales.” Papers of the Ecclesiastical Committee, passim.– Suzay, I. 51. — Statistics of France for 1866.
[47] In 1993 this number has once more fallen, and continues to fall, to 55 900. “Quid”, 1996 page 623. (SR.)
[48] Felix Rocquain, “La France aprés le 18 Brumaire.” (Reports of the Councillors of State dispatched on this service, passim).
[49] Moniteur, October 24, 1789. (Speech of Dupont de Nemours.) All these speeches, often more fully reported and with various renderings, may be found in “Les Archives Parlementaires,” 1st series, vols. VIII. and IX.
[50] Duvergier, decree of June 14-17, 1791. “The annihilation of every corporation of citizens of any one condition or profession being on of the foundation-stones of the French constitution, it is forbidden to re-establish these de-facto under any pretext or form whatever. Citizens of a like condition or profession, such as contractors, shopkeepers, workmen of all classes, and associates in any art whatever shall not, on assembling together, appoint either president, or secretaries, or syndics, discuss or pass resolutions, or frame any regulations in relation to their assumed common interests.”
[51] Moniteur, sitting of November 2nd, 1789.
[52] Moniteur, sitting of February 12, 1790. Speeches of Dally d’Agier and Barnave.
[53] Moniteur, sitting of August 10, 1789. Speech by Garat; February 12, 1790, speech by Pétion; October 30, 1789, speech by Thouret.
[54] Moniteur, sitting of November 2, 1789. Speech by Chapelier; October 24, 1789, speech by Garat; October 30, 1789, speech by Mirabeau, and the sitting of August 10, 1789.
[55] Moniteur, sitting of October 23, 1789. Speech by Thouret.
[56] Moniteur, sitting of October 23, 1789. Speech by Treilhard; October24th, speech by Garat; October 30, speech by Mirabeau. — On the 8th of August, 1789, Al. de Lameth says in the tribune: “When an foundation was set up, it is to the nation, which the grant was given.”
[57] Duvergier, laws of August 18, 1792; August 8-14, 1793; July 11, 1794; July 14, 1792; August 24, 1793.
[58] Moniteur, sitting of July 31, 1792. Speech of M. Boistard; the property of the hospitals, at this time was estimated at eight hundred millions. — Already in 1791 (sitting of January 30th) M. de Larochefoucauld-Liancourt said to the Assembly: Nothing will more readily restore confidence to the poor than to see the nation assuming the right of rendering them assistance.” He proposes to decree; accordingly, that all hospitals and places of beneficence he placed under the control of the nation. (Mercure, February 12, 1791.)
[59] Moniteur, sitting of August 10, 1789. Speech by Sieyès. — The figures given here are deduced from the statistics already given in the “Ancient Régime.”
[60] Moniteur, v. 571.sitting of September 4, 1790. Report of the Committee on Finances — V. 675, sitting of September 17, 1790. Report by Necker.
[61] A Revolutionary Government promissory bank note. (SR.)
[62] Sauzay, I. 228 (from October 10, 1790, to February 20, 1791). “The total weight of the spoil of the monastic establishments in gold, silver, and plated ware, sent to the Mint amounted to more than 525 kilograms (for the department).”
[63] Duvergier, law of October 8-14.
[64] Moniteur, sitting of June 3,1792. Speech of M. Bernard, in the name of the committee of Public Assistance: “Not a day passes in which we do not receive the saddest news from the departments on the penury of their hospitals.” — Mercure de France, December 17, 1791, sitting of December 5. A number of deputies of the Department of the North demand aid for their hospitals and municipalities. Out of 480,000 livres revenue there remains 10,000 to them. “The property of the Communes is mortgaged, and no longer affords them any resources. 280,000 persons are without bread.
[65] Sauzay, I. 252 (December 3, 1790. April 13, 1791).
[66] Moniteur, sitting of June 1, 1790. Speeches by Camus, Treilhard, etc.
[67] But on the assumption that all religion has been invented by human beings for their own comfort or use, then what would be more natural than clever rulers using their power to influence the religious authorities to their own advantage. (SR.)
[68] Ultramontane: Extreme in favoring the Pope’s supremacy. (SR.)
[69] Sauzay, I. 168.
[70] Personal knowledge, as I visited Besançon four times between 1863 and 1867.
[71] Moniteur, sitting of May 30, 1790, and others following. (Report of Treilhard, speech by Robespierre.)
[72] Duvergier, laws of July 12th-August 14th; November 14-25, 1790; January 21-26, 1791.
[73] Moniteur, sitting of May 31, 1790. Robespierre, in covert terms, demands the marriage of priests. — Mirabeau prepared a speech in the same sense, concluding that every priest and monk should be able to contract marriage; on the priest or monk presenting himself with his bride before the curé, the latter should be obliged to give them the nuptial benediction etc. Mirabeau wrote, June 2, 1790: “Robespierre… has juggled me out of my motion on the marriage of priests.” — In general the germ of all the laws of the Convention is found in the Constituent Assembly. (Ph. Plan, “Un Collaborateur de Mirabeau,” p.56, 144.)
[74] Duvergier, laws of November 27th — December 26, 1790; February 5th, March 22nd, and April 5, 1791. — Moniteur, sitting of November 6, 1790, and those that follow, especially that of December 27th. “I swear to maintain with all my power the French Constitution and especially the decrees relating to the Civil Constitution of the clergy.” — Cf. sitting of January 2, 1791, speech by the Bishop of Clermont.
[75] Duvergier, law of May 7, 1791, to maintain the right of nonjuring priests to perform mass in national or private edifices. (Demanded by Talleyrand and Sieyès.)
[76] “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3235. Letter of M. de Château- Randon, deputy of la Lozère, May 28, 1791. After the decree of May 23rd, all the functionaries of the department handed in their resignations.
[77] Duvergier, law of May 21-29, 1791.
[78] Sauzay, I. 366, 538 to 593, 750. — Archives Nationales,” F7, 3235, Letter of M. de Chânteau-Randon, May 10, 1791. — Mercure, April 23rd, and April 16, 1701. Articles of Mallet du Pan, letter from Bordeaux, March 20, 1791.
[79] Buchez and Roux, XII, 77. Report of Gallois and Gensonné sent to La Vendée and the Deux Sévres (July 25, 1791). — ” Archives Nationales,” F7, 3253, letter of the Directory of the Bas-Rhin (letter of January 7, 1792). — ” Le District de Machecoul de 1788 à 1793,” by Lallier. –” Histoire de Joseph Lebon,” by Paris. — Sauzay, vol. I. and II. in full.
[80] Mercure, January 15th, April 23rd, May 16th and 30th, June 1st, November 23rd, 1791. — “Le District de Machecoul,” by Lallier, 173. — Sauzay, I. 295. — Lavirotte, “Annales d’Arnay-le-Duc (February 5, 1792). — “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3223. Petition of a number of the inhabitants of Montpellier, November 17, 1791.
[81] Duvergier, decree of November 29, 1791. — Mercure, November 30, 1791 (article by Mallet du Pan).
CHAPTER III. THE CONSTRUCTIONS – THE CONSTITUTION OF 1791..
That which is called a Government is a concert of powers, each with a distinct function, and all working towards a final and complete end. The merit of a Government consists in the attainment of this end; the worth of a machine depends upon the work it accomplishes. The important thing is not to produce a good mechanical design on paper, but to see that the machine works well when set up on the ground. In vain might its founders allege the beauty of their plan and the logical connection of their theorems; they are not required to furnish either plan or theorems, but an instrument.
Two conditions are requisite to render this instrument serviceable and effective. In the first place, the public powers must harmonize with each other, if not, one will neutralize the other; in the second place they must be obeyed, or they are null.
The Constituent Assembly made no provision for securing this harmony or this obedience. In the machine which it constructed the motions all counteract each other; the impulse is not transmitted; the gearing is not complete between the center and the extremities; the large central and upper wheels turn to no purpose; the innumerable small wheels near the ground break or get out of order: the machine, by virtue of its own mechanism, remains useless, over-heated, under clouds of waste steam, creaking and thumping in such a matter as to show clearly that it must explode.
I.
Powers of the Central Government. – The Assembly on the partition of power. – Rupture of every tie between the Legislature and the King. – The Assembly on the subordination of the executive power. – How this is nullified. – Certainty of a conflict. – The deposition of the King is inevitable.
Let us first consider the two central powers, the Assembly and the King. – Ordinarily when distinct powers of different origin are established by a Constitution, it makes, in the case of conflict between them, a provision for an arbiter in the institution of an Upper Chamber. Each of these powers, at least, has a hold on the other. The Assembly must have one on the King: which is the right to refuse taxation. The King must have one on the Assembly: which is the right of dissolving it. Otherwise, one of the two being disarmed, the other becomes omnipotent, and, consequently, insane. The peril here is as great for an omnipotent Assembly as it is for an absolute King. If the former is desirous of remaining in its right mind, it needs repression and control as much as the latter. If it is proper for the Assembly to restrain the King by refusing him subsidies, it is proper for him to be able to defend himself by appealing to the electors. – But, besides these extreme measures, which are dangerous and rarely resorted to, there is another which is ordinarily employed and is safe, that is, the right for the King to take his ministers from the Chamber. Generally, the leaders of the majority form the ministry, their nomination being the means of restoring harmony between the King and Assembly; they are at once men belonging to the Assembly and men belonging to the King. Through this expedient not only is the confidence of the Assembly assured, since the Government remains in the hands of its leaders, but also it is under restraint because these become simultaneously both powerful and responsible. Placed at the head of all branches of the service, they are, before proposing it or accepting it, in a position to judge whether a law is useful and practicable. Nothing is so healthy for a majority as a ministry composed of its own chiefs; nothing is so effective in repressing rashness or intemperance. A railway conductor is not willing that his locomotive should be deprived of coal, nor to have the rails he is about to run on broken up. – This arrangement, with all its drawbacks and inconveniences, is the best one yet arrived at by human experience for the security of societies against despotism and anarchy. For the absolute power which establishes or saves them may also oppress or exhaust them, there is a gradual substitution of differentiated powers, held together through the mediation of a third umpire, caused by reciprocal dependence and an which is common to both.
Experience, however, is unimportant to the members of the Constituent Assembly; under the banner of principles they sunder one after another all the ties which keep the two powers together harmoniously. – There must not be an Upper Chamber, because this would be an asylum or a nursery for aristocrats. Moreover, “the nation being of one mind,” it is averse to “the creation of different organs.” So, applying ready-made formulas and metaphors, they continue to produce ideological definitions and distinctions.
The King must not have a hold on the legislative body: the executive is an arm, whose business it is to obey; it is absurd for the arm to constrain or direct the head. Scarcely is the monarch allowed a delaying veto. Sieyès here enters with his protest declaring that this is a “lettre de cachet[1] launched against the universal will,” and there is excluded from the action of the veto the articles of the Constitution, all money-bills, and some other laws. – -Neither the monarch nor the electors of the Assembly are to convoke the Assembly; he has no voice in or oversight of the details of its formation; the electors are to meet together and vote without his summons or supervision. Once the Assembly is elected he can neither adjourn nor dissolve it. He cannot even propose a law;[2] per- mission is only granted to him “to invite it to take a subject into consideration.” He is limited to his executive duties; and still more, a sort of wall is built up between him and the Assembly, and the opening in it, by which each could take the other’s hand, is carefully closed up. The deputies are forbidden to become ministers throughout the term of their service and for two years afterwards. This is because fears are entertained that they might be corrupted through contact with the Court, and, again, whoever the ministers might be, there is no disposition to accept their ascendancy.[3] If one of them is admitted into the Assembly it is not for the purpose of giving advice, but to furnish information, reply to interrogatories, and make protestations of his zeal in humble terms and in a dubious position.[4] By virtue of being a royal agent he is under suspicion like the King himself, and he is sequestered in his bureau as the King is sequestered in his palace.- Such is the spirit of the Constitution: by force of the theory, and the better to secure a separation of the powers,[5] a common understanding between them is for ever rendered impossible, and to make up for this impossibility there remains nothing but to make one the master and the other the clerk.
This they did not fail to do, and for greater security, the latter is made an honorary clerk, The executive power is conferred on him nominally and in appearance; he does not possess it in fact, care having been taken to place it in other hands. – In effect, all executive agents and all secondary and local powers are elective. The King has no voice, directly or indirectly, in the choice of judges, public prosecutors, bishops, curés, collectors and assessors of the taxes, commissaries of police, district and departmental administrators, mayors, and municipal officers. At most, should an administrator violate a law, he may annul his acts and suspend him; but the Assembly, the superior power, has the right to cancel this suspension. – As to the armed force, of which he is supposed to be the commander-in-chief, this escapes from him entirely: the National Guard is not to receive orders from him; the gendarmerie and the troops are bound to respond to the requisitions of the municipal authorities, whom the King can neither select nor displace: in short, local action of any kind – that is to say, all effective action – is denied to him. – The executive instrument is purposely destroyed. The connection which existed between the wheels of the extremities and the central shaft is broken, and henceforth, incapable of distributing its energy, this shaft, in the hands of the monarch, stands still or else turns to no purpose. The King, “supreme head of the general administration, of the army, and of the navy, guardian of public peace and order, hereditary representative of the nation,” is without the means, in spite of his lofty titles, of directly applying his pretended powers, of causing a schedule of assessments to be drawn up in a refractory commune, of compelling payment by a delinquent tax-payer, of enforcing the free circulation of a convoy of grain, of executing the judgment of a court, of suppressing an outbreak, or of securing protection to persons and property. For he can bring no constraint to bear on the agents who are declared to be subordinate to him; he has no resources but those of warning and persuasion. He sends to each Departmental Assembly the decrees which he has sanctioned, requesting it to transmit them and cause them to be carried out; he receives its correspondence and bestows his censure or approval – and that is all. He is merely a powerless medium of communication, a herald or public advertiser, a sort of central echo, sonorous and empty, to which news is brought, and from which laws depart, to spread abroad like a common rumor. Such as he is, and thus diminished, he is still considered to be too strong. He is deprived of the right of pardon, “which severs the last artery of monarchical government.”[6] All sorts of precautions are taken against him. He cannot declare war without a decree of the Assembly; he is obliged to bring war to an end on the decree of the Assembly; he cannot make a treaty of peace, an alliance, or a commercial treaty, without the ratification of these by the Assembly. It is expressly declared that he is to nominate but two- thirds of the rear-admirals, one-half of the lieutenant-generals, field-marshals, captains of Vessels and colonels of the gendarmerie, one-third of the colonels and lieutenant-colonels of the line, and a sixth of the naval lieutenants. He must not allow troops to stay or pass within 30,000 yards of the Assembly. His guard must not consist of more than 1,800 men, duly verified, and protected against his seductions by the civil oath. The heir-presumptive must not leave the country without the Assembly’s assent. It is the Assembly which is to regulate by law the education of his son during minority. – All these precautions are accompanied with threats. There are against him five possible causes of dethronement; against his responsible Ministers, eight causes for condemnation to from twelve to twenty years of constraint, and eight grounds for condemnations to death.[7] Everywhere between the lines of the Constitution, we read the constant disposition to assume an attitude of defense, the secret dread of treachery, the conviction that executive power, of whatever kind, is in its nature inimical to the public welfare. – For withholding the nomination of judges, the reason alleged is that “the Court and the Ministers are the most contemptible portion of the nation.”[8] If the nomination of Ministers is conceded, it is on the ground that” Ministers appointed by the people would necessarily be too highly esteemed.” The principle is that “the legislative body alone must possess the confidence of the people,” that royal authority corrupts its depository, and that executive power is always tempted to commit abuses and to engage in conspiracies. If it is provided for in the Constitution it is with regret, through the necessity of the case, and on the condition of its being trammeled by impediments; it will prove so much the less baneful in proportion as it is restrained, guarded, threatened, and denounced. – A position of this kind is manifestly intolerable; and only a man as passive as Louis XVI. could have put up with it. Do what he will, however, he cannot make it a tenable one. In vain does he scrupulously adhere to the Constitution, and fulfill it to the letter. Because he is powerless the Assembly regards him as lukewarm, and imputes to him the friction of the machine which is not under his control. If he presumes once to exercise his veto it is rebellion, and the rebellion of an official against his superior, which is the Assembly; the rebellion of a subject against his Sovereign, which is the people. In this case dethronement is proper, and the Assembly has only to pass the decree; the people have simply to execute the act, and the Constitution ends in a Revolution. – A piece of machinery of this stamp breaks down through its own movement. In conformity with the philosophic theory the two wheels of government must be separated, and to do this they have to be disconnected and isolated one from the other. In conformity with the popular creed, the driving-wheel must be subordinated and its influence neutralized: to do this it is necessary to reduce its energy to a minimum, break up its connections, and raise it up in the air to turn round like a top, or to remain there as an obstacle to something else. It is certain that, after much ill-usage as a plaything, it will finally be removed as a hindrance.
II. THE CREATION OF POPULAR DEMOCRACY.
Administrative powers. – The Assembly on the hierarchy. – Grades abolished. – Collective powers. – Election introduced, and the influence of subordinates in all branches of the service. – Certainty of disorganization. – Power in the hands of municipal bodies.
Let us leave the center of government and go to the extremities, and observe the various administrations in working operation.[9]
For any service to work well and with precision, there must be a single and unique chief who can appoint, pay, punish and dismiss his subordinates. – For, on the one hand, he stands alone and feels his responsibility; he brings to bear on the management of affairs a degree of attention and consistency, a tact and a power of initiation of which a committee is incapable; corporate follies or defects do not involve any one in particular, and authority is effective only when it is in one hand. – On the other hand, being master, he can rely on the subalterns whom he has himself selected, whom he controls through their hopes or fears, and whom he discharges if they do not perform their duties; otherwise he has no hold on them and they are not instruments to be depended on. Only on these conditions can a railway manager be sure that his pointsmen are on the job. Only on these conditions can the foreman of a foundry engage to execute work by a given day. In every public or private enterprise, direct, immediate authority is the only known, the only human and possible way to ensure the obedience and punctuality of agents. – Administration is thus carried on in all countries, by one or several series of functionaries, each under some central manager who holds the reins in his single grasp.[10]
This is all reversed in the new Constitution. In the eyes of our legislators obedience must be spontaneous and never compulsory, and, in the suppression of despotism, they suppress government. The general rule in the hierarchy which they establish is that the subordinates should be independent of their superior, for he must neither appoint nor displace them: the only right he has is to give them advice and remonstrate with them.[11] At best, in certain cases, he can annul their acts and inflict on them a provisional suspension of their functions, which can be contested and is revocable.[12] We see, thus, that none of the local powers are delegated by the central power; the latter is simply like a man without either hands or arms, seated in a gilt chair. The Minister of the Finances cannot appoint or dismiss either an assessor or a collector; the Minister of the Interior, not one of the departmental, district, or communal administrators; the Minister of Justice, not one judge or public prosecutor. The King, in these three branches of the service, has but one officer of his own, the commissioner whose duty it is to advocate the observance of the laws in the courts, and, on sentence being given, to enforce its execution. – All the muscles of the central power are paralyzed by this stroke, and henceforth each department is a State apart, living by itself.
An similar amputation, however, in the department itself, has cut away all the ties by which the superior could control and direct his subordinate. – If the administrators of the department are suffered to influence those of the district, and those of the district those of the municipality, it is only, again, in the way of council and solicitation. Nowhere is the superior a commander who orders and constrains, but everywhere a censor who gives warnings and scolds. To render this already feeble authority still more feeble at each step of the hierarchy, it is divided among several bodies. These consist of superposed councils, which administer the department, the district, and the commune. There is no directing head in any of these councils. Permanency and executive functions throughout are vested in the directories of four or eight members, or in bureaus of two, three, four, six, and even seven members whose elected chief, a president or mayor,[13] has simply an honorary primacy. Decision and action, everywhere blunted, delayed, or curtailed by talk and the processes of discussion, are brought forth only after the difficult, tumultuous assent of several discordant wills.[14] Elective and collective as these powers are, measures are still taken to guard against them. Not only are they subject to the control of an elected council, one-half renewable every two years, but, again, the mayor and public prosecutor of the commune after serving four years, and the procureur-syndic of the department or district after eight years service, and the district collector after six years’ service, are not re-elected. Should these officials have deserved and won the confidence of the electors, should familiarity with affairs have made them specially competent and valuable, so much the worse for affairs and the public ; they are not to be anchored to their post.[15] Should their continuance in office introduce into the service a spirit of order and economy, that is of no consequence; there is danger of their acquiring to much influence, and the law sends them off as soon as they become expert and entitled to rule. – Never has jealousy and suspicion been more on the alert against power, even legal and legitimate. Sapping and mining goes on even in services which are recognized as essential, as the army and the gendarmerie.[16] In the army, on the appointment of a non-commissioned officer, the other non- commissioned officers make up a list of candidates, and the captain selects three, one of whom is chosen by the colonel. In the choice of a sub-lieutenant, all the officers of the regiment vote, and he who receives a majority is appointed. In the gendarmerie, for the appointment of a gendarme, the directory of the department forms a list; the colonel designates five names on it, and the directory selects one of them. For the choice of a corporal, quartermaster or lieutenant, there is, besides the directory and the colonel, another intervention, that of the officers, both commissioned and non- commissioned. It is a system of elective complications and lot- drawings; one which, giving a voice in the choice of officers to the civil authorities and to military subordinates, leaves the colonel with only a third or one-quarter of his former ascendancy. In relation to the National Guard, the new principle is applied without any reservation. All the officers and non-commissioned officers up to the grade of captain are elected by their own men. All the superior officers are elected by the inferior officers. All under- officers and all inferior and superior officers are elected for one year only, and are not eligible for re-election until after an interval of a year, during which they must serve in the ranks.[17] – The result is manifest: command, in every civil and in every military order, becomes upset; subalterns are no longer precise and trustworthy instruments; the chief no longer has any practical hold on them; his orders, consequently, encounter only tame obedience, doubtful deference, sometimes even open resistance; their execution remains dilatory, uncertain, incomplete, and at length is utterly neglected; a latent and soon flagrant system of disorganization is instituted by the law. Step by step, in the hierarchy of Government, power has slipped downwards, and henceforth belongs by virtue of the Constitution to the authorities who sit at the bottom of the ladder. It is not the King, or the minister, or the directory of the department or of the district who rules, but its municipal officers; and their sway is as omnipotent as it can be in a small independent republic. They alone have the “strong hand” with which to search the pockets of refractory tax-payers, and ensure the collection of the revenue; to seize the rioter by the throat, and protect life and property; in short, to convert the promises and menaces of the law into acts. Every armed force, the National Guard, the regulars, and the gendarmerie, must march on their requisition. They alone, among the body of administrators, are endowed with this sovereign right; all that the department or the district can do is to invite them to exercise it. It is they who proclaim martial law. Accordingly, the sword is in their hands.[18] Assisted by commissioners who are appointed by the council-general of the commune, they prepare the schedule of taxation of real and personal property, fix the quota of each tax- payer, adjust assessments, verify the registers and the collector’s receipts, audit his accounts, discharge the insolvent, answer for returns and authorize prosecutions.[19] Private purses are, in this way, at their mercy, and they take from them whatever they determine to belong to the public. – With the purse and the sword in their hands they lack nothing that is necessary to make them masters, and all the more because the application of every law belongs to them; because no orders of the Assembly to the King, of the King to the ministers, of ministers to the departments, of departments to the districts, of the districts to the communes, brings about any real local result except through them; because each measure of general application undergoes their special interpretation, and can always be optionally disfigured, softened, or exaggerated according to their timidity, inertia, violence or partiality. Moreover, they are not long in discovering their strength. We see them on all sides arguing with their superiors against district, departmental, and ministerial orders, and even against the Assembly itself; alleging circumstances; lack of means, their own danger and the public safety, failing to obey, acting for themselves, openly disobeying and glorying in the act,[20] and claiming, as a right, the omnipotence which they exercise in point of fact. Those of Troyes, at the festival of the Federation, refuse to submit to the precedence of the department and claim it for themselves, as “immediate representatives of the people.” Those of Brest, notwithstanding the reiterated prohibitions of their district, dispatch four hundred men and two cannon to force the submission of a neighboring commune to a cure’ who has taken the oath. Those of Arnay-le-Duc arrest Mesdames (the King’s aunts), in spite of their passport signed by the ministers, hold them in spite of departmental and district orders, persist in barring the way to them in spite of a special decree of the National Assembly, and send two deputies to Paris to obtain the sanction of their decision. What with arsenals pillaged, citadels invaded, convoys arrested, couriers stopped, letters intercepted, constant and increasing insubordination, usurpations without truce or measure, the municipalities arrogate to themselves every species of license on their own territory and frequently outside of it. Henceforth, forty thousand sovereign bodies exist in the kingdom. Force is placed in their hands, and they make good use of it. They make such good use of it that one of them, the commune of Paris, taking advantage of its proximity, lays siege to, mutilates, and rules the National Convention, and through it France.
III. MUNICIPAL KINGDOMS.
The Municipal bodies. – Their great task. – Their incapacity. – Their feeble authority.- Insufficiency of their means of action. – The role of the National Guard. –
Let us follow these municipal kings into their own domain: the burden on their shoulders is immense, and much beyond what human strength can support. All the details of executive duty are confided to them; they have not to busy themselves with a petty routine, but with a complete social system which is being taken to pieces, while another is reconstructed in its place. – They are in possession of four milliards of ecclesiastical property, real and personal, and soon there will be two and a half milliards of property belonging to the emigrants, which must be sequestered, valued, managed, inventoried, divided, sold, and the proceeds received. They have seven or eight thousand monks and thirty thousand nuns to displace, install, sanction, and provide for. They have forty-six thousand ecclesiastics, bishops, canons, curés, and vicars, to dispossess, replace, often by force, and later on to expel, intern, imprison, and support. They are obliged to discuss, trace out, teach and make public new territorial boundaries, those of the commune, of the district and of the department. They have to convoke, lodge, and protect the numerous primary and secondary Assemblies, to supervise their operations, which sometimes last for weeks. They must install those elected by them, justices of the peace, officers of the National Guard, judges, public prosecutors, curés, bishops, district and departmental administrators. They are to form new lists of tax-payers, apportion amongst themselves, according to a new system of impost, entirely new real and personal taxes, decide on claims, appoint an assessor, regularly audit his accounts and verify his books, aid him with force, use force in the collection of the excise and salt duties, which being reduced, equalized, and transformed in vain by the National Assembly, afford no returns in spite of its decrees. They are obliged to find the funds for dressing, equipping, and arming the National Guard, to step in between it and the military commanders, and to maintain concord between its diverse battalions. They have to protect forests from pillage, communal land from being invaded, to maintain the octroi, to protect former functionaries, ecclesiastics, and nobles, suspected and threatened, and, above all, to provide, no matter how, provisions for the commune which lacks food, and consequently, to raise subscriptions, negotiate purchases at a distance and even abroad, organize escorts, indemnify bakers, supply the market every week notwithstanding the dearth, the insecurity of roads, and the resistance of cultivators. – Even an absolute chief; sent from a distance and from high place, the most energetic and expert possible, supported by the best-disciplined and most obedient troops, would scarcely succeed in such an undertaking; and there is instead only a municipality which has neither the authority, the means, the experience, the capacity, nor the will.
In the country, says an orator in the tribune,[21] “the municipal officers, in twenty thousand out of forty thousand municipalities, do not know how to read or write.” The curé, in effect, is excluded from such offices by law, and, save in La Vendée and the noble is excluded by public opinion. Besides, in many of the provinces, nothing but patois is spoken.[22] French, especially the philosophic and abstract phraseology of the new laws and proclamations, remains gibberish to their inhabitants. They cannot possibly understand and apply the complicated decrees and fine-spun instructions which reach them from Paris. They hurry off to the towns, get the duties of the office imposed on them explained and commented on in detail, try to comprehend, imagine they do, and then, the following week, come back again without having understood anything, either the mode of keeping state registers, the distinction between feudal rights which are abolished and those retained, the regulations they should enforce in cases of election, the limits which the law imposes as to their powers and subordination. Nothing of all this finds its way into their rude, untrained brains; instead of a peasant who has just left his oxen, there is needed here a legal adept aided by a trained clerk. – Prudential considerations must be added to their ignorance. They do not wish to make enemies for themselves in their commune, and they abstain from any positive action, especially in all tax matters. Nine months after the decree on the patriotic contribution, “twenty-eight thousand municipalities are overdue, not having (yet) returned either rolls or estimates.”[23] At the end of January, 1792, “out of forty thousand nine hundred and eleven municipalities, only five thousand four hundred and forty-eight have deposited their registers; two thousand five hundred and eighty rolls only are definitive and in process of collection. A large number have not even begun their sectional statements.”[24] – It is much worse when, thinking that they do understand it, they undertake to do their work. In their minds, incapable of abstraction, the law is transformed and deformed by extraordinary interpretations. We shall see what it becomes when it is brought to bear on feudal dues, on the forests, on communal rights, on the circulation of corn, on the taxes on provisions, on the supervision of the aristocrats, and on the protection of persons and property. According to them, it authorizes and invites them to do by force, and at once, whatever they need or desire for the time being. – The municipal officers of the large boroughs and towns, more acute and often able to comprehend the decrees, are scarcely in a better condition to carry them out effectively. They are undoubtedly intelligent, inspired by the best disposition, and zealous for the public welfare. During the first two years of the Revolution it is, on the whole, the best informed and most liberal portion of the bourgeoisie which, in the department as in the district, undertakes the management of affairs. Almost all are men of the law, advocates, notaries, and attorneys, with a small number of the old privileged class imbued with the same spirit, a canon at Besançon, a gentleman at Nîmes. Their intentions are of the very best; they love order and liberty, they give their time and their money, they hold permanent sessions and accomplish an incredible amount of work, and they often voluntarily expose themselves to great danger. – But they are bourgeois philosophers, and, in this latter particular, similar to their deputies in the National Assembly, and, with this twofold character, as incapable as their deputies of governing a disintegrated nation. In this twofold character they are ill-disposed towards the ancient régime, hostile to Catholicism and feudal rights, unfavorable to the clergy and the nobility, inclined to extend the bearing and exaggerate the rigor of recent decrees, partisans of the Rights of Man, and, therefore, humanitarians and optimists, disposed to excuse the misdeeds of the people, hesitating, tardy and often timid in the face of an outbreak – in short, admirable writers, exhorters, and reformers, but good for nothing when it comes to breaking heads and risking their own bones. They have not been brought up in such a way as to become men of action in a single day. Up to this time they have always lived as passive administrators, as quiet individuals, as studious men and clerks, domesticated, conversational, and polished, to whom words concealed facts, and who, on their evening promenade, warmly discussed important principles of government, without any consciousness of the practical machinery which, with a police-system for its ultimate wheel, rendered themselves, their promenade, and their conversation perfectly secure. They are not imbued with that sentiment of social danger which produces the veritable chief; the man who subordinates the emotions of pity to the exigencies of the public service. They are not aware that it is better to mow down a hundred conscientious citizens rather than let them hang a culprit without a trial. Repression, in their hands, is neither prompt, rigid, nor constant. They continue to be in the Hôtel-de-Ville what they were when they went into it, so many jurists and scribes, fruitful in proclamations, reports, and correspondence. Such is wholly their role, and, if any amongst them, with more energy, desires to depart from it, he has no hold on the commune which, according to the Constitution, he has to direct, and on that armed force which is entrusted to him with a view to insure the observance of the laws.
To insure respect for authority, indeed, it must not spring up on the spot and under the hands of its subordinates. It loses its prestige and independence when those who create it are precisely those who have to submit to it. For, in submitting to it, they remember that they have created it. This or that candidate among them who has but lately solicited their suffrages is now a magistrate who issues orders, and this sudden transformation is their work. It is with difficulty that they pass from the role of sovereign electors to that of docile subjects of the administration, and recognize a commander in one of their own creatures.[25] On the contrary, they will submit to his control only in their own fashion, reserving to themselves in practice the powers the right to which they have conferred on him.
“We gave him his place, and he must do as we want him to do,”
Such popular reasoning is the most natural in the world. It is as applicable to the municipal officer wearing his scarf as to the officer in the National Guard wearing his epaulettes; the former as well as the latter being conferred by the arbitrary voice of the electors, and always seeming to them a gift which is revocable at their pleasure. The superior always, and more particularly in times of danger or of great public excitement, seems, if directly appointed by those whom he commands, to be their clerk. – Such is municipal authority at this epoch, intermittent, uncertain, and weak; and all the weaker because the sword, whose hilt the men of the Hôtel-de-Ville seem to hold, does not always leave its scabbard at their bidding. They alone are empowered to summon the National Guard, but it does not depend on them, and it is not at their disposal. To obtain its support it is needful that its independent chiefs should be willing to respond to their requisition; that the men should willingly obey their elected officers; that these improvised soldiers should consent to quit their plow, their stores, their workshops and offices, to lose their day, to patrol the streets at night, to be pelted with stones, to fire on a riotous crowd whose enmities and prejudices they often share. Undoubtedly, they will fire on some occasions, but generally they will remain quiet, with their arms at rest; and, at last, they will grow weary of a trying, dangerous, and constant service, which is disagreeable to them, and for which they are not fitted. They will not answer the summons, or, if they do, they will come too late, and in too small a number. In this event, the regulars who are sent for, will do as they do and remain quiet, following their example, while the municipal magistrate, into whose hands the sword has glided, will be able to do no more than make grievous reports, to his superiors of the department or district, concerning the popular violence of which he is a powerless witness. – In other cases, and especially in the country, his condition is worse. The National Guard, preceded by its drums, will come and take him off to the town hall to authorize by his presence, and to legalize by his orders, the outrages that it is about to commit. He marches along seized by the collar, and affixes his signature at the point of the bayonet. In this case not only is his instrument taken away from him, but it is turned against of holding it by the hilt, he feels the point: the armed force which he ought to make use of makes use of him.
IV. On Universal Suffrage.
The National Guard as electors. – Its great power.- Its important task. – The work imposed on active citizens. – They avoid it.
Behold, then, the true sovereign, the elector, both National Guard and voter. They are the kings designed by the Constitution; there he is, in every hierarchical stage, with his suffrage, with which to delegate authority, and his gun to assure its exercise. – Through his free choice he creates all local powers, intermediary, central, legislative, administrative, ecclesiastical, and judiciary. He appoints directly, and in the primary assemblies, the mayor, the municipal board, the public prosecutor and council of the commune, the justice of the peace and his assessors, and the electors of the second degree. Indirectly, and through these elected electors, he appoints the administrators and procureurs-syndics of both district and department, the civil and criminal judges, the public prosecutor, bishops, and priests, the members of the National Assembly and jurors of the higher National Court[26]. All these commissions which he issues are of short date, the principal ones, those of municipal officer, elector, and deputy, having but two years to run; at the end of this brief term their recipients are again subject to his vote, in order that, if he is displeased with them, he may replace them by others. He must not be fettered in his choice; in every well-conducted establishment the legitimate proprietor must be free easily and frequently to renew his staff of clerks. He is the only one in whom confidence can be placed, and, for greater security, all arms are given up to him. When his clerks wish to employ force he is the one to place it at their disposal. Whatever he desired as elector he executes as National Guard. On two occasions he interferes, both times in a decisive manner; and his control over the legal powers is irresistible because these are born out of his vote and are obeyed only through his support. – But these rights are, at the same time, burdens. The Constitution describes him as an “active citizen,” and this he eminently is or should be, since public action begins and ends with him, since everything depends on his zeal and capacity, since the machine is good and only works well in proportion to his discernment, punctuality, calmness, firmness, discipline at the polls, and in the ranks. The law requires his services incessantly day and night, in body and mind, as gendarme and as elector. – How burdensome this service of gendarme must be, can be judged by the number of riots. How burdensome that of elector must be, the list of elections will show.
In February, March, April, and May, 1789, there are prolonged parish meetings, for the purpose of choosing electors and writing out grievances, also bailiwick meetings of still longer duration to choose deputies and draw up the memorial. During the months of July and August, 1789, there are spontaneous gatherings to elect or confirm the municipal bodies; other spontaneous meetings by which the militia is formed and officered; and then, following these, constant meetings of this same militia to fuse themselves into a National Guard, to renew officers and appoint deputies to the federative assemblies. In December, 1789, and January, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect municipal officers and their councils. In May, 1790, there are primary and secondary meetings, to appoint district and departmental administrators. In October, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect the justice of the peace and his assessors, also secondary meetings, to elect the district courts. In November, 1790, there are primary meetings, to renew one-half of the municipal bodies. In February and March, 1791, there are secondary meetings, to nominate the bishop and curés. In June, July, August, September, 1791, there are primary and secondary meetings, to renew one-half of the district and departmental administrators, to nominate the president, the public prosecutor, and the clerk of the criminal court, and to choose deputies. In November, 1791, there are primary meetings to renew one-half of the municipal council. Observe that many of these elections drag along because the voters lack experience, because the formalities are complicated, and because opinions are divided. In August and September, 1791, at Tours, they are prolonged for thirteen days;[27] at Troyes, in January, 1790, instead of three days they last for three weeks; at Paris, in September and October, 1791, only for the purpose of choosing deputies, they last for thirty-seven days; in many places their proceedings are contested, annulled, and begun over again. To these universal gatherings, which put all France in motion, we must add the local gatherings by which a commune approves or gainsays its municipal officers, makes claims on the department, on the King, or on the Assembly, demands the maintenance of its parish priest, the provisioning of its market, the arrival or dispatch of a military detachment, – and think of all that these meetings, petitions, and nominations presuppose in the way of preparatory committees and preliminary meetings and debates! Every public representation begins with rehearsals in secret session. In the choice of a candidate, and, above all, of a list of candidates; in the appointment in each commune of from three to twenty-one municipal officers, and from six to forty-two notables; in the selection of twelve district administrators and thirty-six departmental administrators, especially as the list must be of a double length and contain twice as many officers as there are places to fill, immediate agreement is impossible. In every important election the electors are sure to be in a state of agitation a month beforehand, while four weeks of discussion and caucus is not too much to give to inquiries about candidates, and to canvassing voters. Let us add, accordingly, this long preface to each of the elections, so long and so often repeated, and now sum up the troubles and disturbances, all this loss of time, all the labor which the process demands. Each convocation of the primary assemblies, summons to the town-hall or principal town of the canton, for one or for several days, about three million five hundred thousand electors of the first degree. Each convocation of the assemblies of the second class compels the attendance and sojourn at the principal town of the department, and again in the principal town of the district, of about three hundred and fifty thousand elected electors. Each revision or re-election in the National Guard gathers together on the public square, or subjects to roll-call at the town-hall, three or four millions of National Guards. Each federation, after exacting the same gathering or the same roll-call, sends delegates by hundreds of thousands to the principal towns of the districts and departments, and tens of thousands to Paris. – The powers thus instituted at the cost of so great an effort, require an equal effort to make them work; one branch alone of the administration[28] keeps 2,988 officials busy in the departments, 6,950 in the districts, 1,175,000 in the communes – in all, nearly one million two hundred thousand administrators, whose places, as we have seen above, are no sinecures. Never did a political machine require so prodigious an expenditure of force to set it up and keep it in motion. In the United States, where it is now (around 1875) deranged by its own action, it has been estimated that, to meet the intentions of the law and keep each wheel in its proper place, it would be necessary for each citizen to give one whole day in each week, or on-sixth of his time, to public business. In France, under the newly adopted system, where disorder is universal, where the duty of National Guard is added to and complicates that of elector and administrator, I estimate that two days would be necessary. This is what the Constitution comes to, this is its essential and supreme requirement: each active citizen has to give up one-third of his time to public affairs.
Now, these twelve hundred thousand administrators and three or four million electors and National Guards, are just the men in France who have the least leisure. The class of active citizens, indeed, comprises about all the men who labor with their hands or with their heads. The law exempts only domestics devoted to personal service or common laborers who, possessing no property or income, earn less than twenty-one sous a day. Every journeyman-miller, the smallest farmer, every village proprietor of a cottage or of a vegetable- garden, any ordinary workman, votes at the primary meetings, and may become a municipal officer. Again, if he pays ten francs a year direct tax, if he is a farmer or yeomen on any property which brings him in four hundred francs, if his rent is one hundred and fifty francs, he may become an elected elector and an administrator of the district or department. According to this standard the eligible are innumerable; in Doubs, in 1790,[29] they form two-thirds of the active citizens. Thus, the way to office is open to all, or almost all, and the law has taken no precaution whatever to reserve or provide places for the elite, who could best fill them. On the contrary, the nobles, the ecclesiastical dignitaries, the members of the parliaments, the grand functionaries of the ancient regime, the upper class of the bourgeoisie, almost all the rich who possess leisure, are practically excluded from the elections by violence, and from the various offices by public opinion: they soon retire into private life, and, through discouragement or disgust, through monarchical or religious scruples, abandon entirely a public career. – The burden of the new system falls, accordingly, on the most occupied portion of the community: on merchants, manufacturers, agents of the law, employees, shopkeepers, artisans, and cultivators. They are the people who must give up one-third of their time already appropriated, neglect private for public business, leave their harvests, their bench, their shop, or their briefs to escort convoys and patrol the highways, to run off to the principal town of the canton, district, or department, and stay and sit there in the town-hall,[30] subject to a deluge of phrases and papers, conscious that they are forced to gratuitous drudgery, and that this drudgery is of little advantage to the public. – For the first six months they do it with good grace; their zeal in penning memorials, in providing themselves with arms against “brigands,” and in suppressing taxes, rents, and tithes, is active enough. But now that this much is obtained or extorted, decreed as a right, or accomplished in fact, they must not be further disturbed. They need the whole of their time: they have their crops to get in, their customers to serve, their orders to give, their books to make up, their credits to adjust, all which are urgent matters, and neither ought to be neglected or interrupted. Under the lash of necessity and of the crisis they have put their backs to it, and, if we take their word for it, they hauled the public cart out of the mud; but they had no idea of putting themselves permanently in harness to drag it along themselves. Confined as this class has been for centuries to private life, each has his own wheelbarrow to trundle along, and it is for this, before all and above all, that he holds himself responsible. From the beginning of the year 1790 the returns of the votes taken show that as many are absent as present; at Besançon there are only nine hundred and fifty-nine voters out of thirty-two hundred inscribed; four months after this more than one- half of the electors fail to come to the polls;[31] and throughout France, even at Paris, the indifference to voting keeps on increasing. Puppets of such an administration as that of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. do not become Florentine or Athenian citizens in a single night. The hearts and heads of three or four millions of men are not suddenly endowed with faculties and habits which render them capable of diverting one-third of their energies to work which is new, disproportionate, gratuitous, and supererogatory. – A fallacy of monstrous duplicity lies at the basis of the political theories of the day and of those which were invented during the following ten years. Arbitrarily, and without any examination, a certain weight and resistance are attributed to the human metal employed. It is found on trial to have ten times less resistance and twenty times more weight than was supposed.
V. The Ruling Minority.
The restless minority. – Its elements.- The clubs.- Their ascendancy.- How they interpret the Rights of Man. – Their usurpations and violence.
In default of the majority, who shirk their responsibilities, it is the minority which does the work and assumes the power. The majority having resigned, the minority becomes sovereign, and public business, abandoned by the hesitating, weak, and absent multitude, falls into the hands of the resolute, energetic, ever-present few who find the leisure and the disposition to assume the responsibility. In a system in which all offices are elective, and in which elections are frequent, politics becomes a profession for those who subordinate their private interests to it, and who find it of personal advantage; every village contains five or six men of this class, every borough twenty or thirty, every town its hundreds and Paris its many thousands.[32] These are veritable active citizens They alone give all their time and attention to public matters, correspond with the newspapers and with the deputies at Paris, receive and spread abroad the party watchword on every important question, hold caucuses, get up meetings, make motions, draw up addresses, overlook, rebuke, or denounce the local magistrates, form themselves into committees, publish and push candidates, and go into the suburbs and the country to canvass for votes. They hold the power in recompense for their labor, for they manage the elections, and are elected to office or provided with places by the successful candidates. There is a prodigious number of these offices and places, not only those of officers of the National Guard and the administrators of the commune, the district, and the department, whose duties are gratuitous, or little short of it, but a quantity of others which are paid,[33] – eighty-three bishops, seven hundred and fifty deputies, four hundred criminal judges, three thousand and seven civil judges, five thousand justices of the peace, twenty thousand assessors forty thousand communal collectors, forty-six thousand curés, without counting the accessory or insignificant places which exist by tens and hundreds of thousands, from secretaries, clerks, bailiffs and notaries, to gendarmes, constables, office-clerks, beadles, grave-diggers, and keepers of sequestered goods. The pasture is vast for the ambitious; it is not small for the needy, and they seize upon it. Such is the rule in pure democracies: hence the swarm of politicians in the United States. When the law incessantly calls all citizens to political action, there are only a few who devote themselves to it; these become expert in this particular work, and, consequently, preponderant. But they must be paid for their trouble, and the election secures to them their places because they manage the elections.
Two sorts of men furnish the recruits for this dominant minority: on the one hand the enthusiasts, and on the other those who have no social position. Towards the end of 1789, moderate people, who are minding their own business, retire into privacy, and are daily less disposed to show themselves. The public square is occupied by others who, through zeal and political passion, abandon their pursuits, and by those who, finding themselves hampered in their social sphere, or repelled from ordinary circles, were merely awaiting a new opening to take a fresh start. In these utopian and revolutionary times, there is no lack of either class. Flung out by handfuls, the dogma of popular sovereignty falls like a seed scattered around, to end up vegetating in heated brains, in the narrow and rash minds which, once possessed by an idea, adhere to it and are mastered by it. It falls amongst a class of reasoners who, starting from a principle, dash forward like a horse who has had blinders put on. This is especially the case with the legal class, whose profession accustoms them to deductions; nor less with the village attorney, the unfrocked monk, the “intruding” and excommunicated curé, and above all, the journalist and the local orator, who, for the first time in his life, finds that he has an audience, applause, influence and a future before him. These are the only people who can do the complicated and constant work which the new Constitution calls for; for they are the only men whose desires are unlimited, whose dreams are coherent, whose doctrine is explicit, whose enthusiasm is contagious, who cherish no scruples, and whose presumption is unbounded. Thus has the rigid will been wrought and tempered within them, the inward spring of energy which, being daily more tightly wound up, urges them on to propaganda and to action. – During the second half of the year 1790 we see them everywhere following the example of the Paris Jacobins, styling themselves friends of the Constitution, and grouping themselves together in popular associations. Each town and village gives birth to a club of patriots who regularly every evening, or several times a week, meet “for the purpose of co-operating for the safety of the commonwealth.”[34] This is a new and spontaneous organ,[35] an cancer and a parasite, which develops itself in the social body alongside of its legal organizations. Its growth insensibly increases, attracting to itself the substance of the others, employing them for its own ends, substituting itself for them, acting by and for itself alone, a sort of omnivorous outgrowth the encroachment of which is irresistible, not only because circumstances and the working of the Constitution nourish it, but also because its germ, deposited at a great depth, is a living portion of the Constitution itself.
For, placed at the head of the Constitution, as well as of the decrees which are attached to it, stands the Declaration of the Rights of Man. According to this, and by the avowal of the legislators themselves, there are two parts to be distinguished in the law, the one superior, eternal, inviolable, which is the self- evident principle, and the other inferior, temporary, and open to discussion, which comprehends more or less exact or erroneous applications of this principle. No application of the law is valid if it derogates from the principle. No institution or authority is entitled to obedience if it is opposed to the rights which it aims to guarantee. These sacred rights, anterior to all society, take precedence of every social convention, and whenever we would know if a legal order is legitimate, we have merely to ascertain if it is in conformity with natural right. Let us, accordingly, in every doubtful or difficult case, refer to this philosophic gospel, to this incontestable catechism, this primordial creed proclaimed by the National Assembly. – The National Assembly itself invites us to do so. For it announces that
“ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes
of public misfortune, and of the corruption of governments.”
It declares that
“the object of every political association is the preservation of natural and
imprescriptible rights.”
It enumerates them, “in order that the acts of legislative power and the acts of executive power may at once be compared with the purpose of every political institution.” It desires “that every member of the social body should have its declaration constantly in mind.” – Thus we are told to control all acts of application by the principle, and also we are provided with the rule by which we may and should accord, measure, or even refuse our submission to, deference for, and toleration of established institutions and legal authority.
What are these superior rights, and, in case of dispute, who will decide as arbitrator? – There is nothing here like the precise declarations of the American Constitution,[36] those positive prescriptions which serve to sustain a judicial appeal, those express prohibitions which prevent beforehand certain species of laws from being passed, which prescribe limits to public powers, which mark out the province not to be invaded by the State because it is reserved to the individual.
On the contrary, in the declaration of the national Assembly, most of the articles are abstract dogmas,[37] metaphysical definitions, more or less literary axioms, that is to say, more or less false, now vague and now contradictory, open to various interpretations and to opposite constructions, These are good for platform display but bad in practice, mere stage effect, a sort of pompous standard, useless and heavy, which, hoisted in front of the Constitutional house and shaken every day by violent hands, cannot fail soon to tumble on the heads of passers by.[38] – Nothing is done to ward off this visible danger. There is nothing here like that Supreme Court which, in the United States, guards the Constitution even against its Congress, and which, in the name of the Constitution, actually invalidates a law, even when it has passed through all formalities and been voted on by all the powers; which listens to the complaints of the individual affected by an unconstitutional law; which stays the sheriff’s or collector’s hand raised against him, and which above their heads gives judgment on his interests and wrongs. Ill-defined and discordant laws are proclaimed without any provision being made for their interpretation, application or sanction. No means are taken to have them specially expounded. No district tribunal is assigned to consider the claims which grow out of them, to put an end to litigation legally, peacefully, on a last appeal, and through a final decision which becomes a precedent and fixes the loose sense of the text. All this is made the duty of everybody, that is to say of those who are disposed to charge themselves with it, – in other words, the active minority in council assembled. – Thus, in each town or village it is the local club which, by the authorization of the legislator himself, becomes the champion, judge, interpreter and administrator of the rights of man, and which, in the name of these superior rights, may protest or rebel, as it seems best, not only against the legitimate acts of legal powers, but also against the authentic text of the Constitution and the Laws.[39]
Consider, indeed, these rights as they are proclaimed, along with the commentary of the speaker who expounds them at the club before an audience of heated and daring spirits, or in the street to the rude and fanatical multitude. Every article in the Declaration is a dagger pointed at human society, and the handle has only to be pressed to make the blade enter the flesh.[40] Among “these natural and imprescriptible rights” the legislator has placed “resistance to oppression.” We are oppressed : let us resist and take up arms. According to this legislator, “society has the right to bring every public agent of the Administration to account.” Let us away to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and interrogate our lukewarm or suspected magistrates, and watch their sessions to see if they prosecute priests and disarm the aristocrats; let us stop their intrigues against the people; let us force these slow clerks to hasten their steps. – According to this legislator “all citizens have the right to take part in person, or through their representatives, in the formation of the law.” There must thus be no more electors privileged by their payment of a three-franc tax. Down with the new aristocracy of active citizens! Let us restore to the two millions of proletarians the right of suffrage, of which the Constitution has unjustly defrauded them! – According to this legislator, “men are born and remain free, and equal in their rights.” Consequently, let no one be excluded from the National Guard; let everybody, even the pauper, have some kind of weapon, a pike or gun, to defend his freedom! – In the very terms of the Declaration, “the law is the expression of the universal will.” Listen to these clamors in the open streets, to these petitions flowing in from the towns on all sides; behold the universal will, the living law which abolishes the written law! On the strength of this the leader of a few clubs in Paris are to depose the King, to violate the Legislative Assembly and decimate the National Convention. – In other terms, the turbulent, factious minority is to supplant the sovereign nation, and henceforth there is nothing to hinder it from doing what it pleases just when it pleases. The operation of the Constitution has given to it the reality of power, while the preamble of the Constitution clothes it with the semblance of right.
VI. Summary of the work of the Constituent Assembly.
Such is the work of the Constituent Assembly. In several of its laws, especially those which relate to private interests, in the institution of civil regulations, in the penal and rural codes,[41] in the first attempts at, and the promise of, a uniform civil code, in the enunciation of a few simple regulations regarding taxation, procedure, and administration, it planted good seed. But in all that relates to political institutions and social organization its proceedings are those of an academy of Utopians, and not those of practical legislators. – On the sick body entrusted to it, it performed amputations which were as useless as they were excessive, and applied bandages as inadequate as they were injurious. With the exception of two or three restrictions admitted inadvertently, and the maintenance of the show of royalty, also the obligation of a small electoral qualification, it carried out its principle to the end, the principle of Rousseau. It deliberately refused to consider man as he really was under its own eyes, and persisted in seeing nothing in him but the abstract being created in books. Consequently, with the blindness and obstinacy characteristic of a speculative surgeon, it destroyed, in the society submitted to its scalpel and its theories, not only the tumors, the enlargements, and the inflamed parts of the organs, but also the organs themselves, and even the vital governing centers around which cells arrange themselves to recompose an injured organ. That is, the Assembly destroyed on the one hand the time-honored, spontaneous, and lasting societies formed by geographical position, history, common occupations and interests, and on the other, those natural chiefs whose name, repute, education, independence, and earnestness designated them as the best qualified to occupy high positions. In one direction it despoils and permits the ruin and proscription of the superior class, the nobles, the members of Parliament, and the upper middle class. In another it dispossesses and breaks up all historic or natural corporations, religious congregations, clerical bodies, provinces, parliaments, societies of art and of all other professions and pursuits. This done, every tie or bond which holds men together is found to be severed; all subordination and every graduated scale of rank have disappeared. There is no longer rank and file, or commander-in-chief. Nothing remains but individual particles, 26 millions of equal and disconnected atoms. Never was so much disintegrated matter, less capable of resistance, offered to hands undertaking to mold it. Harshness and violence will be sufficient to ensure success. These brutal hands are ready for the work, and the Assembly which has reduced the material to powder has likewise provided the mortar and pestle. As awkward in destruction as it is in construction, it invents for the restoration of order in a society which is turned upside down a machine which would, of itself, create disorder in a tranquil society. The most absolute and most concentrated government would not be strong enough to effect without disturbance a similar equalization of ranks, the same dismemberment of associations, and the same displacement of property. No social transformation can be peacefully accomplished without a well-commanded army, obedient and everywhere present, as was the case in the emancipation of the Russian serfs by Emperor Alexander. The new Constitution,[42] on the contrary, reduces the King to the position of an honorary president, suspected and called in question by a disorganized State. Between him and the legislative body it interposes nothing but sources of conflict, and suppresses all means of concord. The monarch has no hold whatever on the administrative departments which he must direct; the mutual independence of the powers, from the center to the extremities of the State, everywhere produces indifference, negligence, and disobedience between the injunctions issued and their execution. France is a federation of forty thousand municipal sovereignties, in which the authority of legal magistrates varies according to the caprice of active citizens. These active citizens, too heavily loaded, shy away from the performance of public duty; in which a minority of fanatics and ambitious men monopolize the right to speak, to vote, all influence, the power and all action. They justify their multiple ursurpations, their unbridled despotism, and their increasing encroachments by the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The masterpiece[43] of ideal abstractions and of practical absurdities is accomplished. In accordance with the Constitution spontaneous anarchy becomes legalized anarchy. The latter is perfect; nothing finer of the kind has been seen since the ninth century.
______________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] The name for the dreaded secret Royal warrant of arrest. (SR.)
[2] The initiative rests with the King on one point: war cannot be decreed by the Assembly except on his formal and preliminary proposition. This exception was secured only after a violent struggle and a supreme effort by Mirabeau.
[3] Speech by Lanjuinais, November 7, 1789. “We determined on the separation of the powers. Why, then, should the proposal he made to us to unite the legislative power with the executive power in the persons of the ministers?”
[4] See the attendance of the Ministers before the Legislative Assembly.
[5] “Any society in which the separation of the powers is not clearly defined has no constitution.” (Declaration of Rights, article XVI.) – This principle is borrowed from a text by Montesquieu, also from the American Constitution. In the rest the theory of Rousseau is followed.
[6] Mercure de France, an expression by Mallet du Pan.
[7] Constitution of 1791, ch. II. articles 5, 6, 7. — Decree of September 25 – October 6, 1791, section III. articles, 8 to 25.
[8] Speeches by Barnave and Roederer in the constituent Assembly. – Speeches by Barnave and Duport in the Jacobin Club.
[9] Principal texts. (Duvergier, “Collection des Lois et Decrets.”) – Laws on municipal and administrative organization, December 14 and 22, 1789; August 12-20, 1790; March 12, 1791. On the municipal organization of Paris, May 21st, June 27, 1790. – Laws on the organization of the Judiciary, August 16-24, 1790; September 16-29, 1791; September 29, October 21, 1791.- Laws on military organization, September 23, October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791; July 27, 28, 1791 – Laws on the financial organization, November 14- 24,.1790; November 23, 1790; March 17, 1791; September 26, October 2, 1791.
[10] The removal of such managerial authority has since the second World war taken place inside the United Nations and other Western public administrations and seems to be the aim of much communist trade union effort. The result has everywhere been added cost and decreased efficiency. (SR.)
[11] This principle has been introduced in Western educational systems when clever self-appointed psychologists told parents and teacher alike that they could and should not punish their children but only talk and explain to them. (SR.)
[12] This description fits the staff regulations of the United Nations secretariat in which I served for 32 years. (SR.)
[13] Decrees of December 14 and December 22, 1789: “In municipalities reduced to three members (communes below five hundred inhabitants), all executive functions shall belong to the mayor alone.”
[14] Could it be that Lenin took note of this and had “it this translated in Russian and made use of it in his and later in Stalin’s schools for international revolutionaries. It would in any case have weakened the Bourgeois Capitalist countries. In any case such measures have been introduced both in the international organizations and in most Western Democratic Governments after World War II. (SR.)
[15] This was in the United Nations called ‘Rotation’ and made the administration of missions and forces difficult, expensive and inefficient. This rotation was also used in the Indian and other armies in order to prevent the officers to reach an understanding or achieve any power over the troops under their command. (SR.)
[16] Laws of September 23 – October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791. (Titles II. And VII.) – Cf. the legal prescriptions in relation to the military tribunals. In every prosecuting or judicial jury one- seventh of the sworn members are taken from the non-commissioned officers, and one-seventh from the soldiers, and again, according to the rank of the accused, the number of those of the same rank is doubled.
[17] Law of July 28th, August 12, 1791.
[18] Laws of November 24, 1789 (article 52), August 10-14, 1789. – Instruction of August 10-20, 1790; § 8 – Law of October 21, November 21, 1789.
[19] Laws of November 14 and 23, 1790; January 13th, September 26th, October 9, 1792.
[20] Albert Babeau, I. 327 (Féte of the Federation, July14, 1790). – “Archives Nationales,” F7, 3215 (May 17,1791, Deliberation of the council-general of the commune of Brest. May 17 and 19, Letters of the directory of the district). – Mercure, March 5, 1791. “Mesdames are stopped until the return of the two deputies, whom the Republic of Arnay-le-Duc has sent to the representatives of the nation to demonstrate to them the necessity of keeping the king’s aunts in the kingdom.”
[21] Moniteur, X. 132. Speech by M. Labergerie, November 8, 1791.
[22] At Montauban, in the intendant’s salon, the ladies of the place spoke patois only, the grandmother of the gentleman who has informed me of this fact did not understand any other language.
[23] Moniteur, V.163, sitting of July 18, 1791. Speech by M. Lecoulteux, reporter.
[24] Moniteur, XI. 283, sitting of February 2, 1792. Speech by Cambon: “They go away thinking that they understand what is explained to them, but return the following day to obtain fresh explanations. The attorneys refuse to give the municipalities any assistance, stating that they know nothing about these matters.”
[25] The same may happen when a subordinate is promoted to be placed in charge of his or her former equals and colleagues. This is why it is often preferably to transfer someone who is recognized as being of superior talent whenever a promotions is to take place. (SR.)
[26] Law of May 11-15, 1791.
[27] Minutes of the meeting of the Electoral Assembly of the Department of Indre-et-Loire (1791, printed).
[28] De Ferrières, I. 367.
[29] Suzay, I, 191 (21,711 are eligible out of 32,288 inscribed citizens).
[30] Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Department of Indre-et-Loire, Aug. 27, 1791. “A member of the Assembly made a motion that all the members composing it should be indemnified for the expenses which would be incurred by their absence from home and the long sojourn they had to make in the town where the Assembly was held. He remarked that the inhabitants of the country were those who suffered the most, their labor being their sole riches; that if no attention was paid to this demand, they would be obliged, in spite of their patriotism, to withdraw and abandon their important mission; that the electoral assemblies would then be deserted, or would be composed of those whose resources permitted them to make this sacrifice.”
[31] Sauzay, I. 147, 192.
[32] For the detail of these figures, see vol. II. Book IV.
[33] De Ferrières, I. 367. Cf. The various laws above mentioned.
[34] Constant, “Histoire d’un Club Jacobin en Province” (Fontainebleau) p.15. (Procés-verbaux of the founding of the clubs of Moret, Thomery, Nemours, and Montereau.)
[35] Later to change and become socialist and communist parties everywhere. (SR.)
[36] Cf. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 (except the first phrase, which is a catchword thrown out for the European philosophers). – Jefferson proposed a Declaration of Rights for the Constitution of March 4, 1789, but it was refused. They were content to add to it the eleven amendments which set forth the fundamental rights of the citizen.
[37] Article I. “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights common to all. Social distinctions are founded solely on public utility.”
The first phrase condemns the hereditary royalty which is sanctioned by the Constitution. The second phrase can be used to legitimate hereditary monarchy and an aristocracy. – Articles 10 and 11 bear upon the manifestations of religious convictions and on freedom of speech and of the press. By virtue of these two articles worship, speech, and the press may be made subject to the most repressive restrictions, etc.
[38] The International Bill of Human Rights of 1948 is quite different from the one approved in 1789. In 1948 there is no more any mention of any “right to resistance to oppression”, there is a softening of the position on the right of property and new rights, to free education, to a country, to rest and leisure, to a high standard of health and to an adequate standard of living have been introduced. (SR.)
[39] Stalin and his successors organized such a system of “clubs” world-wide which even today remain active as “protectors” of the environment, refugees, prisoners, animals and the environment. (SR.)
[40] Buchez and Roux , XI. 237. (Speech by Malouet in relation to the revision, August 5, 1791.) “You constantly tempt the people with sovereignty without giving them the immediate use of it.”
[41] Decrees of September 25 – October 6, 1791; September 28 – October 6, 1791.
[42] Impartial contemporaries, those well qualified to judge, agree as to the absurdity of the Constitution.
“The Constitution was a veritable monster. There was too much of monarchy in it for a republic, and too much of a republic for a monarchy. The King was a side-dish, un hors d’uvre, everywhere present in appearance but without any actual power.” (Dumont, 339.)
“It is a general and almost universal conviction that this Constitution is inexecutable. The makers of it to a man condemn it. (G. Morris, September 30, 1791.)
“Every day proves more clearly that their new Constitution is good for nothing.” (ibid. , December 27, 1791.)
Cf. The sensible and prophetic speech made by Malouet (August 5, 1791, Buchez and Roux, XI. 237).
[43] Taine’s vivid description is likely to have encouraged any radical revolutionary having the luck to read his explicit description of how to proceed with the destruction of a naïve corrupt capitalist, bourgeois society. (SR.)
BOOK THIRD. THE APPLICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION.[1]
CHAPTER I.
I. The Federations. – Popular application of philosophic theory. – Idyllic celebration of the Contrat-Social. – The two strata of the human mind. – Permanent disorder.
If there ever was an Utopia which seemed capable of realization, or, what is still more to the purpose, was really applied, converted into a fact, fully established, it is that of Rousseau, in 1789 and during the three following years. For, not only are his principles embodied in the laws, and the Constitution throughout animated with his spirit, but it seems as if the nation looked upon his ideological gambols, his abstract fiction, as serious. This fiction it carried out in every particular. A social contract, at one spontaneous and practical, an immense gathering of men associating together freely for the first time for the recognition of their respective rights, forming a specific compact, and binding themselves by a solemn oath: such is the social recipe prescribed by the philosophers, and which is carried out to the letter. Moreover, as this recipe is esteemed infallible, the imagination is worked upon and the sensibilities of the day are brought into play. It is admitted that men, on again becoming equals, have again become brothers.[2] A sudden and amazing harmony of all volitions and all intelligences will restore the golden age on earth. It is proper, accordingly, to regard the social contract as a festival, an affecting, sublime idyll, in which, from one end of France to the other, all, hand in hand, should assemble and swear to the new compact, with song, with dance, with tears of joy, with shouts of gladness, the worthy beginning of public felicity. With unanimous assent, indeed, the idyll is performed as if according to a written program.
On the 29th of November, 1789, at Etoile, near Valence, the federations began.[3] Twelve thousand National Guards, from the two banks of the Rhône, promise “to remain for ever united, to insure the circulation of grain, and to maintain the laws passed by the National Assembly.” On the 13th of December, at Montélimart, six thousand men, the representatives of 27 000 other men, take a similar oath and confederate themselves with the foregoing. – Upon this the excitement spreads from month to month and from province to province. Fourteen towns of the bailiwicks of Franche-Comté form a patriotic league. At Pontivy, Brittany enters into federal relations with Anjou. One thousand National Guards of Vivarais and Languedoc send their delegates to Voute. 48 000 in the Vosges send their deputies to Epinal. During February, March, April, and May, 1790, in Alsace, Champagne, Dauphiny, Orléanais, Touraine, Lyonnais, and Provence, there is the same spectacle. At Draguignan eight thousand National Guards take the oath in the presence of 20 000 spectators. At Lyons 50 000 men, delegates of more than 500 000 others take the civic oath. – But local unions are not sufficient to complete the organization of France ; a general union of all Frenchmen must take place. Many of the various National Guards have already written to Paris for the purpose of affiliating themselves with the National Guard there; and, one the 5th of June, the Parisian municipal body having proposed it, the Assembly decrees the universal federation. It is to take place on the 14th of July, everywhere on the same day, both at the center and at the extremities of the kingdom. There is to be one in the principal town of each district and of each department, and one in the capital. To the latter each body of the National Guards is to send deputies in the proportion of one man to every two hundred; and each regiment one officer, one non-commissioned officer, and four privates. Fourteen thousand representatives of the National Guard of the provinces appear on the Champ de Mars, the theater of the festival; also eleven to twelve thousand representatives of the land and marine forces, besides the National Guard of Paris, and sixty thousand spectators on the surrounding slopes, with a still greater crowd on the heights of Chaillot and of Passy. All rise to their feet and swear fidelity to the nation, to the law, to the King and to the new Constitution. When the report of the cannon is heard which announces the taking of the oath, those of the Parisians who have remained at home, men, women, and children, raise their hands in the direction of the Champ de Mars and likewise make their affirmation. In every principal town of every district, department, and commune in France there is the same oath on the same day. Never was there a more perfect social compact heard of. Here, for the first time in the world, everybody beholds a veritable legitimate society, for it is founded on free pledges, on solemn stipulations, and on actual consent. They possess the authentic act and the dated official report of it.[4]
There is still something more – the time and the occasion betoken a union of all hearts. The barriers which have hitherto separated men from each other are all removed and without effort. Provincial antagonisms are now to cease: the confederates of Brittany and Anjou write that they no longer desire to be Angevins and Bretons, but simply Frenchmen. All religious discords are to come to an end: at Saint-Jean-du-Gard, near Alais, the Catholic curé and the Protestant pastor embrace each other at the altar; the pastor occupies the best seat in the church, and at the Protestant meeting-house the curé has the place of honor, and listens to the sermon of the pastor.[5] Distinctions of rank and condition will no longer exist; at Saint- Andéol ” the honor of taking the oath in the name of the people is conferred on two old men, one ninety-three and the other ninety-four years of age, one a noble and a colonel of the National Guard, and the other a simple peasant.” At Paris, two hundred thousand persons of all conditions, ages, and sexes, officers and soldiers, monks and actors, school-boys and masters, dandies and ragamuffins, elegant ladies and fishwives, workmen of every class and the peasants from the vicinity, all flocked to the Champ de Mars to dig the earth