The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789
It is not my purpose to inquire how such a system of legislation could have arisen, spread, and become general throughout Europe. But it is certain that in the Middle Ages it existed more or less in every European nation, and that in many it prevailed to the exclusion of every other.
I have had occasion to study the political institutions of the Middle Ages in France, in England, and in Germany, and the further I proceeded in my labours the more was I astonished at the prodigious similarity which existed amongst all these various sets of laws; and the more did I wonder how nations so different, and having so little intercourse, could have contrived laws so much alike. Not but they continually and almost immeasurably differ in their details and in different countries, but the basis is invariably the same. If I discovered a political institution, a law, a fixed authority, in the ancient Germanic legislation, I was sure, on searching further, to find something exactly analogous to it in France and in England. Each of these three nations helped me more fully to understand the others.
In all three the government was carried on according to the same maxims, political assemblies were formed out of the same elements, and invested with the same powers. Society was divided in the same manner, and the same gradation of classes subsisted in each; in all three the position of the nobles, their privileges, their characteristics, and their disposition were identical; as men they were not distinguishable, but rather, properly speaking, the same men in every place.
The municipal constitutions were alike; the rural districts were governed in the same manner. The condition of the peasantry differed but little; the land was owned, occupied, and tilled after the same fashion, and the cultivators were subjected to the same burthens. From the confines of Poland to the Irish Channel, the Lord’s estate, the manorial courts, the fiefs, the quit-rents, feudal service, feudal rights, and the corporations or trading guilds, were all alike. Sometimes the very names were the same; and what is still more remarkable, the same spirit breathes in all these analogous institutions. I think I may venture to affirm, that in the fourteenth century the social, political, administrative, judicial, economical, and literary institutions of Europe were more nearly akin to each other than they are at the present time, when civilisation appears to have opened all the channels of communication, and to have levelled every obstacle.
It is no part of my scheme to relate how this ancient constitution of Europe gradually became wasted and decayed; it is sufficient to remark that in the eighteenth century it was everywhere falling into ruin.4 On the whole, its decline was less marked in the east than in the west of the continent; but on all sides old age and decrepitude were visible.
The progress of this gradual decay of the institutions of the Middle Ages may be followed in the archives of the different nations. It is well known that each manor kept rolls called terriers, in which from century to century were recorded the limits of fiefs and the quit-rents, the dues, the services to be rendered, and the local customs. I have seen rolls of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which are masterpieces of method, perspicuity, concision, and acuteness. The further we advance towards modern times the more obscure, ill-digested, defective, and confused do they become, in spite of the general progress of enlightenment. It seems as if political society became barbarous, while civil society advances towards civilisation.
Even in Germany, where the ancient constitution of Europe had preserved many more of its primitive features than in France, some of the institutions which it had created were already completely destroyed. But we shall not be so well able to appreciate the ravages of time when we take into account what was gone, as when we examine the condition of what was left.
The municipal institutions which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had raised the chief towns of Germany into rich and enlightened small republics, still existed in the eighteenth; but they were a mere semblance of the past. Their ancient traditions seemed to continue in force; the magistrates appointed by them bore the same titles and seemed to perform the same functions; but the activity, the energy, the municipal patriotism, the manly and prolific virtues which they formerly inspired, had disappeared. These ancient institutions appeared to have collapsed without losing the form that distinguished them.5
All the powers of the Middle Ages which where still in existence seemed to be affected by the same disease; all showed symptoms of the same languor and decay. Nay more, whatever was mixed up with the constitution of that time, and had retained a strong impression of it, even without absolutely belonging to those institutions, at once lost its vitality. Thus it was that the aristocracy was seized with senile debility; even political freedom, which had filled the preceding centuries with its achievements, seemed stricken with impotency wherever it preserved the peculiar characteristics impressed upon it by the Middle Ages. Wherever the Provincial Assemblies had maintained their ancient constitution unchanged, they checked instead of furthering the progress of civilisation; they seemed insensible and impervious to the new spirit of the times. Accordingly the hearts of the people turned from them towards their sovereigns. The antiquity of these institutions had not made them venerable: on the contrary, the older they grew the more they fell into discredit; and, strangely enough, they inspired more and more hatred in proportion as their decay rendered them less capable of mischief. ‘The actual state of things,’ said a German writer, who was a friend and contemporary of the period anterior to the French Revolution, ‘seems to have become generally offensive to all, and sometimes contemptible. It is strange to see with what disfavour men now look upon all that is old. New impressions creep into the bosom of our families and disturb their peace. Our very housewives will no longer endure their ancient furniture.’ Nevertheless, at this time Germany, as well as France, enjoyed a high state of social activity and constantly increasing prosperity. But it must be borne in mind that all the elements of life, activity and production, were new, and not only new, but antagonistic to the past.
Royalty no longer had anything in common with the royalty of the Middle Ages, it enjoyed other prerogatives, occupied a different place, was imbued with a different spirit, and inspired different sentiments; the administration of the State spread in all directions upon the ruins of local authorities; the organised array of public officers superseded more and more the government of the nobles. All these new powers employed methods and followed maxims which the men of the Middle Ages had either not known or had condemned; and, indeed, they belong to a state of society of which those men could have formed no idea.
In England, where, at the first glance, the ancient constitution of Europe might still seem in full vigour, the case is the same. Setting aside the ancient names and the old forms, in England the feudal system was substantially abolished in the seventeenth century; all classes of society began to intermingle, the pretensions of birth were effaced, the aristocracy was thrown open, wealth was becoming power, equality was established before the law, public employments were open to all, the press became free, the debates of Parliament public; every one of them new principles, unknown to the society of the Middle Ages. It is precisely these new elements, gradually and skilfully incorporated with the ancient constitution of England, which have revived without endangering it, and filled it with new life and vigour without destroying the ancient forms. In the seventeenth century England was already quite a modern nation, which had still preserved, and, as it were, embalmed some of the relics of the Middle Ages.
This rapid view of the state of things beyond the boundaries of France was essential to the comprehension of what is about to follow; for no one who has seen and studied France only, can ever—I venture to affirm—understand anything of the French Revolution.
CHAPTER V
WHAT WAS THE PECULIAR SCOPE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONThe preceding pages have had no other purpose than to throw some light on the subject in hand, and to facilitate the solution of the questions which I laid down in the beginning, namely, what was the real object of the Revolution? What was its peculiar character? For what precise reason it was made, and what did it effect?
The Revolution was not made, as some have supposed, in order to destroy the authority of religious belief. In spite of appearances, it was essentially a social and political Revolution; and within the circle of social and political institutions it did not tend to perpetuate and give stability to disorder, or (as one of its chief adversaries had said) to methodise anarchy; but rather to increase the power and the rights of public authority. It was not destined (as others have believed) to change the whole character which civilisation had previously assumed, to check its progress, or even essentially to alter any of the fundamental laws upon which human society in Western Europe is based. If we divest it of all the accidental circumstances which altered its aspect in different countries and at various times, and consider only the Revolution itself, we shall clearly perceive that its only effect has been to abolish those political institutions which during several centuries had been in force among the greater part of the European nations, and which are usually designated as feudal institutions, in order to substitute a more uniform and simple state of society and politics, based upon an equality of social condition.
This was quite sufficient to constitute an immense revolution, for not only were these ancient institutions mixed up and interwoven with almost all the religious and political laws of Europe, but they had also given rise to a crowd of ideas, sentiments, habits, and manners which clung around them. Nothing less than a frightful convulsion could suddenly destroy and expel from the social body a part to which all its organs adhered. This made the Revolution appear even greater than it really was; it seemed to destroy everything, for what it did destroy was bound up with, and formed, as it were, one flesh with everything in the social body.
However radical the Revolution may have been, its innovations were, in fact, much less than has been commonly supposed, as I shall show hereafter. What may truly be said is, that it entirely destroyed, or is still destroying (for it is not at an end), every part of the ancient state of society that owed its origin to aristocratic and feudal institutions—everything in any way connected with those institutions, or in any degree, however slight, imbued with their spirit. It spared no part of the old world, save such as had always been foreign to those institutions, or could exist apart from them. Least of all was the Revolution a fortuitous event. It took the world by surprise, it is true, but it was not the less the completion of a long process, the sudden and violent termination of a work which had successively passed before the eyes of ten generations. If it had not taken place, the old social structure would equally have fallen sooner in one place and later in another—only it would have crumbled away by degrees instead of falling with a crash. The Revolution effected on a sudden and by a violent and convulsive effort, without any transition, without forethought, without mercy, that which would have happened little by little if left to itself. This was its work.
It is surprising that this view of the subject, which now seems so easy to discern, should have been so obscured and confused even to the clearest perceptions.
‘Instead of redressing their grievances,’ says Burke of the representatives of the French nation, ‘and improving the fabric of their state, to which they were called by their monarch and sent by their country, they were made to take a very different course. They first destroyed all the balances and counterpoises which serve to fix the State and to give it a steady direction, and which furnish sure correctives to any violent spirit which may prevail in any of the orders. These balances existed in the oldest constitution and in the constitution of all the countries in Europe. These they rashly destroyed, and then they melted down the whole into one incongruous, ill-connected mass.’6
Burke did not perceive that he had before his eyes the very Revolution which was to abolish the ancient common law of Europe; he could not discern that this and no other was the very question at issue.
But why, we may ask, did this Revolution, which was imminent throughout Europe, break out in France rather than elsewhere, and why did it there display certain characteristics which have appeared nowhere else, or at least have appeared only in part? This second question is well worthy of consideration, and the inquiry will form the subject of the following book.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
WHY FEUDAL RIGHTS HAD BECOME MORE ODIOUS TO THE PEOPLE IN FRANCE THAN IN ANY OTHER COUNTRYIt must at first sight excite surprise that the Revolution, whose peculiar object it was, as we have seen, everywhere to abolish the remnant of the institutions of the Middle Ages, did not break out in the countries in which these institutions, still in better preservation, caused the people most to feel their constraint and their rigour, but, on the contrary, in the countries where their effects were least felt; so that the burden seemed most intolerable where it was in reality least heavy.
In no part of Germany, at the close of the eighteenth century, was serfdom as yet completely abolished,7 and in the greater part of Germany the people were still literally adscripti glebæ, as in the Middle Ages. Almost all the soldiers who fought in the armies of Frederic II. and of Maria Theresa were in reality serfs.8 In most of the German States, as late as 1788, a peasant could not quit his domain, and if he quitted it he might be pursued in all places wherever he could be found, and brought back by force. In that domain he lived subject to the seignorial jurisdiction which controlled his domestic life and punished his intemperance or his sloth. He could neither improve his condition, nor change his calling, nor marry without the good pleasure of his master. To the service of that master a large portion of his time was due. Labour rents (corvées) existed to their full extent, and absorbed in some of these countries three days in the week. The peasant rebuilt and repaired the mansion of the lord, carted his produce to market, drove his carriage, and went on his errands. Several years of the peasant’s early life were spent in the domestic service of the manor-house. The serf might, however, become the owner of land, but his property always remained very incomplete. He was obliged to till his field in a certain manner under the eye of the master, and he could neither dispose of it nor mortgage it at will. In some cases he was compelled to sell its produce; in others he was restrained from selling it; his obligation to cultivate the ground was absolute. Even his inheritance did not descend without deduction to his offspring; a fine was commonly subtracted by the lord.
I am not seeking out these provisions in obsolete laws. They are to be met with even in the Code framed by Frederic the Great and promulgated by his successor at the very time of the outbreak of the French Revolution.9
Nothing of the kind had existed in France for a long period of time. The peasant came, and went, and bought, and sold, and dealt, and laboured, as he pleased. The last traces of serfdom could only be detected in one or two of the eastern provinces annexed to France by conquest; everywhere else the institution had disappeared; and indeed its abolition had occurred so long before that even the date of it was forgotten. The researches of archæologists of our own day have proved that as early as the thirteenth century serfdom was no longer to be met with in Normandy.
But in the condition of the people in France another and a still greater revolution had taken place. The French peasant had not only ceased to be a serf; he had become an Owner of Land. This fact is still at the present time so imperfectly established, and its consequences, as will presently be seen, have been so remarkable, that I must be permitted to pause for a moment to examine it.
It has long been believed that the subdivision of landed property in France dates from the Revolution of 1789, and was only the result of that Revolution. The contrary is demonstrable by every species of evidence.
Twenty years at least before that Revolution, Agricultural Societies were in existence which already deplored the excessive subdivision of the soil. ‘The division of inheritances,’ said M. de Turgot, about the same time, ‘is such that what sufficed for a single family is shared among five or six children. These children and their families can therefore no longer subsist exclusively by the land.’ Necker said a few years later that there was in France an immensity of small rural properties.
I have met the following expressions in a secret Report made to one of the provincial Intendants a few years before the Revolution:—‘Inheritances are divided in an equal and alarming manner, and as every one wishes to have something of everything, and everywhere, the plots of land are infinitely divided and perpetually subdivided.’ Might not this sentence have been written in our days?
I have myself taken the infinite pains to reconstruct, as it were, the survey of landed property as it existed in France before the Revolution, and I have in some cases effected my object. In pursuance of the law of 1790, which established the land-tax, each parish had to frame a return of the landed properties then existing within its boundaries. These returns have for the most part disappeared; nevertheless I have found them in a few villages, and by comparing them with the rolls of the present holders, I have found that, in these villages, the number of landed proprietors at that time amounted to one-half, frequently to two-thirds, of their present number: a fact which is the more remarkable if it be remembered that the total population of France has augmented by more than one-fourth since that period.
Already, as at the present time, the love of the peasant for property in land was intense, and all the passions which the possession of the soil has engendered in his nature were already inflamed. ‘Land is always sold above its value,’ said an excellent contemporary observer; ‘which arises from the passion of all the inhabitants to become owners of the soil. All the savings of the lower orders which elsewhere are placed out at private interest, or in the public securities, are intended in France for the purchase of land.’
Amongst the novelties which Arthur Young observed in France, when he visited that country for the first time, none struck him more than the great division of the soil among the peasantry. He averred that half the soil of France belonged to them in fee. ‘I had no idea,’ he often says, ‘of such a state of things;’ and it is true that such a state of things existed at that time nowhere but in France, or in the immediate neighbourhood of France.
In England there had been peasant landowners, but the number of them had already considerably decreased. In Germany there had been at all times and in all parts of the country a certain number of peasant freeholders, who held portions of the soil in fee. The peculiar and often eccentric laws which regulated the property of these peasants are to be met with in the oldest of the Germanic customs; but this species of property was always of an exceptional character, and the number of these small proprietors was very limited.10
The districts of Germany in which, at the close of the eighteenth century, the peasants were possessed of land and lived almost as freely as in France, lay on the banks of the Rhine.11 In those same districts the revolutionary passions of France spread with the utmost velocity, and have always been most intense. The tracts of Germany which remained, on the contrary, for the longest time inaccessible to these passions, are those where no such tenures of land had yet been introduced. The observation deserves to be made.
It is, then, a vulgar error to suppose that the subdivision of landed property in France dates from the Revolution. This state of things is far older. The Revolution, it is true, caused the lands of the Church and a great portion of the lands of the nobility to be sold; but if any one will take the trouble, as I have sometimes done, to refer to the actual returns and entries of these sales, it will be seen that most of these lands were purchased by persons who already held other lands; so that though the property changed hands, the number of proprietors increased far less than is supposed. There was already an immensity of these persons, to borrow the somewhat ambitious but, in this case, not inaccurate expression of M. Necker.
The effect of the Revolution was not to divide the soil, but to liberate it for a moment. All these small landowners were, in reality, ill at ease in the cultivation of their property, and had to bear many charges or easements on the land which they could not shake off.
These charges were no doubt onerous.12 But the cause which made them appear insupportable was precisely that which might have seemed calculated to diminish the burden of them. The peasants of France had been released, more than in any other part of Europe, from the government of their lords, by a revolution not less momentous than that which had made them owners of the soil.
Although what is termed in France the Ancien Régime is still very near to us, since we live in daily intercourse with men born under its laws, that period seems already lost in the night of time. The radical revolution which separates us from it has produced the effect of ages: it has obliterated all that it has not destroyed. Few persons therefore can now give an accurate answer to the simple question—How were the rural districts of France administered before 1789? And indeed no answer can be given to that question with precision and minuteness, without having studied, not books, but the administrative records of that period.
It is often said that the French nobility, which had long ceased to take part in the government of the State, preserved to the last the administration of the rural districts—the Seigneurs governed the peasantry. This again is very like a mistake.
In the eighteenth century all the affairs of the parish were managed by a certain number of parochial officers, who were no longer the agents of the manor or domain, and whom the Lord no longer selected. Some of these persons were nominated by the Intendant of the province, others were elected by the peasants themselves. The duty of these authorities was to assess the taxes, to repair the church, to build schools, to convoke and preside over the vestry or parochial meeting. They attended to the property of the parish and determined the application of it—they sued and were sued in its name. Not only the lord of the domain no longer conducted the administration of these small local affairs, but he did not even superintend it. All the parish officers were under the government or the control of the central power, as we shall show in a subsequent chapter. Nay, more, the Seigneur had almost ceased to act as the representative of the Crown in the parish, or as the channel of communication between the King and his subjects. He was no longer expected to apply in the parish the general laws of the realm, to call out the militia, to collect the taxes, to promulgate the mandates of the sovereign, or to distribute the bounty of the Crown. All these duties and all these rights belonged to others. The Seigneur was in fact no longer anything but an inhabitant of the parish, separated by his own immunities and privileges from all the other inhabitants. His rank was different, not his power. The Seigneur is only the principal inhabitant was the instruction constantly given by the Provincial Intendants to their Sub-delegates.