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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eve of the French Revolution
+by Edward J. Lowell
+
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+Title: The Eve of the French Revolution
+
+Author: Edward J. Lowell
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6301]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 22, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ***
+
+
+
+
+Tonya Allen, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD J. LOWELL
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+There are two ways in which the French Revolution may be considered. We
+may look at the great events which astonished and horrified Europe and
+America: the storming of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the
+massacres of September, the Terror, and the restoration of order by
+Napoleon. The study of these events must always be both interesting and
+profitable, and we cannot wonder that historians, scenting the
+approaching battle, have sometimes hurried over the comparatively
+peaceful country that separated them from it. They have accepted easy
+and ready-made solutions for the cause of the trouble. Old France has
+been lurid in their eyes, in the light of her burning country-houses.
+The Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, they think, must have been
+wretches, or they could not so have suffered. The social fabric, they
+are sure, was rotten indeed, or it would never have gone to pieces so
+suddenly.
+
+There is, however, another way of looking at that great revolution of
+which we habitually set the beginning in 1789. That date is, indeed,
+momentous; more so than any other in modern history. It marks the
+outbreak in legislation and politics of ideas which had already been
+working for a century, and which have changed the face of the civilized
+world. These ideas are not all true nor all noble. They have in them a
+large admixture of speculative error and of spiritual baseness. They
+require to-day to be modified and readjusted. But they represent sides
+of truth which in 1789, and still more in 1689, were too much overlooked
+and neglected. They suited the stage of civilization which the world had
+reached, and men needed to emphasize them. Their very exaggeration was
+perhaps necessary to enable them to fight, and in a measure to supplant,
+the older doctrines which were in possession of the human mind.
+Induction, as the sole method of reasoning, sensation as the sole origin
+of ideas, may not be the final and only truth; but they were very much
+needed in the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and
+they found philosophers to elaborate them, and enthusiasts to preach
+them. They made their way chiefly on French soil in the decades
+preceding 1789.
+
+The history of French society at that time has of late years attracted
+much attention in France. Diligent scholars have studied it from many
+sides. I have used their work freely, and acknowledgment will be found
+in the foot-notes; but I cannot resist the pleasure of mentioning in
+this preface a few of those to whom I am most indebted; and first M.
+Albert Babeau, without whose careful researches several chapters of this
+book could hardly have been written. His studies in archives, as well as
+in printed memoirs and travels, have brought much of the daily life of
+old France into the clearest light. He has in an eminent degree the
+great and thoroughly French quality of telling us what we want to know.
+His impartiality rivals his lucidity, while his thoroughness is such
+that it is hard gleaning the old fields after him.
+
+Hardly less is my indebtedness to the late M. Aimé Chérest, whose
+unfinished work, "La Chute de l'ancien régime," gives the most
+interesting and philosophical narrative of the later political events
+preceding the meeting of the Estates General. To the great names of de
+Tocqueville and of Taine I can but render a passing homage. The former
+may be said to have opened the modern mind to the proper method of
+studying the eighteenth century in France, the latter is, perhaps, the
+most brilliant of writers on the subject; and no one has recently
+written, or will soon write, about the time when the Revolution was
+approaching without using the books of both of them. And I must not
+forget the works of the Vicomte de Broc, of M. Boiteau, and of M.
+Rambaud, to which I have sometimes turned for suggestion or
+confirmation.
+
+Passing to another branch of the subject, I gladly acknowledge my debt
+to the Right Honorable John Morley. Differing from him in opinion almost
+wherever it is possible to have an opinion, I have yet found him
+thoroughly fair and accurate in matters of fact. His books on Voltaire,
+Rousseau, and the Encyclopaedists, taken together, form the most
+satisfactory history of French philosophy in the eighteenth century with
+which I am acquainted.
+
+Of the writers of monographs, and of the biographers, I will not speak
+here in detail, although some of their books have been of very great
+service to me. Such are those of M. Bailly, M. de Lavergne, M. Horn, M.
+Stourm, and M. Charles Gomel, on the financial history of France; M. de
+Poncins and M. Desjardins, on the cahiers; M. Rocquain on the
+revolutionary spirit before the revolution, the Comte de Luçay and M. de
+Lavergne, on the ministerial power and on the provincial assemblies and
+estates; M. Desnoiresterres, on Voltaire; M. Scherer, on Diderot; M. de
+Loménie, on Beaumarchais; and many others; and if, after all, it is the
+old writers, the contemporaries, on whom I have most relied, without the
+assistance of these modern writers I certainly could not have found them
+all.
+
+In treating of the Philosophers and other writers of the eighteenth
+century I have not endeavored to give an abridgment of their books, but
+to explain such of their doctrines as seemed to me most important and
+influential. This I have done, where it was possible, in their own
+language. I have quoted where I could; and in many cases where quotation
+marks will not be found, the only changes from the actual expression of
+the author, beyond those inevitable in translation, have been the
+transference from direct to oblique speech, or some other trifling
+alterations rendered necessary in my judgment by the exigencies of
+grammar. On the other hand, I have tried to translate ideas and phrases
+rather than words.
+
+EDWARD J. LOWELL.
+
+June 24, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+I. THE KING AND THE ADMINISTRATION
+
+II. LOUIS XVI. AND HIS COURT
+
+III. THE CLERGY
+
+IV. THE CHURCH AND HER ADVERSARIES
+
+V. THE CHURCH AND VOLTAIRE
+
+VI. THE NOBILITY
+
+VII. THE ARMY
+
+VIII. THE COURTS OF LAW
+
+IX. EQUALITY AND LIBERTY
+
+X. MONTESQUIEU
+
+XI. PARIS
+
+XII. THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS
+
+XIII. THE COUNTRY
+
+XIV. TAXATION
+
+XV. FINANCE
+
+XVI. "THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA"
+
+XVII. HELVETIUS, HOLBACH, AND CHASTELLUX
+
+XVIII. ROUSSEAU'S POLITICAL WRITINGS
+
+XIX. "LA NOUVELLE HÉLOÏSE" AND "ÉMILE"
+
+XX. THE PAMPHLETS
+
+XXI. THE CAHIERS
+
+XXII. SOCIAL AND ECONOMICAL MATTERS IN THE CAHIERS
+
+XXIII CONCLUSION
+
+INDEX OF EDITIONS CITED
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+It is characteristic of the European family of nations, as distinguished
+from the other great divisions of mankind, that among them different
+ideals of government and of life arise from time to time, and that
+before the whole of a community has entirely adopted one set of
+principles, the more advanced thinkers are already passing on to
+another. Throughout the western part of continental Europe, from the
+sixteenth to the eighteenth century, absolute monarchy was superseding
+feudalism; and in France the victory of the newer over the older system
+was especially thorough. Then, suddenly, although not quite without
+warning, a third system was brought face to face with the two others.
+Democracy was born full-grown and defiant. It appealed at once to two
+sides of men's minds, to pure reason and to humanity. Why should a few
+men be allowed to rule a great multitude as deserving as themselves? Why
+should the mass of mankind lead lives full of labor and sorrow? These
+questions are difficult to answer. The Philosophers of the eighteenth
+century pronounced them unanswerable. They did not in all cases advise
+the establishment of democratic government as a cure for the wrongs
+which they saw in the world. But they attacked the things that were,
+proposing other things, more or less practicable, in their places. It
+seemed to these men no very difficult task to reconstitute society and
+civilization, if only the faulty arrangements of the past could be done
+away. They believed that men and things might be governed by a few
+simple laws, obvious and uniform. These natural laws they did not make
+any great effort to discover; they rather took them for granted; and
+while they disagreed in their statement of principles, they still
+believed their principles to be axiomatic. They therefore undertook to
+demolish simultaneously all established things which to their minds did
+not rest on absolute logical right. They bent themselves to their task
+with ardent faith and hope.
+
+The larger number of people, who had been living quietly in the existing
+order, were amused and interested. The attacks of the Philosophers
+seemed to them just in many cases, the reasoning conclusive. But in
+their hearts they could not believe in the reality and importance of the
+assault. Some of those most interested in keeping the world as it was,
+honestly or frivolously joined in the cry for reform and for
+destruction.
+
+At last an attempt was made to put the new theories into practice. The
+social edifice, slowly constructed through centuries, to meet the
+various needs of different generations, began to tumble about the
+astonished ears of its occupants. Then all who recognized that they had
+something at stake in civilization as it existed were startled and
+alarmed. Believers in the old religion, in old forms of government, in
+old manners and morals, men in fear for their heads and men in fear for
+their estates, were driven together. Absolutism and aristocracy,
+although entirely opposed to each other in principle, were forced into
+an unnatural alliance. From that day to this, the history of the world
+has been largely made up of the contests of the supporters of the new
+ideas, resting on natural law and on logic, with those of the older
+forms of thought and customs of life, having their sanctions in
+experience. It was in France that the long struggle began and took its
+form. It is therefore interesting to consider the government of that
+country, and its material and moral condition, at the time when the new
+ideas first became prominent and forced their way toward fulfillment.
+
+It is seldom in the time of the generation in which they are propounded
+that new theories of life and its relations bear their full fruit. Only
+those doctrines which a man learns in his early youth seem to him so
+completely certain as to deserve to be pushed nearly to their last
+conclusions. The Frenchman of the reign of Louis XV. listened eagerly to
+Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau. Their descendants, in the time of
+his grandson, first attempted to apply the ideas of those teachers.
+While I shall endeavor in this book to deal with social and political
+conditions existing in the reign of Louis XVI., I shall be obliged to
+turn to that of his predecessor for the origin of French thoughts which
+acted only in the last quarter of the century.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE KING AND THE ADMINISTRATION.
+
+
+When Louis XVI. came to the throne in the year 1774, he inherited a
+power nearly absolute in theory over all the temporal affairs of his
+kingdom. In certain parts of the country the old assemblies or
+Provincial Estates still met at fixed times, but their functions were
+very closely limited. The _Parliaments_, or high courts of justice,
+which had claimed the right to impose some check on legislation, had
+been browbeaten by Louis XIV., and the principal one, that of Paris, had
+been dissolved by his successor. The young king appeared, therefore, to
+be left face to face with a nation over which he was to exercise direct
+and despotic power. It was a recognized maxim that the royal was law.
+[Footnote: Si veut le roi, si veut la loi.] Moreover, for more than two
+centuries, the tendency of continental governments had been toward
+absolutism. Among the great desires of men in those ages had been
+organization and strong government. A despotism was considered more
+favorable to these things than an aristocracy. Democracy existed as yet
+only in the dreams of philosophers, the history of antiquity, and the
+example of a few inconsiderable countries, like the Swiss cantons. It
+was soon to be brought into greater prominence by the American
+Revolution. As yet, however, the French nation looked hopefully to the
+king for government, and for such measures of reform as were deemed
+necessary. A king of France who had reigned justly and strongly would
+have received the moral support of the most respectable part of his
+subjects. These longed for a fair distribution of public burdens and for
+freedom from unnecessary restraint, rather than for a share in the
+government. The admiration for the English constitution, which was
+commonly expressed, was as yet rather theoretic than practical, and was
+not of a nature to detract from the loyalty undoubtedly felt for the
+French crown.
+
+Every monarch, however despotic in theory, is in fact surrounded by many
+barriers which it takes a strong man to overleap. And so it was with the
+king of France. Although he was the fountain of justice, his judicial
+powers were exercised through magistrates many of whom had bought their
+places, and could therefore not be dispossessed without measures that
+were felt to be unjust and almost revolutionary. The breaking up of the
+Parliament of Paris, in the latter years of the preceding reign, had
+thrown the whole body of judges and lawyers into a state of discontent
+bordering on revolt. The new court of justice which had superseded the
+old one, the Parlement Maupeou as it was called, after the name of the
+chancellor who had advised its formation, was neither liked nor
+respected. It was one of the first acts of the government of Louis XVI.
+to restore the ancient Parliament of Paris, whose rights over
+legislation will be considered later, but which exercised at least a
+certain moral restraint on the royal authority.
+
+But it was in the administrative part of the government, where the king
+seemed most free, that he was in fact most hampered. A vast system of
+public offices had been gradually formed, with regulations, traditions,
+and a professional spirit. This it was which had displaced the old
+feudal order, substituting centralization for vigorous local life.
+
+The king's councils, which had become the central governing power of the
+state, were five in number. They were, however, closely connected
+together. The king himself was supposed to sit in all of them, and
+appears to have attended three with tolerable regularity. When there was
+a prime minister, he also sat in the three that were most important. The
+controller of the finances was a member of four of the councils, and the
+chancellor of three at least. As these were the most important men in
+the government, their presence in the several councils secured unity of
+action. The boards, moreover, were small, not exceeding nine members in
+the case of the first four in dignity and power: the Councils of State,
+of Despatches, of Finance, and of Commerce. The fifth, the Privy
+Council, or Council of Parties, was larger, and served in a measure as a
+training-school for the others. It comprised, beside all the members of
+the superior councils, thirty councilors of state, several intendants of
+finance, and eighty lawyers known as _maîtres des requêtes_.
+[Footnote: De Lucay, _Les Secrétaires d'État, 418, 419, 424, 442, 448,
+449.]
+
+The functions of the various councils were not clearly defined and
+distinguished. Many questions would be submitted to one or another of
+them as chance or influence might direct. Under each there were a number
+of public offices, called bureaux, where business was prepared, and
+where the smaller matters were practically settled. By the royal
+councils and their subordinate public offices, France was governed to an
+extent and with a minuteness hardly comprehensible to any one not
+accustomed to centralized government.
+
+The councils did nothing in their own name. The king it was who
+nominally settled everything with their advice. The final decision of
+every question was supposed to rest with the monarch himself. Every
+important matter was in fact submitted to him. Thus in the government of
+the country, the king could at any moment take as much of the burden
+upon his own shoulders as they were strong enough to bear.
+
+The legislative power was exercised by the councils. It was a question
+not entirely settled whether their edicts possessed full force of law
+without the assent of the high courts or parliaments. But with the
+councils rested, at least, all the initiative of legislation. The
+process of lawmaking began with them, and by them the laws were shaped
+and drafted.
+
+They also possessed no small part of the judiciary power. The custom of
+removing private causes from the regular courts, and trying them before
+one or another of the royal councils, was a great and, I think, a
+growing one. This appellate jurisdiction was due in theory partly to the
+doctrine that the king was the origin of justice; and partly to the idea
+that political matters could not safely be left to ordinary tribunals.
+The notion that the king owes justice to all his subjects and that it is
+an act of grace, perhaps even a duty on his part, to administer it in
+person when it is possible to do so, is as old as monarchy itself.
+
+Solomon in his palace, Saint Louis under his oak, when they decided
+between suitors before them, were exercising the inherent rights of
+sovereignty, as understood in their day. The late descendants of the
+royal saint did not decide causes themselves except on rare occasions,
+but in questions between parties followed the decision of the majority
+of the council that heard the case. Thus the ancient custom of seeking
+justice from a royal judge merely served to transfer jurisdiction to an
+irregular tribunal.[Footnote: De Lucay, _Les Secrétaires d'État_,
+465.]
+
+The executive power was both nominally and actually in the hands of the
+councils. Great questions of foreign and domestic policy could be
+settled only in the Council of State.[Footnote: Sometimes called
+Conseil d'en haut, or Upper Council.] But the whole administration
+tended more and more in the same direction. Questions of detail were
+submitted from all parts of France. Hardly a bridge was built or a
+steeple repaired in Burgundy or Provence without a permission signed by
+the king in council and countersigned by a secretary of state. The
+Council of Despatches exercised disciplinary jurisdiction over authors,
+printers, and booksellers. It governed schools, and revised their rules
+and regulations. It laid out roads, dredged rivers, and built canals. It
+dealt with the clergy, decided differences between bishops and their
+chapters, authorized dioceses and parishes to borrow money. It took
+general charge of towns and municipal organization. The Council of
+Finance and the Council of Commerce had equally minute questions to
+decide in their own departments.[Footnote: De Lucay, _Les Secrétaires
+d'État_, 418. For this excessive centralization, see, also, De
+Tocqueville, _L'ancien Régime et la Révolution_, passim.]
+
+Evidently the king and his ministers could not give their personal
+attention to all these matters. Minor questions were in fact settled by
+the bureaux and the secretaries of state, and the king did little more
+than sign the necessary license. Thus matters of local interest were
+practically decided by subordinate officers in Paris or Versailles,
+instead of being arranged in the places where they were really
+understood. If a village in Languedoc wanted a new parsonage, neither
+the inhabitants of the place, nor any one who had ever been within a
+hundred miles of it, was allowed to decide on the plan and to regulate
+the expense, but the whole matter was reported to an office in the
+capital and there settled by a clerk. This barbarous system, which is by
+no means obsolete in Europe, is known in modern times by the barbarous
+name of bureaucracy.
+
+The royal councils and their subordinate bureaux had their agents in the
+country. These were the intendants, men who deserve attention, for by
+them a very large part of the actual government was carried on. They
+were thirty-two in number, and governed each a territory, called a
+généralité. The Intendants were not great lords, nor the owners of
+offices that had become assimilated to property; they were hard-working
+men, delegated by the council, under the great seal, and liable to be
+promoted or recalled at the royal pleasure. They were chosen from the
+class of _maîtres des requêtes_, and were therefore all lawyers and
+members of the Privy Council. Thus the unity of the administration in
+Versailles and the provinces was constantly maintained.
+
+It had originally been the function of the intendants to act as legal
+inspectors, making the circuit of the provincial towns for the purpose
+of securing uniformity and the proper administration of justice in the
+various local courts.[Footnote: Du Boys, i. 517.] They retained to the
+end of the monarchy the privilege of sitting in all the courts of law
+within their districts.[Footnote: De Lucay, _Les Assemblées
+provinciales_, 31.] But their duties and powers had grown to be far
+greater than those of any officer merely judicial. The intendant had
+charge of the interests of the Catholic religion and worship, and the
+care of buildings devoted to religious purposes. He also controlled the
+Protestants, and all their affairs. He encouraged and regulated
+agriculture and commerce. He settled many questions concerning military
+matters and garrisons. The militia was entirely managed by him. He
+cooperated with the courts of justice in the control of the police. He
+had charge of post-roads and post-offices, stage coaches, books and
+printing, royal or privileged lotteries, and the suppression of illegal
+gambling. He was, in fact, the direct representative of the royal power,
+and was in constant correspondence with the king's minister of state.
+And as the power of the crown had constantly grown for two centuries, so
+the power of the intendant had constantly grown with it, tending to the
+centralization and unity of France and to the destruction of local
+liberties.
+
+As the intendants were educated as lawyers rather than as
+administrators, and as they were often transferred from one province
+to another after a short term of service, they did not acquire full
+knowledge of their business. Moreover, they did not reside regularly
+in the part of the country which they governed, but made only flying
+visits to it, and spent most of their time near the centre of
+influence, in Paris or Versailles. Yet their opportunities for doing
+good or harm were almost unlimited. Their executive command was nearly
+uncontrolled; for where there were no provincial estates, the
+inhabitants could not send a petition to the king except through the
+hands of the intendant, and any complaint against that officer was
+referred to himself for an answer.[Footnote: For the intendants, see
+Necker, _De l'administration_, ii. 469, iii. 379. Ibid., _Mémoire au
+roi sur l'établissement des administrations provinciales_, passim. De
+Lucay, _Les Assemblées provinciales_, 29. Mercier, _Tableau de Paris_,
+ix. 85. The official title of the intendant was _commissaire
+départi_.]
+
+The intendants were represented in their provinces by subordinate
+officers called sub-delegates, each one of whom ruled his petty district
+or _élection_. These men were generally local lawyers or
+magistrates. Their pay was small, they had no hope of advancement, and
+they were under great temptation to use their extensive powers in a
+corrupt and oppressive manner.[Footnote: De Lucay, _Les Assemblées
+provinciales_, 42, etc.]
+
+Beside the intendant, we find in every province a royal governor. The
+powers of this official had gradually waned before those of his rival.
+He was always a great lord, drawing a great salary and maintaining great
+state, but doing little service, and really of far less importance to
+the province than the new man. He was a survival of the old feudal
+government, superseded by the centralized monarchy of which the
+intendant was the representative.[Footnote: The _generalité_
+governed by the intendant, and the _province_ to which the royal
+governor was appointed, were not always coterminous.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOUIS XVI. AND HIS COURT.
+
+
+A centralized government, when it is well managed and carefully watched
+from above, may reach a degree of efficiency and quickness of action
+which a government of distributed local powers cannot hope to equal. But
+if a strong central government become disorganized, if inefficiency, or
+idleness, or, above all, dishonesty, once obtain a ruling place in it,
+the whole governing body is diseased. The honest men who may find
+themselves involved in any inferior part of the administration will
+either fall into discouraged acquiescence, or break their hearts and
+ruin their fortunes in hopeless revolt. Nothing but long years of
+untiring effort and inflexible will on the part of the ruler, with power
+to change his agents at his discretion, can restore order and honesty.
+
+There is no doubt that the French administrative body at the time when
+Louis XVI. began to reign, was corrupt and self-seeking. In the
+management of the finances and of the army, illegitimate profits were
+made. But this was not the worst evil from which the public service was
+suffering. France was in fact governed by what in modern times is called
+"a ring." The members of such an organization pretend to serve the
+sovereign, or the public, and in some measure actually do so; but their
+rewards are determined by intrigue and favor, and are entirely
+disproportionate to their services. They generally prefer jobbery to
+direct stealing, and will spend a million of the state's money in a
+needless undertaking, in order to divert a few thousands into their own
+pockets.
+
+They hold together against all the world, while trying to circumvent
+each other. Such a ring in old France was the court. By such a ring will
+every country be governed, where the sovereign who possesses the
+political power is weak in moral character or careless of the public
+interest; whether that sovereign be a monarch, a chamber, or the mass of
+the people.[Footnote: "Quand, dans un royaume, il y a plus d'avantage à
+faire sa cour qu'à faire son devoir, tout est perdu." Montesquieu, vii.
+176, (_Pensées diverses_.)]
+
+Louis XVI., king of France and of Navarre, was more dull than stupid,
+and weaker in will than in intellect. In him the hobbledehoy period had
+been unusually prolonged, and strangers at court were astonished to see
+a prince of nineteen years of age running after a footman to tickle him
+while his hands were full of dirty clothes.[Footnote: Swinburne, i.
+11.] The clumsy youth grew up into a shy and awkward man, unable to find
+at will those accents of gracious politeness which are most useful to
+the great. Yet people who had been struck at first only with his
+awkwardness were sometimes astonished to find in him a certain amount of
+education, a memory for facts, and a reasonable judgment.[Footnote:
+Campan, ii. 231. Bertrand de Moleville, _Histoire_, i. Introd.;
+_Mémoires_, i. 221.] Among his predecessors he had set himself
+Henry IV. as a model, probably without any very accurate idea of the
+character of that monarch; and he had fully determined he would do what
+in him lay to make his people happy. He was, moreover, thoroughly
+conscientious, and had a high sense of the responsibility of his great
+calling. He was not indolent, although heavy, and his courage, which was
+sorely tested, was never broken. With these virtues he might have made a
+good king, had he possessed firmness of will enough to support a good
+minister, or to adhere to a good policy. But such strength had not been
+given him. Totally incapable of standing by himself, he leant
+successively, or simultaneously, on his aunt, his wife, his ministers,
+his courtiers, as ready to change his policy as his adviser. Yet it was
+part of his weakness to be unwilling to believe himself under the
+guidance of any particular person; he set a high value on his own
+authority, and was inordinately jealous of it. No one, therefore, could
+acquire a permanent influence. Thus a well-meaning man became the worst
+of sovereigns; for the first virtue of a master is consistency, and no
+subordinate can follow out with intelligent zeal today a policy which he
+knows may be subverted tomorrow.
+
+The apologists of Louis XVI. are fond of speaking of him as
+"virtuous." The adjective is singularly ill-chosen. His faults were
+of the will more than of the understanding. To have a vague notion of
+what is right, to desire it in a general way, and to lack the moral
+force to do it,--surely this is the very opposite of virtue.
+
+The French court, which was destined to have a very great influence on
+the course of events in this reign and in the beginning of the French
+Revolution, was composed of the people about the king's person. The
+royal family and the members of the higher nobility were admitted into
+the circle by right of birth, but a large place could be obtained only
+by favor. It was the court that controlled most appointments, for no
+king could know all applicants personally and intimately. The stream of
+honor and emolument from the royal fountain-head was diverted, by the
+ministers and courtiers, into their own channels. Louis XV had been led
+by his mistresses; Louis XVI was turned about by the last person who
+happened to speak to him. The courtiers, in their turn, were swayed by
+their feelings, or their interests. They formed parties and
+combinations, and intrigued for or against each other. They made
+bargains, they gave and took bribes. In all these intrigues, bribes, and
+bargains, the court ladies had a great share. They were as corrupt as
+the men, and as frivolous. It is probable that in no government did
+women ever exercise so great an influence.
+
+The factions into which the court was divided tended to group themselves
+round certain rich and influential families. Such were the Noailles, an
+ambitious and powerful house, with which Lafayette was connected by
+marriage; the Broglies, one of whom had held the thread of the secret
+diplomacy which Louis XV. had carried on behind the backs of his
+acknowledged ministers; the Polignacs, new people, creatures of Queen
+Marie Antoinette; the Rohans, through the influence of whose great name
+an unworthy member of the family was to rise to high dignity in the
+church and the state, and then to cast a deep shadow on the darkening
+popularity of that ill-starred princess. Such families as these formed
+an upper class among nobles, and the members firmly believed in their
+own prescriptive right to the best places. The poorer nobility, on the
+other hand, saw with great jealousy the supremacy of the court families.
+They insisted that there was and should be but one order of nobility,
+all whose members were equal among themselves.[Footnote: See among
+other places the Instructions of the Nobility of Blois to the deputies,
+_Archives parlementaires_, ii. 385.]
+
+The courtiers, on their side, thought themselves a different order of
+beings from the rest of the nation. The ceremony of presentation was the
+passport into their society, but by no means all who possessed this
+formal title were held to belong to the inner circle. Women who came to
+court but once a week, although of great family, were known as "Sunday
+ladies." The true courtier lived always in the refulgent presence of his
+sovereign.[Footnote: Campan, iii. 89.]
+
+The court was considered a perfectly legitimate power, although much
+hated at times, and bearing, very properly, a large share of the odium
+of misgovernment. The idea of its legitimacy is impressed on the
+language of diplomacy, and we still speak of the Court of St. James, the
+Court of Vienna, as powers to be dealt with. Under a monarchy, people do
+not always distinguish in their own minds between the good of the state
+and the personal enjoyment of the monarch, nor is the doctrine that the
+king exists for his people by any means fully recognized. When the Count
+of Artois told the Parliament of Paris in 1787 that they knew that the
+expenses of the king could not be regulated by his receipts, but that
+his receipts must be governed by his expenses, he spoke a half-truth;
+yet it had probably not occurred to him that there was any difference
+between the necessity of keeping up an efficient army, and the
+desirability of having hounds, coaches, and palaces. He had not
+reflected that it might be essential to the honor of France to feed the
+old soldiers in the Hotel des Invalides, and quite superfluous to pay
+large sums to generals who had never taken the field and to colonels who
+seldom visited their regiments. The courtiers fully believed that to
+interfere with their salaries was to disturb the most sacred rights of
+property. In 1787, when the strictest economy was necessary, the king
+united his "Great Stables" and "Small Stables," throwing the Duke of
+Coigny, who had charge of the latter, out of place. Although great pains
+were taken to spare the duke's feelings and his pocket, he was very
+angry at the change, and there was a violent scene between him and the
+king. "We were really provoked, the Duke of Coigny and I," said Louis
+good-naturedly afterwards, "but I think if he had thrashed me, I should
+have forgiven him." The duke, however, was not so placable as the king.
+Holding another appointment, he resigned it in a huff. The queen was
+displeased at this mark of temper, and remarked to a courtier that the
+Duke of Coigny did not appreciate the consideration that had been shown
+him.
+
+"Madam," was the reply, "he is losing too much to be content with
+compliments. It is too bad to live in a country where you are not sure
+of possessing today what you had yesterday. Such things used to take
+place only in Turkey."[Footnote: Besenval, ii. 255.]
+
+It is not easy, in looking at the French government in the eighteenth
+century, to decide where the working administration ended, and where the
+useless court that answered no real purpose began. The ministers of
+state were reckoned a part of the court. So were many of the upper
+civil-servants, the king's military staff, and in a sense, the guards
+and household troops. So were the "great services," partaking of the
+nature of public offices, ceremonial honors, and domestic labors. Of
+this kind were the Household, the Chamber, the Antechamber and Closet,
+the Great and the Little Stables, with their Grand Squire, First Squire
+and pages, who had to prove nobility to the satisfaction of the royal
+herald. There was the department of hunting and that of buildings, a
+separate one for royal journeys, one for the guard, another for police,
+yet another for ceremonies. There were five hundred officers "of the
+mouth," table-bearers distinct from chair-bearers. There were tradesmen,
+from apothecaries and armorers at one end of the list to saddle-makers,
+tailors and violinists at the other.
+
+When a baby is at last born to Marie Antoinette (only a girl, to every
+one's disappointment), a rumor gets about that the child will be
+tended with great simplicity. The queen's mother, the Empress Maria
+Theresa, in distant Vienna, takes alarm. She does not approve of "the
+present fashion according to Rousseau" by which young princes are
+brought up like peasants. Her ambassador in Paris hastens to reassure
+her. The infant will not lack reasonable ceremony. The service of her
+royal person alone will employ nearly eighty attendants.[Footnote:
+Mercy-Argenteau, iii. 283, 292.] The military and civil households of
+the king and of the royal family are said to have consisted of about
+fifteen thousand souls, and to have cost forty-five million francs per
+annum. The holders of many of the places served but three months
+apiece out of every year, so that four officers and four salaries were
+required, instead of one.
+
+With such a system as this we cannot wonder that the men who
+administered the French government were generally incapable and
+self-seeking. Most of them were politicians rather than
+administrators, and cared more for their places than for their
+country. Of the few conscientious and patriotic men who obtained
+power, the greater number lost it very speedily. Turgot and
+Malesherbes did not long remain in the Council. Necker, more cautious
+and conservative, could keep his place no better. The jealousy of
+Louis was excited, and he feared the domination of a man of whom the
+general opinion of posterity has been that he was wanting in
+decision. Calonne was sent away as soon as he tried to turn from
+extravagance to economy. Vergennes alone, of the good servants,
+retained his office; perhaps because he had little to do with
+financial matters; perhaps, also, because he knew how to keep himself
+decidedly subordinate to whatever power was in the ascendant. The
+lasting influences were that of Maurepas, an old man who cared for
+nothing but himself, whose great object in government was to be
+without a rival, and whose art was made up of tact and gayety; and
+that of the rival factions of Lamballe and Polignac, guiding the
+queen, which were simply rapacious.
+
+The courtiers and the numerous people who were drawn to Versailles by
+business or curiosity were governed by a system of rules of gradual
+growth, constituting what was known as "Étiquette." The word has passed
+into common speech. In this country it is an unpopular word, and there
+is an impression in many people's minds that the thing which it
+represents is unnecessary. This, however, is a great delusion. Étiquette
+is that code of rules, not necessarily connected with morals, by which
+mutual intercourse is regulated. Every society, whether civilized or
+barbarous, has such a code of its own. Without it social life would be
+impossible, for no man would know what to expect of his neighbors, nor
+be able promptly to interpret the words and actions of his fellow-men.
+It is in obedience to an unwritten law of this kind that an American
+takes off his hat when he goes into a church, and an Asiatic, when he
+enters a mosque, takes off his shoes; that Englishmen shake hands, and
+Africans rub noses. Where étiquette is well understood and well adapted
+to the persons whom it governs, men are at ease, for they know what they
+may do without offense. Where it is too complicated it hampers them,
+making spontaneous action difficult, and there is no doubt that the
+étiquette that governed the French court was antiquated, unadvisable and
+cumbrous. Its rules had been devised to prevent confusion and to
+regulate the approach of the courtiers to the king. As all honors and
+emoluments came from the royal pleasure, people were sure to crowd about
+the monarch, and to jostle each other with unmannerly and dangerous
+haste, unless they were strictly held in check. Every one, therefore,
+must have his place definitely assigned to him. To be near the king at
+all times, to have the opportunity of slipping a timely word into his
+ear, was an invaluable privilege. To be employed in menial offices about
+his person was a mark of confidence. Rules could not easily be revised,
+for each of them concerned a vested right. Those in force in the reign
+of Louis XVI. had been established by his predecessors when manners were
+different.
+
+At the close of the Middle Ages privacy may be said to have been a
+luxury almost unknown to any man. There was not room for it in the
+largest castle. Solitude was seldom either possible or safe. People
+were crowded together without means of escape from each other. The
+greatest received their dependents, and often ate their meals, in
+their bedrooms. A confidential interview would be held in the
+embrasure of a window. Such customs disappeared but gradually from
+the sixteenth century to our own. But by the latter part of the
+eighteenth, modern ways and ideas were coming in. Yet the étiquette of
+the French court was still old-fashioned. It infringed too much on the
+king's privacy; it interfered seriously with his freedom. It exposed
+him too familiarly to the eyes of a nation overprone to ridicule. A
+man who is to inspire awe should not dress and undress in public. A
+woman who is to be regarded with veneration should be allowed to take
+her bath and give birth to her children in private.[Footnote: See the
+account of the birth of Marie Antoinette's first child, when she was
+in danger from the mixed crowd that filled her room, stood on chairs,
+etc., 19th Dec. 1778. Campan, i. 201. At her later confinements only
+princes of the blood, the chancellor and the ministers, and a few
+other persons were admitted. Ibid., 203.]
+
+Madame Campan, long a waiting-woman of Marie Antoinette, has left an
+account of the toilet of the queen and of the little occurrences that
+might interrupt it. The whole performance, she says, was a masterpiece
+of étiquette; everything about it was governed by rules. The Lady of
+Honor and the Lady of the Bedchamber, both if they were there together,
+assisted by the First Woman and the two other women, did the principal
+service; but there were distinctions among them. The Lady of the
+Bedchamber put on the skirt and presented the gown. The Lady of Honor
+poured out the water to wash the queen's hands and put on the chemise.
+When a Princess of the Royal Family or a Princess of the Blood was
+present at the toilet, the Lady of Honor gave up the latter function to
+her. To a Princess of the Royal Family, that is to say to the sister,
+sister-in-law, or aunt of the king, she handed the garment directly; but
+to a Princess of the Blood (the king's cousin by blood or marriage) she
+did not yield this service. In the latter case, the Lady of Honor handed
+the chemise to the First Woman, who presented it to the Princess of the
+Blood. Every one of these ladies observed these customs scrupulously, as
+appertaining to her rank.
+
+One winter's day it happened that the Queen, entirely undressed, was
+about to put on her chemise. Madame Campan was holding it unfolded. The
+Lady of Honor came in, made haste to take off her gloves and took the
+chemise. While she still had it in her hands there came a knock at the
+door, which was immediately opened. The new-comer was the Duchess of
+Orleans, a Princess of the Blood. Her Highness's gloves were taken off,
+she advanced to take the shift, but the Lady of Honor must not give it
+directly to her, and therefore passed it back to Madame Campan, who gave
+it to the princess. Just then there came another knock at the door, and
+the Countess of Provence, known as Madame, and sister-in-law to the
+king, was ushered in. The Duchess of Orleans presented the chemise to
+her. Meanwhile the Queen kept her arms crossed on her breast, and looked
+cold. Madame saw her disagreeable position, and without waiting to take
+off her gloves, merely threw away her handkerchief and put the chemise
+on the Queen. In her haste she knocked down the Queen's hair. The latter
+burst out laughing, to hide her annoyance; and only murmured several
+times between her teeth: "This is odious! What a nuisance!"
+
+This anecdote gives but an instance of the well-known and not unfounded
+aversion of Marie Antoinette to the étiquette of the French court. But
+the young queen made no attempt to reform that étiquette; she tried only
+to evade it. Much has been written about Marie Antoinette as a woman,
+her terrible misfortunes and the fortitude with which she bore them
+having evoked the sympathy of mankind. Her conduct as a queen-consort
+has been less considered. The woman was lively and amiable, possessing a
+great personal charm, which impressed those who approached her; but that
+mattered little to the nation, whose dealings were with the queen. What
+were the duties of her office and how did she fulfill them?
+
+The first thing demanded of her was parade. She had to keep up the
+splendor and attractiveness of the French monarchy. This, in spite of
+her impatience of étiquette, was of all her public duties the one which
+she best performed. Her manners were dignified, gracious, and
+appropriately discriminating. It is said that she could bow to ten
+persons with one movement, giving, with her head and eyes, the
+recognition due to each separately.
+
+She had also the art of talking to several people at once, so that each
+one felt as if her remarks had been addressed to himself, and the
+equally important art (sometimes called royal) of remembering faces and
+names. As she passed from one part of her palace to another, surrounded
+by the ladies of her court, she seemed to the spectator to surpass them
+all in the nobility of her countenance and the dignified grace of her
+carriage. She had the crowning beauty of woman, a well-poised and
+proudly carried head. Her gait was a gliding motion, in which the steps
+were not clearly distinguishable. Foreigners generally were enchanted
+with her, and to them she owes no small part of her posthumous
+popularity. The French nobility, on the other hand, complained, not
+unreasonably, that the queen was too exclusively devoted to the society
+of a few intimate companions, for whose sake she neglected other people.
+Her court, on this account, was sometimes comparatively deserted. But a
+young queen can hardly be very severely blamed if she often prefers her
+pleasures and her friends to the tedious duties of her position. Marie
+Antoinette had had little education or guidance. Her likes and dislikes
+were strong, nor was she entirely above petty spite. "You tell me,"
+wrote Maria Theresa to her daughter on one occasion, "that for love of
+me you treat the Broglies well, although they have been disrespectful to
+you personally. That is another odd idea. Can a little Broglie be
+disrespectful to you? I do not understand that. No one was ever
+disrespectful to me, nor to any of your ten brothers and sisters." It
+was no fair-weather queen that wrote this most royal reproof. Marie
+Antoinette never rose to this height of dignity, where the great lady
+sits above the clouds. In her days of prosperity she certainly never
+approached it. Perhaps no mortal woman ever reached it in early life.
+[Footnote: Mercy-Argenteau, _passim_, and especially i. 218, 265,
+279; ii. 218, 232, 312, 525; iii. 56, 113, 132 and _n_., 157, 265,
+490. Tilly, _Mémoires,_ 230. Cognel, 59, 84; Wraxall, i. 85;
+Walpole's _Letters,_ vi. 245 (23d Aug. 1776), etc.]
+
+It is one of the most important duties of a queen-consort to set a good
+example in morals. Here Marie Antoinette was deficient. Her private
+conduct has probably been slandered, but she brought the slanders on
+herself. Beside the code of morals, there is in every country a code of
+proprieties, and people who habitually do that which is considered
+improper have only themselves to thank if a harsh construction is put on
+their doubtful actions. The scandals concerning Marie Antoinette were
+numberless and public. The young queen of France chose for her intimate
+companions men and women of bad reputation. Her brother, Joseph II., was
+shocked when he visited her, at the familiar manners which she
+permitted. He wrote to her that English travelers compared her court to
+Spa, then a famous gambling-place, and he called the house of the
+Princess of Guéménée, which she was in the habit of frequenting, "a real
+gambling-hell." Accusations of cheating at cards flew about the palace,
+and one courtier had his pocket picked in the royal drawing-room. The
+queen was constantly surrounded by dissipated young noblemen, who on
+race days were allowed to come into her presence in costumes which
+shocked conservative people. She herself was recognized at public masked
+balls, where the worst women of the capital jostled the great nobles of
+the court. When she had the measles, four gentlemen of her especial
+friends were appointed nurses, and hardly left her chamber during the
+day and evening. People asked ironically what four ladies would be
+appointed to nurse the king if he were ill. In her amusements she was
+seldom accompanied by her husband. It hardly told in her favor that the
+latter was a man for whom a young and high-spirited woman could not be
+expected to entertain any very passionate affection.
+
+The country was deeply in debt, and during a part of the reign an
+expensive war was going on. It was obviously the queen's duty to
+retrench her own expenses, and to set an example of economy. Yet her
+demands on the treasury were very great. Her personal allowance was
+much larger than that of the previous queen, and she was frequently in
+debt. Her losses at play were considerable, in spite of her husband's
+well-known aversion to gambling. She increased the number of expensive
+and useless offices about her court. She was constantly accessible to
+rapacious favorites. The feeble king could at least recognize that he
+owed something to his subjects; the queen appears to have thought that
+the revenues of France were intended principally to provide means for
+the royal bounty to people who had done nothing to deserve it. On the
+other hand, she acknowledged the duty of private charity, and believed
+that thereby she was earning the gratitude of her subjects. That the
+taxpayer was entitled to any consideration is an idea that does not
+seem to have entered her mind.
+
+Had Marie Antoinette been the wife of a strong and able king, she would
+probably have been quite right in avoiding interference in the
+government of the state. Being married to Louis XVI., it was inevitable
+that she should try to direct his vacillating will in public matters. It
+therefore becomes pertinent to ask whether her influence was generally
+exerted on the right side.
+
+It is evident that in the earlier part of her reign the affairs of the
+state did not interest her, though her feelings were often strongly
+moved for or against persons. Her preference for Choiseul and his
+adherents, over Aiguillon and his party, was natural and well founded.
+The Duke of Choiseul was not only the author of the Austrian alliance
+and of the queen's marriage, but was also the ablest minister who had
+recently held favor in France. Had Marie Antoinette possessed as much
+influence over her husband in 1774 as she obtained later, she might
+perhaps have overcome what seems to have been one of his strongest
+prejudices, and have brought Choiseul back to power, to the benefit of
+the country. But her efforts in that direction were unavailing. In her
+relations with the other ministers, Turgot, Malesherbes, and Necker, her
+voice was generally on the side of extravagance and the court, and
+against economy and the nation. This, far more than the intrigues of
+faction, was the cause of the unpopularity that pursued her to her
+grave. If the court of France was a corrupt ring living on the country,
+Marie Antoinette was not far from being its centre.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE CLERGY.
+
+
+The inhabitants of France were divided into three orders, differing in
+legal rights. These were the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons, or
+Third Estate. The first two, which are commonly spoken of as the
+privileged orders, contained but a small fraction of the population
+numerically, but their wealth and position gave them a great importance.
+
+The clergy formed, as the philosophers were never tired of complaining,
+a state within a state. No accurate statistics concerning it can be
+obtained. The whole number of persons vowed to religion in the country,
+both regular and secular, would seem to have been between one hundred
+and one hundred and thirty thousand. They owned probably from one fifth
+to one quarter of the soil. The proportion was excessive, but it does
+not appear that the lay inhabitants of the country were thereby crowded.
+Like other landowners, the clergy had tenants, and they were far from
+being the worst of landlords. For one thing, they were seldom absentees.
+The abbot of a monastery might spend his time at Versailles, but the
+prior and the monks remained, to do their duty by their farmers. It is
+said that the church lands were the best cultivated in the kingdom, and
+that the peasants that tilled them were the best, treated.[Footnote:
+Barthelémy, _Erreurs et mensonges historiques, xv. 40._ Article
+entitled _La question des congregations il y a cent ans_, quoting
+largely from Féroux, _Vues d'un Solitaire Patriote_, 1784. See also
+Genlis, _Dictionnaire des Étiquettes,_ ii. 79. Mathieu, 324.
+Babeau, _La vie rurale_, 133.] In any case the church was rich. Its
+income from invested property, principally land, has been reckoned at
+one hundred and twenty-four million livres a year. It received about as
+much more from tithes, beside the amount, very variously reckoned, which
+came in as fees, on such occasions as weddings, christenings, and
+funerals.
+
+Tithes were imposed throughout France for the support of the clergy.
+They were not, however, taken upon all Articles of produce, nor did they
+usually amount to one tenth of the increase. Sometimes the tithe was
+compounded for a fixed rent in money; sometimes for a given number of
+sheaves, or measures of wine per acre. Oftener it was a fixed proportion
+of the crop, varying from one quarter to one fortieth. In some places
+wood, fruit, and other commodities were exempt; in other places they
+were charged. Tithe was in some cases taken of calves, lambs, chickens,
+sucking pigs, fleeces, or fish; and the clergy or the tithe owners were
+bound to provide the necessary bulls, rams, and boars. A distinction was
+usually made between the Great tithes, levied on such common articles as
+corn and wine, and the Small tithes, taken from less important crops. Of
+these the former were often paid to the bishops, the latter to the
+parish priest. The tithes had in some cases been alienated by the church
+and were owned by lay proprietors. In general, it is believed that this
+tax on the agricultural class in France amounted to about one eighteenth
+of the gross product of the soil.[Footnote: Chassin, _Les cahiers
+due clergé_, 36. Bailly, ii. 414, 419. Boiteau, 41. Rambaud, ii. 58
+_n._ Taine, _L'ancien Régime_ (book i. chap ii.). The livre
+of the time of Louis XVI. is commonly reckoned to have had at least
+twice the purchasing power of the franc of to-day.]
+
+The whole body of the clergy, as it existed within the boundaries of the
+kingdom, was not subject to the same rules and laws. The larger part of
+it formed what was known as the "Clergy of France," and possessed
+peculiar rights and privileges presently to be described. Those
+ecclesiastics, however, who lived in certain provinces, situated
+principally in the northern and eastern part of the country, and annexed
+to the kingdom since the beginning of the sixteenth century, were called
+the "Foreign Clergy." These did not share the rights of the larger body,
+but depended more directly on the papacy. They paid certain taxes from
+which the Clergy of France were exempt. The mode of appointment to
+bishoprics and abbacies was different among them from what it was in the
+rest of the country. Throughout France, and in all affairs,
+ecclesiastical and secular, were anomalies such as these.
+
+The Church of France enjoyed great and peculiar privileges, both among
+the churches of Christendom, and among the Estates of the French realm.
+By the Concordat, or treaty of 1516, made between Pope Leo X. and King
+Francis I., the nomination to bishroprics and to considerable
+ecclesiastical benefices had been given to the king, while the Holy
+Father kept only a right of veto on appointments. The _annates_, or
+first-fruits of the bishoprics, taxes equal in theory to one year's
+revenue on every change of incumbent, but in fact of less amount than
+that, were paid to the Pope, and these, with other dues, made up a sum
+of three or four million livres sent annually from France to Rome. On
+the other hand, the Clergy of France was the only body in the state
+which had undisputed constitutional rights independent of the throne.
+Its ordinary assemblies were held once in ten years. The country was
+divided into sixteen ecclesiastical provinces, each under the
+superintendence of an archbishop. In each of these provinces a meeting
+was held, composed of delegates of the various dioceses. Each of these
+provincial meetings elected two bishops and two other ecclesiastics,
+either regular or secular. These deputies received, from their
+constituents, instructions called _cahiers_ to be taken by them to
+the Ordinary Assembly of the clergy, which was held in Paris. This body
+granted subsidies to the king, managed the debt and other secular
+affairs of the clergy, and pronounced unofficially even in matters of
+doctrine. Smaller Assemblies, nearly equal in power, came together at
+least once during the interval which elapsed between the meetings of the
+Ordinary Assemblies; so that as often as once in five years the Church
+of France exercised a true political activity. The sum voted to the king
+was called a Free Gift[Footnote: Don Gratuit], and the name was not
+altogether inappropriate, for, although required was stated by the
+king's ministers, conditions were not infrequently exacted of the crown.
+Thus in 1785, on the occasion of a gift of eighteen million livres, the
+suppression of the works of Voltaire was demanded. And once at least, as
+late as 1750, on the occasion of a squabble between the church and the
+court, the clergy had refused to make any grant whatsoever. The total
+amount of the Free Gift voted during the reign of Louis XVI. was
+65,800,000 livres, or less than four and a half millions a year on an
+average. The grant was not annual, but was made in lump sums from time
+to time; a vote of two thirds of the assembly being necessary for making
+it. The assembly itself assessed the tax on the dioceses. A commission
+managed the affairs of the clergy when no assembly was sitting. The
+order had its treasury, and its credit was good. The king was its debtor
+to the extent of about a hundred million livres.
+
+The clergy itself was in debt. Instead of raising directly, by
+taxation of its members, the money which it paid to the state, it had
+acquired the habit of borrowing the necessary sum. The debt thus
+incurred appears to have been about one hundred and thirty-four
+million livres. In addition to the amount necessary for interest on
+this debt, and for a provision for its gradual repayment, the order
+had various expenses to meet. For these purposes it taxed itself to an
+amount of more than ten million livres a year. On the other hand it
+received back from the king a subsidy of two and a half million
+livres. From most of the regular, direct taxes paid by Frenchmen the
+Clergy of France was freed. [Footnote: _Revue des questions
+historiques_, 1st July, 1890 (L'abbé L. Bourgain, _Contribution du
+clergé à l'impôt_). Sciout, i. 35. Boiteau, 195. Rambaud,
+ii. 44. Necker, _De l'Administration_, ii. 308. The financial
+statement given above refers to the Clergy of France only. Its
+pecuniary affairs are as difficult and doubtful as those of every part
+of the nation at this period, and have repeatedly been made the
+subject of confused statement and religious and political
+controversy. The Foreign Clergy paid some of the regular taxes, giving
+the state about one million livres a year on an income of twenty
+million livres. Boiteau, 196.]
+
+The bishops were not subject to the secular tribunals, but other clerks
+came under the royal jurisdiction in temporal matters. In spiritual
+affairs they were judged by the ecclesiastical courts.
+
+The income of the clergy, had it been fairly distributed, was amply
+sufficient for the support of every one connected with the order. It
+was, however, divided with great partiality. There were set over the
+clergy, both French and foreign, eighteen archbishops and a hundred and
+twenty-one bishops, beside eleven of those bishops _in partibus
+infidelium_, who, having no sees of their own in France, might be
+expected to make themselves generally useful. These hundred and fifty
+bishops were very highly, though unequally paid. The bishoprics, with a
+very few exceptions, were reserved for members of the nobility, and this
+rule was quite as strictly enforced under Louis XVI. as under any of his
+predecessors. Nothing prevented the cumulation of ecclesiastical
+benefices, and that prelate was but a poor courtier who did not enjoy
+the revenue of several rich abbeys. Nor was it in money and in
+ecclesiastical preferment alone that the bishops were paid for the
+services which they too often neglected to perform.
+
+Not a few of them were barons, counts, dukes, princes of the Holy Roman
+Empire, or peers of France by virtue of their sees. Several rose to be
+ministers of state. Even in that age they were accused of worldliness.
+It was a proverb that with Spanish bishops and French priests an
+excellent clergy could be made. But not all the French bishops were
+worldly, nor neglectful of their spiritual duties. Among them might be
+found conscientious and serious prelates, abounding both in faith and
+good works, living simply and bestowing their wealth in charity.
+[Footnote: Rambaud, ii. 37. Mathieu, 151.]
+
+After the bishops came the abbots. As their offices were in the gift of
+the king, and as no discipline was enforced upon them, they were chiefly
+to be found in the antechambers of Versailles and in the drawing-rooms
+of Paris. They were not even obliged to be members of the religious
+orders they were supposed to govern.[Footnote: The abbots of abbeys
+_en commende_ were appointed by the king. These appear to have been
+most of the rich abbeys. There were also _abbayes régulières_,
+where the abbot was elected by the brethren. Rambaud, ii. 53. The
+revenues of the monasteries were divided into two parts, the _mense
+abbatiale_, for the abbot, the _mense conventuelle_, for the
+brethren. Mathieu, 73.] Leaving the charge of their monasteries to the
+priors, they spent the incomes where new preferment was to be looked
+for, and devoted their time to intrigues rather than to prayers. No
+small part of the revenues of the clergy was wasted in the dissipations
+of these ecclesiastic courtiers. They were imitated in their vices by a
+rabble of priests out of place, to whom the title of abbot was given in
+politeness, the little _abbés_ of French biography and fiction.
+These men lived in garrets, haunted cheap eating-houses, and appeared on
+certain days of the week at rich men's tables, picking up a living as
+best they could. They were to be seen among the tradesmen and suitors
+who crowded the levees of the great, distinguishable in the throng by
+their black clothes, and a very small tonsure. They attended the toilets
+of fashionable ladies, ever ready with the last bit of literary gossip,
+or of social scandal. They sought employment as secretaries, or as
+writers for the press. The church, or indeed, the opposite party, could
+find literary champions among them at a moment's notice. Nor was hope of
+professional preferment always lacking. It is said that one of the
+number kept an ecclesiastical intelligence office. This man was
+acquainted with the incumbents of valuable livings; he watched the state
+of their health, and calculated the chances of death among them. He knew
+what patrons were likely to have preferment to give away, and how those
+patrons were to be reached. His couriers were ever on the road to Rome,
+for the Pope still had the gift of many rich places in France, in spite
+of the Concordat.[Footnote: Mercier, ix. 350.]
+
+Another large part of the revenues of the church was devoted to the
+support of the convents. These contained from sixty to seventy thousand
+persons, more of them women than men. Owing to various causes, and
+especially to the action of a commission appointed to examine all
+convents, and to reform, close, or consolidate such as might need to be
+so treated, the number of regular religious persons fell off more than
+one half during the last twenty-five years of the monarchy. Yet many of
+the functions which in modern countries are left to private charity, or
+to the direct action of the state, were performed in old France by
+persons of this kind. The care of the poor and sick and the education of
+the young were largely, although not entirely, in the hands of religious
+orders. Some monks, like the Benedictines of St. Maur, devoted their
+lives to the advancement of learning. But there were also monks and nuns
+who rendered no services to the public, and were entirely occupied with
+their own spiritual and temporal interests, giving alms, perhaps, but
+only incidentally, like other citizens. Against these the indignation of
+the French Philosophers was much excited. Their celibacy was attacked,
+as contrary to the interests of the state; they were accused of laziness
+and greed. How far were the Philosophers right in their opposition? It
+is impossible to discuss in detail here the policy of allowing or
+discouraging religious corporations in a state. Should men and women be
+permitted to retire from the struggles and duties of active life in the
+world? Is the monastery, with its steady and depressing routine, its
+religious observances, often mechanical, and its quiet life, more or
+less degrading than the wearing toil of the world without, and the
+coarse pleasures of the club or the tavern? Is it better that a woman,
+whom choice or necessity has deprived of every probability of governing
+a home of her own, should struggle against the chances and temptations
+of city life, or the constant drudgery of spinsterhood in the country;
+or that she should find the stupefying protection of a convent? These
+questions have seldom been answered entirely on their own merits. They
+have presented themselves in company with others even more important;
+with questions of freedom of conscience and of national existence. The
+time seems not far distant when they must be reconsidered for their own
+sake. Already in France the persons leading a monastic life are believed
+to be twice as numerous as they were at the outbreak of the Revolution.
+It is difficult to ascertain the number in our own country, but it is
+not inconsiderable.[Footnote: Rambaud (ii. 52 and _n._) reckons
+100,000 in the 18th century and 158,500 to-day in France, but the
+figures for the last century are probably too high, at least if 1788 be
+taken as the point of comparison. Sadlier's _Catholic Directory_,
+1885, p. 116, gives the number of Catholic religions in the Archdiocese
+of New York at 117 regular priests, 271 brothers, 2136 religious women,
+in addition to 279 secular priests.]
+
+A pleasant life the inmates of some convents must have had of it. The
+incomes were large, the duties easy.
+
+Certain houses had been secularized and turned into noble chapters. The
+ladies who inhabited them were freed from the vow of poverty. They wore
+no religious vestment, but appeared in the fashionable dress of the day.
+They received their friends in the convent, and could leave it
+themselves to reenter the secular life, and to marry if they pleased.
+Such a chapter was that of Remiremont in Lorraine, whose abbess was a
+princess of the Holy Roman Empire, by virtue of her office. Her crook
+was of gold. Six horses were harnessed to her carriage. Her dominion
+extended over two hundred villages, whose inhabitants paid her both
+feudal dues and ecclesiastical tithes. Nor were her duties onerous. She
+spent a large part of her time in Strasburg, and went to the theatre
+without scruple. She traveled a good deal in the neighborhood, and was a
+familiar figure at some of the petty courts on the Rhine. The canonesses
+followed her good example. Some of them were continually on the road.
+Others stayed at home in the convent, and entertained much good company.
+They dressed like other people, in the fashion, with nothing to mark
+their religious calling but a broad ribbon over the right shoulder, blue
+bordered with red, supporting a cross, with a figure of Saint Romaric.
+No lady was received into this chapter who could not show nine
+generations or two hundred and twenty-five years of chivalric, noble
+descent, both on the father's and on the mother's side.
+
+Such requirements as this were extreme, but similar conditions were not
+unusual. The Benedictines of Saint Claude, transformed into a chapter of
+canonesses, required sixteen quarterings for admission; that is to say,
+that every canoness must show by proper heraldic proof, that her sixteen
+great--grandfathers and great--grandmothers were of noble blood. The
+Knights of Malta required but four quarterings. They had two hundred and
+twenty commanderies in France, with eight hundred Knights. The Grand
+Priory gave an income of sixty thousand livres to the Prior, who was
+always a prince. The revenues of the order were 1,750,000 livres.
+
+But very rich monasteries were exceptional after all. Those where life
+was hard and labor continuous were far more common. In some of them,
+forty men would be found living on a joint income of six thousand livres
+a year. They cultivated the soil, they built, they dug. They were not
+afraid of great undertakings in architecture or engineering, to be
+accomplished only after long years and generations of labor, for was not
+their corporation immortal? Then we have the begging orders, infesting
+the roads and villages, and drawing several million livres a year from
+the poorer classes, which supported and grumbled at them. And against
+the luxury of the noble chapters must be set the silence, the vigils,
+the fasts of La Trappe. This monastery stood in a gloomy valley, sunk
+among wooded hills. The church and the surrounding buildings were mostly
+old, and all sombre and uninviting. Each narrow cell was furnished with
+but a mattress, a blanket and a table, without chair or fire. The monks
+were clad in a robe and a hood, and wore shoes and stockings, but had
+neither shirt nor breeches. They shaved three times a year. Their food
+consisted of boiled vegetables, with salad once a week; never any butter
+nor eggs. Twice in the night they rose, and hastened shivering to the
+chapel. Never did they speak, but to their confessor; until, in his last
+hour, each was privileged to give to the prior his dying messages.
+Hither, from the active and gay world of philosophy and frivolity would
+suddenly retire from time to time some young officer, scholar, or
+courtier. Here, bound by irrevocable vows, he could weep over his sins,
+or gnash his teeth at the folly that had brought him, until he found
+peace at last in life or in the grave.
+
+To enjoy the temporal privileges of the religious life neither any great
+age nor any extensive learning was required. To hold a cure of souls or
+the abbacy of a "regular" convent (whose inmates chose their abbot), a
+man must be twenty-five years old. But an abbot appointed by the king
+need only be twenty-two, a canon of a cathedral fourteen, and a chaplain
+seven. It cannot be doubted that persons of either sex were obliged to
+make irrevocable vows, without any proof of free vocation, or any reason
+to expect a fixed resolution. Daughters and younger sons could thus be
+conveniently disposed of. A larger share was left for the family, for
+the religious were civilly dead, and did not take part in the
+inheritance. On the other hand, misfortune and want need not be feared
+for the inmate of the convent. If a nun were lost to the joys of the
+world, she was lost to its cares. To make such a choice, to commit
+temporal suicide, the very young should surely not be admitted. Yet it
+was not until 1768 that the time for taking final vows was advanced to
+the very moderate age of twenty-one for young men and eighteen for
+girls.[Footnote: Rambaud, ii. 45. Mathieu, 43. Chassin, 25. Boiteau,
+176. Bailly, 421. Mme. d'Oberkirch, 127. Mme. de Genlis, _Dict. des
+Étiquettes_, i. Ill _n._, _Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de
+France_, I. xxix. Mercier, xi. 358.]
+
+The secular clergy was about as numerous as the regular. It was
+principally composed of the _curés_ and _vicaires_ who had charge of
+parishes.[Footnote: The bishops, of course, belonged to the secular
+clergy. So, in fact, did the canons; who, on account of the similarity
+of their mode of life, have been treated with the regulars. In the
+French hierarchy the _curé_ comes above the _vicaire_. The relation
+is somewhat that of _parson_ and _curate_ in the church of England.]
+These men were mostly drawn from the lower classes of society, or at
+any rate not from the nobility. They had therefore very little chance
+of promotion. Some of them in the country districts were very poor;
+for the great tithes, levied on the principal crops, generally
+belonged to the bishops, to the convents of regulars, or to laymen;
+and only the lesser tithes, the occasional fees,[Footnote: _Casuel._]
+and the product of a small glebe were reserved for the parish priest,
+and the latter was liable to continual squabbles with the peasants
+concerning his dues. But the parish priest, with all other churchmen,
+was exempt from the state taxes, although obliged to pay a proportion
+of the _décimes_,[Footnote: _Décime_, in the singular, was an
+extraordinary tax levied on ecclesiastical revenue for some object
+deemed important. _Décimes_, in the plural, was the tax paid annually
+by bénéfices. _Dîme_, tithe (see Littré, _Décime_). It seems a
+question whether the proportion of the _décimes_ paid by the parish
+priests was too large. See _Revue des questions historiques_, 1st July
+1890, 102. Necker, _De l'Administration_, ii. 313.] or special tax
+laid by the clergy on their own order. Moreover, the government set a
+minimum;[Footnote: _Portion congrue._] and if the income of the parish
+priest fell below it, the owner of the great tithes was bound to make
+up the difference. This minimum was set at five hundred livres a year
+for a _curé_ in 1768, and raised to seven hundred in 1785. A _vicaire_
+received two hundred and three hundred and fifty. These amounts do not
+seem large, but they must have secured to the country priest a
+tolerable condition, for we do not find that the clerical profession
+was neglected.
+
+Apart from considerations of material well being, the condition of the
+parish priest was not undesirable. He was fairly independent, and could
+not be deprived of his living without due process of law. His house was
+larger or smaller according to his means, but his authority and
+influence might in any case be considerable. He had more education and
+more dealings with the outer world than most of his parishioners. To him
+the intendant of the province might apply for information concerning the
+state of his village, and the losses of the peasants by fire, or by
+epidemics among their cattle. His sympathy with his fellow-villagers was
+the warmer, that like them he had a piece of ground to till, were it
+only a garden, an orchard, or a bit of vineyard. Round his door, as
+round theirs, a few hens were scratching; perhaps a cow lowed from her
+shed, or followed the village herd to the common. The priest's servant,
+a stout lass, did the milking and the weeding. In 1788, a provincial
+synod was much disturbed by a motion, made by some fanatic in the
+interest of morals, that no priest should keep a serving-maid less than
+forty-five years of age. The rule was rejected on the ground that it
+would make it impossible to cultivate the glebes. Undoubtedly, the
+priests themselves often tucked up the skirts of their cassocks, and
+lent a hand in the work. They were treated by their flocks with a
+certain amount of respectful familiarity. They were addressed as
+_messire_. With the joys and sorrows of their parishioners, their
+connection was at once intimate and professional. Their ministrations
+were sought by the sick and the sad, their congratulations by the happy.
+No wedding party nor funeral feast was complete without them.[Footnote:
+Turgot, v. 364. This letter is very interesting, as showing the
+importance of the _curés_ and their possible dealings with the
+intendant. Mathieu, 152. Babeau, _La vie rurale_, 157. A good study
+of the clergy before the Revolution is found in an article by Marius
+Sepet (_La société française à la veille de la révolution_), in the
+_Revue des questions historiques_, 1st April and 1st July, 1889.]
+
+The privileges and immunities which the Church of France enjoyed had
+given to her clergy a tone of independence both to the Pope and to the
+king. We have seen them accompanying their "free gifts" to the latter by
+requests and conditions. Toward the Holy See their attitude had once
+been quite as bold. In 1682 an assembly of the Church of France had
+promulgated four propositions which were considered the bulwarks of the
+Gallican liberties.
+
+(1.) God has given to Saint Peter and his successors no power, direct or
+indirect, over temporal affairs.
+
+(2.) Ecumenical councils are superior to the Pope in spiritual matters.
+
+(3.) The rules, usages and statutes admitted by the kingdom and the
+Church of France must remain inviolate.
+
+(4.) In matters of faith, decisions of the Sovereign Pontiff are
+irrevocable only after having received the consent of the church.
+
+These propositions were undoubtedly a part of the law of France, and
+were fully accepted by a portion of the French clergy. But the spirit
+that dictated them had in a measure died out during the corrupt reign of
+Louis XV. The long quarrel between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, which
+agitated the Galilean church during the latter part of the seventeenth
+and the earlier half of the eighteenth century, had tended neither to
+strengthen nor to purify that body. A large number of the most serious,
+intelligent and devout Catholics in France had been put into opposition
+to the most powerful section of the clergy and to the Pope himself. Thus
+the Church of France was in a bad position to repel the violent attacks
+made upon her from without.[Footnote: Rambaud, ii. 40. For a Catholic
+account of the Jansenist quarrel, see Carné, _La monarchie française
+au 18me siècle_, 407.]
+
+For a time of trial had come to the Catholic Church, and the Church of
+France, although hardly aware of its danger, was placed in the forefront
+of battle. It was against her that the most persistent and violent
+assault of the Philosophers was directed. Before considering the
+doctrines of those men, who differed among themselves very widely on
+many points, it is well to ask what was the cause of the great
+excitement which their doctrines created. Men as great have existed in
+other centuries, and have exercised an enormous influence on the human
+mind.
+
+But that influence has generally been gradual; percolating slowly,
+through the minds of scholars and thinkers, to men of action and the
+people. The intellectual movement of the eighteenth century in France
+was rapid. It was the nature of the opposition which they encountered
+which drew popular attention to the attacks of the Philosophers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CHURCH AND HER ADVERSARIES.
+
+
+The new birth of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had
+been followed by the strengthening and centralization of government,
+both in church and state. France had its full share of this change. Its
+civil government became the strongest in Europe, putting down every
+breath of opposition. Against the political conduct of Louis XIV neither
+magistrate nor citizen dared to raise his voice. The Church of France,
+on the other hand, in close alliance with the civil power, became almost
+irresistible in her own sphere. The Catholic Church throughout Europe
+had been the great schoolmaster of civilization. It had fallen into the
+common fault of schoolmasters, the assumption of infallibility. It was,
+moreover, a state within all states. Its sovereign, the Pope, the most
+powerful monarch in Christendom, is chosen in accordance with a curious
+and elaborate set of regulations, by electors appointed by his
+predecessors. His rule, nominally despotic, is limited by powers and
+influences understood by few persons outside of his palace. His
+government, although highly centralized, is yet able to work efficiently
+in all the countries of the earth. It is served by a great body of
+officials, probably less corrupt on the whole than those of any other
+state. They are kept in order, not only by moral and spiritual
+sanctions, but by a system of worldly promotion. They wield over their
+subjects a tremendous weapon, sometimes borrowed, but seldom long or
+very skillfully used by laymen, and called, in clerical language,
+excommunication. This, when it is confined to the denial of religious
+privileges, may be considered a spiritual weapon. But in the eighteenth
+century the temporal power of Catholic Europe was still in great measure
+at the service of the ecclesiastical authorities. Obedience to the
+church was a law of the state. Although Frenchmen were no longer
+executed for heresy in the reign of Louis XVI., they still were
+persecuted. The property of Protestants was unsafe, their marriages
+invalid. Their children might be taken from them. Such toleration as
+existed was precarious, and the Church of France was constantly urging
+the temporal government to take stronger measures for the extirpation of
+heresy.
+
+The church had succeeded in implanting in the minds of its votaries one
+opinion of enormous value in its struggle for power. Originally and
+properly an association for the practice and spreading of religion, the
+corporation had succeeded in making itself an object of worship. One
+great reason why atheism took root in France was the impossibility,
+induced by long habit, of distinguishing between religion and
+Catholicism, and of conceiving that the one may exist without the other.
+The by-laws of the church had become as sacred as the primary duties of
+piety; and the injunction to refrain from meat on Fridays was
+indistinguishable by most Catholics, in point of obligation, from the
+injunction to love the Lord their God.
+
+The Protestant churches which separated themselves from the Church of
+Rome in the sixteenth century carried with them much of the intolerant
+spirit of the original body. It is one of the commonplace sneers of the
+unreflecting to say that religious toleration has always been the dogma
+of the weaker party. The saying, if it were true, which it is not, yet
+would not be especially sagacious. Toleration, like other things, has
+been most sought by those whose need of it was greatest. But they have
+not always recognized its value. It was no small step in the progress of
+the human mind that was taken when men came to look on religious
+toleration as desirable or possible. That the state might treat with
+equal favor all forms of worship was an opinion hardly accepted by wise
+and liberal-minded men in the eighteenth century. It may be that the
+fiery contests of the Reformation were still too near in those days to
+let perfect peace be safe or profitable.
+
+Yet religious toleration was making its way in men's minds. Cautiously,
+and with limitations, the doctrine is stated, first by Locke, Bayle, and
+Fénelon in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, then by almost
+all the great writers of the eighteenth. The Protestants, with their
+experience of persecution, assert that those persons should not be
+tolerated who teach that faith should not be kept with heretics, or that
+kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms; or who attribute
+to themselves any peculiar privilege or power above other mortals in
+civil affairs; in short, they exclude the Catholics. Atheists also may
+be excluded, as being under no possible conscientious obligation to
+dogmatize concerning their negative creed. The Catholics maintain the
+right of the sovereign to forbid the use of ceremonies, or the
+profession of opinions, which would disturb the public peace.
+Montesquieu, a nominal Catholic only, declares that it is the
+fundamental principle of political laws concerning religion, not to
+allow the establishment of a new form if it can be prevented; but when
+one is once established, to tolerate it. He refuses to say that heresy
+should not be punished, but he says that it should be punished only with
+great circumspection. This left the case of the French Protestants to
+all appearances as bad as before; for the laws denied that they had been
+established in the kingdom, and the church always asserted that it was
+mild and circumspect in its dealings with heretics. Voltaire will not
+say that those who are not of the same religion as the prince should
+share in the honors of the state, or hold public office. Such
+limitations as these would seem to have deprived toleration of the
+greater part of its value, by excluding from its benefits those persons
+who were most likely to be persecuted. But the statement of a great
+principle is far more effectual than the enumeration of its limitations.
+Toleration, eloquently announced as an ideal, made its way in men's
+minds. "Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial
+liberty, is the thing we stand in need of," cries Locke, and the saying
+is retained when his exceptions concerning the Catholics are forgotten.
+"When kings meddle with religion," says Fénelon, "instead of protecting,
+they enslave her."[Footnote: Locke, vi. 46, 46 (Letter on Toleration).
+Bayle, Commentary on the Text "Compelle intrare" (for atheists), ii.
+431, a., Fénelon, Oeuvres, vii. 123 (Essai philosophique sur le
+gouvernement civil). Montesquieu, Oeuvres, iv. 68; v. 175 (Esprit des
+Lois, liv. xii. ch. v. and liv. xxxv. ch. x.). Felice, Voltaire, xli.
+247 (Essai sur la tolérance).]
+
+The Church of France had long been cruel to her opponents. The
+persecution of the French Protestants, which preceded and followed the
+revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, is known to most readers. It
+was long and bloody. But about the middle of the eighteenth century it
+began to abate. The last execution for heresy in France appears to have
+taken place in 1762. A Protestant meeting was surprised and attacked by
+soldiers in 1767. Some eight or ten years later than this, the last
+prisoner for conscience' sake was released from the galleys at Toulon.
+But no religion except the Roman Catholic was recognized by the state;
+and to its clergy alone were entrusted certain functions essential to
+the conduct of civilized life. No marriage could be legally solemnized
+but by a Catholic priest. No public record of births was kept but in the
+parish registers. As a consequence of this, no faithful Protestant could
+be legally married at all, and all children of Protestant parents were
+bastards, whose property could be taken from them by the nearest
+Catholic relative. It is true that the courts did much to soften the
+execution of these laws; but the judges, with the best intentions, were
+sometimes powerless; and all judges did not mean to act fairly by
+heretics.
+
+Slowly, during the lifetime of a generation, the Protestants gained
+ground. The coronation-oath contained a clause by which the king
+promised to exterminate heretics. When Louis XVI. was to be crowned at
+Rheims, Turgot desired to modify this part of the oath. He drew up a new
+form. The clergy, however, resisted the innovation, and Maurepas, the
+prime minister, agreed with them. The young king, with characteristic
+weakness, is said to have muttered some meaningless sounds, in place of
+the disputed portion of the oath.
+
+In 1778, an attempt was made to induce the Parliament of Paris to
+interfere in behalf of the oppressed sectaries, It was stated that since
+1740, more than four hundred thousand marriages had been contracted
+outside of the church, and that these marriages were void in law and the
+constant cause of scandalous suits. But the Parliament, by a great
+majority, rejected the proposal to apply to the king for relief. In
+1775, and again in 1780, the assembly of the clergy protested against
+the toleration accorded to heretics. It is not a little curious that at
+a time when a measure of simple humanity was thus opposed by the highest
+court of justice in the realm, and by the Church of France in its
+corporate capacity, a foreign Protestant, Necker, was the most important
+of the royal servants.
+
+The spirit of the church, or at least of her leading men, is expressed
+in the Pastoral Instruction of Lefranc de Pompignan, Archbishop of
+Vienne, perhaps the most prominent French ecclesiastic of the century.
+The church, he says, has never persecuted, although misguided men have
+done so in her name. The sovereign should maintain the true religion,
+and is himself the judge of the best means of doing it. But religion
+sets bounds to what a monarch should do in her defense. She does not ask
+for violent or sanguinary measures against simple heretics. Such
+measures would do more harm than good. But when men have the audacity to
+exercise a pretended and forbidden ministry, injurious to the public
+peace, it would be absurd to think that rigorous penalties applied to
+their misdeeds are contrary to Christian charity. And in connection with
+toleration, the prelate brings together the two texts, "Judge not, that
+ye be not judged;"--"but he that believeth not is condemned already."
+This plan of dealing gently with Protestants, while so maltreating their
+pastors as to make public worship or the administration of sacraments
+very difficult, was a favourite one with French churchmen.
+
+The great devolution was close at hand. On the last day of the first
+session of the Assembly of Notables, in the spring of 1787, Lafayette
+proposed to petition the king in favor of the Protestants. His motion
+was received with almost unanimous approval by the committee to which it
+was made, and the Count of Artois, president of that committee, carried
+a petition to Louis XVI. accordingly. His Majesty deigned to favor the
+proposal, and an edict for giving a civil status to Protestants was
+included in the batch of bills submitted to the Parliament of Paris for
+registration. The measure of relief was of the most moderate character.
+It did not enable the sectaries of the despised religion to hold any
+office in the state, nor even to meet publicly for worship. Yet the
+opposition to the proposed law was warm, and was fomented by part of the
+nobility and of the clergy. One of the great ladies of the court called
+on each counselor of the Parliament, and left a note to remind him of
+his duty to the Catholic religion and the laws. The Bishop of Dol told
+the king of France that he would be answerable to God and man for the
+misfortunes which the reestablishment of Protestantism would bring on
+the kingdom. His Majesty's sainted aunt, according to the bishop, was
+looking down on him from that heaven where her virtues had placed her,
+and blaming his conduct. Louis XVI. resented this language and found
+manliness enough to send the Bishop of Dol back to his see. On the 19th
+of January, 1788, the matter was warmly debated in the Parliament
+itself. D'Espréménil, one of the counselors, was filled with excitement
+and wrath at the proposed toleration. Pointing to the image of Christ,
+which hung on the wall of the chamber, "would you," he indignantly
+exclaimed, "would you crucify him again?" But the appeal of bigotry was
+unavailing. The measure passed by a large majority.[Footnote: For the
+last persecution of the Protestants, see Felice, 422. Howard,
+Lazzarettos, 55. Coquerel, 93. Geffroy, i. 406. Chérest, i. 45, 382. For
+the oath, Turgot, i. 217; vii. 314, 317. See also Dareste, vii. 20,
+Lefranc de Pompignan, i. 132. Geffroy, i. 410; ii. 85. Droz, ii. 38.
+Sallier, Annales françaises, 136 n. The majority was 94 to 17. Seven
+counselors and three bishops retired without voting.]
+
+It was not against Protestants alone that the clergy showed their
+activity. The church, in its capacity of guardian of the public morals
+and religion, passed condemnation on books supposed to be hostile to its
+claims. In this matter it exercised concurrent jurisdiction with the
+administrative branch of the government and with the courts of law. A
+new book was liable to undergo a triple ordeal. A license was required
+before publication, and the manuscript was therefore submitted to an
+official censor, often an ecclesiastic. Thence it became the custom to
+print in foreign countries, books which contained anything to which
+anybody in authority might object, and to bring them secretly into
+France. The presses of Holland and of Geneva were thus used. Sometimes,
+instead of this, a book would be published in Paris with a foreign
+imprint. Thus "Boston" and "Philadelphia" are not infrequently found on
+the title-pages of books printed in France in the reign of Louis XVI.
+Such books were sold secretly, with greater or less precautions against
+discovery, for the laws were severe; an ordinance passed as late as 1757
+forbade, under penalty of death, all publications which might tend to
+excite the public mind. So loose an expression gave discretionary power
+to the authorities. The extreme penalty was not enforced, but
+imprisonment and exile were somewhat capriciously inflicted on authors
+and printers.
+
+But a book that had received the _imprimatur_ of the censor was not
+yet safe. The clergy might denounce, or the Parliament condemn it. The
+church was quick to scent danger. An honest scholar, an upright and
+original thinker, could hardly escape the reproach of irreligion or of
+heresy. Nor were the laws fairly administered. It might be more
+dangerous to be supposed to allude disagreeably to the mistress of a
+prince, than to attack the government of the kingdom. Had a severe law
+been severely and consistently enforced, slander, heresy, and political
+thought might have been stamped out together. Such was in some measure
+the case in the reign of Louis XIV. But under the misrule of the
+courtiers of his feeble successors, no strict law was adhered to. There
+was a common tendency to wink at illegal writings of which half the
+public approved. Malesherbes, for instance, was at one time at the head
+of the official censors. He is said to have had a way of warning authors
+and publishers the day before a descent was to be made upon their
+houses. Under laws thus enforced, authors who held new doctrines learned
+to adapt their methods to those of the government. Almost all the great
+French writers of the eighteenth century framed some passages in their
+books for the purpose of satisfying the censor or of avoiding
+punishment. They were profuse in expressions of loyally to church and
+state, in passages sometimes sounding ludicrously hollow, sometimes
+conveying the most biting mockery and satire, and again in words hardly
+to be distinguished from the heartfelt language of devotion. They became
+skillful at hinting, and masters of the art of innuendo. They attacked
+Christianity under the name of Mahometanism, and if they had occasion to
+blame French ministers of state, would seem to be satirizing the viziers
+of Turkey. Politics and theology are subjects of unceasing and vivid
+interest, and their discussion cannot be suppressed, unless minds are to
+be smothered altogether. If any measure of free thought and speech is to
+be admitted, the engrossing topics will find expression. If people are
+not allowed pamphlets and editorials, they will bring out their ideas in
+poems and fables. Under Louis XV and Louis XVI, politics took possession
+of popular songs, and theology of every conceivable kind of writing.
+There was hardly an advertisement of the virtues of a quack medicine, or
+a copy of verses to a man's mistress, that did not contain a fling at
+the church or the government. There can be no doubt that the moral
+nature of authors and of the public suffered in such a course. Books
+lost some of their real value. But for a time an element of excitement
+was added to the pleasure both of writers and readers. The author had
+all the advantage of being persecuted, with the pleasing assurance that
+the persecution would not go very far. The reader, while perusing what
+seemed to him true and right, enjoyed the satisfaction of holding a
+forbidden book. He had the amusement of eating stolen fruit, and the
+inward conviction that it agreed with him.[Footnote: Lomenie, Vie de
+Beaumarchais, i. 324. Montesquieu, i. 464 (Lettres persanes, cxlv.).
+Mirabeau, L'ami des hommes, 238 (pt. ii. oh, iv.). Anciennes Lois, xxii.
+272. Lanfrey, 193.]
+
+The writers who adopted this course are mostly known as the
+"Philosophers." It is hard to be consistent in the use of this word as
+applied to Frenchmen of the eighteenth century. The name was sometimes
+given to all those who advocated reform or alteration in church or
+state. In its stricter application, it belongs to a party among them; to
+Voltaire and his immediate followers, and especially to the
+Encyclopaedists.
+
+"Never," says Voltaire, in his "English Letters," "will our
+philosophers make a religious sect, for they are without enthusiasm."
+This was a favorite idea with the disciples of the great cynic, but the
+event has disproved its truth. The Philosophers in Voltaire's lifetime
+formed a sect, although it could hardly be called a religious one. The
+Patriarch of Ferney himself was something not unlike its pontiff.
+Diderot and d'Alembert were its bishops, with their attendant clergy of
+Encyclopaedists. Helvetius and Holbach were its doctors of atheology.
+Most reading and thinking Frenchmen were for a time its members.
+Rousseau was its arch-heretic. The doctrines were materialism, fatalism,
+and hedonism. The sect still exists. It has adhered, from the time of
+its formation, to a curious notion, its favorite superstition, which may
+be expressed somewhat as follows: "Human reason and good sense were
+first invented from thirty to fifty years ago." "When we consider," says
+Voltaire, "that Newton, Locke, Clarke and Leibnitz, would have been
+persecuted in France, imprisoned at Rome, burnt at Lisbon, what must we
+think of human reason? It was born in England within this century."
+[Footnote: Voltaire (Geneva ed. 1771) xv. 99 (Newton). Also (Beuchot's
+ed.) xv. 351 (Essai sur les Moeurs) and passim. The date usually set by
+Voltaire's modern followers is that of the publication of the Origin of
+Species; although no error is more opposed than this one to the great
+theory of evolution.] And similar expressions are frequent in his
+writings. The sectaries, from that day to this, have never been wanting
+in the most glowing enthusiasm. In this respect they generally surpass
+the Catholics; in fanaticism (or the quality of being cocksure) the
+Protestants. They hold toleration as one of their chief tenets, but
+never undertake to conceal their contempt for any one who disagrees with
+them. The sect has always contained many useful and excellent persons,
+and some of the most dogmatic of mankind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE CHURCH AND VOLTAIRE.
+
+
+The enemies of the Church of France were many and bitter, but one man
+stands out prominent among them. Voltaire was a poet, much admired in
+his day, an industrious and talented historian, a writer on all sorts of
+subjects, a wit of dazzling brilliancy; but he was first, last, and
+always an enemy of the Catholic Church, and although not quite an
+atheist, an opponent of all forms of religion. For more than forty years
+he was the head of the party of the Philosophers. During all that time
+he was the most conspicuous of literary Frenchmen. Two others, Rousseau
+and Montesquieu, may rival him in influence on the modern world, but his
+followers in the regions of thought are numerous and aggressive to-day.
+
+Voltaire was born in 1694 the son of a lawyer named Arouet. There are
+doubts as to the origin of the name he has made so famous; whether it
+was derived from a fief possessed by his mother, or from an anagram of
+AROUET LE JEUNE. At any rate, the name was adopted by the young poet, at
+his own fancy, a case not without parallel in the eighteenth century.
+[Footnote: As in the case of D'Alembert. For Voltaire's name, see
+Desnoiresterres, _Jeunesse de Voltaire_, 161.]
+
+Voltaire began early to attract public attention. Before he was
+twenty-five years old he had established his reputation as a wit, had
+spent nearly a year in the Bastille on a charge of writing satirical
+verses, and had produced a successful tragedy. In this play a couplet
+sneering at priests might possibly have become a familiar quotation
+even had it been written by another pen.[Footnote: _Oedipe_, written
+in 1718. "Nos prêtres ne sont point ce qu'un vain peuple pense; Notre
+credulité fait toute leur science." Act IV., Scene I.] For several
+years Voltaire went on writing, with increasing reputation. In 1723,
+his great epic poem, "La Henriade," was secretly circulated in
+Paris.[Footnote: Desnoiresterres, _Jeunesse_, 297.] The author was
+one of the marked men of the town. At the same time his reputation
+must have been to some extent that of a troublesome fellow. And in
+December of that year an event occurred which was destined to drive
+the rising author from France for several years, and add bitterness to
+a mind naturally acid.
+
+The details of the story are variously told. It appears that Voltaire
+was one evening at the theatre behind the scenes, and had a dispute with
+the Chevalier de Chabot, of the family of Rohan. "Monsieur de Voltaire,
+Monsieur Arouet, what's your name!" the chevalier is said to have called
+out. "My name is not a great one, but I am no discredit to it," answered
+the author. Chabot lifted his cane, Voltaire laid his hand on his sword.
+Mademoiselle Lecouvreur, the actress, for whose benefit, perhaps, the
+little dispute was enacted, took occasion to faint. Chabot went off,
+muttering something about a stick.
+
+A few days later, Voltaire was dining at the house of the Duke of Sulli.
+A servant informed him that some one wanted to see him at the door. So
+Voltaire went out, and stepped quietly up to a coach that was standing
+in front of the house. As he put his head in at the coach door, he was
+seized by the collar of his coat and held fast, while two men came up
+behind and belabored him with sticks. The Chevalier de Chabot, his noble
+adversary, was looking on from another carriage.
+
+When the tormentors let him go, Voltaire rushed back into the house and
+appealed to the Duke of Sulli for vengeance, but in vain. It was no
+small matter to quarrel with the family of Rohan. Then the poet applied
+to the court for redress, but got none. It is said that Voltaire's
+enemies had persuaded the prime minister that his petitioner was the
+author of a certain epigram, addressed to His Excellency's mistress, in
+which she was reminded that it is easy to deceive a one-eyed Argus. (The
+minister had but one eye.) Finally Voltaire, seeing that no one else
+would take up his quarrel, began to take fencing lessons and to keep
+boisterous company. It is probable that he would have made little use of
+any skill he might have acquired as a swordsman. Voltaire was not
+physically rash. The Chevalier de Chabot, although he held the
+commission of a staff-officer, was certainly no braver than his
+adversary, and was in a position to take no risks. Voltaire was at first
+watched by the police; then, perhaps after sending a challenge, locked
+up in the Bastille. He remained in that state prison for about a
+fortnight, receiving his friends and dining at the governor's table. On
+the 5th of May, 1726, he was at Calais on his way to exile in England.
+[Footnote: Desnoiresterres, _Jeunesse_, 345.]
+
+Voltaire spent three years in England, years which exercised a deep
+influence on his life. He learned the English language exceptionally
+well, and practiced writing it in prose and verse. He associated on
+terms of intimacy with Lord Bolingbroke, whom he had already known in
+France, with Swift, Pope, and Gay. He drew an epigram from Young. He
+brought out a new and amended edition of the "Henriade," with a
+dedication in English to Queen Caroline. He studied the writings of
+Bacon, Newton, and Locke. Thus to the Chevalier de Chabot, and his
+shameful assault, did French thinkers owe, in no small measure, the
+influence which English writers exercised upon them.
+
+While in England, Voltaire was taking notes and writing letters. These
+he probably worked over during the years immediately following his
+return to France. The "Lettres Philosophiques," or "Letters concerning
+the English Nation," were first published in England in 1733. They were
+allowed to slip into circulation in France in the following year.
+Promptly condemned by the Parliament of Paris as "scandalous and
+contrary to religion and morals, and to the respect due to the powers
+that be," they were "torn and burned at the foot of the great
+staircase," and read all the more for it.
+
+It is no wonder that the church, and that conservative if sometimes
+heterodox body, the Parliament of Paris, should have condemned the
+"English Letters." A bitter satire is leveled at France, with her
+religion and her government, under cover of candid praise of English
+ways and English laws. What could the Catholic clergy say to words like
+these, put into the mouth of a Quaker? "God forbid that we should dare
+to command any one to receive the Holy Ghost on Sunday to the exclusion
+of the rest of the faithful! Thank Heaven we are the only people on
+earth who have no priests! Would you rob us of so happy a distinction?
+Why should we abandon our child to mercenary nurses when we have milk to
+give him? These hirelings would soon govern the house and oppress mother
+and child. God has said: `Freely ye have received; freely give.' After
+that saying, shall we go chaffer with the Gospel, sell the Holy Ghost,
+and turn a meeting of Christians into a tradesman's shop? We do not give
+money to men dressed in black, to assist our poor, to bury our dead, to
+preach to the faithful. Those holy occupations are too dear to us to be
+cast off upon others."[Footnote: Voltaire, xxxvii. 124.]
+
+Having thus attacked the institution of priesthood in general, Voltaire
+turns his attention in particular to the priests of France and England.
+In morals, he says, the Anglican clergy are more regular than the
+French. This is because all ecclesiastics in England are educated at the
+universities, far from the temptations of the capital, and are called to
+the dignities of the church at an advanced age, when men have no
+passions left but avarice and ambition. Advancement here is the
+recompense of long service, in the church as well as in the army. You do
+not see boys becoming bishops or colonels on leaving school. Moreover,
+most English priests are married men. The awkward manners contracted at
+the university, and the slight intercourse with women usual in that
+country, generally compel a bishop to be content with his own wife.
+Priests sometimes go to the tavern in England, because custom allows it;
+but if they get drunk, they do so seriously, and without making scandal.
+
+"That indefinable being, who is neither a layman nor an ecclesiastic, in
+a word, that which we call an _abbé_, is an unknown species in
+England. Here all priests are reserved, and nearly all are pedants. When
+they are told that in France young men known for their debauched lives
+and raised to the prelacy by the intrigues of women make love publicly,
+amuse themselves by composing amorous songs, give long and dainty
+suppers every night, and go thence to ask the enlightenment of the Holy
+Spirit, and boldly call themselves successors of the apostles, they
+thank God that they are Protestants;--but they are vile heretics, to be
+burned by all the devils, as says Master Francois Rabelais. Which is why
+I have nothing to do with them."[Footnote: Voltaire, xxxvii. 140.]
+
+While the evil lives of an important part of the French clergy are
+thus assailed, the doctrines of the Church are not spared. The
+following is from the letter on the Socinians. "Do you remember a
+certain orthodox bishop, who in order to convince the Emperor of the
+consubstantiality [of the three Persons of the Godhead] ventured to
+chuck the Emperor's son under the chin, and to pull his nose in his
+sacred majesty's presence? The Emperor was going to have the bishop
+thrown out of the window, when the good man addressed him in the
+following fine and convincing words: `Sir, if your Majesty is so angry
+that your son should be treated with disrespect, how do you think that
+God the Father will punish those who refuse to give to Jesus Christ
+the titles that are due to Him?' The people of whom I speak say that
+the holy bishop was ill-advised, that his argument was far from
+conclusive, and that the Emperor should have answered: `Know that
+there are two ways of showing want of respect for me; the first is not
+to render sufficient honor to my son, the other is to honor him as
+much as myself.'"[Footnote: Voltaire, xxxvii. 144.] Such words as
+these were hardly to be borne. But the French authorities recognized
+that there was a greater and more insidious danger to the church in
+certain other passages by which Frenchmen were made to learn some of
+the results of English abstract thought.
+
+Among the French writers of the eighteenth century are several men of
+eminent talent; one only whose sinister but original genius has given a
+new direction to the human mind. I shall treat farther on of the ideas
+of Rousseau. The others, and Voltaire among them, belong to that class
+of great men who assimilate, express, and popularize thought, rather
+than to the very small body of original thinkers. Let us then pause for
+a moment, while studying the French Philosophers and their action on
+the church, and ask who were their masters.
+
+Montaigne, Bayle, and Grotius may be considered the predecessors on the
+Continent of the French Philosophic movement, but its great impulse came
+from England. Bacon had much to do with it; Hooker and Hobbes were not
+without influence; Newton's discoveries directed men's minds towards
+physical science; but of the metaphysical and political ideas of the
+century, John Locke was the fountain-head. Some Frenchmen have in modern
+times disputed his claims. To refute these disputants it is only
+necessary to turn from their books to those of Voltaire and his
+contemporaries. The services rendered by France to the human race are so
+great that her sons need never claim any glory which does not clearly
+belong to them. All through modern history, Frenchmen have stood in the
+front rank of civilization. They have stood there side by side with
+Englishmen, Italians, and Germans. International jealousy should spare
+the leaders of human thought. They belong to the whole European family
+of nations. The attempt to set aside Locke, Newton, and Bacon, as guides
+of the eighteenth century belongs not to that age but to our own.
+
+The works of Locke are on the shelves of most considerable libraries;
+but many men, now that the study of metaphysics is out of fashion, are
+appalled at the suggestion that they should read an essay in three
+volumes on the human understanding, evidently considering their own
+minds less worthy of study than their bodies or their estates. It may be
+worth while, therefore, to give a short summary of those theories, or
+discoveries of Locke which most modified French thought in the
+eighteenth century. The great thinker was born in 1632 and died in 1704.
+His principal works were published shortly after the English Revolution
+of 1688, but had been long in preparation; and the "Essay on the Human
+Understanding" is said to have occupied him not less than twenty years.
+
+It is the principal doctrine of Locke that all ideas are derived from
+sensation and reflection. He acknowledges that "it is a received
+doctrine that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon
+their minds in their very first being;" but he utterly rejects every
+such theory. It is his principal business to protest and argue against
+the existence of such "innate ideas." Virtue he believes to be generally
+approved because it is profitable, not on account of any natural leaning
+of the mind in its direction. Conscience "is nothing else but our own
+opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own
+actions." Memory is the power in the mind to revive perceptions which it
+once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has
+had them before. Wit lies in the assemblage of ideas, judgment in the
+careful discrimination among them. "Things are good or evil only in
+reference to pleasure or pain;" ... "our love and hatred of inanimate,
+insensible beings is commonly founded on that pleasure or pain which we
+receive from their use and application any way to our senses, though
+with their destruction; but hatred or love of beings incapable of
+happiness or misery is often the uneasiness or delight which we find in
+ourselves, arising from a consideration of their very being or
+happiness. Thus the being and welfare of a man's children or friends,
+producing constant delight in him, he is said constantly to love them.
+But it suffices to note that our ideas of love and hatred are but
+dispositions of the mind in respect of pleasure or pain in general,
+however caused in us."
+
+We have no clear idea of substance nor of spirit. Substance is that
+wherein we conceive qualities of matter to exist; spirit, that in which
+we conceive qualities of mind, as thinking, knowing, and doubting. The
+primary ideas of body are the cohesion of solid, and therefore separate
+parts, and a power of communicating motion by impulse. The ideas of
+spirit are thinking and will, or a power of putting body into motion by
+thought, and, which is consequent to it, liberty. The ideas of
+existence, mobility, and duration are common to both.
+
+Locke's intelligence was clear enough to perceive that these two ideas,
+spirit and matter, stand on a similar footing. Less lucid thinkers have
+boldly denied the existence of spirit while asserting that of matter.
+Locke's system would not allow him to believe that either conception
+depended on the nature of the mind itself. He therefore rejected the
+claims of substance as unequivocally as those of spirit, declaring it to
+be "only an uncertain supposition of we know not what, i. e., of
+something whereof we have no particular, distinct, positive idea, which
+we take to be the substratum or support of those ideas we know." Yet he
+inclines on the whole toward materialism. "We have," he says, "the ideas
+of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether
+any mere material being thinks, or no; it being impossible for us, by
+the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover
+whether omnipotency has not given to some system of matter, fitly
+disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to
+matter so disposed a thinking immaterial substance, it being, in respect
+of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive
+that God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking,
+than that he should superadd to it another substance, with a faculty of
+thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort
+of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which
+cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and
+power of the Creator."... "All the great ends of morality and religion,"
+he adds, "are well secured without philosophical proof of the soul's
+immateriality." As to our knowledge "of the actual existence of things,
+we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and a demonstrative
+knowledge of the existence of God; of the existence of anything else, we
+have no other but a sensitive knowledge, which extends not beyond the
+objects present to our senses."[Footnote: Is not an intuitive knowledge
+suspiciously like an innate idea? Locke's _Works_, i. 38, 39, 72,
+82, 137, 145, 231; ii. 10, 11, 21, 331, 360, 372 (Book i. ch. 3, 4, Book
+ii. ch. 1, 10, 11, 20, 23, Book iv. ch. 3).]
+
+The eulogy of Locke in Voltaire's "Lettres Philosophiques" gave
+especial offense to the French churchmen. Voltaire writes to a friend
+that the censor might have been brought to give his approbation to all
+the letters but this one. "I confess," he adds, "that I do not
+understand this exception, but the theologians know more about it than
+I do, and I must take their word for it."[Footnote: Voltaire, li. 356
+(_Letter to Thieriot,_ 24 Feb. 1733).] The letter to which the censor
+objected was principally taken up with the doctrine of the materiality
+of the soul. "Never," says Voltaire, "was there perhaps a wiser or a
+more methodical spirit, a more exact logician, than Locke."
+... "Before him great philosophers had positively decided what is the
+soul of man; but as they knew nothing at all about it, it is very
+natural that they should all have been of different minds." And he
+adds in another part of the letter, "Men have long disputed on the
+nature and immortality of the soul. As to its immortality, that cannot
+be demonstrated, since people are still disputing about its nature;
+and since, surely, we must thoroughly know a created being to decide
+whether it is immortal or not. Human reason alone is so unable to
+demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that religion has been
+obliged to reveal it to us. The common good of all men demands that we
+should believe the soul to be immortal; faith commands it; no more is
+needed, and the matter is almost decided. It is not the same as to its
+nature; it matters little to religion of what substance is the soul,
+if only it be virtuous. It is a clock that has been given us to
+regulate, but the maker has not told us of what springs this clock is
+composed."[Footnote: Voltaire, xxxvii. 177, 182 (_Lettres
+philosophiques._ In the various editions of Voltaire's collected works
+published in the last century these letters do not appear as a series,
+but their contents is distributed among the miscellaneous articles,
+and those of the _Dictionnaire philosophique_. The reason for this
+was that the letters, having been judicially condemned, might have
+brought their publishers into trouble if they had appeared under their
+own title. Bengesco, ii. 9. Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire à Cirey_, 28,
+Voltaire, xxxvii. 113. In Beuchot's edition the letters appear in
+their original form).]
+
+The "Lettres philosophiques" may be considered the first of Voltaire's
+polemic writings. They exhibit his mordant wit, his clear-sightedness
+and his moral courage. There is in them, perhaps, more real gayety,
+more spontaneous fun, than in his later books. Voltaire was between
+thirty-five and forty years old when they were written, and although
+he possessed to the end of his long life more vitality than most men,
+yet he was physically something of an invalid, and his many exiles and
+disappointments told upon his temper. From 1734, when these letters
+first appeared in France, to 1778, when he died, worn out with years,
+labors, quarrels, and honors, his activity was unceasing. He had many
+followers and many enemies, but hardly a rival. Voltaire was and is
+the great representative of a way of looking at life; a way which was
+enthusiastically followed in his own time, which is followed with
+equal enthusiasm to-day. This view he expressed and enforced in his
+numberless poems, tragedies, histories, and tales. It formed the
+burden of his voluminous correspondence. As we read any of them, his
+creed becomes clear to us; it is written large in every one of his
+more than ninety volumes. It may almost be said to be on every page of
+them. That creed may be stated as follows: We know truth only by our
+reason. That reason is enlightened only by our senses. What they do
+not tell us we cannot know, and it is mere folly to waste time in
+conjecturing. Imagination and feeling are blind leaders of the
+blind. All men who pretend to supernatural revelation or inspiration
+are swindlers, and those who believe them are dupes. It may be
+desirable, for political or social purposes, to have a favored
+religion in the state, but freedom of opinion and of expression should
+be allowed to all men, at least to all educated men; for the populace,
+with their crude ideas and superstitions, may be held in slight
+regard.
+
+Voltaire's hatred was especially warm against the regular clergy.
+"Religion," he says, "can still sharpen daggers. There is within the
+nation a people which has no dealings with honest folk, which does not
+belong to the age, which is inaccessible to the progress of reason, and
+over which the atrocity of fanaticism preserves its empire, like certain
+diseases which attack only the vilest populace." The best monks are the
+worst, and those who sing "Pervigilium Veneris" in place of matins are
+less dangerous than such as reason, preach, and plot. And in another
+place he says that "a religious order should not a part of history." But
+it is well to notice that Voltaire's hatred of Catholicism and of
+Catholic monks is not founded on a preference for any other church. He
+thinks that theocracy must have been universal among early tribes, "for
+as soon as a nation has chosen a tutelary god, that god has priests.
+These priests govern the spirit of the nation; they can govern only in
+the name of their god, so they make him speak continually; they set
+forth his oracles, and all things are done by God's express commands."
+From this cause come human sacrifices and the most atrocious tyranny;
+and the more divine such a government calls itself, the more abominable
+it is.
+
+All prophets are imposters. Mahomet may have begun as an enthusiast,
+enamored of his own ideas; but he was soon led away by his reveries; he
+deceived himself in deceiving others; and finally supported a doctrine
+which he believed to be good, by necessary imposture. Socrates, who
+pretended to have a familiar spirit, must have been a little crazy, or a
+little given to swindling. As for Moses, he is a myth, a form of the
+Indian Bacchus. The Koran (and consequently the Bible) may be judged by
+the ignorance of physics which it displays. "This is the touchstone of
+the books which, according to false religions, were written by the
+Deity, for God is neither absurd nor ignorant." Several volumes are
+devoted by Voltaire to showing the inconsistencies, absurdities and
+atrocities of the Old and New Testaments, and the abominations of the
+Jews.
+
+The positive religious opinions of Voltaire are less important than
+his negations, for the work of this great writer was mainly to
+destroy. He was a theist, of wavering and doubtful faith. He was well
+aware that any profession of atheism might be dangerous, and likely to
+injure him at court and with some of his friends. He thought that
+belief in God and in a future life were important to the safety of
+society, and is said to have sent the servant out of the room on one
+occasion when one of the company was doubting the existence of the
+Deity, giving as a reason that he did not want to have his throat
+cut. Yet it is probable that his theism went a little deeper than
+this. He says that matter is probably eternal and self-existing, and
+that God is everlasting, and self-existing likewise. Are there other
+Gods for other worlds? It may be so; some nations and some scholars
+have believed in the existence of two gods, one good and one
+evil. Surely, nature can more easily suffer, in the immensity of
+space, several independent beings, each absolute master of its own
+portion, than two limited gods in this world, one confined to doing
+good, the other to doing evil. If God and matter both exist from
+eternity, "here are two necessary entities; and if there be two there
+may be thirty. We must confess our ignorance of the nature of
+divinity."
+
+It is noticeable that, like most men on whom the idea of God does not
+take a very strong hold, Voltaire imagined powers in some respects
+superior to Deity. Thus he says above that nature can more easily
+suffer several independent gods than two opposed ones. Having supposed
+one or several gods to put the universe in order, he supposes an order
+anterior to the gods. This idea of a superior order, Fate, Necessity,
+or Nature, is a very old one. It is probably the protest of the human
+mind against those anthropomorphic conceptions of God, from which it
+is almost incapable of escaping. Voltaire and the Philosophers almost
+without exception believed that there was a system of natural law and
+justice connected with this superior order, taught to man by instinct.
+Sometimes in their system God was placed above this law, as its
+origin; sometimes, as we have seen, He was conceived as subjected to
+Nature. "God has given us a principle or universal reason," says
+Voltaire, "as He has given feathers to birds and fur to bears; and
+this principle is so lasting that it exists in spite of all the
+passions which combat it, in spite of the tyrants who would drown it
+in blood, in spite of the impostors who would annihilate it in
+superstition. Therefore the rudest nation always judges very well in
+the long run concerning the laws that govern it; because it feels that
+these laws either agree or disagree with the principles of pity and
+justice which are in its heart." Here we have something which seems
+like an innate idea of virtue. But we must not expect complete
+consistency of Voltaire. In another place he says, "Virtue and vice,
+moral good and evil, are in all countries that which is useful or
+injurious to society; and in all times and in all places he who
+sacrifices the most to the public is the man who will be called the
+most virtuous. Whence it appears that good actions are nothing else
+than actions from which we derive an advantage, and crimes are but
+actions that are against us. Virtue is the habit of doing the things
+which please mankind, and vice the habit of doing things which
+displease it. Liberty, he says elsewhere, is nothing but the power to
+do that which our wills necessarily require of us."[Footnote: Voltaire,
+xx. 439 (_Siècle de Louis XIV._, ch. xxxvii.), xxi. 369 (_Louis XV._),
+xv. 34, 40, 123, 316 (_Essai sur les moeurs_), xliii. 74 (_Examen
+important de Lord Bolingbroke_), xxxi. 13 (_Dict. philos. Liberté_)
+xxxvii. 336 (Traité de métaphysique_). For general attacks on the
+Bible and the Jews, see (_Oeuvres_, xv. 123-127, xliii. 39-205, xxxix.
+454-464. Morley's _Diderot_, ii. 178). Notice how many of the
+arguments that are still repeated nowadays concerning the Mosaic
+account of the creation, etc. etc., come from Voltaire. Notice also
+that Voltaire, while too incredulous of ancient writers, was too
+credulous of modern travelers.]
+
+The Church of France was both angered and alarmed by the writings of
+Voltaire and his friends, and did her feeble best to reply to them. But
+while strong in her organization and her legal powers, her internal
+condition was far from vigorous. Incredulity had become fashionable even
+before the attacks of Voltaire were dangerous. An earlier satirist has
+put into the mouth of a priest an account of the difficulties which
+beset the clergy in those days. "Men of the world," he says, "are
+astonishing. They can bear neither our approval nor our censure. If we
+wish to correct them, they think us ridiculous. If we approve of them,
+they consider us below our calling. Nothing is so humiliating as to feel
+that you have shocked the impious. We are therefore obliged to follow an
+equivocal line of conduct, and to check libertines not by decision of
+character but by keeping them in doubt as to how we receive what they
+say. This requires much wit. The state of neutrality is difficult. Men
+of the world, who venture to say anything they please, who give free
+vent to their humor, who follow it up or let it go according to their
+success, get on much better.
+
+"Nor is this all. That happy and tranquil condition which is so much
+praised we do not enjoy in society. As soon as we appear, we are obliged
+to discuss. We are forced, for instance, to undertake to prove the
+utility of prayer to a man who does not believe in God; the necessity of
+fasting to another who all his life has denied the immortality of the
+soul. The task is hard, and the laugh is not on our side."[Footnote:
+Montesquieu, _Lettres persanes_, i. 210, 211, Lettre lxi.]
+
+The prelates appointed to their high offices by Louis XV. and his
+courtiers were not the men to make good their cause by spiritual
+weapons. There was no Bossuet, no Fénelon in the Church of France of the
+eighteenth century. Her defense was intrusted to far weaker men. First
+we have the archbishops, Lefranc de Pompignan of Vienne and Elie de
+Beaumont of Paris. Then come the Jesuit Nonnotte and the managers of the
+Mémoires de Trévoux, the Benedictine Chaudon, the Abbé Trublet, the
+journalist Fréron, and many others, lay and clerical. The answers of the
+churchmen to their Philosophic opponents are generally inconclusive.
+Lefranc de Pompignan declared that the love of dry and speculative truth
+was a delusive fancy, good to adorn an oration, but never realized by
+the human heart. He sneered at Locke and at the idea that the latter had
+invented metaphysics. His objections and those of the Catholic church to
+that philosopher's teachings were chiefly that the Englishman maintained
+that thought might be an attribute of matter; that he encouraged
+Pyrrhonism, or universal doubt; that his theory of identity was
+doubtful, and that he denied the existence of innate ideas. All these
+matters are well open to discussion, and the advantage might not always
+be found on Locke's side. But in general the Catholic theologians and
+their opponents were not sufficiently agreed to be able to argue
+profitably. They had no premises in common. If one of two disputants
+assumes that all ideas are derived from sensation and reflection, and
+the other, that the most important of them are the result of the
+inspiration of God, there is no use in their discussing minor points
+until those great questions are settled. The attempt to reconcile views
+so conflicting has frequently been made, and no writings are more dreary
+than those which embody it. But men who are too far apart to cross
+swords in argument may yet hurl at each other the missiles of
+vituperation, and there were plenty of combatants to engage in that sort
+of warfare with Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopaedists.
+
+On the two sides, treatises, comedies, tales, and epigrams were written.
+It was not difficult to point out that the sayings of the various
+opponents of the church were inconsistent with each other; that Rousseau
+contradicted Voltaire, that Voltaire contradicted himself. There were
+many weak places in the armor of those warriors. Pompignan discourses at
+great length, dwelling more especially on the worship which the
+Philosophers paid to physical science, on their love of doubt, and on
+their mistaken theory that a good Christian cannot be a patriot.
+Chaudon, perhaps the cleverest of the clerical writers, sometimes throws
+a well directed shaft. "That same Voltaire," he says, "who thinks that
+satires against God are of no consequence, attaches great importance to
+satires written against himself and his friends. He is unwilling to see
+the pen snatched from the hands of the slanderers of the Deity; but he
+has often tried to excite the powers that be against the least of his
+critics." This was very true of Voltaire, who was as thin-skinned as he
+was violent; and who is believed to have tried sometimes to silence his
+opponents by the arbitrary method of procuring from some man in power a
+royal order to have them locked up. Palissot, in a very readable comedy,
+makes fun of Diderot and his friends. As for invective, the supply is
+endless on both sides. The Archbishop of Paris condemns the "Émile" of
+Rousseau as containing a great many propositions that are "false,
+scandalous, full of hatred of the church and her ministers, erroneous,
+impious, blasphemous, and heretical." The same prelate argues as
+follows: "Who would not believe, my very dear brethren, from what this
+impostor says, that the authority of the church is proved only by her
+own decisions, and that she proceeds thus: `I decide that I am
+infallible, therefore so I am.' A calumnious imputation, my very dear
+brethren! The constitution of Christianity, the spirit of the
+Scriptures, the very errors and the weakness of the human mind tend to
+show that the church established by Jesus Christ is infallible. We
+declare that, as the Divine Legislator always taught the truth, so his
+church always teaches it. We therefore prove the authority of the
+church, not by the church's authority, but by that of Jesus Christ, a
+process as accurate as the other, with which we are reproached, is
+absurd and senseless."
+
+The arguments of the clerical writers were not all on this level.
+Chaudon and Nonnotte prepared a series of articles, arranged in the
+form of a dictionary, in which the Catholic doctrine is set forth,
+sometimes clearly and forcibly. But it is evident that the champions
+of Catholicism in that age were no match in controversy for her
+adversaries.[Footnote: Lefranc de Pompignan, i. 27 (_Instruction
+pastorale sur la prétendue philosophie des incredules). Dictionnaire
+antiphilosophique,_ republished and enlarged by Grosse under the title
+_Dictionnaire d'antiphilosophisme,_ Palissot, _Les philosophes._
+Beaumont's "_mandement_" given in Rousseau, (_Oeuvres,_ vii. 22,
+etc. See also Barthelémy, _Erreurs et mensonges,_ 5e, l3e, 14e Série,
+articles on _Fréron, Nonnotte, Trublet,_ and _Patrouillet.
+Confessions de Fréron._ Nisard, _Les ennemis de Voltaire_). The
+superiority of the Philosophers over the churchmen in argument is too
+evident to be denied. Carné, 408.]
+
+The strength of a church does not lie in her doctors and her orators,
+still less in her wits and debaters, though they all have their uses.
+The strength of a church lies in her saints. While these have a large
+part in her councils and a wide influence among her members, a church
+is nearly irresistible. When they are few, timid and uninfluential,
+knowledge and power, nay, simple piety itself, can hardly support her.
+In the Church of France, through the ages, there have been many
+saints; but in the reigns of Louis XVI. and his immediate predecessor
+there were but few, and none of prominence. The persecution of the
+Jansenists, petty as were the forms it took, had turned aside from
+ardent fellowship in the church many of the most earnest, religious
+souls in France. The atmosphere of the country was not then favorable
+to any kind of heroism. Such self-devoted Christians as there were
+went quietly on their ways; their existence to be proved only when, in
+the worst days of the Revolution, a few of them should find the crown
+of martyrdom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE NOBILITY.
+
+
+The second order in the state was the Nobility. It is a mistake,
+however, to suppose that this word bears on the Continent exactly the
+same meaning as in England. Where all the children of a nobleman are
+nobles, a strict class is created. An English peerage, descending only
+to the eldest son, is more in the nature of an office. The French
+_noblesse_ in the latter years of the old monarchy comprised nearly
+all persons living otherwise than by their daily toil, together with the
+higher part of the legal profession. While the clergy had political
+rights and a corporate existence, and acted by means of an assembly, the
+nobility had but privileges. This, however, was true only of the older
+provinces, the "Lands of Elections," whose ancient rights had been
+abolished. In some of the "Lands of Estates," which still kept a remnant
+of self-government, the order was to some extent a political body with
+constitutional rights.
+
+The nobility have been reckoned at about one hundred thousand souls,
+forming twenty-five or thirty thousand families, owning one fifth of the
+soil of France. Only a part of this land, however, was occupied by the
+nobles for their gardens, parks, and chases. The greater portion was let
+to farmers, either at a fixed rent, or on the _métayer_ system, by
+which the landlord was paid by a share of the crops. And beside his rent
+or his portion, the noble received other things from his tenants:
+payments and services according to ancient custom, days of labor, and
+occasional dues. He could tramp over the ploughed lands with his
+servants in search of game, although he might destroy the growing corn.
+The game itself, which the peasant might not kill, was still more
+destructive. Such rights as these, especially where they were harshly
+enforced, caused both loss and irritation to the poor. Although there
+were far too many absentees among the great families, yet the larger
+number of the nobles spent most of their time at home on their estates,
+looking after their farms and their tenants, attending to local
+business, and saving up money to be spent in visits to the towns, or to
+Paris. When they were absent, their bailiffs were harder masters than
+themselves. Unfortunately the eyes of the noble class were turned rather
+to the enjoyments of the city and the court than to the duties of
+country life on their estates, an inevitable consequence of their loss
+of local power.
+
+If the nobles had few political rights, they had plenty of public
+privileges. They were exempt from the most onerous taxes, and the best
+places under the government were reserved for them. Therefore every man
+who rose to eminence or to wealth in France strove to enter their ranks,
+and since nobility was a purchasable commodity, through the
+multiplication of venal offices which conferred it, none who had much
+money to spend failed to secure the coveted rank. Thus the order had
+come to comprise almost all persons of note, and a great part of the
+educated class. To describe its ideas and aspirations is to describe
+those of most of the leaders of France. Nobility was no longer a mark of
+high birth, nor a brevet of distinction; it was merely a sign that a
+man, or some of his ancestors, had had property. Of course all persons
+in the order were not equal. The descendants of the old families, which
+had been great in the land for hundreds of years, despised the mushroom
+noblemen of yesterday, and talked contemptuously of "nobility of the
+gown." Theirs was of the sword, and dated from the Crusades. And under
+Louis XVI., after the first dismissal of Necker, there was a reaction,
+and ground gained by the older nobility over the newer, and by both over
+the inferior classes. As the Revolution draws near and financial
+embarrassment grows more acute, the pickings of the favored class have
+become scarcer, while the appetite for them has increased. Preferment in
+church or state must no longer go to the vulgar.
+
+There is a distinction among nobles quite apart from the length of their
+pedigree. We find a higher and a lower nobility, with no clear line of
+division between them. They are in fact the very rich, whose families
+have some prominence, and the moderately well off. For it may be noticed
+that among nobles of all times and countries, although wealth unaided
+may not give titles and place, it is pretty much a condition precedent
+for acquiring them. A man may be of excellent family, and poor; but to
+be a great noble, a man must be rich. In old France the road to
+preferment was through the court; but to shine at court a considerable
+income was required; and so the _noblesse de cour_ was more or less
+identical with the richer nobility.
+
+In this small but influential part of the nation, both the good and the
+bad qualities which are favored by court life had reached a high degree
+of development. The old French nobility has sometimes been represented
+as exhibiting the best of manners and the worst of morals. I believe
+that both sides of the picture have been painted in too high colors. The
+courtier was not always polite, nor were all great nobles libertines.
+Faithful husbands and wives were by no means exceptional; although, as
+in other places, well behaved people did not make a parade of their
+morality. There is such a thing as a French prig; but prigs are neither
+common nor popular in France. Before the Revolution the art of pleasing
+was more studied than it is to-day,--that art by which men and women
+make themselves agreeable to their acquaintance.
+
+"In old times, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI.," says the Viscount of
+Ségur, "a young man entering society made what was called a
+_début_. He cultivated accomplishments. His father suggested and
+directed this work, for work it was; but the mother, the mother only,
+could bring her son to that last degree of politeness, of grace and
+amiability, which completed his education. Beside her natural
+tenderness, her pride was so much at stake that you may judge what care,
+what studied pains, she used in giving her children, on their entrance
+into society, all the charm that she could develop in them, or bestow
+upon them. Thence came that rare politeness, that exquisite taste, that
+moderation in speech and jest, that graceful carriage, in short that
+combination which characterized what was called good company, and which
+always distinguished French society even among foreigners. If a young
+man, because of his youth, had failed in attention to a lady, in
+consideration for a man older than himself, in deference for old age,
+the mother of the thoughtless young fellow was informed of it by her
+friends the same evening; and on the following day he was sure to
+receive advice and reproof."[Footnote: The Viscount of Ségur was
+brother to the Count of Ségur, from the preface to whose Memoirs this
+extract is taken.]
+
+The instruction thus early given was not confined to forms. Indeed,
+French society in that day was probably less formal in some ways than
+any other European society; and in Paris people were more free than in
+the provinces. Although making a bow was a fine art, although a lady's
+curtsey was expected to be at once "natural, soft, modest, gracious, and
+dignified," ceremonious greetings were considered unnecessary, and few
+compliments were paid. To praise a woman's beauty to her face would have
+been to disparage her modesty. Good manners consisted in no small part
+in distinguishing perfectly what was due to every one, and in expressing
+that distinction with lightness and grace. Different modes of address
+were appropriate toward parents, relations, friends, acquaintances,
+strangers, your superiors in rank, your poor dependents, yet all must be
+treated with courtesy and consideration. Such manners are possible only
+where social distinctions are positively ascertained. In old France, at
+least, every man had his place and knew where he was.
+
+But it was in their dealings with ladies that the Frenchmen of that day
+showed the perfection of their system. Vicious they might be, but
+discourteous they were not. No well-bred man would then appear in a
+lady's room carelessly dressed, or in boots. In speech between the
+sexes, the third person was generally used, and a gentleman in speaking
+to a lady dropped his voice to a lower tone than he employed to men.
+Gentlemen were careful before ladies not to treat even each other with
+familiarity. Still less would one of them, however intimate he might be
+with a lady's husband or brother, speak to her of his friend by any name
+less formal than his title. These habits have left their mark in France
+and elsewhere to this day; but the mark is fast disappearing, not
+altogether to the advantage of social life.[Footnote: Genlis,
+Dictionnaire des Étiquettes, i. 94, 218; ii. 194, 347.]
+
+Friendship between men was sometimes carried so far as to interfere with
+the claims of domestic affection. At least it was faithful and sincere,
+and the man on whom fortune had frowned, the fallen minister, or the
+disgraced courtier, was followed in his adversity by the kindness of his
+friends. Of all the virtues this is perhaps the one which in our hurried
+age tends most to disappear. It is left for the occupation of idle
+hours, and the smallest piece of triviality which can be tortured into
+the name of business, is allowed to crowd away those constantly repeated
+attentions which might add a true grace and refinement to the lives of
+those who gave and of those who received them. It is often said that
+friendships are formed only in youth. Is not this partly because youth
+Revolution, men of all ages made friendships, and supported them by the
+consideration for others which is at the bottom of all politeness. The
+Frenchman is nervous and irritable. When he lets his temper get beyond
+his control, he is fierce and violent. He has little of the easy-going
+good-nature under inconveniences, which some branches of the Teutonic
+race believe themselves to possess. He has less kindly merriment than
+the Tuscan. But he has trained himself for social life; and has learned,
+when on his good behavior, to make others happy about him. And it is
+part of the well-bred Frenchman's pride and happiness to be almost
+always on his good behavior.
+
+In one respect Paris in the eighteenth century was more like a
+provincial town than like a great modern capital. Acquaintanceship had
+not swallowed up intimacy. A man or a woman did not undertake to keep on
+terms of civility with so many people that he could not find time to see
+his best friends oftener than once or twice a year. The much vaunted
+_salons_ of the old monarchy were charming, in great measure
+because they were reasonably organized. An agreeable woman would draw
+her friends about her; they would meet in her parlor until they knew
+each other, and would be together often enough to keep touch
+intellectually. The talker knew his audience and felt at home with it.
+The listener had learned to expect something worth hearing. The mistress
+of the house kept language and men within bounds, and had her own way of
+getting rid of bores. But even French wit and vivacity were not always
+equal to the demands upon them. "I remember," says Montesquieu, "that I
+once had the curiosity to count how many times I should hear a little
+story, which certainly did not deserve to be told or remembered; during
+three weeks that it occupied the polite world, I heard it repeated two
+hundred and twenty-five times, which pleased me much."[Footnote:
+_Oeuvres_, vii 179 _(Pensées diverses)._]
+
+Beside the tie of friendship we may set that of the family. In old
+France this bond was much closer than it is in modern America. If a man
+rose in the world, the benefit to his relations was greater than now;
+and there was no theory current that a ruler, or a man in a position of
+trust, should exclude from the places under him those persons with whom
+he is best acquainted, and of whose fidelity to himself and to his
+employers he has most reason to be sure. On the other hand, a disgrace
+to one member of a family spread its blight on all the others, and the
+judicial condemnation of one man might exclude his near relations from
+the public service--a state of things which was beginning to be
+repugnant to the public conscience, but which had at least the merit of
+forming a strong band to restrain the tempted from his contemplated
+crime.
+
+In fact, the old idea of the family as an organic whole, with common
+joys, honors, and responsibilities, common sorrows and disgraces, was
+giving way to the newer notion of individualism. In France, however, the
+process never went so far as it has done in some other countries,
+including our own.
+
+Good manners were certainly the rule at the French court, but there
+were exceptions, and not inconspicuous ones, for Louis XV. was an
+unfeeling man, and Louis XVI. was an awkward one. When Mademoiselle
+Genêt, fifteen years old, was first engaged as reader to the former
+king's daughters, she was in a state of agitation easy to imagine. The
+court was in mourning, and the great rooms hung with black, the state
+armchairs on platforms, several steps above the floor, the feathers
+and the shoulder-knots embroidered with tinsel made a deep impression
+on her. When the king first approached, she thought him very
+imposing. He was going a-hunting, and was followed by a numerous
+train. He stopped short in front of the young girl and the following
+dialogue took place:--
+
+"Mademoiselle Genêt, I am told that you are very learned; that you know
+four or five foreign languages."
+
+"I know only two, sir," trembling.
+
+"Which are they?"
+
+"English and Italian."
+
+"Do you speak them fluently?"
+
+"Yes, sir, very fluently."
+
+"That's quite enough to put a husband out of temper;" and the king went
+on, followed by his laughing train, and left the poor little girl
+standing abashed and disconsolate.[Footnote: Campan, i. pp. vi. viii.]
+
+The memoirs of the time are full of stories proving that the rigorous
+enforcement of étiquette and the general training in good manners had
+not done away with eccentricity of behavior. The Count of Osmont, for
+instance, was continually fidgeting with anything that might come under
+his hand, and could not see a snuff-box without ladling out the snuff
+with three fingers, and sprinkling it over his clothes like a Swiss
+porter. He sometimes varied this pleasant performance by putting the box
+itself under his nose, to the great disgust of whomever happened to be
+its owner. He once spent a week at the house of Madame de Vassy, a lady
+who was young and good-looking enough, but stiff and ceremonious. This
+lady wore a skirt of crimson velvet over a big panier, and was covered
+with pearls and diamonds. Madame de Vassy would not reprove Monsieur
+d'Osmont in words for his method of treating her magnificent golden
+snuff-box; but used to get up from her place at the card-table as soon
+as he had so used it, empty all the snuff into the fireplace, and ring
+for more. D'Osmont, meanwhile, would go on without noticing her, laugh
+and swear over his cards, and get in a passion with himself if the luck
+ran against him. Yet when he was not playing, the man was lively, modest
+and amiable, and except for his fidgety habits, had the tone of the best
+society.[Footnote: Dufort, ii. 46.]
+
+That which above all things distinguished the French nobility, and
+especially the highest ranks of it, from the rest of mankind was the
+amount of leisure which it enjoyed. Most people in the world have to
+work, most aristocracies to govern The English gentleman of the
+eighteenth century farmed his estates, acted as a magistrate, took
+part in politics. Living in the country, he was a mighty hunter. The
+French nobleman, unless he were an officer in the army (and even the
+officers had inordinately long leave of absence), had nothing to do
+but to kill time. Only the poorer country gentlemen ever thought of
+farming their own lands. For the unemployed nobles of Paris, there was
+but occasional sport to be had. Indeed, the Frenchman, although he
+likes the more violent and tumultuous kinds of hunting, is not easily
+interested in the quieter and more lasting varieties of sport. He will
+joyfully chase the wild boar, when horses, dogs, and horns, with the
+admiration of his friends and servants, concur to keep his blood
+boiling; but he will not care to plod alone through the woods for a
+long afternoon on the chance of bringing home a brace of woodcock; nor
+can he mention fishing without a sneer. Being thus deprived of the
+chief resource by which Anglo-Saxons combine activity and indolence,
+the French nobility cultivated to their highest pitch those human
+pleasures which are at once the most vivid and the most delicate. They
+devoted themselves to society and to love-making. Too quick-witted to
+fall into sloth, too proud to become drunkards or gluttons, they
+dissipated their lives in conversation and stained their souls with
+intrigue. Never, probably, have the arts which make social intercourse
+delightful been carried to so high a degree of excellence as among
+them. Never perhaps, in a Christian country, have offenses against the
+laws of marriage been so readily condoned, where outward decency was
+not violated, as in the upper circles of France in the century
+preceding the Revolution.
+
+The vice of Parisian society under Louis XV. and his grandson presented
+a curious character. Adultery had acquired a regular standing, and
+connections dependent upon it were openly, if tacitly recognized. Such
+illicit alliances were even governed by a morality of their own, and the
+attempt to induce a woman to be unfaithful to her criminal lover might
+be treated as an insult.[Footnote: Witness Rousseau and Mme. d'Houdetot
+in the _Confessions_. Mlle. d'Aydie was accounted very virtuous for
+dissuading her lover from marrying her, even after the birth of her
+child, for fear of injuring his prospects. Yet the match would not seem,
+to modern ideas, to have been a very unequal one.] But this pedantry of
+vice was not always maintained. There were men and women in high life
+who changed their connections very frequently, yielding to the caprice
+of the moment, as the senses or the wit might lead them. Such people
+were not passionate, but simply depraved; yet the mass of the community,
+deterred partly by fear of ridicule, and partly by the Philosophic
+spirit which had decided that chastity was not a part of natural morals,
+did not visit them with very severe condemnation.
+
+If eccentricity sometimes overrode étiquette and even politeness, good
+morals and religion not infrequently made a stand against corruption.
+There were loving wives and careful mothers among the highest nobility.
+Of the Duchess of Ayen we get a description from her children. Her
+mansion was in the Rue St. Honoré, and had a garden running back almost
+to that of the Tuileries (for the Rue de Rivoli was not then in
+existence). The house was known for the beauty of its apartments, and
+for the superb collection of pictures which it contained. After dinner,
+which was served at three o'clock, the duchess would retire to her
+bedchamber, a large room hung with crimson damask, and take her place in
+a great armchair by the fire. Her books, her work, her snuff-box, were
+within reach. She would call her five girls about her. These, on chairs
+and footstools, squabbling gently at times for the places next their
+mother, would tell of their excursions, their lessons, the little events
+of every day. There was nothing frivolous in their education. Their old
+nurse had not filled their minds with fairy tales, but with stories from
+the Old Testament and with anecdotes of heroic actions.
+
+The pleasures of these girls were simple. Once or twice in a summer they
+went on a visit to their grandfather, the Marshal de Noailles at Saint
+Germain en Laye. In the autumn they spent a week with their other
+grandfather, Monsieur d'Aguesseau at Fresnes. An excursion into the
+suburbs, a ride on donkeys on the slopes of Mont Valérien, made up their
+innocent dissipations. Their most frivolous excitement was to see their
+governess fall off her donkey.
+
+The piety of the duchess might in some respects appear extravagant. Her
+fourth daughter had two beggars of the parish for god-parents, as a
+constant reminder of humility. The same child was of a violent and
+willful disposition, but was converted at the age of eleven and became
+mild, patient, and studious. The conversion of so young a sinner, and
+the seriousness with which the event was treated by the family, seem
+rather to belong to the atmosphere of Puritanism than to that of the
+Catholicism of the eighteenth century. But if the religion of the
+Duchess of Ayen sometimes led her to fantastic extremes, these were not
+its principal characteristics. Her piety was applied to the conduct of
+her daily life and to the education of her daughters in honesty,
+reasonableness, and self-devotion. Their faith and hers were to be
+tested by the hardest trials, and to be victorious both in prison and on
+the scaffold. We are fortunate in possessing their biographies. In how
+many cases at the same time and in the same country did similar virtues
+go unrecorded?[Footnote: Vie de Madame de Lafayette, Mme. de Montagu.]
+
+As for the smaller nobility, the "sparrow hawks,"[Footnote: Hobéraux.]
+living in the country, they dwelt among their less exalted neighbors,
+doing good or evil as the character of each one of them directed.
+Sometimes we find them on friendly terms with the villagers, acting as
+godfathers and godmothers to the children, summoning the peasants to
+take part in the chase, or to dance in the courtyard of the castle. We
+find them endowing hospitals, giving alms, keeping an eye on the conduct
+of the village priest. A continual interchange of presents goes on
+between the cottage and the great house. A new lord is welcomed by
+salvos of musketry, the ladies of his family are met by young girls
+bearing flowers. Such relations as these are said to have grown less
+common as the great Revolution drew near. It has often been remarked of
+the Vendée and Brittany, where a larger proportion of lords resided on
+their estates than was the case elsewhere, that a friendlier feeling was
+there cultivated between the upper and the lower classes; and that it
+was in those provinces that a stand was made by lords and peasants alike
+for the maintenance of the old order of things. In some parts of the
+country the peasants and their lords were continually quarreling and
+going to law. The royal intendant was besieged with complaints. The poor
+could not get their pay for their work. They received blows instead of
+money. Arrogance and injustice on the one side were met by impudence and
+fraud on the other. The old leadership had passed away. The upper class
+had lost its power and its responsibility; it insisted the more
+tenaciously on its privileges. Exemption from certain taxes was the
+chief of these, but there were others as irritating if less important.
+Quarrels arose with the priest about the lord's right to be first given
+the holy water. One vicar in his wrath deluged his lordship's new wig.
+
+In general, we may conceive of the lesser nobles, deprived of their
+useful function of regulating and administering the country, leading
+somewhat penurious and useless lives. They hunted a good deal, they
+slept long. Generally they did not eat overmuch, for gluttony is not a
+vice of their race. They grumbled at the ascendency of the court, and at
+the new army-regulations. They preserved in their families the noble
+virtues of dignity and obedience. Children asked their parents' blessing
+on their knees before they went to bed. The elder Mirabeau, the grim
+Friend of Men, still knelt nightly before his mother in his fiftieth
+year. The children honored their parents in fact as well as in form, and
+took no important step in life without paternal consent. The boys ran
+rather wild in their youth, but settled down at the approach of middle
+life; the oldest inheriting the few or barren paternal acres; the
+younger sons equally noble, and thus debarred from lucrative
+occupations, pushing their fortunes in the army. The girls were married
+young or went into a convent. Marriages were arranged entirely by the
+parents. "My father," said a young nobleman, "I am told that you have
+agreed on a marriage for me. Would you be kind enough to tell me if the
+report be true, and what is the name of the lady?" "My son," answered
+his parent, "be so good as to mind your own business, and not to come to
+me with questions."[Footnote: Babeau, _Le Village_, 158. Ch. de
+Kibbe, 169. Mme. de Montagu, 57. Genlis, _Dictionnaire des
+Étiquettes,_ i. 71. Lavergne, _Les Économistes,_ 127.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE ARMY.
+
+
+The nobility of France was essentially a military class. Its privileges
+were claimed on account of services rendered in the field. The priests
+pray, the nobles fight, the commons pay for all; such was the theory of
+the state. It is true that the nobility no longer furnished the larger
+part of the armies; that the old feudal levies of ban and rear-ban, in
+which the baron rode at the head of his vassals, were no longer called
+out. But still the soldier's life was considered the proper career of
+the nobleman. A large proportion of the members of the order were
+commissioned officers, and most officers were members of the order.
+
+The rule which required proofs of nobility as a prerequisite to
+obtaining a commission was not severely enforced in the reign of Louis
+XV., and in the earlier years of his successor. In many regiments it was
+usual to promote one or two deserving sergeants every year. In others
+the necessary certificate of birth could be signed by any nobleman and
+was often obtained from greed or good-nature. Moreover, an order of 1750
+had provided that officers of plebeian extraction should sometimes be
+ennobled for distinguished services. But in 1781, a new rule was
+established. No one could thenceforth receive a commission as second
+lieutenant who could not show four generations of nobility on his
+father's side, counting himself. Thus were all members of families
+recently ennobled excluded from the service, and no door was left open
+to the military ambition of people belonging to the middle class;
+although that class was yearly increasing in importance. Moreover,
+strict genealogical proofs were required, the candidate for a commission
+having to submit his papers to the royal herald. Exceptions were made in
+favor of the sons of members of the military order of Saint Louis.
+[Footnote: Ségur, i. 82, 158. Chérest, i. 14. Anciennes lois françaises,
+22d May, 1781. The regiments to which the regulation applies are those
+of French infantry (not foreign regiments), cavalry, light horse,
+dragoons, and chasseurs à cheval. This would seem to exclude the
+artillery and engineers. The foreign regiments appear to have been
+included in a later order. Chérest, i. 24.]
+
+But all nobles were not on the same footing in the army. Among the
+regimental officers two classes might be distinguished. There were, on
+the one hand, the ensigns, lieutenants, captains, majors, and
+lieutenant-colonels, who generally belonged to the poorer nobility. They
+served long and for small pay, with little hope of the more brilliant
+rewards of the profession. They did their work and stayed with their
+regiments, although leave of absence was not difficult to obtain in time
+of peace. Their lives were hard and frugal, a captain's pay not
+exceeding twenty-five hundred livres, which was perhaps doubled by
+allowances. On the other hand were the colonels and second colonels,
+young men of influential families, who, at most, passed through the
+lower ranks to learn something of the duties of an officer. Their
+commissions were procured by favor. There was scarce a bishop about the
+court who did not have a candidate for a colonelcy, scarcely a pretty
+woman who did not aspire to make her friend a captain. The rich young
+men, thus promoted, threw their money about freely in camp and garrison.
+Thus if the nobility had exclusive privileges, the court had privileges
+that excluded those of the rest of the nobility, and in the very last
+days of the old monarchy, these also were enhanced. The Board of War in
+1788, decided that no one should become a general officer who had not
+previously been a colonel; and colonels' commissions, besides being very
+expensive, were given, as above stated, by favor alone. Thus on the eve
+of the Revolution were the bands of privilege drawn tighter in France.
+[Footnote: Ségur, i. 154. Chérest, ii. 90.] The colonels thus appointed
+were generally not wanting in courage. The French nobility of all
+degrees was ready enough to give its blood on the battle-field. Thus the
+son of the Duke of Boufflers, fourteen years old, had been made colonel
+of the regiment which bore the name of his family. The duke served as a
+lieutenant-général in the same army. Fearing that the boy might not know
+how to behave in battle, the father, on the first occasion, obtained
+permission from the Marshal, Maurice de Saxe, commander of the army, to
+accompany his son as a volunteer. The boy's regiment was ordered to
+attack the intrenched village of Raucoux. The young colonel and his
+father, followed by two pages, led their men against the intrenchments.
+When they reached the works, the duke took his son in his arms and threw
+him over the parapet. He himself followed, and both came off unhurt, but
+the two pages were shot dead.[Footnote: Montbarey, i. 38.]
+
+In America, as in Europe, the young favorites of fortune were ready
+enough to fight. Such men as Lauzun, Ségur, or the Viscount of Noailles
+asked nothing better than adventures, whether of war or love; but in
+peace they could not be looked on as satisfactory or hard-working
+officers. Yet they and their like continued to get advancement.
+Ordinances might be passed from time to time, requiring age or length of
+service, but ordinances in old France did not apply to the great. The
+poorer nobility might grumble, but the court families continued to get
+the good places. The lieutenant-colonels and the other working officers
+of the army had but little chance of rising to be general officers. Even
+before the order of 1788, promotion fell to the courtier colonels. The
+baton of the marshals of France was placed in the hands only of the very
+highest nobility. All over Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries, armies were often commanded by men born to princely rank.
+That this did not necessarily mean that they were ill commanded may be
+shown by the names of Turenne and Condé, Maurice de Saxe and Eugène of
+Savoy, Prince Henry of Prussia I and Frederick the Great.
+
+While the higher commands were thus monopolized (or nearly so) by the
+rich and powerful, the poorer nobility flocked into the army, to occupy
+the subordinate ranks of commissioned officers. Sometimes they came
+through the military schools. The most important of these had been
+founded at Paris in 1750, by the financier Paris-Duverney. Here several
+hundred young gentlemen, mostly born poor and preferably the sons of
+officers, received a military education. The boys came to the school
+from their homes in the country between the ages of nine and eleven,
+rustic little figures sometimes, in wooden shoes and woolen caps, like
+the peasant lads who had been their early playmates. They were taught
+the duties of gentlemen and officers, cleanliness, an upright carriage,
+the manual and tactics, and something of military science. Other
+schools, kept by monks, existed in the provinces where the young
+aspirants for commissions learned engineering and the theory of
+artillery. But many young a noblemen entered their career by a process
+more in accordance with youthful tastes. We find boys in camp in time of
+war, evading the orders which forbade entering the service before the
+age of sixteen. Children of twelve and thirteen are wounded in battle.
+[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_, ii. 7, 45. Montbarey, i. 18.]
+
+As the only form of active life in which most nobles could take part
+was found in the army, there was always too large a number of
+officers, and too great a proportion of the military expenses was
+devoted to them. In 1787 hardly more than one in three of those
+holding commissions was in active service. The number of soldiers
+under Louis XVI. was less than a hundred and fifty thousand actually
+with the colors. There were thirty-six thousand officers, on paper;
+thirteen thousand actively employed. The soldiers cost the state
+44,100,000 livres a year, the officers 46,400,000 livres.[Footnote:
+Babeau, Vie militaire, i. 15; ii. 90, 145. Necker, De l'Administration,
+ii. 415, 418.]
+
+The relation between the officers and the soldiers of the old French
+army was more intimate and kindly than that existing in any other
+European army of the time. For both, their regiment was a home, and the
+military service a lifelong profession. They had entered it young, and
+they hoped to die in it. Their relation to each other had become a part
+of the structure of their minds; a condition of coherent thought. A
+soldier might rise from the ranks and become a lieutenant, or even a
+captain, but such promotion was infrequent; few common soldiers had the
+education or the means to aspire to it. On the other hand, the command
+of a company was sometimes almost hereditary. The captain might be lord
+of the village in which his soldiers were born. In that case he would
+care for them in sickness, and perhaps even grant a furlough when the
+private was much needed by his family at home. His own chance of
+promotion was small. He expected to do the work of his life in that
+company, among those soldiers, with perhaps his younger brother, or, in
+time, his son, as his lieutenant. It would seem that in the years
+immediately preceding the French Revolution these kindly relations were
+in some measure dying out. The captain was no longer so closely
+connected with his company as he had been. Officialism was taking the
+place of those personal connections which had characterized the feudal
+system. The gulf between soldiers and officers, if not harder to cross
+for the ambitious, separated the commonplace members of each group more
+widely from those of the other.[Footnote: Babeau, Vie militaire, i. 43,
+189. Montbarey, ii. 272. Moore's View, i. 365.]
+
+The private soldiers of King Louis XVI., who stood in long white lines
+on parade at Newport, while their many colored flags floated above and
+the officers brandished their spontoons in front, or who rushed in
+night attack on the advanced redoubt at Yorktown, were not, like
+modern European soldiers, brought together by conscription. They were,
+nominally at least, volunteers. Unruly lads, mechanics out of work,
+runaway apprentices, were readily drawn into the service by skillful
+recruiting officers. Thirty years before, it had been the custom of
+these landsharks to cheat or bully young men into the service. The raw
+youth, arriving in Paris from the country, had been offered by a
+chance acquaintance a place as servant in a gentleman's family, and
+after signing an engagement had found himself bound for eight years to
+serve His Majesty, in one of his regiments of foot. The young
+barber-surgeon had waked from a carouse with the king's silver in his
+pocket. Such things were still common in Germany. In France some
+effort had been made to regulate the activity of the recruiting
+officers. Complaints of force or fraud in enlistment received
+attention from the authorities. The soldiers of Louis XVI., therefore,
+were engaged with comparative fairness. The infantry came mostly from
+the towns, the cavalry and artillery from the country. The soldiers
+were derived from the lowest part of the population. Whether they
+improved or deteriorated in the service depended on their officers. In
+any case they became entirely absorbed in it. The soldier did not keep
+even the name by which he had been known in common life. He assumed,
+or was given, a _nom de guerre_ such as La Tulippe, La Tendresse,
+Pollux, Pot-de-Vin, Vide-bouteille, or Va-de-bon-coeur. His term of
+service was seven or eight years, but he was by no means sure of
+getting a fair discharge at the end of it; and was in any case likely
+to reenlist. Thus the recruit had, in fact entered upon the profession
+of his life.[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_, i. 55, 136,
+182. Mercier, x. 273. Ségur, i. 222; _Encyc. méth. Art milit._ ii. 177
+(_Desertion_)]
+
+The uniforms of the day were ill adapted to campaigning. The French
+soldier of the line wore white clothes with colored trimmings, varying
+according to his regiment. On his head was perched the triangular cocked
+hat of the period, standing well out over his ears, but hardly shading
+his eyes. Beneath it his hair was powdered, or rather, pasted; for the
+powder was sifted on to the wet hair, and caked in the process. The
+condition of the mass after a rainy night at the camp-fire may be
+imagined. In some regiments the wearing of a moustache was required, and
+those soldiers whom nature had not supplied with such an ornament were
+obliged to put on a false one, fastened with pitch, which was liable to
+cause abcesses on the lip. Sometimes a fine, uniform color was produced
+in the moustaches of a whole regiment by means of boot-blacking. Broad
+white belts were crossed upon the breast. The linen gaiters, white on
+parade, black for the march, came well above the knee, and a superfluous
+number of garters impeded the step. It was a tedious matter to put these
+things on; and if a pebble got in through a button-hole, the soldier was
+tempted to leave it in his shoe, until it had made his foot sore.
+Uniforms were seldom renewed. The coat was expected to last three years,
+the hat two, the breeches one.[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_,
+i. 93. _Encyc. méth. Art milit._ i. 589 (_Chaussure_) ii. 179.
+Susane, ix. (_Plates_). See also a very interesting little book by
+a great man, Maurice de Saxe, _Les Rêveries_.]
+
+All parts of the soldier's uniform were tight and close fitting. I think
+that this was learned from the Prussians. The ideal of the army as a
+machine seems to have originated, or at least to have been first worked
+out in Germany. Such an ideal was a natural consequence of the military
+system of the age. Of the soldiers of Frederick the Great only one-half
+were his born subjects. Other German princes enlisted as many foreigners
+as they could. In the French army were many regiments of foreign
+mercenaries. Nowhere was the pay high, or the soldier well treated.
+Desertion was very common. Under these circumstances mechanical
+precision became an invaluable quality. The soldier must be held in very
+strict bands, for if left free he might turn against the power that
+employed him.
+
+The connection between a rigid system in which nothing is left to the
+soldier's intelligence or initiative, and a tight uniform, which
+confines his movements, is both deep and evident. If a man is never to
+have his own way, his master will inevitably find means to make him
+needlessly uncomfortable. As the modern owner of a horse sometimes
+diminishes the working power of the animal by check-reins and
+martingales, so the despot of the eighteenth century buckled and
+buttoned his military cattle into shape, and made them take unnatural
+paces. But even under these disadvantages the French soldiers
+surpassed all others in grace and ease of bearing. Officers were
+sometimes accused of sacrificing the efficiency of their commands to
+appearances. The evolutions of the troops involved steps more
+appropriate to the dancing-master than to the drill sergeant.
+[Footnote: Montbarey, ii. 272.] Such criticisms as these have often
+been made on the French soldier by his own countrymen and by
+foreigners. But those who think he can be trifled with on this
+account, are apt to find themselves terribly mistaken.
+
+The food of the soldiers was coarse and barely sufficient. The pay was
+so absorbed by the requirements of the uniform, many of the smaller
+parts of which were at the expense of the men, and by the diet, that
+little was left for the almost necessary comforts of drink and tobacco.
+The barracks, handsome outside, were close and crowded within. During
+this reign orders were given that only two men should sleep in a bed. In
+some garrisons soldiers were still billeted on the inhabitants. In
+sickness they were better cared for than civilians, the military
+hospitals being decidedly better than those open to the general public.
+[Footnote: Lafayette told the Assembly of Notables in 1787 that the food
+of the soldiers was insufficient for their maintenance. _Mémoires_,
+i. 215. Ségur, i. 161.]
+
+If we compare the material condition of the French soldier in the latter
+years of the old monarchy with that of other European soldiers of his
+day, we shall find him about as well treated as they were. If we compare
+those times with these, we shall find that he is now better clothed, but
+not better fed than he was then.[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie
+militaire_, i. 374]
+
+"The soldiers are very clean," writes an English traveler in France in
+the year 1789; "so far from being meagre and ill-looking fellows, as
+John Bull would persuade us, they are well-formed, tall, handsome men,
+and have a cheerfulness and civility in their countenances and manner
+which is peculiarly pleasing. They also looked very healthy, great care
+is taken of them."[Footnote: Rigby, 13.]
+
+The period of twenty-five years that preceded the Revolution was a time
+of attempted reform in the French army. The defeats of the Seven Years'
+War had served as a lesson. The Duke of Choiseul, the able minister
+of Louis XV., abolished many abuses. The manoeuvres of the troops
+became more regular, the discipline stricter and more exact for a time.
+The Duke of Aiguillon ousted Choiseul, by making himself the courtier of
+the strumpet Du Barry, and things appear to have slipped back. Then the
+old king died, and Aiguillon followed his accomplice into exile. Louis
+XVI. found his finances in disorder, his army and navy demoralized. The
+death of the minister of war in 1775 gave him the opportunity to make
+one of his well-meant and feeble attempts at reform. He called to the
+ministry an old soldier, the Count of Saint-Germain, who had for some
+time been living in retirement. The count had seen much foreign service,
+was in full sympathy neither with the French army nor with the French
+court, and was moreover a man who had little knack at getting on with
+anybody. He had written a paper on military reforms, and thus attracted
+notice. In vain, when in office, he attacked some crying abuses,
+especially the privileges granted to favored regiments and favored
+persons. While he disgusted the court in this way, he raised a storm of
+indignation in the army by his love of foreign innovations, and
+especially of one practice considered deeply degrading. This was the
+punishment of minor offenses by flogging with the flat of the sword;
+using a weapon especially made for that purpose. The arguments in favor
+of this punishment are obvious. It is expeditious; it is disagreeable to
+the sufferer, but does not rob the state of his services, nor subject
+him to the bad influences and foul air of the guard-house. The
+objections are equally apparent. Flogging, which seems the most natural
+and simple of punishments to many men in an advanced state of
+civilization, is hated by others, hardly more civilized, with a deadly
+hatred. In the former case it inflicts but a moderate injury upon the
+skin; in the latter, it strikes deep into the mind and soul. It would be
+hard to say beforehand in which way a nation will take it. The English
+soldier of Waterloo, like the German of Rossbach, received the lash
+almost as a joke. The Frenchman, their unsuccessful opponent on those
+fields, could hardly endure it. Grenadiers wept at inflicting the sword
+stroke, and their colonel mingled his tears with theirs. "Strike with
+the point," cried a soldier, "it hurts less!"
+
+To some of the foreigners in the French service this sensitiveness
+seemed absurd. The Count of Saint-Germain consulted, on the subject, a
+major of the regiment of Nassau, who had risen from the ranks. "Sir,"
+said the veteran, "I have received a great many blows; I have given a
+great many, and all to my advantage."[Footnote: Ségur, i. 80. Mercier,
+vii. 212. Besenval, ii. 19. Allonville. _Mem. sec._ 84. Montbarey,
+i. 311. Flogging in some form and German ways in general seem to have
+been introduced into the French army as early as Choiseul's time, and
+more or less practiced through the reign of Louis XVI.; but the great
+discontent appears to date from the more rigorous application of such
+methods by Saint-Germain. Montbarey. Dumouriez, i. 370 (liv. ii. ch.
+iii).]
+
+The spirit of reform was in the air, and ardent young officers would let
+nothing pass untried. The Count of Ségur tells a story of such an one;
+and although no name be given, he seems to point to the brother-in-law
+of Lafayette, the brave Viscount of Noailles.
+
+"One morning," says Ségur, "I saw a young man of one of the first
+families of the court enter my bedroom. I had been his friend from
+childhood. He had long hated study, and thought only of pleasure, play,
+and women. But recently he had been seized with military ardor, and
+dreamed but of arms, horses, school of theory, exercises, and German
+discipline.
+
+"As he came into my room, he looked profoundly serious; he begged me to
+send away my valet. When we were alone: `What is the meaning, my dear
+Viscount,' said I, `of so early a visit and so grave a beginning? Is it
+some new affair of honor or of love?'
+
+"`By no means,' said he, `but it is on account of a very important
+matter, and of an experiment that I have absolutely resolved to make. It
+will undoubtedly seem very strange to you; but it is necessary in order
+to enlighten me on the great subject we are all discussing; we can judge
+well only of what we have ourselves undergone. When I tell you my plan
+you will feel at once that I could intrust it only to my best friend,
+and that none but he can help me to execute it. In a word, here is the
+case: I want to know positively what effect strokes with the flat of the
+sword may have on a strong, courageous, well-balanced man, and how far
+his obstinacy could bear this punishment without weakening. So I beg you
+to lay on until I say "Enough."'
+
+"Bursting out laughing at this speech, I did all I could to turn him
+aside from his strange plan, and to convince him of the folly of his
+proposal; but it was useless. He insisted, begged and conjured me to do
+him this pleasure, with as many entreaties as if it had been a question
+of getting me to render him some great service.
+
+"At last I consented and resolved to punish his fancy by giving him his
+money's worth. So I set to work; but, to my great astonishment, the
+sufferer, coldly meditating on the effect of each blow, and collecting
+all his courage to support it, spoke not a word and constrained himself
+to appear unmoved; so that it was only after letting me repeat the
+experiment a score of times that he said: `Friend, it is enough. I am
+contented; and I now understand that this must be an efficacious method
+of conquering many faults.'
+
+"I thought all was over; and up to that point the scene had seemed to me
+simply comic; but just as I was about to ring for my valet to dress me,
+the Viscount, suddenly stopping me, said: `One moment, please; all is
+not finished; it is well that you should make this experiment, too.'
+
+"I assured him that I had no desire to do so, and that it would by no
+means change my opinion, which was entirely adverse to an innovation so
+opposed to the French character.
+
+"`Very well,' answered he, `but I ask it not for your sake but for mine.
+I know you; although you are a perfect friend, you are very lively, a
+little fond of poking fun, and you would perhaps make a very amusing
+story of what has just happened between us, at my expense, among your
+ladies.'
+
+"`But is not my word enough for you?' I rejoined.
+
+"`Yes,' said he, `in any more serious matter; but anyway, if I am only
+afraid of an indiscretion, that fear is too much. And so, in the name of
+friendship, I beg you, set me completely at ease on that point by taking
+back what you have been kind enough to lend me so gracefully. Moreover,
+I repeat it, believe me, you will profit by it and be glad to have
+judged for yourself this new method that is so much discussed.'
+
+"Overcome by his prayers, I let him take the fatal weapon; but after he
+had given me the first stroke, far from imitating his obstinate
+endurance, I quickly called out that it was enough, and that I
+considered myself sufficiently enlightened on this grave question. Thus
+ended this mad scene; we embraced at parting; and in spite of my desire
+to tell the story, I kept his secret as long as he pleased."[Footnote:
+Ségur, i. 84.]
+
+The discipline of the French army, like that of other bodies, military
+and civil, depended much less on regulations than on the individual
+character of the men in command for the time being. France was engaged
+in but one war during the reign of Louis XVI., and in that war the
+land forces were occupied only in America. "The French discipline is
+such," writes Lafayette to Washington from Newport, "that chickens and
+pigs walk between the lines without being disturbed, and that there is
+in the camp a cornfield of which not one leaf has been touched." And
+Rochambeau tells with honest pride of apples hanging on the trees
+which shaded the soldier's tents. "The discipline of the French army,"
+he says, "has always followed it in all its campaigns. It was due to
+the zeal of the generals, of the superior and regimental officers, and
+especially to the good spirit of the soldier, which never failed." But
+Rochambeau was a working general, and Lafayette had done his best in
+France that, as far as was possible, the French commander in America
+should have working officers under him. Neither in war nor in peace
+have the French always been famous for their discipline; and the
+discontent which had been caused by the changes above mentioned had
+not tended to strengthen it in the closing years of the monarchy.
+"Whatever idea I may have formed of the want of discipline and of the
+anarchy which reigned among the troops," says Besenval, "it was far
+below what I found when I saw them close," and circumstances confirm
+the testimony of this not over-trustworthy witness.[Footnote:
+Washington, vii. 518. Rochambeau, i. 255, 314. Fersen,
+i. 39. 67. Besenval, ii. 36.]
+
+It was in the latter part of the previous reign that the adventure of
+the Count of Bréhan had taken place; but the story is too characteristic
+to be omitted, and the spirit which it showed continued to exist down to
+the very end of the old monarchy.
+
+The Count of Bréhan, after serving with distinction in the Seven Years'
+War, had retired from the army, and devoted his time to society and the
+fine arts. He was called to Versailles one day by the Duke of Aiguillon,
+prime minister to Louis XV., his friend and cousin. "I have named you to
+the king," said the duke, "as the only man who would be able to bring
+the Dauphiny regiment into a state of discipline. The line officers, by
+their insubordinate behavior, have driven away several colonels in
+succession. If I were offering you a favor, you might refuse; but this
+is an act of duty, and I have assured the king that you would undertake
+it."
+
+"You do me justice," answered Bréhan. "I will take the command of the
+regiment, but I must make three conditions. I must have unlimited power
+to reward and punish; I must be pardoned if I overstep the regulations;
+and if I succeed in bringing the regiment into good condition, I am not
+to be obliged to keep it for more than a year."
+
+His conditions granted, Bréhan set out for Marseilles, where the
+regiment was quartered. On his arrival in that city, he put up at a
+small and inconspicuous inn, and, dressed as a civilian, made his way on
+foot to a coffee-house, which was said to be a favorite lounging-place
+of the officers of the Dauphiny regiment. Taking a seat, he listened to
+the conversation going on about him, and soon made out that the
+insubordinate subalterns were talking about their new colonel, and of
+the fine tricks they would play him on his arrival. Picking out two
+young officers who were making themselves particularly conspicuous, he
+interrupted their conversation.
+
+"You do not know," he says, "the man whom you want to drive away. I
+advise you to mind what you do, or you may get into a scrape."
+
+"Who is this jackanapes that dares to give us advice?"
+
+"A man who will not stand any rudeness, and who demands satisfaction!"
+cries Bréhan, unbuttoning his civilian's coat and showing his military
+order of Saint Louis.
+
+So he goes out with the young fellows, and all the way to the place
+where they are to fight, he chaffs and badgers them. This puts them more
+and more out of temper, so that when they reach the ground they are very
+much excited, while he is perfectly cool. He wounds them one after the
+other; then, turning to the witnesses: "Gentlemen," says he, "I believe
+I have done enough, for a man who has been traveling night and day all
+the way from Paris. If anybody wants any more, he can easily find me. I
+am not one of the people who get out of the way."
+
+Thereupon he leaves them, goes back to his inn, puts on his uniform,
+calls on the general commanding the garrison, and sends orders to the
+officers of the Dauphiny regiment to come and see him. These presently
+arrive, and are thoroughly astonished when they recognize the man whom
+they met in the coffee-house, and who has just wounded two of their
+comrades. But Bréhan pretends not to know any of them, speaks to all
+kindly, tells them of the severe orders that he bears in case of
+insubordination, and expresses the hope and conviction that there will
+be no trouble. He then asks if all the officers of the regiment are
+present. They answer that two gentlemen are ill. "I will go to see
+them," says the new colonel, "and make sure that they are well taken
+care of." He does in fact visit his late adversaries, and finds them in
+great trepidation. They try to make excuses, but Bréhan stops them. "I
+do not want to know about anything that happened before I took command,"
+he says, "and I am quite sure that henceforth I shall have only a good
+report to make to the king of all the officers of my regiment, with whom
+I hope to live on the best of terms."
+
+By this firm and conciliatory conduct, the Count of Bréhan inspired the
+Dauphiny regiment with respect and affection. He restored its discipline
+and left it when his service was over, much regretted by all its
+officers.[Footnote: Allonville, i. 162.]
+
+The lieutenants of the French army were united in an association called
+the Calotte. The legitimate object of this society was to lick young
+officers into shape, by obliging them to conform to the rules of
+politeness and proper behavior, as understood by their class. For this
+purpose the senior lieutenant of each regiment was the chief of the
+regimental club, and there was a general chief for the whole army.
+Offenses against good manners, faults of meanness, or oddity of
+behavior, were discouraged by admonitions, given privately by the chief,
+or publicly in the convivial meetings of the club. Moral pressure might
+be carried so far in an aggravated case, as to cause the culprit to
+resign his commission. The society in fact represented an organized
+professional spirit; and although not recognized by the regulations, was
+favored by the superior officers.[Footnote: Calotte=scull cap, here
+fool's-cap. Concerning this society, see a series of _feuilletons_
+in the _Moniteur Universel,_ Nov. 25th to 30th, 1864 by Gen.
+Ambert; also _Encyclopédie méthodique, Art militaire. Militaire,_
+iv. 101-103 (article _Calotte_); Ségur, i. 132.]
+
+When discipline was relaxed, the Calotte assumed too great powers. Not
+content with moral means, it undertook to enforce its decrees by
+physical ones; and it extended its jurisdiction far above the rank of
+lieutenant.
+
+At the outbreak of the war between France and England in 1778, two camps
+were formed in Normandy and Brittany for the purpose of training the
+army, and perhaps with some intention of making a descent on the English
+coast. The young French officers swarmed to these camps and divided
+their time between drill and pleasure. On one occasion, seats had been
+reserved on a hill for some Breton ladies, who were to see the
+manoeuvres. Two colonels, escorting two ladies of the court who had
+recently arrived from Paris, undertook to appropriate the chairs for
+their companions. A squabble such as is common on such occasions was the
+result.
+
+The Count of Ségur, above mentioned, was acting as aide-de-camp to the
+commanding general. A few days after the quarrel about the chairs, just
+as he was going to begin a game of prisoners' base, two officers who
+were his friends informed him privately that the Calotte had ordered the
+two colonels who had given offense on that occasion to be publicly
+tossed in blankets and that the sentence was about to be carried out.
+Ségur, to gain time, ordered the drummers to beat an alarm. The game was
+broken up, every officer ran to his colors, and the aide-de-camp
+hastened to explain the matter to the astonished general. The proposed
+punishment was deferred and finally prevented; but the escape from a
+scandalous breach of discipline had been a narrow one.
+
+As the Revolution drew nearer, its spirit became evident in the army.
+The Count of Guibert, the most talented and influential member of the
+Board of War in 1788, was the object of satire and epigram. The younger
+officers conspired to spoil the success of his manoeuvres. The
+experiments that had been tried, the frequent changes in the
+regulations, had unsettled their ideas. In their reaction against the
+disagreeable rigor of German discipline, they protested that English
+officers alone, and not the machine-like soldiers of a despot, were the
+models for freemen. The common soldiers caught the spirit of
+insubordination from those who commanded them. Especially, the large
+regiment of French Guards, a highly privileged body, permanently
+quartered in Paris, was infected with the spirit of revolt. Its men were
+conspicuous in the early troubles of the Revolution, acting on the side
+of the mob.[Footnote: Chérest, i. 552. Miot de Mélito, i. 3.]
+
+The militia of old France does not call for a long notice. It consisted
+of from sixty to eighty thousand men, whose chief duty was in garrison
+in time of war, and who during peace were not kept constantly together,
+but assembled from time to time for drill. As the term of service was
+six years, the number of men drawn did not exceed fifteen thousand
+annually. This was surely no great drain on a population of twenty-six
+millions. Militia duty was greatly hated, however. This appears to have
+been because men did not volunteer for it, but were drafted; and because
+many persons were exempted from the draft. This immunity covered not
+only the sons of aged parents who were dependent on them for support,
+but privileged persons of all sorts, from apothecaries to advocates,
+gentlemen and their servants and game-keepers. The burden was thus
+thrown entirely on the poorer peasantry.[Footnote: Broc, i. 117;
+Babeau, _Le Village_, 259.]
+
+The navy in the time of Louis XVI. reached a high state of efficiency.
+The war of 1778 to 1783 was in great measure a naval war, and although
+the French and their allies were worsted in some of the principal
+actions, the general result may be held to have been favorable to them.
+The navy at the outbreak of hostilities consisted of about seventy ships
+of the line, and as many frigates and large corvettes, with a hundred
+smaller vessels. These ships were built on admirable models, for the
+French marine architects were well-trained and skillful; but the
+materials and the construction were not equal in excellence to the
+design. The invention of coppering the ships' bottoms, and thus adding
+to their speed, although generally practiced in England, had been
+applied in France only to the smaller part of the navy. The French,
+however, had an advantage over the English in the fact that ships of the
+same nominal class were in reality larger and broader of beam among the
+former than among the latter, so that the French were sometimes able to
+fight their lower batteries in rough water, when the English had to keep
+their lower ports closed.
+
+The naval officers of France were almost all noblemen, and received a
+careful professional training. Yet the practice of transferring officers
+of high rank from the army to the navy had not been completely
+abandoned. Thus d'Estaing, who commanded with little distinction on the
+North American coast in 1778, was no sailor, but a lieutenant-général,
+artificially turned into a vice-admiral. Such cases, however, were not
+common, and in general the French commanders erred rather by adhering
+too closely to naval rule, than by want of professional training. In the
+navy, as elsewhere, no great original talent was developed during this
+reign, which was a time of expectation rather than of action.
+
+The men, like the officers, were good and well-trained, except when the
+lack of sailors obliged the government to employ soldiers on shipboard.
+It is noticeable that the seamen bore the rope's end with equanimity,
+although the landsmen were so much offended at flogging with the flat of
+the sword. Nor do I find any complaint of want of discipline at sea.
+
+The administration of naval affairs was less satisfactory than the ships
+or the crews. The magazines were not well provided; and the stores were
+probably bad, for the fleets were subject to epidemics.[Footnote:
+Chabaud-Arnault, 189, 196, 214. Charnoek, iii. 222, 282 Ségur, i. 138.
+Chevalier.]
+
+In general the navy appears to have suffered less than the army from the
+fermentation of the public mind. Marine affairs must always remain the
+concern of a special class of men, cut off by absorbing occupations from
+the interests and sympathies of the rest of mankind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE COURTS OF LAW.
+
+
+While the greater and more conspicuous part of the French nobility lived
+by the sword, a highly respectable portion of the order wore the
+judicial gown. Prominent in French affairs in the eighteenth century we
+find the Parliaments, a branch of the old feudal courts of the kings of
+France, retaining the function of high courts of justice, and playing,
+moreover, a certain political part. In the Parliament of Paris, on
+solemn occasions, sat those few members of the highest nobility who held
+the title of Peers of France. With these came the legal hierarchy of
+First President, presidents _à mortier_ and counselors, numbering
+about two hundred. The members were distributed, for the purposes of
+ordinary business, among several courts, the Great Chamber, five courts
+of Inquest, two courts of Petitions, etc.[Footnote: Grand' Chambre,
+Cour des Enquêtes, Cour des Requêtes.] The Parliament of Paris possessed
+original and appellate jurisdiction over a large part of central
+France,--too large a part for the convenience of suitors,--but there
+were twelve provincial parliaments set over other portions of the
+kingdom. The members of these courts, and of several other tribunals of
+inferior jurisdiction, formed the magistracy, a body of great dignity
+and importance.
+
+We have seen that the church possessed certain political rights; that it
+held assemblies and controlled taxes. The political powers of the
+parliaments were more limited, amounting to little more than the right
+of solemn remonstrance. Under a strong monarch, like Louis XIV., this
+power remained dormant; under weak kings, like his successors, it became
+important.
+
+The method of passing a law in the French monarchy was this. The king,
+in one of his councils, issued an edict, and sent it to the Parliament
+of Paris, or to such other Parliaments as it might concern, for
+registration. If the Parliament accepted the edict, the latter was
+entered in its books, and immediately promulgated as law. If the
+Parliament did not approve, and was willing to enter on a contest with
+the king and his advisers, it refused to register. In that case the king
+might recede, or he might force the registration. This was done by means
+of what was called a _bed of justice_. His Majesty, sitting on a
+throne (whence the name of the ceremony), and surrounded by his officers
+of state, personally commanded the Parliament to register, and the
+Parliament was legally bound to comply. As a matter of fact, it did
+sometimes continue to remonstrate; it sometimes adjourned, or ceased to
+administer justice, by way of protest; but such a course was looked on
+as illegal, and severe measures on the part of the king and his
+counselors--the court, as the phrase went,--were to be expected. These
+measures might take the form of imprisonment of recalcitrant judges, or
+of exile of the Parliament in a body. Sometimes new courts of justice,
+more closely dependent on the king's pleasure, were temporarily
+established. Such were the Royal Chamber and the famous Maupeou
+Parliament under Louis XV., the Plenary Court of Louis XVI. Had these
+monarchs been strong men, the new courts would undoubtedly have
+superseded the old Parliaments altogether; as it was, they led only to
+confusion and uncertainty.[Footnote: Du Boys, Hist. du droit criminel
+de la France, ii. 225, 239.]
+
+Throughout the reign of Louis XV. the Parliament of Paris was fighting
+against the church, while the court repeatedly changed sides, but
+oftener inclined to that of clergy. The controversy was theological in
+its origin, the magistrates being Jansenist in their proclivities, while
+the Church of France was largely controlled by the Molinist, or Jesuit
+party. The contest was long and doubtful, neither side obtaining a full
+victory. It was the fashion in the Philosophic party to represent the
+whole matter as a miserable squabble. Yet, apart from the importance of
+the original controversy, which touched the mighty but insoluble
+questions of predestination and free-will, the quarrel had a true
+interest for patriotic Frenchmen. The Roman Church was contending for
+the absolute and unlimited control of religious matters; the Parliament
+for the supremacy of law in the state.
+
+In the reign of Louis XVI. the Parliament was principally engaged in
+struggles of another character. The magistrates were members of a highly
+privileged class. Their battle was arrayed for vested rights against
+reforms. From the time of Turgot to that of Lomenie de Brienne and the
+Notables, the Parliament of Paris, sometimes in sympathy with the
+nation, sometimes against it, was vigorously resisting innovations. Yet
+so great was the irritation then felt against the royal court that the
+Parliament generally gained a temporary popularity by its course of
+opposition.
+
+The courts of justice, and especially the Parliaments, were controlled
+by men who had inherited or bought their places.[Footnote: Under Louis
+XIV, the price of a place of _président à mortier_ was fixed at
+350,000 livres, that of a _maître des requêtes_ at 150,000 livres,
+that of a counselor at 90,000 to 100,000 livres. The place of First
+President was not venal, but held by appointment. Martin, xiii. 53 and
+n. The general subject of the venality of offices is considered in the
+chapter on Taxation.] This, while offering no guarantee of capacity,
+assured the independence of the judges. As the places were looked on as
+property, they were commonly transmitted from father to son, and became
+the basis of that nobility of the gown which played a large part in
+French affairs. The owner of a judicial place was obliged to pass an
+examination in law, before he could assume its duties and emoluments.
+This examination differed in severity at different times and in the
+different Parliaments. In the latter part of the eighteenth century it
+would appear to have been very easy at Paris, but harder in some of the
+provinces. The Parliaments, in any case, retained control over admission
+to their own bodies. Although they could not nominate, they could refuse
+certificates of capacity and morality. They insisted that none but
+counselors should be admitted to the higher places, and that candidates
+should be men of means, "so that, in a condition where honor should be
+the only guide, they might be able to live independently of the profits
+accessory to their labors, which should never have any influence." This
+caution was especially necessary as the judges were paid in great
+measure by the fees, or costs, which under the quaint name of spices
+were borne by the parties. Originally these fees had in fact consisted
+of sugar plums, not more than could be eaten in a day, but subsequently
+they had been commuted and increased until they amounted to considerable
+sums.[Footnote: Bastard d'Estang, i. 122, 245; Du Boys, 535.]
+
+By requiring pecuniary independence and social position, together with a
+certain amount of learning and of personal character, the tone of the
+upper courts was kept good, the magistrates being generally among the
+most learned, solid, and respectable men in France. They seem also to
+have been hard-working and honest, although prejudiced in favor of their
+own privileged class. As the Revolution drew near, they fell into the
+common weakness of their age and country, the worship of public opinion,
+and the love of popularity. We find the Parliament of Paris undergoing,
+and even courting, the applause of the mob in its own halls of justice.
+Like the great Assembly which was soon to have in its hands the
+destinies of France, the most dignified court of justice in the land
+failed to perceive that the deliberative body that allows itself to be
+influenced or even interrupted by spectators, will soon, and deservedly,
+lose respect and power.[Footnote: De Tocqueville praises the
+independence of the old magistrates, who could neither be degraded nor
+promoted by the government, Oeuvres, iv. 171 (Ancien Régime, ch. xi.).
+Montesquieu, iii. 217 (Esp. des lois, liv. v. ch. xix.). Mirabeau, L'Ami
+des hommes, 212, 219. Bastard d'Estang, ii. 611, 621. Grimm, xi. 314.]
+
+When we pass from the consideration of the political functions of the
+Parliaments, and of their composition, to that of the ordinary
+administration of justice, we are struck by the diversity of the law in
+civil matters, and by its severity in criminal affairs. The kingdom of
+France, as it existed in the eighteenth century, was made up of many
+provinces and cities, various in their history. Each one had its local
+customs and privileges. The complication of rules of procedure and
+rights of property was almost infinite. The body of the law was derived
+from sources of two distinct kinds, from feudal custom and from Roman
+jurisprudence. The customs which arose, or were first noted, in the
+Middle Ages, originating as, they did in the manners of barbarian
+tribes, or in the exigencies of a rude state of society, were products
+of a less civilized condition of the human mind than the laws of Rome.
+From a very early period, therefore, the most intelligent and educated
+lawyers all over Europe were struggling, more or less consciously, to
+bring customary feudal law into conformity with Roman ideas. These
+legists recognized that in many matters the custom had definitely fixed
+the law; but whenever a doubtful question arose, they looked for
+guidance to the more perfect system. "The Roman law," they said, "is
+observed everywhere, not by reason of its authority, but by the
+authority of reason." This idea was peculiarly congenial to the tone of
+thought current in the eighteenth century.
+
+Even in England the common and customary law was enlarged at that time
+and adapted to new conditions in accordance with Latin principles, by
+the genius of Lord Mansfield and other eminent lawyers. In France the
+process began earlier and lasted longer. Domat, d'Aguesseau, and Pothier
+were but the successors of a long line of jurists. By the time of Louis
+XVI., some uniformity of principle had been introduced; but everywhere
+feudal irregularity still worried the minds of Philosophers and vexed
+the temper of litigants. The courts were numerous and the jurisdiction
+often conflicting. The customs were numberless, hardly the same for any
+two lordships. To the subjects of Louis XVI., believing as they did that
+there was a uniform, natural law of justice easily discoverable by man,
+this state of things seemed anomalous and absurd. "Shall the same case
+always be judged differently in the provinces and in the capital? Must
+the same man be right in Brittany and wrong in Languedoc?" cries
+Voltaire. And the inconvenience arising from this excessive variety of
+legal rights, together with the vexatious nature of some of them, did
+more perhaps than any other single cause to engender in the men of that
+time their too great love of uniformity.[Footnote: "Servatur ubique jus
+romanum, non ratione imperii, sed rationis imperio." Laferrière, i. 82,
+532. See Ibid., i. 553 n., for a list of eighteen courts of
+extraordinary jurisdiction, and of five courts of ordinary jurisdiction,
+viz.; 1, Parlemens, 2, Présidiaux, 3, Baillis et sénéchaux royaux, 4,
+Prévôts royaux, 5, Juges seigneuriaux. Voltaire, xxi. 419 (_Louis
+XV._), Sorel, i. 148.]
+
+It has been said that the judges of the higher courts were generally
+honest. In the lower courts, and especially in those tribunals which
+still depended on the lords, oppression and injustice appear to have
+been not uncommon. The bailiffs who presided in them were often partial
+where the interests of the lords whose salaries they received were
+concerned. And even when we come to the practice before the Parliaments,
+the American reader will sometimes be struck with astonishment at the
+extent to which members of those high tribunals were allowed by custom
+to be influenced by the private and personal solicitation of parties.
+The whole spirit of the continental system of civil and criminal law is
+here at variance with that of the Anglo-Saxon system. English and
+American judges are like umpires in a conflict; French judges like
+interested persons conducting an investigation. The latter method is
+perhaps the better for unraveling intricate cases, but the former would
+seem to expose the bench to less temptation. A judge who is long
+closeted with each of the contestants alternately must find it harder to
+keep his fingers from bribes and his mind from prejudice than a judge
+who is prevented by strict professional étiquette from seeing either
+party except in the full glare of the court-room, and from listening to
+any argument of counsel, save where both sides are represented.
+Accusations of bribery, even of judges, were common in old France. The
+lower officers of the court took fees openly. Thick books, under the
+name of mémoires, were published, with the avowed intention of
+influencing the public and the courts in pending cases.[Footnote: For a
+statement that influential persons went unpunished in criminal matters
+and got the better of their adversaries in civil matters by means of
+_lettres de cachet_, and for instances, see Bos. 148; a long list
+of iniquitous judgments, Ibid., 190, etc.]
+
+One judicial abuse especially contrary to fair dealing had become very
+common. Powerful and influential persons could have their cases removed
+from the tribunals in which they were begun, and tried in other courts
+where from personal influence they might expect a more favorable result.
+It was not only the royal council that could draw litigation to itself.
+The practice was widespread. By a writ called _committimus_, the
+tribunal by which an action was to be tried could be changed.
+
+This appears to have been a frequent cause of failure of justice.
+
+As for the criminal proceedings of the age, there was hardly a limit to
+their cruelty. Under Louis XV. the prisons were filthy dens, crowded and
+unventilated, true fever-holes. A private cell ten feet square, for a
+man awaiting trial, cost sixty francs a month. Large dogs were trained
+to watch the prisoners and to prevent their escape. Twice a year, in May
+and September, the more desperate convicts left Paris for the galleys.
+They made the journey chained together in long carts, so that eight
+mounted policemen could watch a hundred and twenty of them. The galleys
+at Toulon appear to have been less bad than the prisons in Paris. They
+were kept clean and well-aired, and the prisoners were fairly well fed
+and clothed; but some of them had been imprisoned for forty, fifty, or
+even sixty years. They were allowed to for themselves and to earn a
+little money. They were divided into three classes, deserters,
+smugglers, and thieves, distinguished by the color of their caps.
+[Footnote: Mercier, iii. 265, x. 151. Howard, Lazarettos, 54.]
+
+Torture was regarded as a regular means for the discovery of crime. It
+was administered in various ways, the forms differing from province to
+province. They included the application of fire to various parts of the
+body, the distension of the stomach and lungs by water poured into
+mouth, thumbscrews, the rack, the boot. These were but methods of
+investigation, used on men and women whose crime was not proved. They
+might be repeated after conviction for the discovery of accomplices. The
+greater part of the examination of accused persons was carried on in
+private, and during it they were not allowed counsel for their defense.
+They were confronted but once with the witnesses against them, and that
+only after those witnesses had given their evidence and were liable to
+the penalties of perjury if they retracted it. Many offenses were
+punishable with death. Thieving servants might be executed, but under
+Louis XVI. public feeling rightly judged the punishment too severe for
+the offense, so that masters would not prosecute nor judges condemn for
+it.[Footnote: Counsel were not allowed in France for that important
+part of the proceedings which was carried on in secret. Voltaire,
+xlviii. 132. In England, at that time, counsel were not allowed of right
+to prisoners in cases of felony; but judges were in the habit of
+straining the law to admit them. Strictly they could only instruct the
+prisoner in matters of law. Blackstone iv. fol. 355 (ch. 27). The
+English seem for a long time to have entertained a wholesome distrust of
+confessions. Blackstone, _ubi supra_. How far is the Continental
+love of confessions derived from the church; and how far is the love of
+the church for confessions a result of the ever present busybody in
+human nature?]
+
+Other criminals did not escape so easily. A most barbarous method of
+execution was in use. The wheel was set up in the principal cities of
+France. The voice of the crier was heard in the streets as he peddled
+copies of the sentence. The common people crowded about the scaffold,
+and the rich did not always scorn to hire windows overlooking the scene.
+The condemned man was first stretched upon a cross and struck by the
+executioner eleven times with an iron bar, every stroke breaking a bone.
+The poor wretch was then laid on his back on a cart wheel, his broken
+bones protruding through his flesh, his head hanging, his brow dripping
+bloody sweat, and left to die. A priest muttered religious consolation
+by his side. By such sights as these was the populace of the French
+cities trained to enjoy the far less inhuman spectacle of the
+guillotine.[Footnote: Mercier, iii. 267. Howard says that the gaoler at
+Avignon told him that he had seen prisoners under torture sweat blood.
+Lazarettos, 53.]
+
+It was not until the middle of the century that men's minds were fairly
+turned toward the reform of the criminal law. Yet eminent writers had
+long pointed out the inutility of torture. "Torture-chambers are a
+dangerous invention, and seem to make trial of patience rather than of
+truth," says Montaigne; but he thinks them the least evil that human
+weakness has invented under the circumstances. Montesquieu advanced a
+step farther. He pointed out that torture was not necessary. "We see
+today a very well governed nation [the English] reject it without
+inconvenience." ... "So many clever people and so many men of genius have
+written against this practice," he continues, "that I dare not speak
+after them. I was about to say that it might be admissible under
+despotic governments, where all that inspires fear forms a greater part
+of the administration; I was about to say that slaves among the Greeks
+and Romans,--but I hear the voice of nature crying out against me."
+Voltaire attacked the practice in his usual vivacious manner; but, with
+characteristic prudence suggested that torture might still be applied in
+cases of regicide.[Footnote: Montaigne, ii. 36 (liv. ii. ch. v). So I
+interpret the last words of the chapter. Montesquieu, iii. 260
+(_Esprit des Lois,_ liv. vi. ch. 17). Voltaire, xxxii. 52
+(_Dict. philos. Question_), xxxii. 391 (_Ibid., Torture_).]
+
+Such scattered expressions as these might long have remained unfruitful.
+But in 1764 appeared the admirable book of the Milanese Marquis
+Beccaria, and about thirteen years later the Englishman John Howard
+published his first book on the State of the Prisons. Beccaria shared
+the ideas of the Philosophers on most subjects. Where he differed from
+them, it was as Rousseau differed, in the direction of socialism. But in
+usefulness to mankind few of them can compare with him. From him does
+the modern world derive some of its most important ideas concerning the
+treatment of crime. Extreme, like most of the Philosophers of his age;
+unable, like them, to recognize the proper limitations of his theories,
+he has yet transformed the thought of civilized men on one of the most
+momentous subjects with which they have to deal. So great is the change
+wrought in a hundred years by his little book, that it is hard to
+remember as we read it that it could ever have been thought to contain
+novelties. "The end of punishment... is no other than to prevent the
+criminal from doing farther injury to society, and to prevent others
+from committing the like offense." "All trials should be public." "The
+more immediately after the commission of a crime the punishment is
+inflicted, the more just and useful it will be." "Crimes are more
+effectually prevented by the _certainty_ than by the severity of
+punishment." These are the commonplaces of modern criminal legislation.
+The difficulty lies in applying them. In the eighteenth century their
+enunciation was necessary. "The torture of a criminal during his trial
+is a cruelty consecrated by custom in almost every nation," says
+Beccaria. Indeed it seems to have been legal in his day all over the
+Continent, although restricted in Prussia and obsolete in practice in
+Holland. Beccaria opposed torture entirely, on broad grounds. As to
+torture before condemnation he holds it a grievous wrong to the
+innocent, "for in the eye of the law, every man is innocent whose crime
+has not been proved. Besides, it is confounding all relations to expect
+that a man should be both the accuser and the accused, and that pain
+should be the test of truth; as if truth resided in the muscles and
+sinews of a wretch in torture. By this method, the robust will escape
+and the weak will be condemned." The penalties proposed by Beccaria are
+generally mild,--he would have abolished that of death altogether,--his
+reliance being on certainty and not on severity of punishment.
+[Footnote: Beccaria, _passim_. Lea, _Superstition and Force_,
+515.]
+
+It was not to be expected that Beccaria's book should work an immediate
+change in the manners of Christendom. The criminal law remained
+unaltered at first, in theory and practice. But the consciences of the
+more advanced thinkers were affected. In 1766, at Abbeville, a young man
+named La Barre was convicted of standing and wearing his hat while a
+religious procession was passing, singing blasphemous songs, speaking
+blasphemous words, and making blasphemous gestures. There was much
+popular excitement at the time on account of the mutilation of a
+crucifix standing on a bridge in the town, but La Barre was not shown to
+have been concerned in this outrage. The judges at Abbeville appear to
+have laid themselves open to the accusation of personal hostility to
+him. The young man, having been tortured, was condemned to make public
+confession with a rope round his neck, before the church of Saint
+Vulfran, where the injured crucifix: had been placed, to have his tongue
+cut out, to be beheaded, and to have his body burned. This outrageous
+sentence was confirmed by the Parliament of Paris. The superstitious
+king, Louis XV., would not grant a pardon. The capital sentence was
+executed, but the cutting out of the tongue was omitted, the executioner
+only pretending to do that part of his work. La Barre's head fell, amid
+the applause of a cruel crowd which admired the skillful stroke of the
+headsman. A thrill of indignation, not unmixed with fear, ran through
+the liberal party in France. The anger and grief of Voltaire were loudly
+expressed. It was at least an improvement on the state of public feeling
+in former generations that such severity should not have met with
+universal acquiescence.[Footnote: The best account of the affair of La
+Barre which I have met is in Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire et
+Rousseau_, 465.]
+
+The practice of torture was not without defenders. One of them asked
+what could be done to find stolen money if the thief refused to say
+where he had hidden it. But this was not his only argument. "The accused
+himself," he said, "has a guarantee in torture, which makes him a judge
+in his own case, so that he becomes able to avoid the capital punishment
+attached to the crime of which he is accused." And this writer
+confidently asserts that for a single example which might be cited in
+two or three centuries of an innocent man yielding to the violence of
+torture, a million cases of rightful punishment could be mentioned.
+[Footnote: Muyard de Vougland, quoted in Du Boys, ii. 205 ]
+
+Yet the march of progress was fairly rapid in the latter part of the
+eighteenth century. In the jurisprudence of that age a distinction was
+made between preparatory torture, which was administered to suspected
+persons to make them confess, and previous torture, which was
+inflicted on the condemned, previous to execution, to obtain the
+accusation of accomplices. The former of these, by far the greater
+disgrace to civilization, was abolished in France on the 24th of
+August, 1780; the latter not until, 1788, and then only provisionally.
+Thus was one of the greatest of modern reforms accomplished before the
+Revolution. About the same time many ordinances were passed for the
+amelioration of French prisons. They were about as bad as those of
+other countries, and that was very bad indeed.[Footnote: _Question
+préparatoire; question préalable, sometimes called q. définitive_.
+Desmaze, _Supplices_, 177. Desjardins, p. xx. Howard, _passim_. The
+English have long boasted that torture is not allowed by their law;
+and although the _peine forte et dure_ was undoubted torture, the
+boast is in general not unfounded. Torture was abolished in several
+parts of Germany in the eighteenth century, but lingered in other
+parts until the nineteenth. It was not done away in Baden until
+1831. Lea, _Superstition and Force_, 517.]
+
+The courts of law did not act against persons alone. The Parliament of
+Paris was in the habit of passing condemnation on books supposed to
+contain dangerous matter. The suspected volume was brought to the bar
+of the court by the advocate general, the objectionable passages were
+read, and the book declared to be "heretical, schismatical, erroneous,
+blasphemous, violent, impious," and condemned to be burned by the public
+executioner. Then a fagot was lighted at the foot of the great steps
+which may still be seen in front of the court-house in Paris. The street
+boys and vagabonds ran to see the show. The clerk of the court, if we
+may believe a contemporary, threw a dusty old Bible into the fire, and
+locked the condemned book, doubly valuable for its condemnation, safely
+away in his book-case.[Footnote: Mercier, iv. 241.]
+
+As for the author, the Parliament would sometimes proceed directly
+against him, but oftener he was dealt with by an order under the royal
+hand and seal, known as a _lettre de cachet_[Footnote: The
+_lettre de cachet_ was written on paper, signed by the king, and
+countersigned by a minister. It was so sealed that it could not be
+opened without breaking the seal. It was reputed a private order.
+Larousse.] Arbitrary imprisonment, without trial, is a thing so
+outrageous to Anglo-Saxon feelings that we are apt to forget that it has
+until recent years formed a part of the regular practice of most
+civilized nations. It is considered necessary to what is called the
+_police_ of the country, a word for which we have in English no
+exact equivalent. Police, in this sense, not only punishes crime, but
+averts danger. Acts which may injure the public are prevented by
+guessing at evil intentions; and criminal enterprises are not allowed to
+come to action.
+
+This sort of protection is a part of the function of every government;
+but on the Continent, in old times, and still in some countries, long
+and painful imprisonment of men who had never been convicted of any
+crime was considered one of the proper methods of police. It was
+justified in some measure in French eyes by the fact that secrecy saved
+the feelings of innocent families, which thus did not suffer in the
+public estimation for the misdeeds of one unruly member. In France,
+where the family is much more of a unit than in English-speaking
+countries, the disgrace of one person belonging to it affects the others
+far more seriously. The _lettre de cachet_ of old France, confining
+its victim in a state prison, was too elaborate a method to be used with
+the turbulent lower classes--for them there were less dignified forms of
+proceeding; but it was freely employed against persons of any
+consequence. Spendthrifts and licentious youths were shut up at the
+request of their relations. Authors of dangerous books were readily
+clapped into the Bastille, Vincennes or Fors l'Evêque. Voltaire,
+Diderot, Mirabeau, and many others underwent that sort of confinement;
+and the first of them is said to have procured by his influence the
+incarceration of one of his own literary enemies. Fallen statesmen were
+fortunate when they did not pass from the cabinet to the prison, but
+were allowed the alternative of exile, or of seclusion in their own
+country houses. But this was not the worst. The _lettre de cachet_
+was too often the instrument of private hate. Signed carelessly, or even
+in blank, by the king, it could be procured by the favorite or the
+favorite's favorite, for his own purposes. And if the victim had no
+protector to plead his cause, he might be forgotten in captivity and
+waste a lifetime.
+
+For such abuses as this, there is no remedy but publicity. If, on the
+one hand, too much has been made of the romantic story of the Bastille,
+which was certainly not a standing menace to most peaceable Frenchmen,
+too great stress, on the other hand, may be laid on the undoubted fact
+that under Louis XVI. the grim old fortress contained but few prisoners,
+and that some of them were persons who might have been cast into prison
+under any system of government. In the reign of that king's immediate
+predecessor great injustice had been committed. Nor had arbitrary
+proceedings been entirely renounced by the government of Louis XVI.
+itself. In the very last year before that in which the Estates General
+met at Versailles, the royal ministers imprisoned in the Bastille twelve
+Breton gentlemen, whose crime was that they importunately presented a
+petition from the nobles of their province. The apartments which they
+were to occupy were filled with other prisoners, so room was made by
+removing these unhappy occupants to the madhouse at Charenton, whence
+they were released only in the following year by order of a committee of
+the National Assembly.[Footnote: Barère, i. 281. Perhaps the most
+terrifying thing about the Bastille was that no one really knew what
+went on inside. Mercier thinks that the common people were not afraid of
+it, iii. 287, 289.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+EQUALITY AND LIBERTY.
+
+
+It was as a privileged order that the Nobility of France principally
+excited the ill-will of the common people. The more thoughtful Frenchmen
+of the eighteenth century, all of them at least who have come to be
+known by the name of Philosophers, set before themselves two great
+ideals. These were equality and liberty. The aspiration after these was
+accompanied in their minds by contempt for the past and its lessons,
+misunderstanding of the benefits which former ages had bequeathed to
+them, and hatred of the wrongs and abuses which had come down from
+earlier times. Among them the word gothic was a violent term of
+reproach, aimed indiscriminately at buildings, laws, and customs.
+History, with the exception of that of Sparta, was thought to consist
+far more of warnings than of models. Just before the Revolution, a
+number of persons who had met in a lady's parlor were discussing the
+education of the Dauphin. "I think," said Lafayette," that he would do
+well to begin his History of France with the year 1787."
+
+This tendency to depreciate the past was due in a measure to the
+preference, natural to lively minds, for deductive over inductive
+methods of thought. It is so much easier and pleasanter to assume a few
+plausible general principles and meditate upon them, than to amass and
+compare endless series of dry facts, that not by long chastening will
+the greater part of the world be brought to the more arduous method. Nor
+should enthusiasm for one of the great processes of thought cause
+contempt of the other. Even the great inductive French philosopher of
+the eighteenth century, Montesquieu, failed in a measure to grasp the
+continuity of history; and drew the facts for his study rather from
+China and from England than from France, rather from the Roman republic
+than the existing monarchy. Fear of the censor and of the civil and
+ecclesiastical tribunals, which would not bear the open discussion of
+questions of present interest, doubtless added to this tendency.
+
+The idea of equality at first seems simple, but equality may be of many
+kinds. Absolute equality in all respects between two human beings, no
+one has ever seen, and no one perhaps has ever thought of desiring. All
+the relations of life are founded on inequality. By their differences
+husband and wife, friend and friend, are made necessary and endeared to
+each other; the parent protects and serves the child, the child obeys
+and helps the parent; the citizen calls on the magistrate to guard his
+rights, the magistrate enforces the laws which have their sanction in
+the consent of the body of citizens. Equality as a political ideal is
+therefore a limited equality. It may extend to condition, it may be
+confined to civil rights, or to opportunities.
+
+The Philosophers of the eighteenth century, followed by a school in our
+day, universally assumed that an approximate equality of condition was
+desirable. Rousseau agreed with Montesquieu, in believing that a small
+republic, none of whose citizens were either very rich or very poor, was
+likely to be in a desirable condition. Virtue, they thought, would be
+its especial characteristic. In some of the Swiss cantons, and later in
+the struggling American colonies of Great Britain, Frenchmen discovered
+communities approaching their ideal in respect to the equal distribution
+of wealth; and their discovery in the latter case was not without great
+results. This kind of equality has since passed away from large portions
+of America, as it must always disappear where civilization increases.
+Good people mourn its departure; some few, perhaps, would patiently
+endure its return. They are about as numerous as those who abandon city
+life to dwell permanently in the country, also the home of comparative
+equality of condition. The theoretic admiration for this sort of
+equality was shared by a large and enlightened part of the French
+nobility. Thus the order was weakened by the fact that many of its own
+members did not believe in its claims.
+
+Another kind of equality is that of civil rights. Before the Revolution,
+France was ruled by law, but all Frenchmen were not ruled by the same
+law. There were privileged persons and privileged localities. Of these
+anomalies, sometimes working hardship, the minds of intelligent men at
+that time were especially impatient. They believed, as has been said, in
+natural laws, implanted in every breast, finding their expression in
+every conscience; and many of them entertained a crude notion that such
+laws could easily be applied to the enormously complicated facts of
+actual life. Assuming such laws to exist, as absolute as mathematical
+axioms and far easier of application, all variation was error, all
+anomaly absurd, all claims of a privileged class unfair and unfounded.
+
+Equality of civil rights is also desired from the fear of oppression; a
+very important motive in the eighteenth century, when the great still
+had the power to be very oppressive at times. We have seen the treatment
+which Voltaire received at the hands of a member of one of the great
+families. Outrages still more flagrant appear to have been not uncommon
+in the reign of Louis XV., and although there had probably never been a
+time in France so free from them as that of his successor, their memory
+was still fresh. It is in their decrepitude that political abuses are
+most ferociously attacked. When young and lusty they are formidable.
+
+Again, there is equality of opportunity. This is desired as a means of
+subverting equality of condition to our own advantage, as a chance to be
+more than equal to our fellow-men. This kind is longed for by the able
+and ambitious. Where it is denied, the strongest good men will be less
+useful to the state, unless they happen to be favorably placed at birth;
+the strongest bad men perhaps more dangerous, because more discontented.
+It is this sort of equality, more than any other, which the French
+Philosophers and their followers actually secured for Frenchmen, and in
+a less degree for other Europeans of to-day. By their efforts, the
+chance of the poor but talented child to rise to power and wealth has
+been somewhat increased. This chance, when they began their labors, was
+not so hopeless as it is often represented. It is not now so great as it
+is sometimes assumed to be. Still, there has been one decided advance.
+We have seen that under the old monarchy many important places were
+reserved for members of the noble class, and practically for a few
+families among them. Since that monarchy passed away, the opportunity to
+serve the state, with the great prizes which public life offers to the
+strong and the aspiring, has been thrown open, theoretically at least,
+to all Frenchmen.
+
+If the idea of equality be comparatively simple, that of liberty is very
+much the reverse. The word, in its general sense, signifies little more
+than the absence of external control. In politics it is used, in the
+first place, for the absence of foreign conquest, and in this sense a
+country may be called free although it is governed by a despot. The next
+signification of liberty is political right, and this is the sense in
+which it has been most used until recent years. When a tyrant overthrew
+the liberties of a Greek city, he substituted his own personal rule for
+the rights of an oligarchy. The mass of the inhabitants may have been
+neither better nor worse off than before. When Hampden resisted the
+encroachments of King Charles I, he was fighting the battle of the upper
+and middle classes against despotism, and we hold him one of the
+principal champions of liberty. Indeed, liberty in this sense is so far
+from being identical with equality, that many of those who have been
+foremost in its defense have been members of aristocracies and holders
+of slaves. To accuse them of inconsistency is to be misled by the
+ambiguous meaning of a word. They fought for rights which they believed
+to be their own; they denied that the rights of all men were identical.
+During the eighteenth century in France, certain bodies, such as the
+clergy and the Parliament of Paris, were struggling for political
+liberties in this older sense, and before the outbreak of the French
+Revolution many of the most enlightened of the nobility hoped to acquire
+such liberties. Much blood and confusion might have been spared, and
+many useful reforms accomplished, had Frenchmen clutched less wildly at
+the phantom of equality, and sought the safer goal of political liberty.
+
+Another sort of liberty, although it has undoubtedly been desired by
+individuals in all ages, is almost entirely modern as an ideal for
+civilized communities. This is the absence of interference, not only of
+a foreign power or of a lawless oppressor, but of the very law itself.
+The desire for such freedom as this, would in almost all ages of the
+world have been held inconsistent with proper respect for order and
+security. It would have been considered no more than the wicked longing
+of an unchastened spirit, the temptation of the Evil One himself. In the
+eighteenth century, however, we see the rise of new opinions. It may be
+that order had become so firmly established in the European world that a
+reaction could safely set in. At any rate we find a new way of looking
+at things. "Independence," a word which had been often used by the
+clerical party, and always as a term of reproach, is treated by the
+Philosophers with favor. Toleration of all kinds of opinions, and of
+most kinds of spoken words, is making way.[Footnote: In spite of the
+impatience shown by Voltaire of any criticism of himself, he and his
+followers did more than any other men that ever lived to make criticism
+free to all writers.] A new school of thinkers is adapting the new form
+of thought to economical matters. _Laissez faire; laissez passer_.
+Restrict the functions of government. Order will arise from the average
+of contending interests; right direction is produced by the sum of
+conflicting forces. The doctrine has exerted enormous influence since
+the French Revolution in resisting the claims of socialism,--that new
+form of tyranny in which all are to be the despot and each the slave.
+But few of the Philosophers accepted it entirely. Most of them desired
+the constant interference of the government for one purpose or another,
+and many believed in the power, almost the omnipotence, of a mythical
+personage, borrowed in part from Plutarch and commonly called the
+Legislator.
+
+The history and action of this personage may be roughly stated as
+follows. Every nation now civilized was in early days in a barbarous
+condition. Once upon a time, a great man came from somewhere, and
+brought a complete set of laws, morals, and manners with him. To these
+laws and customs he generally ascribed a divine origin. The nation to
+which they were proclaimed adopted them, and the people's subsequent
+happiness and prosperity were in proportion to their excellence. The
+reasons which are supposed to have induced the barbarous tribe to change
+all its habits at the bidding of one man are seldom given, or if given,
+are ludicrously inadequate. The theory of the legislator is now out of
+date. It is generally held that the institutions of every race have
+grown up with it, that they are appropriate to its nature and history,
+gradually modified sometimes by act of the national will, and more or
+less changed under foreign influences, but that their general character
+cannot suddenly be subverted. Its institutions thus as truly belong to a
+civilized race, as the skin without fur or the erect position belong to
+mankind. There is some evidence in support of either theory, and the
+truth will probably be found to lie between them, although nearer to the
+latter. Yet the effect of a higher civilization implanted on a lower one
+seems at times singularly rapid. The story of the legislator is a part
+of most early histories and mythologies. The classical model has
+generally been held to be either Minos or Lycurgus. There were few
+clever men in France between the years 1740 and 1790 who did not dream
+of trying on the sandals of those worthies.
+
+While the ideas attached to equality and to liberty were vague and
+indefinite, it was generally assumed that they would coincide. Liberty
+and equality, however, have tendencies naturally opposed to each other.
+Remove the exterior forces which control the wills of men, overturn
+foreign domination, give every citizen political rights, reduce the
+interference of laws to a minimum, and the natural differences and
+inequalities of physical, mental, and moral strength, or power of will,
+inherent in mankind, will have the fuller opportunity to act. The strong
+improve their natural advantage, they acquire dominion over their weaker
+neighbors, they monopolize opportunities for themselves, their friends
+and their children. Only by keeping all men in strict subjection to
+something outside of themselves can all be kept in comparative equality.
+This fact was instinctively apprehended by one school of French
+thinkers. We shall see that the followers of Rousseau, while posing as
+champions of Liberty, were in fact the founders of a system which is the
+very antithesis of individual freedom.[Footnote: It is perhaps needless
+to remark that I have touched here only on the political meanings of the
+word Liberty. In the eighteenth century the word was much used in its
+philosophical sense, and the eternal problem of necessity and free-will
+was warmly discussed.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+MONTESQUIEU.
+
+
+One man stands out among the French nobility of the gown in the
+eighteenth century, influencing human thought beyond the walls of the
+court-room; one Philosopher who looks on existing society as something
+to be saved and directed. The work of Voltaire and his followers was
+principally negative. Their favorite task was demolition. The ugly and
+uninhabitable edifices of Rousseau's genius required for their erection
+a field from which all possible traces of civilized building had been
+removed. But Montesquieu, while he satirized the vices of the society
+which he saw about him, yet appreciated at their full value the benefits
+of civilization. He recognized that change is always accompanied by
+evil, even if its preponderating result be good, and that it should be
+attempted only with care and caution. His ideas influenced the leading
+men of the second half of the century somewhat in proportion to their
+judgment and in inverse proportion to their enthusiasm.
+
+Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron of Montesquieu, born in 1689, was by
+inheritance one of the presidents of the Parliament of Bordeaux.
+[Footnote: In his youth he was known as Charles Louis de la Brède, the
+name being taken from a fief of his mother. The name of Montesquieu he
+inherited from an uncle, together with his place of _président à
+mortier_. Vian, _Histoire de Montesquieu_, 16, 30.] He was recognized
+in early life as a rising man, a respectable magistrate, sensible and
+brilliant rather than learned; a man of the world, rich and thrifty,
+not very happily married, and fond of the society of ladies. In
+appearance he was ugly, with a large head, weak eyes, a big nose, a
+retreating forehead and chin. In temperament he was calm and cheerful.
+"I have had very few sorrows," he says, "and still less
+ennui."--"Study has been to me a sovereign remedy against the troubles
+of life, and I have never had a grief that an hour's reading would not
+dissipate." He was shy, he tells us, but less among bright people than
+among stupid ones. Good-natured he appears to have been, and somewhat
+selfish; easily amused, less by what people said than by their way of
+saying it. He was a good landlord and a kind master. It is told of him
+that one day, while scolding one of his servants, he turned round with
+a laugh to a friend standing by. "They are like clocks," said he, "and
+need winding up now and then".[Footnote: See the medallion given in
+Vian, and said by the _Biographie universelle_ to be the only
+authentic portrait. Also Montesq. vii. 150, (_Pensées diverses.
+Portrait de M. par lui-même_, apparently written when he was about
+forty). Also Vian, 141.]
+
+Montesquieu set himself a high standard of duty. In a paper intended
+only for his son, he writes: "If I knew something which was useful to
+myself and injurious to my family, I should reject it from my mind. If I
+knew of anything which was useful to my family and which was not so to
+my country, I should try to forget it. If I knew something useful to my
+country, which was injurious to Europe and the human race, I should
+consider it a crime."[Footnote: Montesq., vii. 157.]
+
+Montesquieu's first book appeared in 1721, a book very different from
+those which followed it. It is witty and licentious after a rather
+stately fashion, full of keen observation and cutting satire. In
+contrast to the books of other famous writers of the century, the
+"Persian Letters" are eminently the work of a gentleman;--of a French
+gentleman, when the Duke of Orléans was Regent.
+
+The "Lettres Persanes" are, as their name suggests, the supposed
+correspondence of two rich Persians, Usbek and Rica, traveling in France
+and exchanging letters with their friends and their eunuchs in Persia.
+The letters which the travelers receive, containing the gossip of their
+harems, form but the smaller portion of the book, and are evidently
+intended to give it variety and lightness. In the letters which they
+write to their Persian correspondents we have the satirical picture of
+French society. How far had the ruling, infallible church sunk in the
+minds of Frenchmen, when a well-placed and rather selfish man could
+write what follows.
+
+"The Pope is the chief of the Christians. He is an old idol, to which
+people burn incense from the force of habit. In old times he was
+formidable even to princes; for he deposed them as easily as our
+magnificent Sultans depose the kings of Irimette and of Georgia. But he
+is no longer feared. He calls himself the successor of one of the
+earliest Christians, known as Saint Peter; and it is certainly a rich
+inheritance, for he has enormous treasures and a rich country under his
+dominion."
+
+The bishops are legists, subordinate to the Pope. They have two
+functions. When assembled they make articles of faith as he does. When
+separate, they dispense people from obeying the law. For the Christian
+religion is full of difficult observances; and it is thought to be
+harder to do your duty than to have bishops to give you dispensation.
+The doctors, bishops, and monks are constantly raising questions on
+religious subjects, and dispute for a long time, until at last an
+assembly is held to decide among them. In no kingdom have there been as
+many civil wars as in that of Christ.[Footnote: Montesq., i. 124.
+Letter xxix.]
+
+Farther on we have a picture of the way in which religion is regarded in
+French society. It is less a subject of sanctification than of dispute.
+Courtiers, soldiers, even women, rise up against ecclesiastics and ask
+them to prove what the others have resolved not to believe. This is not
+because people have determined their minds by reason, nor that they have
+taken the trouble to examine the truth or falsehood of this religion
+which they reject. They are rebels who have felt the yoke and who have
+shaken it off before they have known it. They are, therefore, no firmer
+in their unbelief than in their faith. They live in an ebbing and
+flowing tide, which unceasingly carries them from one to the other.
+[Footnote: Montesq., i. 251. Letter lxxv.] Making a large allowance for
+satire, we have yet an interesting and doleful picture of a small but
+important part of the French nation. And it is noticeable that the
+Persian Letters precede by thirteen years Voltaire's "Philosophical," or
+"English Letters."[Footnote: 1721-1734.]
+
+Montesquieu argues that it is well to have several sects in a country,
+as they keep a watch on each other, and every man is anxious not to
+disgrace his party. But it is for toleration and not for equality that
+the author pleads. A state church seemed almost necessary to thought in
+the early part of the eighteenth century. Yet Montesquieu has no great
+liking for any form of dogmatic religion; in this he belongs distinctly
+with the Philosophers; morality is, in his eyes, the great, perhaps the
+only thing to be desired; obedience to law, love to men, filial piety,
+those, he says, are the first acts of all religions; ceremonies are good
+only on the supposition that God has commanded them; but about the
+commands of God it is easy to be mistaken, for there are two thousand
+religions, each of which puts in its claim. Thus was the great argument
+of the Catholics, that the multiplicity of Protestant sects--provided
+their falsity, turned against its inventors.[Footnote: Ibid., i. 164.
+Letter xlvi. Compare with Montesquieu's opinion, expressed in the
+_Spirit of the Laws_, that the sovereign should neither allow the
+establishment of a new form of religion, nor persecute one already
+established.]
+
+The licentiousness of the "Persian Letters" has been mentioned. It is
+one of the most noticeable features of the writings of the Philosophers
+of the eighteenth century that the whole subject of sexual morality is
+viewed by them from a standpoint different from that taken by ourselves.
+The thinking Frenchmen of that age believed that there was a system of
+natural morals, imposed on man by his own nature and the nature of
+things. They believed that there was also an artificial system resting
+only on positive law, or on the ordinances of the church. It was the
+tendency of the ecclesiastical mind to ignore that distinction. That
+tendency had been pushed too far and had produced a reaction.
+
+The distinction is one which is not quite disregarded even by men of
+those races which have most respect for law. Nobody feels that the
+injunction to keep off the grass in a public park, or the rule to pass
+to the right in driving, is of quite the same sort of obligation as
+the precept to keep your hands from picking and stealing. A far
+greater amount of odium is incurred by the known breach of a rule of
+natural morals, than by that of a rule depending solely on the
+ordinance of the legislative power. Smuggling may be mentioned as a
+crime coming near the dividing line in the popular feeling of most
+countries. Few men would feel as much disgraced at being caught by a
+custom-house officer, with a box of cigars hidden under the trowsers
+at the bottom of their trunk, as at being seized in the act of
+stealing the same box from the counter of a tobacconist. In countries
+where the laws are arbitrary and the law-making power distrusted, this
+distinction is more strongly marked than where the government has the
+full confidence and approbation of the community. The more progressive
+Frenchmen of a hundred and fifty years ago believed the laws of their
+country to be bad in many respects. They therefore thought that there
+was a great difference between what jurists call _prohibited wrong_
+and _wrong in itself_.
+
+Now, admitting this distinction to exist in men's minds, there is one
+large class of crimes and vices which is put in one category by most
+Anglo-Saxons and which was put in the other by the French Philosophers.
+These are the breaches of the sexual laws. It is one of the greatest
+services of the church to Christendom that she has always laid
+particular emphasis on the duty of chastity. It is one of her greatest
+errors, that she has exalted the practice of celibacy over that of
+conjugal fidelity. The Philosophers, as was their custom, looked abroad
+on the practice of various nations. They found that some of the ancients
+granted divorce freely at the request of either party. They learned that
+Orientals generally allowed polygamy. They saw in their own country a
+low state of sexual morals among the highest classes, partly due perhaps
+to the example of a depraved court. Observation and desire concurred
+with hatred of the clergy to warp their judgments. They forgot, at least
+in part, that chastity is the foundation of the family and the civilized
+state; that divorce and polygamy, although of momentous importance, are
+but secondary questions; that on sexual self-restraint civilization
+rests, as much as on respect for life and property. On the false theory
+that unchastity is but an artificial crime, the delusive invention of an
+ascetic church, will, I think, be found to depend much that has been
+worst in the practice of Frenchmen, much that is most disgusting in
+their literature.[Footnote: The commandment "Thou shalt not commit
+adultery" is equally applicable to polygamists and monogamists. It was
+originally promulgated to the former, and to a nation in which a man
+could put away his wife.]
+
+This theory is seldom held unreservedly. In the "Persian Letters" it
+goes no farther than an elaborate apology for divorce, a scathing
+denunciation of celibacy, and a general licentiousness of tone. The
+later writings of Montesquieu are free from indecency. But it is
+noticeable of him, perhaps the most high-minded of the Philosophers, and
+of the rest of them, that while they constantly insist on the importance
+of virtue, they hardly rank chastity among the virtues.[Footnote: See
+the story of a Guebir who marries his sister, Montesq., i. 226, Letter
+lxvii. The point appears to be that the laws forbidding marriage in
+cases of consanguinity are arbitrary.]
+
+The monarchy fares little better than the church in the "Persian
+Letters." "The King of France," says Rica, "is the most powerful prince
+in Europe. He has no gold-mines like his neighbor the King of Spain; but
+he has more wealth than the latter, for he draws it from the vanity of
+his subjects, more inexhaustible than mines. He has been known to
+undertake and carry on great wars, with no other resource than titles of
+honor to sell; and by a prodigy of human pride, his troops were paid,
+his forts furnished, his fleets equipped."
+
+"Moreover, this king is a great magician; he rules the very minds of his
+subjects; he makes them think as he pleases. If he has only one million
+dollars in his treasury and needs two, he has but to assure them that
+one dollar is worth two, and they believe him. If he has a difficult war
+to carry on, and has no money, he has but to put it into their heads
+that a piece of paper is bullion, and immediately they are convinced. He
+even goes so far as to make them believe that he cures them of all
+manner of diseases by touching them. Such is the strength and power that
+he has over their minds."[Footnote: Ibid., i. 110, Letter xxiv.
+Referring to the sale of offices and titles, to the habit of debasing
+the coinage, and to that of touching for scrofula.]
+
+"What I tell you of this prince need not astonish you, There is another
+magician stronger than he; who is no less master of the king's spirit,
+than the king himself is of that of others. This magician is called the
+Pope. Sometimes he makes the king believe that three are only one; that
+the bread people eat is not bread, that the wine that they drink is not
+wine, and many things of the same kind."
+
+Rica has seen the young king, Louis XV. His countenance is majestic and
+charming; a good education, added to a good natural disposition, gives
+promise of a great sovereign. But Rica is informed that you cannot tell
+about these western kings until you know of their mistress and their
+confessor. "Under a young prince these exercise rival powers; under an
+old one, they are united. The strength of a young king makes the dervish
+weak; but the mistress turns both strength and weakness to account."
+[Footnote: Montesq., i. 339, Letter cvii.]
+
+The Christian princes long ago freed all the slaves in their states;
+saying that Christianity made all men equal. This religious action was
+very useful to them, for it abridged the power of their chief lords.
+Since then, they have conquered new countries where slavery was
+profitable. They have forgotten their religion and allowed slaves to be
+bought and sold.[Footnote: Ibid., i. 252, Letter lxxv.]
+
+The French are more governed by the laws of honor than the Persians,
+because they are more free. But the sanctuary of honor, reputation, and
+virtue seems to be built in republics, where a man may feel that he has
+indeed a country. In Greece and Rome a crown of leaves, a statue, the
+praise of the state, were recompense enough for a battle won or a city
+taken. Switzerland and Holland, with the poorest soil in Europe, are
+the most populous countries for their area. Liberty--and opulence,
+which always follows it--draws strangers to the country. Political
+equality among citizens generally produces equality of fortune, and
+scatters abundance and life.
+
+But under an arbitrary government, the prince, his courtiers, and a few
+individuals, possess all the wealth, while the rest of the country
+suffers from extreme poverty.[Footnote: Montesq., i. 291, Letter
+lxxxix. See also pp. 381, 386, Letters cxxii., cxxiv.]
+
+The satirical character of the "Persian Letters" is sufficiently evident
+from the extracts given above. But Montesquieu is far more widely and
+justly known as a wise and learned writer on government than as a
+satirist. The book we have been considering was by far the lightest, as
+it was the earliest, of his considerable writings. The good sense,
+caution, and conservatism of his nature appear in the "Persian Letters"
+less conspicuously than in his later works; yet, even there, are in
+marked contrast to the haste and shallowness of many of the
+Philosophers. "It is true'," he says, "that laws must sometimes be
+altered, but the case is rare; and when it happens, they should be
+touched with a trembling hand; and so many solemnities should be
+observed, and so many precautions used, that the people may naturally
+conclude that the laws are very sacred, since so many formalities are
+necessary to abrogate them."[Footnote: Ibid., i. 401, Letter cxxix.]
+
+Here is an opinion, overstated perhaps, but not without its frequent
+illustrations since he wrote it. "It seems ... that the largest heads
+grow narrow when they are assembled, and that where there are, most wise
+men, there is least wisdom. Large bodies are always deeply attached to
+details, to vain customs; and essential matters are always postponed. I
+have heard that a king of Aragon, having assembled the Estates of Aragon
+and Catalonia, the first meetings were taken up in deciding in what
+language the deliberations should be held. The dispute was lively, and
+the Estates would have broken up a thousand times, had not an expedient
+been hit upon, which was that the questions should be put in Catalonian
+and the answers given in Aragonese."[Footnote: Montesq., i. 344, Letter
+cix. See several of the principal deliberative bodies of the world so
+bound by their own rules that they can scarcely move; and compare with
+them in point of efficiency the small legislatures and boards which
+manage many important and complicated interests promptly, sitting with
+closed doors.]
+
+"I have never heard people talk about public law," he says in another
+letter, "that they did not inquire carefully what was the origin of
+society; which strikes me as absurd. If men did not form a society, if
+they separated and fled from each other, we should have to ask the
+reason of it, and to seek out why they kept apart. But they are created
+all bound to each other, the son is born near his father and stays
+there; this is society, and the cause of society."[Footnote: Ibid., i.
+301, Letter xciv.]
+
+A satirical book, like the "Persian Letters," could not have been openly
+published in France under Louis XV. The first edition was in fact
+printed at Amsterdam, although Cologne appeared on the title-page as the
+place of publication. The book was anonymous, but Montesquieu was well
+known to be the author, and speedily acquired a great reputation. After
+several years, for things did not move fast in Old France, he was
+proposed for election to the Academy. To be one of the forty members of
+that body is the legitimate ambition of the literary Frenchman. The
+Cardinal de Fleury, who was prime minister, is said to have announced
+that the king would never consent to the election of the author of the
+"Persian Letters." He added that he had not read the book, but that
+people in whom he had confidence assured him that it was dangerous.
+According to Voltaire, Montesquieu thereupon had a garbled edition of
+the Letters hastily printed, himself took a copy to the Cardinal,
+induced His Eminence to read a part of it, and, with the help of
+friends, prevailed on him to alter his decision. Such a trick is more
+worthy of Voltaire, who continually denied his own works, than of
+Montesquieu, who, I believe, never did so. D'Alembert tells the story in
+a way entirely creditable to the latter. He says that Montesquieu saw
+the minister, told him that for private reasons he did not give his name
+to the "Persian Letters," but that he was far from disowning a book of
+which he did not think he had cause to be ashamed. He then insisted that
+the Letters should be judged after reading them, and not on hearsay.
+Thereupon the Cardinal read the book, was pleased with it and with its
+author, and withdrew his opposition to the latter's election to the
+Academy.[Footnote: _Nouvelle Biographie Universelle. Voltaire (Siècle
+de Louis XIV. liste des écrivains)_. D'Alembert, vi. 252. The date of
+Montesquieu's election was Jan. 24, 1728. See a discussion of the whole
+story in Vian, 100. Montesquieu is there said to have threatened to
+leave France, and to have declined a pension at this time. Montesquieu
+tells the story of the pension, but without fixing a date: "Je dis que
+n'ayant pas fait de bassesse, je n'avais pas besoin d'etre consolé par
+des graces," vii. 157. Voltaire was always jealous of Montesquieu's
+reputation; and also, at this time, out of temper with the Academy, to
+which he was elected only in 1746.]
+
+A little before this time Montesquieu resigned his place as one of the
+presidents of the Parliament of Bordeaux, selling the life estate in it,
+but reserving the reversion for his son. Having thus obtained leisure,
+he set out on a long course of travel, lasting three years. "In France,"
+said he later, "I make friends with everybody; in England with nobody;
+in Italy I make compliments to every one; in Germany I drink with every
+one." "When I go into a country, I do not look to see if there are good
+laws, but whether they execute those they have; for there are good laws
+everywhere."[Footnote: Vian, 90. Montesq. vii. 186, 189.]
+
+Montesquieu arrived in England in the autumn of 1729, sailing from
+Holland in the yacht of Lord Chesterfield, whose acquaintance he had
+made on the Continent. He spent seventeen months in the country, and, in
+spite of his epigram about making friends with nobody, saw some of the
+most eminent men, including Swift and Pope, was received by the Royal
+Society, and presented at Court. At a time when England and the English
+language were little known in France, he studied them in a way which
+deeply influenced all his views of government. "In London," he says,
+"liberty and equality. The liberty of London is the liberty of the best
+people,[Footnote: _Honnestes gens,_ which cannot be exactly
+translated. Montesq., vii. 185. Vian, 112.] in which it differs from the
+liberty of Venice, "which is the liberty of debauchery." The equality of
+London is also the equality of the best people, in which it differs from
+the liberty of Holland, which is the liberty of the populace."
+
+"England is at present the most free country in the world; I do not
+except any republic. I call it free because the prince can do no
+conceivable harm to anybody; because his power is controlled and limited
+by a law. But if the lower chamber should become them mistress, its
+power would be unlimited and dangerous, because it would have executive
+power also; whereas now unlimited power is in the parliament and the
+king, and the executive power in the king, whose power is limited. A
+good Englishman must, therefore, seek to defend liberty equally against
+the attacks of the crown and those of the chamber."[Footnote: Montesq.,
+vii. 195 (_Notes sur l'Angleterre_).]
+
+Montesquieu brought back from England an admiration of what he had seen
+there as genuine, and far more discriminating than that of Voltaire.
+While the studies of Montesquieu were principally directed to the
+political institutions of the country, those of Voltaire embraced the
+philosophy and social life of England. Through these two great men, more
+perhaps than through any others, English ideas were spread in France in
+the middle of the eighteenth century.[Footnote: Voltaire returned from
+England a few months before Montesquieu went there in 1729.]
+
+Montesquieu now went on with his studies with an enlarged mind. He would
+appear, before he started on his travels, to have already formed the
+project of writing a great work on the Spirit of the Laws. But in 1784
+he published a smaller book, the "Greatness and Decadence of the
+Romans." It is said that this essay was composed of a part of the
+material collected for the Spirit of the Laws, and was published
+separately in order not to give the Romans too large a place in the more
+important work. This has been doubted, but there is nothing either in
+the subject or in the treatment to make it improbable. Nor is it
+important, so long as between the two books there is unity of purpose
+and agreement of method.
+
+The "Greatness and Decadence of the Romans" is a study of philosophic
+history. In form it is not unlike Machiavelli's Discourses on the first
+ten books of Livy. That remarkable work would have been most profitable
+reading for Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, as it must be in all
+times for students of the science of politics. Of republics Machiavelli
+had more experience than Montesquieu. Both considered the republican
+form of government the most desirable; both thought it impossible
+without the preservation of substantial equality of property among the
+citizens. Montesquieu, who knew more of monarchy than Machiavelli, had
+also more faith in it. Both hated the Rule of the Roman Church.
+[Footnote: Machiavelli, ii. 210. Montesq., ii. 136, 140. Mach., ii.
+130.] The Frenchman excels the Italian in practical wisdom; he is also
+more brilliant. By his brilliancy he may sometimes have been led away,
+but I think not often. While we feel in reading Voltaire that the
+sparkling point is often the cause of the saying, with Montesquieu we
+are generally struck with the weight of thought in what we read.
+
+"The tyranny of a prince," says Montesquieu, "does not bring him
+nearer to ruin, than indifference to the public good brings a
+republic. The advantage of a free state is that the revenues are
+better administered--but how if they are worse? The advantage of a
+free state is that there are no favorites; but when that is not the
+case, and when instead of enriching the prince's friends and
+relations, all the friends and relations of all those who share in the
+government have to be enriched, all is lost; the laws are evaded more
+dangerously than they are violated by a prince, who, being always the
+greatest citizen of a state, has the most interest in its
+preservation."[Footnote: Montesq., ii. 139.]
+
+Kings, as Montesquieu points out, are less envied than aristocracies;
+for the king is too far above most of his subjects to excite
+comparisons, while the nobility is not so placed. Republics, where birth
+confers no privileges, are, he thinks, happier in this respect than
+other countries; for the people can envy but little an authority which
+it grants and withdraws at its pleasure. Montesquieu forgets that every
+chance to rise which excites in the strong and virtuous a noble
+emulation, will cause in the weak and sour the corresponding base
+passion of envy. Complete despotism he believes to be impossible. There
+is in every nation a general spirit on which all power is founded.
+Against this, the ruler is powerless. It is wise not to disturb
+established forms and institutions, for the very causes which have made
+them last hitherto may maintain them in the future, and these causes are
+often complicated and unknown. When the system is changed, theoretic
+difficulties may be overcome, but drawbacks remain which only use can
+show. It is folly in conquerors to wish to make the conquered adopt new
+laws and customs, and it is useless; for under any form of government,
+subjects can obey. Men are never more offended than when their
+ceremonies and customs are interfered with. Oppression is sometimes a
+proof of the esteem in which they are held; interference with their
+customs is always a mark of contempt.[Footnote: Montesq., ii. 181, 315,
+316, 266, 174, 209.]
+
+Such are some of the general opinions of Montesquieu, found in the
+"Greatness and Decadence of the Romans." In the same book occurs the
+expression of an idea (afterwards repeated and worked out), which was to
+be perhaps the most fruitful of his teachings. "The laws of Rome," he
+says, "had wisely divided the public power among a great number of
+offices, which sustained, arrested, and moderated each other; and as
+each had but a limited power, every citizen was capable of attaining to
+any one of them; and the people, seeing several persons pass before it
+one after the other, became accustomed to none of them."[Footnote:
+Ibid., ii. 200.]
+
+This idea that the division of power was highly desirable, that a system
+of checks and balances in government would tend to secure freedom, never
+took firm root in France. Indeed, Montesquieu, as he himself had partly
+foreseen, was more praised than read in his own country.[Footnote:
+Ibid., vii. 157 (Pensées diverses. Portrait de M par lui-même).] But in
+the distant colonies of America the "Greatness and Decadence of the
+Romans" and the "Spirit of the Laws" found eager students. The thoughts
+of Montesquieu were embodied in the constitutions of new states, whose
+social and economic condition was not far removed from that which he
+considered the most desirable. In these states the doctrine of the
+division of powers was consciously and carefully adopted, with the most
+beneficent results. This division was not a new idea to the American
+colonists: it was already in a measure a part of their institutions. But
+there can be little doubt that the idea was enforced in their minds by
+being clearly stated by one of the writers on political subjects whom
+they most admired.[Footnote: We have seen that Montesquieu had arrived
+at this idea from the study of the English Constitution as it existed in
+his day. In respect to the division of powers, the government of the
+United States conforms far more nearly to his idea than does the present
+government of England, in which the system of balanced powers has been
+superseded by that of government by the Lower Chamber, of which he
+pointed out the danger. The full results of this change will be known
+only to future generations.]
+
+Fourteen years had passed from the time of the publication of the
+"Greatness and Decadence of the Romans," when in 1748 appeared the great
+work of Montesquieu, the "Spirit of the Laws." The book is announced by
+its author as something entirely original, "a child without a mother."
+[Footnote: _Prolem sine matre creatam_, on the title-page.] Nor is
+the claim altogether unfounded, although any reader familiar with the
+"Politics" of Aristotle can hardly fail to observe the resemblance
+between that great book and the other. Nor is it a detraction from the
+genius of Montesquieu to say that the comparison will not be altogether
+in his favor.
+
+Montesquieu's scheme is announced in the title originally given to his
+book. "Of the Spirit of the Laws, or of the relation which the laws
+should have to the constitution of every government, manners, climate,
+religion, commerce, etc. To which the author has added new researches
+into the Roman laws concerning inheritance, into French laws, and into
+feudal laws." Thus we see that the principal subject of the book is the
+relation of laws to the circumstances of the country in which they
+exist. In this also is its chief value and its claim to originality.
+The Philosophers of the eighteenth century, following the example of the
+churches, believed that there was an absolute standard of justice to
+which all laws could easily be referred, independently of the country in
+which the laws existed. If the laws of Naples differed from those of
+Prussia, the laws which governed the phlegmatic Dutchman from those
+which contained the excitable inhabitant of Marseilles, one or the other
+set of laws, or both of them, must be wrong. The Civil Law of the Latin
+races, the Common Law of England, each claimed to be the expression of
+perfect abstract reason. The church with its canon, the same for all
+races and climates, confirmed the theory. To all these came Montesquieu
+with a teaching that would reconcile their claims.
+
+"Law in general is human reason, in so far as it governs all the nations
+of the earth; and the political and civil laws of each nation should be
+but the particular cases to which that human reason is applied."
+
+"They should be so adapted to the people for whom they are made, that it
+is a very great chance if those of one nation will apply to another."
+
+"They must be in relation to the nature and the principle of the
+government which is established, or about to be established; whether
+they form it, as do political laws; or maintain it, as do civil laws."
+
+"They must be in relation to the _physical_ nature of the country;
+to the frozen, burning, or temperate climate; to the quality of the
+soil, the situation and size of the country; to the style of life of the
+people, as farmers, hunters, or shepherds; they should be in relation to
+the amount of liberty which the constitution may allow; to the religion
+of the inhabitants, their inclinations, their wealth, their numbers,
+their customs, their morals, and their manners. Finally, they have
+relations to each other; they have them to their own origin, to the
+object of the legislator, to the order of things on which they are
+established. They should be considered from all these points of view."
+
+"This is what I undertake to do in this work. I will examine all these
+relations. They form together what is called `the Spirit of the Laws.'"
+[Footnote: Montesq., iii. 99 (liv. i. c. 3).]
+
+It will be noticed that Montesquieu by no means denies that there are
+general principles of justice. On the contrary, he positively asserts
+it.[Footnote: Ibid., iii. 91 (liv. i. c. 1).] But the great value of
+his teaching consists in the other lesson. "It is better to say that the
+government most in conformity with nature is that whose particular
+disposition is most in relation to the disposition of the people for
+which it is established." This principle may certainly be deduced from
+Aristotle; but it was none the less necessary to teach it in the
+eighteenth century; it is none the less necessary to teach it to-day.
+[Footnote: Ibid., iii. 99; Aristotle, _Politics_, liv. vii. c. ii.]
+
+The conception was a great one, so simple that it seems impossible that
+it could ever have been missed; but it was combated with violence on its
+announcement, and many brilliant and learned men have failed to grasp
+it.[Footnote: Montesq., iv. 145 _n_] Such are the persons in our
+own time who praise despotism in France, or who would set up
+parliamentary government in India. Montesquieu probably carried his
+theories too far. To the north he assigned energy and valor, as if the
+most widely conquering nations that Europe had then known had been the
+Norwegian and the Finn, instead of the Macedonian, the Italian, and the
+Spaniard. Sterility of soil he considered favorable to republics,
+fertility to monarchies. It was natural that a man in revolt against the
+long spiritual tyranny that had oppressed thought in Europe should have
+attributed excessive importance to material causes. Not the less did the
+idea contain its share of truth. Nor was his statement of this, which we
+may call his favorite theory, always excessive. "Several things," he
+says, "govern man; climate, religion, laws, the maxims of government,
+the examples of things past, morals, manners; whence comes a general
+spirit which is their result. Sometimes one of these forces dominates
+and sometimes another."[Footnote: Montesq., iv. 307 (liv. xix. c. 4).]
+
+It may be noted of Montesquieu, and as often of Voltaire, that each of
+them is constantly led astray by imperfect knowledge of foreign, and
+especially of barbarous and savage nations. Since the voyages and
+conquests of the Renaissance, accounts of strange countries had abounded
+in Europe, written in many cases by men anything but accurate, if not,
+in the words of Macaulay, "liars by a double right, as travellers and as
+Jesuits."[Footnote: _Essay on Machiavelli_.] The writers of a
+hundred and fifty years ago could use no better material than was to be
+had. They wished to draw instruction from distant objects, and their
+spy-glasses distorted shapes and modified colors. Imperfect knowledge of
+foreign countries sometimes led Montesquieu into curious mistakes; yet
+these affected his illustrations oftener than his theories.
+
+Having stated his general doctrine, Montesquieu proceeds to apply it. As
+laws should be adapted to the nature of the government of each country,
+it is essential to study that nature, and to consider what is the
+_principle_, or motive force of each form of government. "There is
+this difference," he says, "between the nature of the government and its
+principle: that its nature is what makes it such as it is, and its
+principle what makes it act. One is its especial structure, and the
+other the human passions which cause it to operate."[Footnote:
+Montesq., iii, 120 (liv. iii. c. 1).]
+
+Four kinds of government are recognized by Montesquieu: democratic,
+aristocratic, monarchical, and despotic. The principle of democracy he
+holds to be _virtue_, without which popular government cannot
+continue to exist.[Footnote: Montesq., iii. 122 (liv. iii. c. 3).] An
+aristocratic state needs less virtue, because the people is kept in
+check by the nobles. But the nobility can with difficulty repress the
+members of their own order, and do justice for their crimes. In default
+of great virtue, however, an aristocratic state can exist if the ruling
+class will practice _moderation_.[Footnote: Ibid., iii. 126 (liv.
+c. 4).] In monarchies great things can be done with little virtue, for
+in them there is another moving principle, which is honor.[Footnote:
+Ibid., iii. 128 (liv. iii. c. 5, 6, and 7).] This sort of government is
+founded on the prejudice of each person and each sort of men; it rests
+on ranks, preferences, and distinctions, so that emulation often
+supplies the place of virtue. In a monarchy there will be many tolerable
+citizens, but seldom a very good man, who loves the state better than
+himself. The motive principle of a despotism is _fear_[Footnote:
+Ibid., iii. 135 (liv. iii. c. 9).]; for in despotic states virtue is
+unnecessary, and honor would be dangerous. These qualities of virtue,
+honor, and fear, may not exist in every republic, monarchy, and
+despotism; but they should do so, if the government is to be perfect of
+its kind.[Footnote: Ibid., iii. 140 (liv. iii. c. 11).]
+
+It is worth while to remember, when considering the "Spirit of the
+Laws," that Montesquieu oftenest had in his mind, when speaking of
+democratic republics, those of Greece; when speaking of aristocratic
+republics, early Rome and Venice; of monarchies, France and England; of
+despotisms, the East.[Footnote: But he sometimes refers to England as a
+country where a republic is hidden under the forms of a monarchy.
+Montesq, iii. 216 (liv. V. c. 19).]
+
+Under each form of government, education and the laws should work
+together to strengthen the motive principle belonging to that form.
+Especially is this necessary in republics, for honor, which sustains
+monarchies, is favored by the passions; but virtue, on which democracies
+depend, implies renunciation of self. Virtue, in a republic, is love of
+the republic itself, which leads to good morals; the public good is set
+above private gratification. Thus we see that monks love their order the
+more, the more austere is its rule. The love of the state, in a
+democracy, becomes the love of equality, and thus limits ambition to the
+desire to render great services to the republic. The love of equality
+and frugality are principally excited by equality and frugality
+themselves, when both are established by law. The laws of a democratic
+state should encourage equality in every way; as by forbidding last
+wills, and preventing the acquisition of large landed estates. In a
+democracy all men contract an enormous debt to the state at their birth,
+and, do what they may, they can never repay it. There should be no great
+wealth in the hands of private persons, because such wealth confers
+power and furnishes delights which are contrary to equality. Domestic
+frugality should make public expenditure possible. Even talents should
+be but moderate. But if a democratic republic be founded on commerce,
+individuals may safely possess great riches; for the spirit of commerce
+brings with it that of frugality, economy, moderation, labor, wisdom,
+tranquillity, and order.
+
+It is very important in a democracy to keep old laws and customs; for
+things tend to degenerate, and a corrupted nation seldom does anything
+great. To maintain an aristocratic republic, moderation is necessary.
+The nobles should be simple in their lives and hardly distinguishable
+from plebeians. Distinctions offensive to pride, such as laws
+forbidding intermarriage, are to be avoided. Privileges should belong to
+the senate as a body and simple respect only be paid to the individual
+senators.[Footnote: Montesq., iii. 151 (liv. iv. c. 5). Ibid., iii.
+165-183 (liv. v. c. 2-8).]
+
+As honor is the motive principle of monarchy, the laws should support
+it, and be adapted to sustain that _nobility_ which is the parent
+and the child of honor. Nobility must be hereditary; it must have
+prerogatives and rights; it forms the link between the prince and the
+nation. Monarchical government has the great advantage over the
+republican form, that, as affairs are in a single hand, there is the
+greater promptitude of execution. But there should still be something to
+moderate the will of the prince. This is best found, not in the nobility
+itself, but in such bodies as courts of law with constitutional rights,
+like the French Parliaments.[Footnote: In a despotic government the
+motive principle is fear. The governor of the town must be absolutely
+responsible Montesq., iii, 191 (liv, v. c. 10).]
+
+Montesquieu has been much blamed, both in his own age and since, for his
+partiality to the monarchy as he found it existing in France. While
+recognizing that a republic was a more just and equal form of
+government, he thought that monarchy was that best suited to his time
+and country. Many people who have watched the history of France since
+his day will be found to agree with him. While defending some practices
+which are now considered among the flagrant abuses of old France, he
+recommended some reforms which would have been very salutary. It is
+often wiser to find excuses for retaining an old custom than reasons for
+introducing a new one; and Montesquieu was a conservative, made so by
+his nature, his social position, his wealth, his education as a lawyer,
+his age and his experience. When he wrote the "Persian Letters" he might
+possibly have been willing to overthrow the principal institutions of
+his country for the sake of remedying abuses; but when he had spent
+twenty years over the "Spirit of the Laws," when he had realized the
+complication of life, and the interdependence of things, he was more
+ready to reform than to destroy.
+
+In a despotic government the motive principle is fear. The governor of
+the town must be absolutely responsible to the governor of the province,
+or the latter cannot be entirely responsible to the sovereign. Thus
+absolutism extends throughout the state. As there is no law but the will
+of the prince, and as that law cannot be known in detail to every one,
+there must be a great number of petty tyrants dependent on those
+immediately above them.[Footnote: Montesq., ii. 209 (liv. v. c. 16).]
+
+After a not very successful attempt to define liberty, which he decides
+to be the power to do that which we ought to desire and not to do that
+which we ought not to desire,[Footnote: Ibid., iv. 2-4 (liv. xi. c. 2,
+3).] Montesquieu tells us that political liberty is found only in
+limited governments, for all men who have power will tend to abuse it,
+and will go on until they meet with obstacles; as virtue itself needs to
+be restrained. Various nations, he then says, have various objects:
+conquest was that of Rome, war of Sparta, commerce of Marseilles; there
+is a country the direct object of whose constitution is political
+liberty. That country is England.[Footnote: Montesquieu, here and
+elsewhere, avoids mentioning England or France by name; a curious
+affectation. The references, however, are unmistakable.]
+
+There are in every state three kinds of power, the legislative, the
+executive, and the judicial. Political liberty in a citizen is the
+tranquillity of mind which comes from the opinion he has of his own
+security; and to give him this liberty the government must be such that
+no citizen can be afraid of another. Now this security can exist only
+where the legislative, executive, and judicial powers are in different
+hands. In most of the monarchies of Europe the government is limited,
+because the prince, who has the first two powers, leaves the third to
+others; he makes laws and executes them, but he appoints other men to
+act as judges in his place. In the republics of Italy all three powers
+are united. The same body of magistrates makes the laws, executes them,
+and judges every citizen according to its pleasure; such a body is as
+despotic as an eastern prince.[Footnote: This judgment is somewhat
+softened as to Venice. The most conspicuous example in modern times of
+the tyranny of a single popular body is that of France under the
+Convention.] The judicial power, says Montesquieu (with the English jury
+in his mind), should not be given to a permanent senate, but exercised
+by persons drawn from the body of the people, forming a tribunal which
+lasts only as long as necessity may require it. In serious cases the
+criminal should combine with the law to choose his judges, or at least
+should have a right of challenge. The legislative and executive powers
+can with less danger be given to permanent bodies, because they are not
+exercised against individuals. He then commends representative
+government and the freedom left to members of Parliament in the English
+system. He believes the people more capable of choosing representatives
+wisely than of deciding questions, an opinion on which modern experience
+may have thrown some doubt. He approves of the existence of a second
+chamber, composed of persons distinguished by birth, wealth, or honors;
+for if such were mixed with the people and given only one vote apiece
+like the others, the common liberty would be their slavery, and they
+would have no interest in defending it, because it would oftenest be
+turned against themselves.[Footnote: Montesq., iv. 7 (liv. xi. c. 6).]
+
+The government of France, says Montesquieu, has not, like that of
+England, liberty for its direct object; it tends only to the glory of
+the citizen, the state, and the prince. But from this glory comes a
+spirit of liberty, which in France can do great things, and can
+contribute as much to happiness as liberty itself. The three powers are
+not there distributed as in England; but they have a distribution of
+their own, according to which they approach more or less to political
+liberty; and if they did not approach it, the monarchy would degenerate
+into despotism.[Footnote: Montesq., iv. 24. (liv. xi. c. 7).] This
+sounds somewhat like an empty phrase; yet there undoubtedly were in
+Montesquieu's time some checks on the absolutism of a French monarch.
+"If subjects owe obedience to kings, kings on their part owe obedience
+to the laws," said the Parliament of Paris in 1753. And outside of its
+own boundaries France had long been considered a limited monarchy.
+[Footnote: Rocquain, 170. Machiavelli, ii. 140, 215, 322 (Discourses on
+the first ten books of Livy).] Apart from the limitations imposed by the
+privileges of the church and of the Parliaments, there appear to have
+been some acknowledged fundamental laws (the succession of the crown in
+the male line was one of them) which it would have been beyond the power
+of the sovereign for the time being to destroy. And public opinion, as
+Montesquieu has already told us, has power even in the most despotic
+countries. In a European nation, not broken in spirit by long-continued
+tyranny, and possessing the printing-press, this power must always be
+very great.
+
+As for Montesquieu's admiration of the English form of government, it
+doubtless concurred with other causes to encourage on the Continent the
+study of English political methods. Those methods have since been
+adopted by many continental states, with hardly as many modifications to
+adapt them to local circumstances as might have been desirable. But it
+is the modern English constitution, in which power lies almost entirely
+in the House of Commons, and is exercised by its officers, that has been
+thus copied. In America the principle of the division of powers has been
+carried farther than it ever was in England; and is, of all parts of
+their form of government, that from which many intelligent Americans
+would be most loath to part.
+
+We have seen enough of Montesquieu's attacks on the church. The most
+violent of them were made in his youth, and in a book avowedly
+satirical. In mature life, writing in a more philosophical spirit, his
+language is temperate and wise. "It is bad reasoning against religion,"
+he says, "to bring together in a great work a long enumeration of the
+evils which she has produced, unless you also recount the good she has
+done. If I should tell all the harm which civil laws, monarchy, or
+republican government have done in the world, I should say frightful
+things."[Footnote: Montesq., v. 117 (liv. xxiv. c. 2).] This idea was
+far beyond the reach of Voltaire.
+
+Montesquieu goes on to argue about different forms of religion.
+Mahometanism he holds especially suited to despotism, Christianity to
+limited governments. Catholicism is adapted to monarchies,
+Protestantism, and especially Calvinism, to republics. Where fatalism is
+a religious dogma, the penalties imposed by law must be more severe, and
+the watch kept on the community more vigilant, so that men may be driven
+by these motives who otherwise would abandon self-restraint; but if the
+dogma of liberty be established, the case is otherwise. Climate is not
+without influence on religion. The ablutions required of a Mahometan are
+useful in his warm country. The Protestant of Northern Europe has to
+work harder for a living than the Catholic of the South, and therefore
+desires fewer religious holidays. If a state can prevent the
+establishment of a new form of religion within its borders, it will find
+it well to do so; but if several religions are established, they should
+not be allowed to interfere with each other. Penal laws in religious
+matters should be avoided; for each religion has its own spiritual
+penalties, and to put a man between the fear of temporal punishment, on
+the one hand, and the fear of spiritual punishment on the other,
+degrades his soul. The possessions of the clergy should be limited by
+laws of mortmain.[Footnote: Ibid., v. 124-136 (liv. xxiv. c. 5-14).]
+
+The spirit of moderation should be the spirit of the legislator. This
+Montesquieu declared to be the great theme of his book. Political good,
+like moral good, is always found between extremes.[Footnote: Montesq.,
+v. 379 (liv. xxix. c. 1).]
+
+It was this moderation which made the "Spirit of the Laws" distasteful
+to the more ardent Philosophers. Sharing in many of the feelings of his
+contemporaries, and especially in their distrust of the church,
+Montesquieu was yet unwilling to go to the same extremes as they. His
+chapter on Uniformity and the criticisms made on it by Condorcet, form
+an admirable instance of this.
+
+"There are certain ideas of uniformity," says Montesquieu, "which
+sometimes take possession of great minds (for they touched Charlemagne),
+but which invariably strike small ones. These find in them a kind of
+perfection which they recognize, because it is impossible not to see it;
+the same weights in matters of police, the same measures in commerce,
+the same laws in the state, the same religion in all its parts. But is
+this always desirable without exceptions? Is the evil of changing always
+less than the evil of suffering? And would not the greatness of genius
+rather consist in knowing in what case uniformity is necessary, and in
+what case difference? In China, the Chinese are governed by the Chinese
+ceremonies, and the Tartars by Tartar ceremonies; yet this is the nation
+in all the world which is most devoted to tranquillity. So long as the
+citizens obey the law, what matters it that they shall all obey the
+same?"
+
+This chapter (the whole of it is given above, and it may pass in the
+"Spirit of the Laws" for one of middling length), is, according to
+Condorcet, "one of those which have acquired for Montesquieu the
+indulgence of all prejudiced people, of all who hate intellectual light;
+of all protectors of abuses, etc." And after going on with his invective
+for some time, Condorcet states the substance of his argument as
+follows: "As truth, reason, justice, the rights of men, the interest of
+property, of liberty, of security, are the same everywhere, we do not
+see why all the provinces of one state, or even why all states should
+not have the same criminal laws, the same civil laws, the same laws of
+commerce, etc. A good law must be good for all men, as a true
+proposition is true for all. The laws which appear as if they should be
+different for different countries, either pronounce on objects which
+should not be regulated by laws, like most commercial regulations, or
+are founded on prejudices and habits which should be uprooted; and one
+of the best means of destroying them is to cease to sustain them by
+laws."[Footnote: Montesq., v. 412 (liv. xxix. c. 18). Condorcet, i.
+377. Yet Condorcet speaks elsewhere of Montesquieu as having made a
+revolution in men's minds on the subject of law. D'Alembert, i. 64
+(Condorcet's _Éloge de d'Alembert_). Rousseau also teaches that all
+laws and institutions are not adapted to all nations, but it is because
+he considers most nations childish or effete.]
+
+In these two passages we have the issue between Montesquieu and the
+Philosophic party fairly joined. He alone of the great Frenchmen of his
+century recognized the enormous complication of human life and human
+affairs. Not denying that there are fundamental principles of justice,
+he saw that those principles are hard to formulate truly, harder to
+apply wisely. For their application he offered many valuable
+suggestions. These were lost in the rush and hurry of approaching
+revolution. The superb simplicity of mind which could ignore the
+diversities of human nature was perhaps necessary for the uprooting of
+old abuses. But the delicate task of constructing a permanent government
+cannot succeed unless the differences as well as the resemblances among
+men be taken into account.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+PARIS.
+
+
+The members of the Third Estate differed among themselves far more than
+did those of the Clergy or the Nobility. This order comprised the rich
+banker and the beggar at his gate, the learned encyclopaedist and the
+water-carrier that could not spell his name. Every layman, not of noble
+blood, belonged to the Third Estate. And although this was the
+unprivileged order, there were privileged bodies and privileged persons
+within it. Corporations, guilds, cities, and whole provinces possessed
+rights distinct from those of the rest of the country.
+
+In the reign of Louis XVI. the city of Paris held a position, in the
+world even more prominent than that which it holds to-day. For France
+was then incontestably the first European power, and Paris was then, as
+it is now, not only the capital and the metropolis, but the heart and
+centre of life in France. The population was variously estimated at from
+six to nine hundred thousand. The city was growing in size, and new
+houses were continually erected. There was so much building at times
+during this reign, that masons worked at night, receiving double wages.
+Architects and master masons were becoming rich, and rents were high
+when compared to those of other places. Strangers and provincials
+flocked to Paris for the winter and returned to the country during the
+fine season. Sentimentalists read the works of Rousseau and praised a
+country life, but then as now few people that could afford to stay in
+the city, and had once been caught by its fascination, cared to live
+permanently out of town.[Footnote: Mercier, iv. 205, vii. 190. Babeau,
+Paris en 1789, 27.]
+
+The public buildings and gardens were worthy of the first city in
+Europe. With some of them travelers of to-day are familiar. The larger
+number of the remarkable churches now standing were in existence before
+the Revolution. Of the palaces then in the city, the three most famous
+have met with varied fates. The Luxembourg, which was the residence of
+the king's eldest brother, is the least changed. To the building itself
+but small additions have been made. Its garden was and is a quiet,
+orderly place where respectable family groups sit about in the shade.
+The Louvre has been much enlarged. Under Louis XVI. it consisted of the
+buildings surrounding the eastern court, of a wing extending toward the
+river (the gallery of Apollo), and of a long gallery, since rebuilt,
+running near the river bank and connecting this older palace with the
+Tuileries. About one-half of the space now enclosed between the two
+sides of the enormous edifice, and known as the Place du Carrousel, was
+then covered with houses and streets. The land immediately to the east
+of the Tuileries palace was not built upon, but part of it was enclosed
+by a tall iron railing. Such a railing, either the original one or its
+successor, was to be seen in the same place until recent times and may
+be standing to-day. The Place du Carrousel, as it then existed outside
+of this railing, was a square of moderate size surrounded by houses.
+
+The Palace of the Tuileries itself has had an eventful history since
+Louis XVI. came to the throne, and has only in recent years been
+utterly swept from the ground. But the gardens which bear its name are
+little changed. The long raised terraces ran along their sides then as
+now; although there was no Rue de Rivoli, and the only access to the
+gardens on the north side was by two or three streets or lanes from
+the Rue Saint-Honore. Within the garden the arrangement of broad,
+sunny walks and of shady horse-chestnuts was much the same as now.
+Well-dressed persons walked about or sat under the trees, and the
+unwashed crowd was admitted only on two or three holidays every
+year. In consequence of this exclusion the wives of respectable
+citizens used to come unattended to take the air in the gardens. They
+were brought in sedan-chairs, from which they alighted at the gate.
+What is now the Place de la Concorde was then the Place Louis Quinze,
+with an equestrian statue of that "well-beloved" monarch where
+the obelisk stands. Not far from the pedestal of that statue
+overturned,--not far from the entrance of the street called
+Royal,--near the place where many people had been crushed to death in
+the crowd assembled to see the fireworks in honor of the marriage of
+the Dauphin and the Princess Marie Antoinette of Austria,--was to
+stand the scaffold on which that Dauphin and that princess, after
+reaching the height of earthly splendor, were to pay for their own
+sins and weaknesses and for those of their country.
+
+To the west of the square came the Champs Elysées, still somewhat rough
+in condition, but with people sitting on chairs even then to watch the
+carriages rolling by, as they still do on any fine afternoon. The
+Boulevards stretched their shady length all round the city, and were a
+fashionable drive and walk, near which the smaller theatres rose and
+throve, evading the monopoly of the opéra and the Français. But the
+boulevards were almost the only broad streets. Those interminable,
+straight avenues which even the brilliancy and movement of Paris can
+hardly make anything but tiresome, had not yet been cut. The streets
+were narrow and shady; most of them not very long, nor mathematically
+straight, but keeping a general direction and widening here and there
+into a little square before a church door, or curving to follow an
+irregularity of the ground. Such streets were not in accordance with the
+taste of the age and caused progressive people to complain of Paris.
+Rousseau, who had seen Turin, was disappointed in the French capital. On
+arriving he saw at first only small, dirty, and stinking streets, ugly
+black houses, poverty, beggars, and working people; and the impression
+thus made was never entirely effaced from his mind, in spite of the
+magnificence which he recognized at a later time. Young thought that
+Paris was not to be compared with London; and Thomas Jefferson wrote
+that the latter, though handsomer than Paris, was not so handsome as
+Philadelphia. But the Parisian liked his uneven streets well enough.
+There were fine things to be seen in them. Although the city was
+crowded, there were gardens in many places, belonging to convents and
+even to private persons. And once in your walk you might come out upon a
+bridge, where, if there were not houses built upon it, you might catch a
+breath of the fresh breeze, and watch the sun disappearing behind the
+distant village of Chaillot; for nowhere does he set more gloriously
+than along the Seine.[Footnote: _Paris à travers les ages._
+Babeau, _Paris en 1789_. Cognel, 27, 74. Rousseau, xvii. 274
+(_Confessions_, Part i. liv. iv.). Young, i. 60; Randall's
+_Jefferson_, i. 447.]
+
+The houses were tall and dark, and the streets narrow and muddy. There
+was little water to use, and none to waste, for the larger part of the
+city depended upon wells or upon the supply brought in buckets from
+the Seine. The scarcity was hardly to be regretted, for there were few
+drains to carry dirty water away, and the gutter was full enough
+already. It ran down the middle of the street, which sloped gently
+toward it, and there were no sidewalks. When it rained, this
+street-gutter would rise and overflow, and enterprising men would come
+out with little wooden bridges on wheels and slip them in between the
+carriages, and give the quick-footed walker an opportunity to cross
+the torrent, if he did not slip in from the wet plank; while a pretty
+woman would sometimes trust herself to the arms of a burly
+porter.[Footnote: See the print in Fournel, 539, after Granier.
+Conductors were coming into use before the Revolution. _Encyc. meth.
+Jurisp._, x. 716.] The houses had gutters along the eaves, but no
+conductors coming down the walls, so that the water from the roofs was
+collected and came down once in every few yards in a torrent, bursting
+umbrellas, and deluging cloaks and hats. The manure spread before sick
+men's doors to deaden the sound of wheels was washed down the street
+to add to the destructive qualities which already characterized the
+mud of Paris. An exceptionally heavy fall of snow would entirely get
+the better of the authorities, filling the streets from side to side
+with pools of slush, in which fallen horses had been known to drown.
+When the sun shone again all was lively as before; the innumerable
+vehicles crowded the streets from wall to wall, with their great hubs
+standing well out beyond the wheels, and threatened to eviscerate the
+pedestrian, as he flattened himself against the house. The carriages
+of the nobility dashed through the press, the drivers calling out to
+make room; they were now seldom preceded by runners in splendid
+livery, as had been the fashion under the former reign, but sometimes
+one or two huge dogs careered in front, and the Parisians complained
+that they were first knocked down by the dogs and then run over by the
+wheels. At times came street cleaners and swept up some of the mud,
+and carted it away, having first freely spattered the clothes of all
+who passed near them. In some streets were slaughter-houses, and
+terrified cattle occasionally made their way into the neighboring
+shops. The signs swung merrily overhead. They appealed to the most
+careless eye, being often gigantic boots, or swords, or gloves,
+marking what was for sale within; or if in words, they might be
+misspelt, and thus adapted to a rude understanding. Large placards on
+the walls advertised the theatres. Street musicians performed on their
+instruments. Ballad-singers howled forth the story of the last great
+crime. Amid all the hubbub, the nimble citizen who had practiced
+walking as a fine art, picked his careful way in low shoes and white
+silk stockings; hoping to avoid the necessity of calling for the
+services of the men with clothes-brush and blacking who waited at the
+street corners.[Footnote: Mercier, xii. 71, i. 107, 123, 215, 216.
+Young, i. 76. In 1761 the signs in the principal streets were reduced
+to a projection of three feet. Later, they were ordered to be set flat
+against the walls. Babeau, _Paris_, 42; but see Mercier. Names were
+first put on the street corners in 1728. Babeau, _Paris_, 43.
+Franklin, _L'Hygiène_.]
+
+They were a fine sight, these citizens of Paris, before the male half of
+the world had adopted, even in its hours of play, the black and gray
+livery of toil. The Parisians of the latter part of King Louis XVI.'s
+reign affected simplicity of attire, but not gloom. The cocked hat was
+believed to have permanently driven out the less graceful round hat. It
+was jauntily placed on the wearer's own hair, which was powdered and
+tied behind with a black ribbon. For the coat, stripes were in fashion,
+of light blue and pink, or other brilliant colors. The waistcoat and
+breeches might be pale yellow, with pink bindings and blue buttons; the
+garters and the clocks of the white stockings, blue; the shoes black,
+with plain steel buckles. This would be an appropriate costume for the
+street; although many people wore court-mourning from economy, and
+forgot to take it off when the court did. A handsome snuff-box, often
+changed, and a ring, were part of the costume of a well-dressed man; and
+it was usual to wear two watches, probably from an excessive effort
+after symmetry; while it is intimated by the satirist that clean lace
+cuffs were sometimes sewn upon a dirty shirt.[Footnote: Babeau,
+_Paris_, 214. Fashion plates in various books. For evening dress,
+suits all of black were beginning to come in towards 1789. In the street
+gentlemen were beginning to dress like grooms, aping the English. The
+sword was still worn at times, even by upper servants, but the cane was
+fast superseding it. Women also carried canes, which helped them to walk
+in their high-heeled shoes. Mercier, xi. 229, i. 293.]
+
+The costume of gentlemen in this reign was as graceful in shape as any
+that has been worn in modern Europe. The coat and waistcoat were rather
+long and followed the lines of the person; the tight breeches met the
+long stockings just below the knee, showing the figure to advantage. The
+dress of ladies, on the other hand, was stiff, grotesque, and ungainly;
+waists were worn very long, and hoops were large and stiff. But the most
+noticeable thing was the huge structure which, almost throughout the
+reign, was built upon ladies' heads. As it varied between one and three
+feet in height, and was very elaborate in design, it could not often be
+taken down. No little skill was required to construct it, and poor girls
+could sometimes earn a living by letting out their heads by the hour to
+undergo the practice of clumsy barbers' apprentices. At one time red
+hair came into fashion and was simulated by the use of red powder. The
+colors for clothes varied with the invention of the milliners, and the
+habit of giving grotesque names to new colors had already arisen in
+Paris. About 1782, "fleas' back and belly," "goose dung," and "Paris
+mud" were the last new thing. Caps "à la Boston," and "à la
+Philadelphie," had gone out. Instead of the fashion-plates with which
+Paris has since supplied the world, but which under Louis XVI. were only
+just coming into use, dolls were dressed in the latest style by the
+milliners and sent to London, Berlin, and Vienna.[Footnote: Franklin,
+_Les soins de toilette_. Mercier, viii. 295, ii. l97, l98, 213]
+
+The dress of the common people was more brilliant and varied than it is
+in our time, but probably less neat. Cleanliness of person has never
+been a leading virtue among the French poor. Although there were
+elaborate bathing establishments in the river, a large proportion of the
+people hardly knew what it was to take a bath.[Footnote: But Young
+says, "In point of cleanliness I think the merit of the two nations is
+divided; the French are cleaner in their persons, and the English in
+their houses." Young, i. 291. The whole comparison there given of French
+and English customs is most interesting.] The sentimental milkmaids of
+Greuze are no more like the tanned and wrinkled women that sold milk in
+the streets of Paris, than the court-shepherdesses of Watteau and
+Boucher were like the rude peasants that watched their sheep on the Jura
+mountains. But the Parisian cockney was fond of dress, and would rather
+starve his stomach than his back. The milliners' shops, where the pretty
+seamstresses sat sewing all day in sight of the street, reminding the
+Parisians of seraglios, were never empty of those who had money to
+spend. For leaner purses, the women who sat under umbrellas in front of
+the Colonnade of the Louvre had bargains of cast-off clothing; and there
+were booths along the quays on Sunday, and a fair in the Place de la
+Greve on Monday.[Footnote: Mercier, viii. 269, ix. 294, v. 281, ii.
+267.]
+
+It is sometimes said of our own times that the rich have become richer
+and the poor poorer than in former days. I believe that this is entirely
+untrue, and that in the second half of the nineteenth century a smaller
+proportion of the inhabitants of civilized countries suffers from hunger
+and cold than ever before. Whatever be the figures by which fortunes are
+counted, there is no doubt that the visible difference between the rich
+and the poor was greater in the reign of Louis XVI. than in our own
+time.[Footnote: Mercier mentions fortunes varying from 100,000 to
+900,000 livres income, and speaks of the former as common, i. 172.
+Meanwhile clerks got from 800 to 1500 livres and even less. Those with
+1200 wore velvet coats, ii. 118.] In spite of the fashion of simplicity
+which was one of the affectations of those days, the courtier still on
+occasion glittered in brocade. His liveried servants waited about his
+door. His lackeys climbed behind his coach, and awoke the dimly lighted
+streets with the glare of their torches, as the heavy vehicle bore him
+homeward from the supper and the card-table. The luxuries of great
+houses were relatively more expensive. A dish of early peas might cost
+six hundred francs. Six different officials (a word less dignified would
+hardly suit the importance of the subject), had charge of the
+preparation of his lordship's food and drink, and bullied the numerous
+train of serving-men, kitchen-boys, and scullions. There was the
+_maître d'hôtel_, or housekeeper, who attended to purchases and to
+storing the food; the chief cook, for soups, _hors d'oeuvre_,
+_entrées_, and _entremets_; the pastry-cook, with general
+charge of the oven; the roaster, who fattened the poultry and larded the
+meat before he put the turnspit dog into the wheel; an Italian
+confectioner for sweet dishes; and a butler to look after the wine.
+Bread was usually brought from the bakers, even to great houses, and was
+charged for by keeping tally with notches on a stick. Baking was an
+important trade in Paris, and in times of scarcity the bakers were given
+the first chance to buy wood. For delicacies, there was the great shop
+at the Hôtel d'Aligre in the Rue Saint Honoré, a "famous temple of
+gluttony," where truffles from Perigord, potted partridges from Nérac,
+and carp from Strasbourg were piled beside dates, figs, and pots of
+orange jelly; and where the foreigner from beyond the Rhine, or the
+Alps, could find his own sauerkraut or macaroni.[Footnote: Mercier, x.
+208, xi. 229, 346, xii. 243.]
+
+At the tables of the rich it was usual to entertain many guests; not in
+the modern way, by asking people for a particular day and hour, but by
+general invitation. The host opened his house two or three times a week
+for dinner or supper, and anybody who had once been invited was always
+at liberty to drop in. Thus arose a class of respectably dressed people
+who were in the habit of dining daily at the cost of their acquaintance.
+After dinner it was the fashion to slip away; the hostess called out a
+polite phrase across the table to the retreating guest, who replied with
+a single word.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 176, ii. 225. _La Robe dine, La
+finance soupe._ Mercier says that a man who was a whole year without
+calling at a house where he had once been admitted had to be presented
+over again, and make some excuse, as that he had traveled, etc. This the
+hostess pretended to believe.] It was of course but a small part of the
+inhabitants of Paris that ate at rich men's tables. The fare of the
+middle classes was far less elaborate; but it generally included meat
+once or twice a day. The markets were dirty, and fish was dear and bad.
+The duties which were levied at the entrance of the town raised the
+price of food, and of the wine which Frenchmen find equally essential.
+Provisions were usually bought in very small quantities, less than a
+pound of sugar at a time. Enough for one meal only was brought home, in
+a piece of printed paper, or an old letter. Unsuccessful books thus
+found their use at the grocer's. Before dinner the supply for dinner was
+bought; before supper, that for supper. After the meal nothing was left.
+The poorer citizens carried their dinners to be baked at the cook-shops,
+and saved something in the price of wood. The lower classes had their
+meat chopped fine and packed in sausages, as is still done in Germany,
+an economical measure by which many shortcomings are covered up and no
+scrap is lost.[Footnote: Ibid., i. 219, xii. 128.]
+
+The use of coffee had become universal. It was sold about the streets
+for two sous a cup, including the milk and a tiny bit of sugar. While
+the rich drank punch and ate ices, the poor slaked their thirst with
+liquorice water, drawn from a shining cylinder carried on a man's back.
+The cups were fastened to this itinerant fountain by long chains, and
+were liable to be dashed from thirsty lips in a crowd by any one passing
+between the drinker and the water-seller.[Footnote: Mercier, viii. 270,
+_n_., iv. 154, xii. 296, v. 310. See plates in Fournel, 509, 516.]
+
+For the very poor there was second-hand food, the rejected scraps of the
+rich. In Paris they were nasty enough; but at Versailles, where the king
+and the princes lived, even people that were well to do did not scorn to
+buy dishes that had been carried untouched from a royal table. Near the
+poultry market in Paris, a great pot was always hanging on the fire,
+with capons boiling in it; you bought a boiled fowl with its broth, a
+savory mess. In general the variety of food was increasing. Within forty
+years the number of sorts of fruit and vegetables in use had almost
+doubled.[Footnote: Ibid., v. 85, 249. Genlis, _Dictionnaire des
+Étiquettes_, ii. 40, _n_., citing Buffon. Scraps of food are
+still sold in the Central Market of Paris.]
+
+The population was divided into many distinct classes, but there was a
+good deal of intercourse from class to class, nor was it extremely
+difficult for the able and ambitious to rise in the world. The
+financiers had become rich and important, but were regarded with
+jealousy. In an aristocratic state the nobles think it all wrong that
+any one else should have as much money as themselves. This is not
+strange; but it is more remarkable that the common people are generally
+of the same opinion, and that, while the profusion of the great noble is
+looked on as no more than the liberality which belongs to his station,
+the extravagance of the mere man of money is condemned and derided. This
+tendency was increased in France by the fact that many of the greatest
+fortunes were made by the farmers of the revenue, who were hated as
+publicans even more than they were envied as rich men. Yet one
+financier, Necker, although of foreign birth, was perhaps the most
+popular man in France during this reign, and it was not the least of
+Louis's follies or misfortunes that he could not bring himself to share
+the admiration of his people for his Director General of the Treasury.
+
+The mercantile class in Paris did not hold a high position. The merchant
+was too much of a shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper was too much of a
+huckster. The smallest sale involved a long course of bargaining. This
+was perhaps partly due to the fact, admirable in itself, that the wife
+was generally united with her husband in the management of the shop. The
+customary law of Paris was favorable to the rights of property of
+married women; and the latter were associated with their husbands in
+commerce and consulted in all affairs. This habit is still observed in
+France. It tends to draw husband and wife together, by uniting their
+occupations and their interests. Unfortunately it tends also to the
+neglect of children, especially in infancy, when their claims are
+exacting. Thus the Frenchwoman of the middle class is in some respects
+more of a wife and less of a mother than the corresponding Anglo-Saxon.
+The babies, even of people of very moderate means, were generally sent
+out from Paris into the country to be nursed. Later in the lives of
+children, girls were kept continually with their mothers, watched and
+guarded with a care of which we have little conception. Boys were much
+more separated from their parents, and left to schoolmasters. Neither
+boys nor girls were trusted or allowed to gain experience for themselves
+nearly as much as we consider desirable.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 53, v.
+231, ix. 173, vi. 325.]
+
+Marriages were generally left to the discretion of parents, except in
+the lowest classes; and parents were too often governed by pecuniary,
+rather than by personal considerations in choosing the wives and
+husbands of their sons and daughters. Such a system of marriage would
+seem unbearable, did we not know that it is borne and approved by the
+greater part of mankind. It is possible that the chief objection to it
+is to be found less in the want of attachment between married people,
+which might be supposed to be its natural result, than in the diminution
+of the sense of loyalty. In England and America it is felt to be
+disgraceful to break a contract which both parties have freely made,
+with their eyes open; and this feeling greatly reenforces the other
+motives to fidelity. Yet while the rich and idle class in France, if the
+stories of French writers may be trusted, has always been honeycombed
+with marital unfaithfulness, there are probably no people in the world
+more united than the husbands and wives of the French lower and middle
+classes. Working side by side all the week with tireless industry,
+sharing a frugal but not a sordid life, they seek their innocent
+pleasures together on Sundays and holidays. The whole neighborhood of
+Paris is enlivened with their not unseemly gayety, as freely shared as
+the toil by which it was earned. The rowdyism of the sports in which men
+are not accompanied by women, the concentrated vulgarity of the summer
+boarding-house, where women live apart from the men of their families,
+are almost equally unknown in France. In the latter part of the
+eighteenth century many of the comfortable burghers of Paris owned
+little villas in the suburbs, whither the family retired on Sundays,
+sometimes taking the shop-boy as an especial favor. The common people
+also were to be found in great numbers in the suburban villages, such as
+Passy, Auteuil, or in the Bois de Boulogne, dancing on the green;
+although in the reign of Louis XVI. they are said to have been less gay
+than before.[Footnote: Mercier, in. 143, iv. 162, xii. 101.]
+
+Artists, artisans, and journeymen, in their various degrees, formed
+classes of great importance, for Paris was famous for many sorts of
+manufactures, and especially for those which required good taste. But
+it was noticed that on account of the abridgment of the power of the
+trade-guilds, and the consequent rise of competition, French goods
+were losing in excellence, while they gained in cheapness; so that it
+was said that workmanship was becoming less thorough in Paris than in
+London.
+
+The police of Paris was already remarkable for its efficiency. The
+inhabitants of the capital of France lived secure in their houses, or
+rode freely into the country, while those of London were in danger of
+being stopped by highwaymen on suburban roads, or robbed at night by
+housebreakers in town. From riots, also, the Parisians had long been
+singularly free, and for more than a century had seen none of
+importance, while London was terrified, and much property destroyed in
+1780 by the Gordon riots. In spite of the forebodings of some few
+pessimists, people did not expect any great revolution, but rather
+social and economic reforms. It was believed that the powers of
+repression were too strong for the powers of insurrection. The crash
+came, at last, not through the failure of the ordinary police, but from
+demoralization at the centre of government and in the army. While Louis
+still reigned in peace at Versailles, the administration of Paris went
+on efficiently. Correspondence was maintained with the police of other
+cities. Criminals and suspected persons, when arrested, could be
+condemned by summary process. The Lieutenant General of Police had it in
+his discretion to punish without publicity. The more scandalous crimes
+were systematically hidden from the public; a process more favorable to
+morality than to civil liberty. For the criminal classes in Paris
+arbitrary imprisonment was the common fate, and disreputable men and
+women Were brought in by bands.[Footnote: Mercier, vi. 206. Monier,
+396.]
+
+The liability to arbitrary arrest affected the lives of but a small
+proportion of the citizens after all. To most Parisians it was far more
+important that the streets were safe by day and night; that fire-engines
+were provided, and Capuchin monks trained to use them, while soldiers
+hastened to the fire and would press all able-bodied men into the
+service of passing buckets; that small civil cases were promptly and
+justly disposed of.[Footnote: Mercier, i. 197, 210, ix. 220, xii. 162
+(_Jurisdiction consulaire_).]
+
+The increase of humane ideas which marked the age was beginning in the
+course of this reign to affect the hospitals and poor-houses as well as
+the prisons, and to diminish their horrors. At the Hotel Dieu, the
+greatest hospital in Paris, six patients were sometimes wedged into one
+filthy bed. Yet even, there, some improvement had taken place. And while
+Howard considered that hospital a disgrace to Paris, he found many other
+charitable foundations in the city which did it honor. Here as elsewhere
+there was no uniformity.[Footnote: Mercier, vii. 7, iii. 225. Howard,
+_State of the Prisons_, 176, 177. Babeau, _La Ville_, 435.
+Cognel, 88. A horrible description of the Hotel Dieu, written in 1788 by
+Tenon, a member of Academy of Sciences, is given in A. Franklin,
+_L'Hygiène_, 181.]
+
+In the medical profession, the regular physicians held themselves far
+above the surgeons, many of whom had been barbers' apprentices; but it
+would appear that the science of surgery was better taught and was
+really in a more advanced state than that of medicine. More than eight
+hundred students attended the school of surgery. In medicine,
+inoculation was slowly making its way, but was resorted to only by the
+upper classes. Excessive bleeding and purgation were going out of
+fashion, but the poor still employed quacks, or swallowed the coarse
+drugs which the grocers sold cheaper than the regular apothecaries, or
+relied on the universal remedy of the lower classes in Paris, a cordial
+of black currants.[Footnote: It was called _Cassis_. Mercier, xii.
+126, vii. 126.]
+
+Near the Hotel Dieu was the asylum for foundlings, whither they were
+brought not only from Paris, but from distant towns, and whence they
+were sent out to be nursed in the country. They were brought to Paris
+done up tightly in their swaddling clothes, little crying bundles,
+packed three at a time into wadded boxes, carried on men's backs. The
+habit of dressing children loosely, recommended by Rousseau, had not yet
+reached the poor; as the habit of having babies nursed by their own
+mothers, which he had also striven to introduce, had been speedily
+abandoned by the rich. The mortality among the foundlings was great, for
+two hundred of them were sometimes kept in one ward during their stay at
+the asylum.[Footnote: Mercier, iii. 239, viii. 188. Cognel found the
+asylum very clean. Cognel, 87.]
+
+Although some falling off in the ardor of religious practices was
+noticed as the Revolution drew near, the ceremonies of the church were
+still visible in all their splendor. On the feast of Corpus Christi a
+long procession passed through the streets, where doors and windows
+were hung with carpets and tapestry. The worsted pictures, it is true,
+were adapted rather to a decorative than to a pious purpose, and
+over-scrupulous persons might be shocked at seeing Europa on her bull,
+or Psyche admiring the sleeping Cupid, on the route of a religious
+procession. Such anomalies, however, could well be disregarded. Around
+the sacred Host were gathered the dignitaries of the state and the
+city in their robes of office, marshaled by the priests, who for that
+day seemed to command the town. In some cases, it is said, the great
+lords contented themselves with sending their liveried servants to
+represent them. Soldiers formed the escort. The crowd in the street
+fell on its knees as the procession passed. Flowers, incense, music,
+the faithful with their foreheads in the dust, all contributed to the
+picturesqueness of the scene. A week later the ceremony was repeated
+with almost equal pomp. On the Sunday following, there was another
+procession in the northern suburbs. Naked boys, leading lambs,
+represented Saint John the Baptist; Magdalens eight years old, walking
+by their nurses' side, wept over their sins; the pupils of the school
+of the Sacred Heart marched with downcast eyes. The Host was carried
+under a dais of which the cords were held by respected citizens, and
+was escorted by forty Swiss guards. A hundred and fifty censers swung
+incense on the air. The diplomatic corps watched the procession from
+the balcony of the Venetian ambassador, even the Protestants bowing or
+kneeling with the rest. [Footnote: Mercier, iii. 78. Cognel, 101.]
+
+From time to time, through the year, these great ceremonies were
+renewed, either on a regularly returning day, or as occasion might
+demand. On the 3d of July the Swiss of the rue aux Ours was publicly
+carried in procession. There was a legend that a Swiss Protestant
+soldier had once struck the statue of the Holy Virgin on the corner of
+this street with his sword, and that blood had flowed from the wounded
+image. Therefore, on the anniversary of the outrage, a wicker figure was
+carried about the town, bobbing at all the sacred images at the street
+corners, with a curious mixture of piety and fun. Originally it had been
+dressed like a Swiss, but the people of Switzerland, who were numerous
+and useful in Paris, remonstrated at a custom likely to bring them into
+contempt; and the grotesque giant was thereupon arrayed in a wig and a
+long coat, with a wooden dagger painted red in his hand. The grammarian
+Du Marsais once got into trouble on the occasion of this procession. He
+was walking in the street when one woman elbowed another in trying to
+get near the statue. "If you want to pray," said the woman who had been
+pushed, "go on your knees where you are; the Holy Virgin is everywhere."
+Du Marsais was so indiscreet as to interfere. Being a grammarian, he was
+probably of a disputatious turn of mind. "My good woman," said he, "you
+have spoken heresy. Only God is everywhere; not the Virgin." The woman
+turned on him and cried out: "See this old wretch, this Huguenot, this
+Calvinist, who says that the Holy Virgin is not everywhere!" Thereupon
+Du Marsais was attacked by the mob and forced to take refuge in a house,
+whence he was rescued by the guard, which kept him shut up for his own
+safety until after nightfall.[Footnote: Mercier, iv. 97. Fournel, 176.
+This procession was abolished by order of the police, June 27, 1789.
+Fournel, 177.]
+
+For an occasional procession, we have one in October, 1785, when three
+hundred and thirteen prisoners, redeemed from slavery among the
+Algerines, were led for three days about the streets with great pomp by
+brothers of the orders of the Redemption. Each captive was conducted by
+two angels, to whom he was bound with red and blue ribbons, and the
+angels carried scrolls emblazoned with the arms of the orders. There was
+the usual display of banners and crosses, guards and policemen; there
+were bands of music and palm-branches. The long march required frequent
+refreshment, which was offered by the faithful, and it is said that many
+of the captives and some of the professionally religious persons
+indulged too freely. A drunken angel must have been a cheerful sight
+indeed. The object of this procession was to raise money to redeem more
+prisoners from slavery, for the Barbary pirates were still suffered by
+the European powers to plunder the commerce of the Mediterranean and to
+kidnap Christian sailors.[Footnote: Bachaumont, xxx. 24. Compare
+Lesage, i. 347 (_Le diable boiteux_, ch. xix). For a procession of
+persons delivered by charity from imprisonment for not paying their wet
+nurses, see Mercier, xii. 85.]
+
+Nor was it in great festivals alone that the religious spirit of the
+people was manifested. On Sundays all shops were shut, and the common
+people heard at least the morning mass, although they were getting
+careless about vespers. Every spring for a fortnight about Easter, there
+was a great revival of religious observance, and churches and
+confessionals were crowded. But throughout the year, one humble kind of
+procession might be met in the streets of Paris. A poor priest, in a
+worn surplice, reverently carries the Host under an old dirty canopy. A
+beadle plods along in front, with an acolyte to ring the bell, at the
+sound of which the passers-by kneel in the streets and cabs and coaches
+are stopped. Louis XV. once met the "Good God," as the eucharistic wafer
+was piously called, and earned a short-lived popularity by going down on
+his silken knees in the mud. All persons may follow the viaticum into
+the chamber of the dying. The watch, if it meets the procession on its
+return, will escort it back to its church.[Footnote: _Ordonnance de
+la police du Châtelet concernant l'observation des dimanches et fêtes,
+du 18 Novembre, 1782_. Monin, 403.]
+
+Let us follow it in the early morning, and, taking our stand under the
+porch where the broken statues of the saints are still crowned with the
+faded flowers of yesterday's festival, or wandering thence about the
+streets of the city, let us watch the stream of life as it flows now
+stronger, now more gently hour by hour.
+
+It is seven o'clock. The market gardeners, with their empty baskets,
+are jogging on their weary horses toward the suburbs. Already they
+have supplied the markets. They meet only the early clerks, fresh
+shaven and powdered, hastening to their offices. At nine, the town is
+decidedly awake. The young barber-surgeons ("whiting" as the Parisians
+call them), sprinkled from head to foot with hair powder, carry the
+curling-iron in one hand, the wig in the other, on their way to the
+houses of their customers. The waiters from the lemonade-shops are
+bringing coffee and cakes to the occupants of furnished lodgings. On
+the boulevards, young dandies, struck with Anglomania, contend
+awkwardly with their saddle-horses.
+
+At ten lawyers in black and clients of all colors flock to the island
+in the river where are the courts of law. The Palace, as the great
+court-house is called, is a large and imposing pile of buildings, with
+fine halls and strong prisons, and the most beautiful of gothic
+chapels. But the passages are blocked with the stalls of hucksters who
+sell stationery, books, and knicknacks.[Footnote: Mercier, vi. 72,
+iv. 146, ix. 171. Cognel, 41.]
+
+In the rue Neuve des Petits Champs they are drawing the royal lottery.
+The Lieutenant-Général of Police, accompanied by several officers,
+appears on a platform. Near him is the wheel of fortune. The wheel is
+turned, it stops, and a boy with blindfolded eyes puts his hand into an
+opening in the wheel, and pulls out a ticket, which he hands to the
+official. The latter opens it, holding it up conspicuously in front of
+him to avert suspicion of foul play. The ticket is then posted on a
+board, and the boy pulls out another. The crowd is noisy and excited at
+first, then sombre and discouraged as all the chances are exhausted.
+
+Noon is the time when the Exchange is most active, and when lazy people
+hang about the Palais Royal, whose gardens are the centre of news and
+gossip. The antechambers of bankers and men in place are crowded with
+anxious clients. At two the streets are full of diners-out, and all the
+cabs are taken. They are heavy and clumsy vehicles, dirty inside and
+out, and the coachmen are drunken fellows. Clerks and upper servants
+dash about in cabriolets, and sober people are scandalized at seeing
+women in these frivolous vehicles unescorted. "They go alone; they go in
+pairs!" cries one, "without any men. You would think they wanted to
+change their sex." Dandies drive the high-built English "whiski." All
+are blocked among carts and drays, with sacks, and beams, and casks of
+wine. For people that would go out of town there are comfortable
+traveling chaises, or the cheap and wretched _carrabas_, in which
+twenty persons are jolted together, and the rate of travel is but two or
+three miles an hour; while on the road to Versailles, the active
+postillions known as _enragés_ will take you to the royal town and
+back, a distance of twenty miles, and give you time to call on a
+minister of state, all within three hours.[Footnote: Mercier, vii. 114,
+228, ix. 1, 266, xi. 17, xii. 253. Chérest, ii. 166.]
+
+Between half past two and three, people of fashion are sitting down to
+dinner, following the mysterious law of their nature which makes them
+do everything an hour or two later in the day than other mortals. At
+quarter past five the streets are full again. People are on their way
+to the theatre, or going for a drive in the boulevards, and the
+coffee-houses are filling. As daylight fails, bands of carpenters and
+masons plod heavily toward the suburbs, shaking the lime from their
+heavy shoes. At nine in the evening people are going to supper, and
+the streets are more disorderly than at any time in the day. The
+scandalous scenes which have disappeared from modern Paris, but which
+are still visible in London, were in the last century allowed early in
+the evening; but long before midnight the police had driven all
+disorderly characters from the streets. At eleven the coffee-houses
+are closing; the town is quiet, only to be awakened from time to time
+by the carriages of the rich going home after late suppers, or by the
+tramp of the beasts of burden of the six thousand peasants who nightly
+bring vegetables, fruit, and flowers into the great city.[Footnote:
+Ibid., iv. 148.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS.
+
+
+The provincial towns in France under Louis XVI. were only beginning to
+assume a modern appearance. Built originally within walls, their houses
+had been tall, their streets narrow, crooked, and dirty. But in the
+eighteenth century most of the walls had been pulled down, and public
+walks or drives laid out on their sites. The idea that the beauty of
+cities consists largely in the breadth and straightness of their streets
+had taken a firm hold on the public mind. This idea, if not more
+thoroughly carried out than it can be in an old town, has much in its
+favor. Before the French Revolution the broad, dusty, modern avenues,
+which allow free passage to men and carriages and free entrance to light
+and air, but where there is little shade from the sun or shelter from
+the wind, were beginning to supersede the cooler and less windy, but
+malodorous lanes where the busy life of the Middle Ages had found
+shelter. Large and imposing public buildings were constructed in many
+towns, facing on the public squares. With the artistic thoroughness
+which belongs to the French mind, the fronts of the surrounding private
+houses were made to conform in style to those of their prouder
+neighbors. The streets were lighted, although rather dimly; their names
+were written at their corners, and in some instances the houses were
+numbered.
+
+But such innovations did not touch every provincial town, nor cover the
+whole of the places which they entered. More commonly, the old
+appearance of the streets was little changed. The houses jutted out into
+the narrow way, with all manner of inexplicable corners and angles. The
+shop windows were unglazed, and shaded only by a wooden pent-house, or
+by the upper half of a shutter. The other half might be lowered to form
+a shelf, from which the wares could overrun well into the roadway. Near
+the wooden sign which creaked overhead stood a statue of the Virgin or a
+saint. Glancing into the dimly-lighted shop, you might see the master
+working at his trade, with a journeyman and an apprentice. The busy
+housewife bustled to and fro; now chaffering with a customer at the
+shop-door, now cooking the dinner, or scolding the red-armed maid, in
+the kitchen.[Footnote: Babeau, _La Ville_, 363. Ibid., _Les
+Artisans_, 73, 82. Viollet le Duc, _Dict. d'Architecture_
+(Boutique.)]
+
+The house was only one room wide, but several stories high. Upstairs
+were the chambers and perhaps a sitting-room. Even among people of
+moderate means the modern division of rooms was coming into fashion, and
+beds were being banished from kitchens and parlors. There were more beds
+also, and fewer people in each, than in former years. On the walls of
+the rooms paint and paper were taking the place of tapestry, and light
+colors, with brightness and cleanliness, were displacing soft dark
+tones, dirt, and vermin.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Bourgeois_, 9, 19,
+37.]
+
+Houses were thinly built and doors and windows rattled in their
+frames. The rooms in the greater part of France were heated only by
+open fires, although stoves of brick or glazed pottery were in common
+use in Switzerland and Germany; and wood was scarce and dear. In
+countries where the winter is short and sharp, people bear it with
+what patience they may, instead of providing against it, as is
+necessary where the cold is more severe and prolonged. Thicker clothes
+were worn in the house than when moving about in the streets. Wadded
+slippers protected the feet against the chill of the brick floors, and
+the old sat in high-backed chairs to cut off the draft, with
+footstools under their feet. Chilblains were, and are still, a
+constant annoyance of European winter. The dressing-gown was in
+fashion in France as in America, where we frequently see it in
+portraits of the last century. Similar garments had been in use in the
+Middle Ages. They belong to cold houses.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les
+Artisans_, 123. In 1695 the water and wine froze on the king's table
+at Versailles, _Les Bourgeois_, 23.]
+
+The dress of the working-classes, which had been very brilliant at the
+time of the Renaissance, had become sombre in the seventeenth century,
+but was regaining brilliancy in the eighteenth. The townspeople dressed
+in less bright colors than the peasants of the country, but not cheaply
+in proportion to their means. Already social distinctions were
+disappearing from costume, and it was remarked that a master-workman, of
+a Sunday, in his black coat and powdered hair, might be mistaken for a
+magistrate; while the wife of a rich burgher was hardly distinguishable
+from a noblewoman.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 13, 199.
+Handiwork was very cheap. Babeau gives the bill for a black gown costing
+210 livres 15 sous, of which only 3 livres was for the making; _Les
+Bourgeois_, 169 n.]
+
+Great thrift was practiced by the poorer townspeople of the middle
+class, but their lives were not without comfort. We read of a family in
+a small town of Auvergne before the middle of the century, composed of a
+man and his wife, with a large number of children, the wife's mother,
+her two grandmothers, her three aunts, and her sister, all sitting about
+one table, and living on one modest income. The husband and father had a
+small business and owned a garden and a little farm. In the garden
+almost enough vegetables were raised for the use of the family. Quinces,
+apples, and pears were preserved in honey for the winter. The wool of
+their own sheep was spun by the women, and so was the flax of their
+field, which the neighbors helped them to strip of an evening. From the
+walnuts of their trees they pressed oil for the table and for the lamp.
+The great chestnuts were boiled for food. The bread also was made of
+their own grain, and the wine of their own grapes.
+
+In the country towns, among people of small means, a healthy freedom was
+allowed to boys and girls. There were moonlight walks and singing
+parties. Love matches resulted from thus throwing the young people
+together, and were found not to turn out worse than other marriages. But
+in large towns matches were still arranged by parents, and the girls
+were educated rather to please the older people than the young men, for
+it was the elders who would find husbands for them.[Footnote:
+Marmontel, i. 10, 51. Babeau, _Les Bourgeois_, 315.]
+
+Amusements were simple and rational in the cultivated middle class.
+People in the provinces were not above enjoying amateur music and
+recitation, and the fashion of singing songs at table, which was going
+out of vogue in Paris, still held its own in smaller places. A literary
+flavor, which has now disappeared, pervaded provincial society. People
+wrote verses and made quotations. But this did not prevent less
+intellectual pleasures. Players sometimes spent eighteen out of the
+twenty-four hours at the card-table. Balls were given either by private
+persons or by subscription. Dancing would begin at six and last well
+into the next morning; for the dwellers in small towns will give
+themselves up to an occupation or an amusement with a thoroughness which
+the more hurried life of a capital will not allow. The local nobility,
+and the upper ranks of the burgher class, the officers, magistrates,
+civil functionaries and their families, met at these balls; for social
+equality was gaining ground in France. The shopkeepers and attorneys
+contented themselves, as a rule, with quieter pleasures, excursions into
+the country, theatres, visits, and little supper parties. Dancing in the
+open air and street shows, in which once all classes had taken part,
+were now left to the poor.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Bourgeois_, 209,
+225, 241, 305.]
+
+The journeyman sometimes lived with his master, sometimes had a room of
+his own in another part of the town. He dressed poorly and lived hard;
+but generally had his wine. Bread and vegetables formed the solid part
+of his diet, beans being a favorite article of food. Wages appear to
+have been about twenty-six sous a day for men, and fifteen for women on
+an average, the value of money being perhaps twice what it is now, but
+the variations were great from town to town. The hours of work were
+long. People were up at four in the summer mornings, in provincial
+towns, and did not stop working until nine at night. But the work was
+the varied and leisurely work of home, not the monotonous drudgery of
+the great factory. Moreover, holidays were more than plenty, averaging
+two a week throughout the year. The French workman kept them with song
+and dance and wine; but drunkenness and riot were uncommon.[Footnote:
+Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 21, 34. A. Young, i. 565.]
+
+The workman's chance of rising in his trade was far better than it is
+now. There were not twice as many journeymen as masters.[Footnote:
+Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 63. Perhaps more workmen under Louis XVI.
+Manufactures on a larger scale were coming in. At Marseilles, 65 soap
+factories employed 1000 men; 60 hatters, 800 men and 400 women.
+Julliany, i. 85. But Marseilles was a large city. In smaller places the
+old domestic trades still held their ground.] The capital required for
+setting up in business was small, although the fees were relatively
+large; the police had to be paid for a license; and the guilds for
+admission.
+
+These guilds regulated all the trade and manufactures of the country.
+They held strict monopolies, and no man was allowed to exercise any
+handicraft as a master without being a member of one of them. The guilds
+were continually squabbling. Thus it was an unceasing complaint of the
+shoemakers against the cobblers that the latter sold new shoes as well
+as second-hand, a practice contrary to the high privileges of the
+shoemakers' corporation. Sometimes the civil authorities were called on
+to interfere. We find the trimming-makers of Paris, who have the right
+to make silk buttons, obtaining a regulation which forbids all persons
+wearing buttons of the same cloth as their coats, or buttons that are
+cast, turned or made of horn.
+
+Minute regulations governed manufactures exercised within the guilds.
+The number of threads to the inch in cloth of various names and kinds
+was strictly regulated. New inventions made their way with difficulty
+against the vested rights of these corporations. Thus Le Prevost, who
+invented the use of silk in making hats, was exposed to all sorts of
+opposition from the other hatters, who said that he infringed their
+privileges; but he overcame it by perseverance, and finally made a large
+fortune. The regulations served to keep up the standard of excellence in
+manufacture, which probably fell in some respects on their abolition.
+They were often made to benefit the masters at the expense of the
+workmen, who on their side formed secret combinations of their own,
+fighting by much the same methods as such unions employ to-day. Thus in
+1783 the journeymen paper-makers instituted a system of fines on their
+masters, which they enforced by deserting in a body the service of those
+who resisted them.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 51, 108, 202,
+239. Levasseur, ii. 353. Turgot, iii. 328, 347. (_Éloge de M. de
+Gournay_), Mercier, xi. 363.]
+
+The successful master of a trade, as he grew rich, might pass into the
+upper middle class, the _haute bourgeoisie_. He became a
+manufacturer, a merchant, perhaps even, when he retired on his fortune,
+a royal secretary, with a patent of hereditary nobility. His children,
+instead of leaving school when they had learned to read, write and
+cipher, and had taken their first communion, stayed on, or were promoted
+to a higher school, to learn Latin and Greek. His wife was called
+Madame, like a duchess. She had probably assisted in his rise, not only
+by good advice and domestic frugality, but by the arts of a saleswoman
+and by her talent for business. Should he die while his sons were young,
+she understood his affairs and could carry them on for her own benefit
+and for that of her children. No longer a single maidservant, red in the
+face and slatternly about the skirts, clatters among the pots in the
+little dark kitchen behind the shop, or stands with her arms akimbo
+giving advice to her mistress. The successful man has mounted his house
+on a larger scale, and if the insolent lackeys of the great do not hang
+about his door, there are at least one or two of those quiet and
+attentive old men-servants, whose respectful and self-respecting
+familiarity adds at once to the comfort and the dignity of life.
+[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 158, 167, 181, 204, 271.]
+
+It was not within the walls of his own house alone that the burgher
+might be a man of importance. The towns retained to the end of the
+monarchy a few of the rights for which they had struggled in earlier and
+rougher times. Assemblies differently composed in different places, but
+sometimes representing the guilds and fraternities and sometimes made up
+of the whole body of citizens, took a part in the government of the
+town. They voted on loans, on the conduct of the city's lawsuits, and on
+municipal business generally. Officers were chosen in various ways, some
+of them by very complicated forms of election, and some by throwing of
+lots. These officers bore different titles in different places, as
+consuls, echevins, syndics, or jurats. They sometimes exercised
+considerable executive and judicial powers, controlling the ordinary
+police of the city. Their perquisites and privileges varied from town to
+town, with the color of their official robes, and the ceremonies of
+their installation. The cities valued their ancient rights, shorn as
+they were of much substantial importance by the centralizing servants of
+the crown; and repeatedly bought them back from the king, as time after
+time the old offices were abolished, and new-fashioned purchasable
+mayoralties set up in their stead.[Footnote: Babeau, _La Ville_,
+39. When the towns bought in the office of mayor, they had to name an
+incumbent, and the town owned the office only for his lifetime and had
+to buy it in again on his death. _Ibid._, 81. This looks as if the
+royal office of mayor were not hereditary, In spite of the _Edit de la
+Paulette_. Where no other purchaser came forward, the towns were
+obliged to buy the office. _Ibid._, 79.]
+
+The municipal authorities shared with the clergy the control of
+education and the care of the poor and the sick. The last were
+collected in large hospitals, many of which were inefficiently
+managed.[Footnote: There were great differences from place to
+place. Howard, _passim_. The hospital, poor-house, etc., at Dijon
+were good; the hospital at Lyons large, but close and dirty. Rigby,
+102, 113. Muirhead, 156.] It must always be borne in mind, when
+thinking of the daily life of the past, that in old times, and even so
+late as the second half of the last century, a high degree of
+civilization and a great deal of luxury were not inconsistent with an
+almost entire disregard of what we are in the habit of considering
+essential conveniences. Comfort, indeed, has been well said to be a
+modern word for a modern idea. Dirt and smells were so common, even a
+hundred years ago, as hardly to be noticed, and diseases arising from
+filth and foul air were borne as unavoidable dispensations of divine
+wrath. Yet some advance had been made. Baths had been absolutely
+essential in the Middle Ages when every one wore wool; the result of
+the common use of linen had been at first to put them out of fashion;
+under Louis XVI. they were coming in again. The itch, so common in
+Auvergne early in the century that in the schools a separate bench was
+set apart for the pupils who had it, was almost unknown in 1786.
+Leprosy had nearly disappeared from France before the end of the
+seventeenth century. The plague was still an occasional visitant in
+the first quarter of the eighteenth, in spite of rigorous quarantine
+regulations. On its approach towns shut their gates and manned their
+walls, and the startled authorities took to cleansing and
+whitewashing. In 1722, the doctors of Marseilles went about dressed
+in Turkey morocco, with gloves and a mask of the same material; the
+mask had glass eyes, and a big nose full of disinfectants. How the
+sight of this costume affected the patients is not mentioned. When the
+plague was over, the Te Deum was sung, and processions took their way
+to the shrine of Saint Roch.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Bourgeois_,
+177. Ibid., _La Ville_, 443.]
+
+Schools were established in every town. The schoolmasters formed a
+guild, the writing-masters another, and neither was allowed to infringe
+the prerogatives of its rival. The schoolmasters in towns were generally
+appointed by the clergy, but the municipal government kept a certain
+control. A good deal of the teaching of boys was done by Brotherhoods,
+while that of girls was almost entirely entrusted to Sisters. In many
+places primary instruction was free and obligatory, at least in name.
+The law making it so had been passed under Louis XIV., for the purpose
+of bringing the children of Protestants under Catholic teaching; but
+this law was not always enforced. In northern France, there were evening
+schools for adults, and Sunday schools where reading and writing was
+taught, probably to children employed in trades during the week. A
+certain amount of religious instruction preceded the ceremony of the
+"first communion." As to secondary or advanced schools, they are said to
+have been more numerous and accessible in the eighteenth century than
+now, when they have mostly been consolidated in the larger cities. There
+were five hundred and sixty-two establishments reckoned as secondary in
+France in 1789, about one third of them being in the hands of
+Brotherhoods. There were also many private schools licensed by the
+municipal authorities. The boys when away from home lived very simply
+indeed. Marmontel, who was sent from his own little town to attend the
+school at a neighboring one, has left a description of his mode of life.
+"I was lodged according to the custom of the school with five other
+scholars, at the house of an honest artisan of the town; and my father,
+sad enough at going away without me, left with me my package of
+provisions for the week. They consisted of a big loaf of rye-bread, a
+small cheese, a piece of bacon and two or three pounds of beef; my
+mother had added a dozen apples. This, once for all, was the allowance
+of the best fed scholars in the school. The woman of the house cooked
+for us; and for her trouble, her fire, her lamp, her beds, her lodging
+and even the vegetables from her little garden which she put in the pot,
+we gave her twenty-five sous apiece a month; so that all told, except
+for my clothing, I might cost my father from four to five louis a year."
+This was about 1733, and the style of living may have risen a little,
+even for schoolboys, during the following half century. The sons of
+professional men and people of the middle class were better off in
+respect to education than most young nobles; as the former were sent to
+good schools, while the latter were brought up at home by incompetent
+tutors. It would appear to have been easy enough for a boy to get an
+education; harder for a girl. But no one who has glanced at the
+literature of the time will imagine that France was then destitute of
+clever women.[Footnote: Babeau, _La Ville_, 482. Ibid., _Les
+Bourgeois_, 369. Marmontel, i. 16. Montbarey, i. 280. Ch. de Ribbe,
+i. 320.]
+
+In the eighteenth century great changes were taking place in the
+national life. Simple artisans presumed to be more comfortable in 1789
+than the first people of the town had been fifty years before. The
+middle class lived in many respects like the nobility, with material
+luxuries and intellectual pleasures. Yet the artificial barriers were
+still maintained. The citizen, unless of noble birth, was excluded not
+only from the army, but from the higher positions in the administration
+and in the legal profession. The nobility of the gown was liable to be
+treated with alternate familiarity and impertinence by that of the sword
+or by that of the court. The last held most of the positions which
+strongly appealed to vanity, many of those which bore the largest
+profit. Jealousy is possible only where persons or classes come near
+each other, and before the Revolution the various classes in France were
+rapidly drawing together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE COUNTRY.
+
+
+There is perhaps no great country inhabited by civilized man more
+favored by nature than France. Possessing every variety of surface from
+the sublime mountain to the shifting sand-dune, from the loamy plain to
+the precipitous rock, the land is smiled upon by a climate in which the
+extremes of heat and cold are of rare occurrence. The grape will ripen
+over the greater part of the country, the orange and the olive in its
+southeastern corner. The deep soil of many provinces gives ample return
+to the labor of the husbandman. If the inhabitants of such a country are
+not prosperous, surely the fault lies rather with man than with nature.
+
+It has been the fashion to represent the French peasant before the
+Revolution as a miserable and starving creature. "One sees certain wild
+animals, male and female, scattered about the country; black, livid and
+all burnt by the sun; attached to the earth in which they dig with
+invincible obstinacy. They have something like an articulate voice, and
+when they rise on their feet they show a human face; and in fact they
+are men. They retire at night into dens, where they live on black bread,
+water, and roots. They spare other men the trouble of sowing, digging
+and harvesting to live, and thus deserve not to lack that bread which
+they have sown." This description, eloquently written by La Bruyere, has
+been quoted by a hundred authors. Some have used it to embellish their
+books with a sensational paragraph; others, and they are many, to show
+from what wretchedness the French nation has been delivered by its
+Revolution.
+
+The advances of the last hundred years are many and great, but it is not
+necessary therefore to believe that in three generations a great nation
+has emerged from savagery. Let us see what part of La Bruyere's
+description may be set down to rhetoric, and to the astonishment of the
+scholar who looks hard at a countryman for the first time. Undoubtedly
+the peasant is sunburnt; unquestionably he is dirty. His speech falls
+roughly on a town-bred ear; his features have been made coarse by
+exposure. His hut is far less comfortable than a city house. His food is
+coarse, and not always plentiful. All these things may be true, and yet
+the peasant may be intelligent and civilized. He may be as happy as most
+of the toilers upon earth. He may have his days of comfort, his hours of
+enjoyment.
+
+While the French writers of the eighteenth century find fault with many
+things in the condition of the peasant, their general opinion of his lot
+is not unfavorable. Voltaire thinks him well off on the whole. Rousseau
+is constantly vaunting not only the morality but the happiness of rural
+life. Mirabeau the elder says that gayety is disappearing, perhaps
+because the people are too rich, and argues that France is not decrepit
+but vigorous.[Footnote: La Bruyere, _Caractères_, ii. 61 (_de
+l'homme_). Voltaire, _passim_, xxxi. 481, _Dict. philos.
+(Population)_. Mirabeau, _L'ami des hommes_, 316, 325, 328.]
+
+"The general appearance of the people is different to what I expected,"
+writes an English traveler, to his family, in 1789; "they are strong and
+well made. We saw many most agreeable scenes as we passed along in the
+evening before we came to Lisle: little parties sitting at their doors;
+some of the men smoking, some playing at cards in the open air, and
+others spinning cotton. Everything we see bears the mark of industry,
+and all the people look happy. We have indeed seen few signs of opulence
+in individuals, for we do not see so many gentlemen's seats as in
+England, but we have seen few of the lower classes in rags, idleness,
+and misery. What strange prejudices we are apt to take concerning
+foreigners! I will own that I used to think that the French were a
+trifling, insignificant people, that they were meagre in their
+appearance, and lived in a state of wretchedness from being oppressed by
+their superiors. What we have already seen contradicts this;[Footnote:
+Observe that this was written in French Flanders. Note by Dr. Rigby.]
+the men are strong and athletic, and the face of the country shows that
+industry is not discouraged. The women, too,--I speak of the lower
+class, which in all countries is the largest and the most useful,--are
+strong and well made, and seem to do a great deal of labor, especially
+in the country. They carry great loads and seem to be employed to go to
+market with the produce of the fields and gardens on their backs. An
+Englishwoman would, perhaps, think this hard, but the cottagers in
+England are certainly not so well off; I am sure they do not look so
+happy. These women with large and heavy baskets on their backs have all
+very good caps on, their hair powdered, earrings, necklaces, and
+crosses. We have not yet seen one with a hat on. What strikes me most in
+what I have seen is the wonderful difference between this country and
+England. I don't know what we may think by and by, but at present the
+difference seems to be in favor of the former; if they are not happy
+they look at least very like it."
+
+"We have now traveled between four and five hundred miles in France,"
+says the same traveler in another place, "and have hardly seen an acre
+uncultivated, except two forests and parks, the one belonging to the
+Prince of Conde, as I mentioned in a former letter, the other to the
+king of France at Fontainebleau, and these are covered with woods. In
+every place almost every inch has been ploughed or dug, and at this time
+appears to be pressed with the weight of the incumbent crop. On the
+roads, to the very edge where the travelers' wheels pass, and on the
+hills to the very summit, may be seen the effects of human industry.
+Since we left Paris we have come through a country where the vine is
+cultivated. This grows on the sides and even on the tops of the highest
+hills. It will also flourish where the soil is too poor to bear corn,
+and on the sides of precipices where no animal could draw the plough."
+[Footnote: Dr. Rigby, 11, 96. See also Sir George Collier, 21.]
+
+Let us now turn to the other end of France, and hear another traveler,
+one generally less enthusiastic than the last. "The vintage itself,"
+says Arthur Young, "can hardly be such a scene of activity and
+animation, as this universal one of treading out the corn, with which
+all the towns and villages in Languedoc are now alive. The corn is all
+roughly stacked around a dry, firm spot, where great numbers of mules
+and horses are driven on a trot round a centre, a woman holding the
+reins, and another, or a girl or two, with whips drive; the men supply
+and clear the floor; other parties are dressing, by throwing the corn
+into the air for the wind to blow away the chaff. Every soul is
+employed, and with such an air of cheerfulness, that the people seem as
+well pleased with their labor, as the farmer himself with his great
+heaps of wheat. The scene is uncommonly animated and joyous. I stopped
+and alighted often to see their method; I was always very civilly
+treated, and my wishes for a good price for the farmer, and not too good
+a one for the poor, well received."[Footnote: Arthur Young, i. 45 (July
+24, 1787).]
+
+These descriptions would give too favorable an idea if they were taken
+for the whole of France. All peasant women did not powder their hair
+and wear earrings. Those of France did much more field-work than those
+of England. Their figures became bent, their general appearance worn;
+an English observer, accustomed to the more ruddy faces of his
+countrywomen, might set them down for twice their age. They often went
+barefoot, and on their way to market carried their shoes on a stick
+until they drew near the town. They had to be thrifty, and might be
+seen picking weeds on the wayside into their aprons, to feed their
+cows. All provinces were not so rich as Flanders. There were vast
+stretches of waste land in France, given up to broom and heath. Wolves
+and bears were still a terror to remote farms. There were, moreover,
+times of famine, which the foolish regulations of the government
+aggravated, by preventing the free movement of provisions within the
+country. In some provinces these seasons of famine were often
+repeated. Then the wretched inhabitants sank into despair. Young
+people would refuse to marry, saying that it was not worth while to
+bring unfortunate children into the world. But in general the country
+people were laborious and happy, with enough for their daily needs,
+and often merry,--resembling in that respect the English before the
+Puritan revival rather than the Anglo-Saxons of more modern
+times.[Footnote: A. Young, i. 6 (May 22, 1787). Ibid., i. 45 (July
+24, 1787), i. 18, (June 10, 1787), i. 28 (June 28, 1787). D'Argenson,
+vi. 49 (Oct. 4, 1749), vi. 322 (Dec. 28, 1850), vii. 55 (Dec. 22,
+1751), viii. 8, 35, 233, ix. 160. Turgot (iv. 274) reckons that in
+Limonsin, 1766, the laborers' families did not have more than 25 to 30
+livres per person per annum for their support, counting all they
+got. This is but 1 64/100 sou a day, and bread cost 2 1/2 sous per lb.
+A. Young, i. 439. This does not seem possible. The people lived partly
+on chestnuts.]
+
+In the country, as in the towns, prosperity and material well-being were
+slowly increasing. The latter years of King Louis XIV. had been years of
+depression and misery. External wars, and the persecution of the
+Protestants at home, heavy taxation and bad government, had reduced the
+numbers and the wealth of the French nation. But with the accession of
+Louis XV. in 1715, a time of recuperation had begun. During the seventy
+years that followed, the population increased from about sixteen to
+about twenty-six millions. The rent of land rose also. The natural
+excellence of the soil, the natural intelligence of the people, were
+bringing about a slow and uneven improvement.[Footnote: Clamageran,
+iii. 464. Bois-Guillebert, 179, and _passim_. Horn, 1. The
+improvement was not universal. Lorraine is said to have lost prosperity
+from the time of its union with France in 1737. Mathieu, 316.]
+
+One third of the soil was covered with small farms, which at the death
+of every proprietor were subdivided among his children. By a curious
+custom (arising in I know not what form of jealousy or caprice), the
+subdivision was wantonly made more disastrous. It was usual to divide
+not only the whole estate, but every part of it among the heirs. Thus,
+if a peasant died possessed of six fields and left three children, it
+was not the custom that each child should take two fields, and that he
+who got the best should make up the difference in money to his brethren.
+Perhaps cash was too scarce for that. But every one of the six fields
+would be divided into three parts, one of which was given to each child,
+so that instead of six separate plots of ground, there were now
+eighteen. This process had been repeated until a farm might almost be
+shaded by a single cherry-tree.[Footnote: Sybel, i. 22. Chérest, ii.
+532. Turgot, iv. 260. English writers, from Arthur Young to Lady Verney,
+wax eloquent over the evils of small holdings.]
+
+The class of middling proprietors was very small. The incidents to the
+holding of land by all who were not noble drove rising families to the
+towns. The great change that has come over the French country during the
+last hundred years consists, in a measure, in the formation of a class
+of men owning farms of moderate size.
+
+A large part of the soil belonged to the nobles and the clergy. The
+exact proportion cannot be ascertained. It has been stated as high as
+two thirds; but this is probably an exaggeration. These proprietors of
+the privileged classes seldom cultivated any very large part of their
+land themselves, by hired workmen, although certain privileges and
+exemptions were allowed to such as chose to keep their farms in their
+own hands. A few of them let their lands for a fixed rent in money.
+But the greater part of the cultivated soil which was owned by the
+nobility and clergy was in the hands of _metayers_, lessees who paid
+their rent in the shape of a proportionate part of the crops.
+Sometimes the landlord made himself responsible for a portion of the
+taxes; sometimes he furnished cattle or farming implements. His share
+of the gross crop was usually one half. The system, which is still
+common in some parts of France, is considered a good one neither for
+the landlord nor for the tenant, but is devised principally to meet
+the want of capital on the part of the latter.[Footnote: Young reckons
+that the price of arable land and its rent are about the same in
+France as in England. The net revenue is larger in France, because
+there are no poor-rates and the tithe is more moderate in that
+country. The price of arable land he calculates to be on an average
+20 Pounds per acre; rent 15 shillings 7d. per acre = 3 9/10 per
+cent. of the salable value. From this deduct the two vingtièmes and 4
+sous per livre (taxes paid by the landlord) and other expenses, and
+the net revenue remains between 3 and 3 1/4 per cent. The product of
+wheat in France is, however, much worse than in England, so that the
+proportion obtained by the landlord is greater and that of the tenant
+less. In France the landlord gets one half of the crop; in England,
+one fourth to one sixth, sometimes only one tenth. A. Young, i. 353.]
+
+We may imagine the country-houses of the nobles scattered over the face
+of the country so that the traveler would come upon one of them once in
+two or three miles. Sometimes the seat of the lord was an ancient
+castle, with walls eight feet thick, rising above the surrounding forest
+from the top of a steep hill, dark and threatening, but no longer
+formidable. Within, the great hall was stone-paved. Its walls were hung
+with dusky portraits and rusty armor. From the hall would open a
+spacious bedroom, with tapestried walls and a monumental bedstead.
+Curtains and coverlets showed the delicate embroidery of some
+ancestress, long since laid to rest in the family chapel. The very
+sheets had perhaps been woven by her shuttle. This bedroom, according to
+old custom, was still the living-room of the family. Sometimes the
+lord's house was modern, elegant, and symmetrical; it was flanked with
+pavilions and in front of it was a stone terrace, with a balustrade, on
+which stood vases for growing plants. Inside the house were high-studded
+rooms with white walls and gilded mouldings. High-backed, crooked-legged
+chairs, in the style of the last reign, were ranged against the walls;
+and near the middle of the dark, slippery, well-waxed floor, were
+lighter seats and stools. The grandmother's armchair with its footstool
+stood at the chimney corner, where the fire was religiously lighted on
+All Saints and put out at Easter, regardless of weather. Through the
+tall windows that opened down to the ground might be seen the long
+straight garden-walks, none too well kept, and clipped shrubs, with here
+and them a marble nymph, moss-grown and broken, or a fountain out of
+repair. The family did not spend much money in the place. There was
+little to do except in the season for shooting.[Footnote: Taine,
+_L'ancien régime_, 17. Mme. de Montagu, 59.]
+
+In order that this last occupation may be left to the lord and his
+friends, game is strictly preserved, to the great detriment of the
+crops. Poachers are sharply dealt with, and the peasant may not have a
+gun to protect him from wolves. There are laws enough against the
+wrongs wrought by landlords and gamekeepers, against the trampling
+down of young wheat, against vexatious complaints and fines, but the
+country people say that such laws are not fairly enforced. Especially
+is the case hard of those who live near the _capitaineries_ or royal
+hunting-grounds. Here rural proprietors may not raise a new wall
+without permission, lest the hares be restrained of their liberty of
+eating cabbages. No crops can be cut until the appointed day, that the
+young partridges be not disturbed. Deer and rabbits live at free
+quarters in the cultivated fields. They are the peasants' personal
+enemies, and among the first unlawful acts of the Revolution will be
+their wholesale destruction.[Footnote: Olivier, 78, mentions the laws
+protecting the crops. The universal complaint of the _cahiers_ proves
+the grievance. See the chapter on the _cahiers_. The _capitainerie_ of
+Chantilly was said to be over 100 miles in circumference. A. Young,
+i. 8 (May 25, 1787).]
+
+In every village there is a church, sometimes even in small places a
+beautiful gothic building, oftener modest in size and of plain
+architecture. Once or twice in a day's ride the red roofs and high
+walls of a convent come in sight, not very different in appearance
+from a group of farm buildings,--were it not for the chapel and its
+belfry;--for here in France the farms are surrounded by high
+walls. The interminable straight roads, fine pieces of engineering,
+but little traveled, stretch out between the ploughed fields, with
+rows of Lombardy poplars on either hand, that tantalize the sun-baked
+traveler with a suggestion of shade.
+
+The peasants live in villages oftener than in detached farms, and the
+village itself is apt to have a rudely fortified appearance. The fields
+that stretch about it belong to the peasants, but with a modified
+ownership. Over them the lords exercise their feudal rights. There is
+the _cens_, a fixed rent, annual, perpetual, inseparably attached
+to the soil. It is paid sometimes in money, sometimes in grain, fruits,
+or chickens, according to deed, or to long established custom. There is
+the _champart_, a rent proportional to the crop, also payable to
+the lord; and there is the tithe which must be given to the clergy.
+Should the peasant wish to sell his holding, a fine called _lods et
+ventes_, amounting in some cases to one sixth of the price, must be
+paid to the lord by the purchaser, and on some estates the lord has also
+the right to refuse to accept the new tenant, and to take the bargain on
+his own account.[Footnote: Prudhomme, 37, 137, 515.]
+
+These are the common incidents of feudal tenure. Rights analogous to
+them may be found in England or in Germany, wherever that system has
+existed. And the vestiges of a state of things far older than feudalism
+have not entirely disappeared. The commons of wood and of pasturage yet
+recall the time when agricultural lands were held by a common tenure.
+Even that tenure itself, with its annual redistribution of the fields,
+may be found in Lorraine.[Footnote: Mathieu, 322.]
+
+There were, moreover, many irksome restrictions on the peasant. In the
+lord's mill he must grind his corn; in the lord's oven he must bake his
+bread; to the lord's bull his cow must be taken. Days of labor on the
+lord's land might be demanded of him. Ridiculous customs, offensive to
+his dignity or his vanity, might be enforced. Newly married couples were
+in some parishes made to jump over the churchyard wall. In other places,
+on certain nights in the year, the peasants were obliged to beat the
+water in the castle ditch to keep the frogs quiet. These customs have
+been considered very grievous by democratic writers, nor were they so
+indifferent to the peasants themselves as the lovers of the good old
+times would have us believe.[Footnote: See the rural _cahiers,
+passim_. Mathieu gives the text of a customary right of
+_banalité_. The fee of the _four banal_ was 1/24 of the bread
+by weight; the _moulin banal_, 1/12 of the flour; the _pressoir
+banal_, 1/10 to 1/12 of the wine; but the fees varied in different
+places even in one province. It was complained that presses enough for
+the work were not furnished, and that grapes spoiled in consequence.
+Mathieu, 285.]
+
+It was not always the lord of the soil who enjoyed and exercised the
+feudal rights. He had sometimes sold them to strangers, in whose hands
+they were merely revenue, and who demanded them harshly.
+
+The origin of these customs lay in a form of civilization that had long
+passed away. To understand the conditions on which the French peasants
+held their lands little more than a hundred years ago, we must glance
+back over many centuries. Feudalism began in military conquest. When the
+barbarians overran the Roman Empire, the victorious chiefs divided the
+land among their principal followers; and the titles thus conferred,
+although personal at first, soon became hereditary. The man who received
+or inherited land was expected to appear in the field with his followers
+at the call of his chief. The tenant, in his turn, distributed the land
+among his friends on conditions similar to those on which he had himself
+received it; and the process might be indefinitely repeated. Thus there
+came to be a hierarchy in the state, in which every member was
+responsible to his immediate superiors and obliged within certain limits
+to obey the man next above him, rather than the king who was supposed to
+rule them all. The obligations were various, according to the conditions
+on which the lands had been granted, but they always involved military
+service on the part of the grantee, and protection on the part of the
+grantor. The services being mutual, and the tenure the usual, or
+fashionable one, most persons who held land in any other way saw fit to
+conform to the feudal method; and absolute, or allodial owners, where
+the tide of conquest had left any, generally, in the course of time,
+surrendered their lands to some neighboring lord, and received them back
+again on feudal conditions.
+
+But the tenure here described existed only among the comparatively rich
+and great. When the last feudal division had been accomplished, when the
+chief had made his last grant to his captains and the soil was divided
+among them, there still remained by far the larger part of the
+population which owed no feudal duty and held no feudal estate. The
+common soldiers of the invading army, the native people of the conquered
+country and their descendants, inextricably mixed together, remained
+upon the soil and cultivated it as free tenants, or as serfs. They paid
+for the use of the land on which they lived in money or in a share of
+the crops, or in services. They acknowledged the title of the feudal
+lords over them, and while struggling to make good bargains with their
+masters, they seldom set up a claim to equality, or to independence. The
+peasants came to think it the natural and divinely appointed order of
+things that they should obey and serve their lords, with a partial
+obedience and a limited service. To ask why they were content so to
+serve, would be to open one of the greatest problems of history.
+Whatever the reason, over a large part of the world, and through the
+greater part of historical time, men have consented to obey other men
+whom they have not selected, and have generally preferred the hereditary
+principle to any other in determining to whom they would look up as
+their rulers.
+
+So the French peasants and their lords went on for centuries, living
+side by side, rendering each other mutual services, sometimes quarreling
+and sometimes making bargains. The peasants were called on for military
+service, but they and their families took refuge in the lord's castle
+when the frequent wars swept over the land. The mill, whose rough
+machinery was still an improvement on the rude hand-mill, or on the yet
+more primitive mortar and pestle; the oven where the peasant could bake
+his bread without lighting a fire on his own hearth, after the toil of
+the long summer's day; the bull of famous breed in all the country-side,
+were the lord's, and all his tenants must use them and pay for them, at
+rates fixed by immemorial custom, or perhaps by some long forgotten
+bargain, made when these conveniences were first furnished to the
+dwellers in the land. The lord led his peasants to battle, he protected
+them from the inhabitants of the next valley, he decided their
+differences in his court, where the more considerable of his tenants sat
+beside him; he governed his people, well or ill, according to his
+character, but on the whole to their reasonable satisfaction. His
+government, such as it might be, was their only refuge from anarchy. The
+lord was governed, not very strictly, by a greater lord, who in his turn
+owed duty to a greater than he; until, after one or more steps, came the
+king, or overlord of the land.
+
+The long struggle by which the kings of France had transformed this
+loose chain of allegiance into the tightened band of almost absolute
+monarchy, is not to be told here. From the tenth century to the
+seventeenth the combat was waged with varied success. The feudal lords
+lost much of their power, but kept much of their wealth and many of
+their privileges. The dukes and counts, whose fathers, in their own
+domains, had been as powerful as the king himself, retained their
+titles, and drew their incomes, but they spent their time in attendance
+on their sovereign. The petty lord still held his court of justice, over
+which his bailiff usually presided, but its functions had been gradually
+usurped by the royal judges. The castle, no longer needed for
+protection, was transformed into a country house. But many old customs
+and old rights were maintained, although their origin was forgotten. The
+peasants still worked for several days in the year on the lands of their
+lord, or paid a part of their crops in rent for their farms, although
+these had been in the possession of their forefathers for a thousand
+years.
+
+This rent, or some rent, the peasants under Louis XVI. believed to be
+just, for they did not claim absolute ownership, but they considered the
+services onerous and degrading. Their ideas on these subjects were not
+very definite, but of late years a general sense of wrong had been
+growing in their minds. The long-lived quarrels which ever exist in the
+country-side were envenomed by stronger suspicions of injustice. It was
+a common complaint that the last survey and apportionment of rent had
+been unfair. The lords were no longer so far removed from their poorer
+neighbors as to be above envy. They were no longer so useful as to be
+considered necessary evils, as a large part of the community everywhere
+is prone to think of its governors.
+
+Let us look at the life of the peasant. His cottage is not attractive; a
+low thatched building, perhaps without a floor. The barn is close
+against it, and the family is not averse to seeking the warmth of the
+cattle and of the dunghill. The windows are without glass, and pigs and
+chickens wander in and out at the open door. But the house belongs to
+the peasant, and is his home. He dares not improve it for fear of
+increased taxes. He cares not much to do so. It keeps him warm at night
+and dry when it rains; daylight and fine weather will find him out of
+doors. If he can hide away a few pieces of silver in an old stocking, he
+will more readily bring them out to buy another bit of ground, than
+waste them in useless comforts and luxuries of building.
+
+The furniture was generally better than the house. A great bedstead,
+with curtains of green serge, was the principal piece, the centre of
+family life, the birthplace of the children, the death-bed of the
+parents. It was made as high as possible, to lift the sleepers above the
+damp ground. A feather-bed helped to keep them warm. A few cupboards and
+chests stood about the walls of the room, dark with age and grime. They
+were made of oak, or pear wood, and sometimes rudely carved. In the
+eighteenth century comfort had much increased in the towns, but the
+country had seen little change.
+
+The dress, again, was generally better than the furniture. The costumes
+of the provinces are often the copy of some long-forgotten fashion of
+the court, simplified or changed to adapt it to rural skill and country
+needs. To be well dressed is a sign of respectability; to be modestly
+housed may pass for a sign of thrift. On Sundays, bright coats, blue,
+gray, or olive, made their appearance. The women came out in good gowns
+and clean caps. There were flowered damask waists, sleeves of white
+serge, wine-colored petticoats. A gold cross was a sign of comparative
+wealth, but silver jewelry was common. Leather shoes were worn by both
+sexes. On week days there were wooden shoes, or bare feet in the
+southern provinces, and overalls of gray linen. Under Louis XVI., cotton
+began to drive out the linen and woolen cloths of former years. Being
+cheaper and less strong, clothes were oftener renewed. The change was
+contrary to beauty, but favorable to cleanliness.
+
+The food of the peasant depended much on his harvest. In good years and
+on good soils he was well fed; in bad years and in poor districts, ill.
+Bread, the chief article of his diet, was cheaper and less good than in
+England, the wheat flour being mixed with rye, barley, oats, chestnuts
+or pease. The women made a soup, or porridge, by boiling this bread in
+water, adding milk perhaps, or a little bit of pork for a relish. Cheese
+and butter were fairly plenty, for common lands were extensive. Beef and
+mutton would be eaten at Easter-tide or at the festival of the patron
+saint, and most at wedding-feasts. Wine appears to have been considered
+a luxury, but a common one. It would seem that a peasant who did not
+taste it several times a week was accounted poor; one who drank it
+freely but temperately twice a day would have been called rich. Tobacco,
+the comforter of the poor, was in common use. This description of the
+food of the country people applies rather to the poorer peasants, or to
+those whose condition was not above the average, than to those who were
+best off. In Normandy, good bread, meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruit,
+with plenty of cider, formed the daily fare in prosperous farm-houses.
+[Footnote: This description of the condition of the peasants is taken
+chiefly from Babeau, _La vie rurale._]
+
+The peasants were not cut off from all social and political activity.
+Every rural parish formed a separate little community, very restricted
+in its rights and functions, yet not without valuable corporate
+powers. [Footnote: The parish and the community were generally
+coterminous, but were not always so. Ibid., _Le Village_, 97.] It
+could hold property, both real and personal; it could sue and be sued;
+it could elect its own officers and manage its own affairs. In the
+eighteenth century it became the fashion in France, as in many other
+countries, to divide the common lands, but many parishes still held
+large tracts in the reign of Louis XVI. The sale of their woods, the
+letting of their pastures, of fishing rights, or of the office of
+wine-taster in grape-growing districts, formed the revenues of the
+rural community. Its expenses were many and various. It repaired the
+nave of the church, the choir being kept in order at the cost of the
+priest. The parsonage and the wall round the churchyard were
+maintained by the parish. The drawing for the militia was at the
+expense of the community. So were some of the roads. It paid the
+schoolmaster and the syndic. Then there were incidental expenses, such
+as the annual mass, the carriage of letters, the keeping in order of
+the church clock. Sometimes the accounts of a community show a charge
+for a present to some influential person, capable of helping in a
+lawsuit, or of effecting a reduction of the taxes assessed on the
+parish. It was a notable feature of the communal expenses, that the
+lord of the village shared them with his poorer neighbors. Into these
+rural matters privilege did not extend.[Footnote: But this was not
+always the case. See the _cahier_ of the Artignose in Provence,
+_Archives parlementaires_, vi. 249. "Clochers et autres bâtiments
+généraux. (Les seigneurs n'en payent rien, même pour leurs biens
+roturiers, pour les différentes charges des communautés)."]
+
+The public meetings of these little communities were held on certain
+Sundays of the year after mass, or after vespers. Sometimes the meeting
+took place in the church itself, oftener in front of it, on the green.
+There the men of the village, streaming from the porch, stood or sat in
+groups on the grass, under the trees. Their own elected syndic presided.
+Ten was a quorum for ordinary business, but two thirds of the whole
+number was necessary to confirm a loan. A fine could be imposed for
+absence, or for leaving the assembly before adjournment.
+
+In these town meetings the affairs of the community were discussed and
+decided. Sales were made, land was let, repairs of public buildings or
+of roads were voted. The syndic was elected. A record of the proceedings
+was kept, and was afterwards submitted to the royal intendant for his
+approval, without which no action was valid. This system lasted to the
+eve of the Revolution, but was at that time giving way to another. Under
+pretense that the public meetings were disorderly, they were gradually
+obliged to surrender their functions to boards partly or wholly elected.
+But certain important matters, such as the election of a schoolmaster,
+were still left to the general assembly. At the same time the right of
+suffrage was somewhat curtailed. Voters were required to be twenty-five
+years old and to pay certain taxes.
+
+The village had its elected head, the syndic,[Footnote: So called in
+the north of France. In the south, _consul_. Babeau, _Le
+Village_, 45.] whose functions were not unlike those of an American
+selectman.
+
+He was the executive officer of the community, who conducted its
+business and had charge of its papers. The central government of the
+country also laid tasks upon him. He had to attend to the drawing of the
+militia, to report epidemics among the cattle, to enforce the laws for
+the destruction of caterpillars. Beside him were other officers, also
+elected by the inhabitants, but more directly the servants of the
+central power than he. These were the collectors of taxes. The syndics
+and collectors had much work and responsibility, with little pay and no
+chance of promotion. Honest and capable men were much averse to taking
+such places and often tried to escape it. The dishonest acquired illicit
+gain in them, at the expense of their fellow-subjects. Serving the
+community was considered less an honor than a duty, and service could be
+forced on the unwilling citizen; but the inhabitants in easy
+circumstances often found means to avoid the task, and the syndics and
+collectors were then chosen from among the poorer and less educated
+peasants. Some of them could neither read nor write.[Footnote: The
+above description of the political life of the village is taken chiefly
+from Babeau, _Le Village_. See also the _cahier_ of the
+village of Pin (_Paris extra muros, Archives parlementaires_, v.
+22, Section 1).] A public body that wishes to be well-served must not
+make public service too disagreeable. France suffered at once from
+overpaid courtiers, and from ill-treated syndics and collectors.
+
+The chief layman of the village was the lord's steward (_bailli_),
+who exercised the judicial functions of his master. He held himself
+above the common peasants and his wife was called "Madame." Her kitchen
+showed a greater array of pots and pans than that of her neighbors; her
+linen and her jewelry were more abundant than theirs. The steward and
+the parish priest were the most important persons in the hamlet.
+[Footnote: Babeau, _La vie rurale_, 156.]
+
+The schoolmaster came far below the priest, who had over him a right
+of supervision. The main control of the schools, however, was in the
+hands of the communities, which elected the masters from candidates
+approved by the clergy. The latter insisted more strongly on orthodoxy
+than on competence. The position of the village schoolmaster was not
+brilliant. His house usually consisted of two rooms, one for the
+school and one for the family; his books were few, his clothes shabby.
+He was paid in part by the scholars, at the rate of three or five sous
+a month for reading, higher for writing and arithmetic. In some cases
+a tax of a hundred and fifty livres was laid on the parish for his
+benefit. But school was not held during the whole year; the scholars
+would desert in a body early in Lent, and be kept busy in the fields
+until November. The master might act as surgeon, or attorney, or
+surveyor; he might cultivate a plot of ground. He was expected to
+assist the priest at divine service, to lead the choir, or even to
+ring the bells. Simple primary schools were abundant in the country,
+especially in some of the northern provinces. In some villages the
+boys and girls went together, but the higher civil and ecclesiastical
+authorities, the king and the bishops, more familiar with the manners
+of the court than with those of the village, looked on these mixed
+schools with disfavor. In general it was harder for girls to get an
+education than for boys.[Footnote: Babeau, _La vie rurale_, 143.
+Ibid., _Le Village_, 277. Ibid., _L'Ecole de village_, 17, 18.
+Mathieu, 262. _Cahier_ of the "_Instituteurs des petites villes,
+bourgs, et villages de Bourgogne," Rev. des deux Mondes_, April 15,
+1881, 874. Statistics are imperfect, but from an examination of
+marriage registers, Babeau gathers that the proportion of persons
+married who could sign their names varied from nearly 89 per cent. of
+the men and nearly 65 per cent. of the women in Lorraine, to 13 per
+cent. of the men and nearly 6 per cent. of the women in the Nivernois.
+The central provinces and Brittany were the most illiterate parts of
+the country. _L'Ecole_, 3 _n_. 187. _Le Village_, 282 _n_. 3.]
+
+The ambitious lad found means by which to rise. In spite of the heavy
+and badly levied taxes, he might grow rich, add new fields to his
+father's farm, attain in some degree to comfort and to that
+consideration in his neighborhood which is perhaps the most legitimately
+dear to the heart of all the worldly consequences of success. Nor was it
+necessary to confine himself entirely to agriculture. The lower walks of
+the law and of medicine might be attained by the son of a peasant, and
+if one generation of labor were hardly long enough to reach the higher,
+no career, except the few reserved for the upper nobility, was beyond
+the aspiration of the rising man for his children or his children's
+children. There was more modest promotion nearer at hand. The blacksmith
+and the innkeeper stood in the eyes of their poorer neighbors as
+instances of prosperity. The studious boy, with good luck, might become
+a schoolmaster, even a parish priest. The active and pushing might, with
+favor, aspire to some petty place under the central government; or to
+stewardship for the lord. To what eminence of fortune might not these
+prove the paths.[Footnote: Babeau, La vie rurale, 128, etc.]
+
+Meanwhile for the unambitious, for the mass of rural mankind, there were
+simpler pleasures, the dance on the green of a Sunday afternoon, the
+weddings with their feasts and merry-makings, the fairs and the festival
+of the patron saint of the village. There were games, ploughing matches,
+grinning matches. Holidays were frequent,--too frequent, said the
+learned; but probably they did not often come amiss to the peasants. On
+those days they could throw off their cares and play as heartily as they
+had worked. It is generally believed that the Frenchman, and especially
+the French peasant, was livelier before the Revolution than he has ever
+been since.[Footnote: Ibid, 187. See Goldsmith's Traveller, the lines
+beginning:--
+
+     "To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
+     I turn; and France displays her bright domain."]
+
+There was much that was hard in the condition of the rural classes, but
+it was better than that of the greater part of mankind. On the continent
+of Europe only the inhabitants of some small states equaled in
+prosperity those of the more fortunate of the French provinces.
+[Footnote: Holland and Lombardy were the richest countries in Europe.
+Tuscany was especially well governed just then. A. Young, i. 480.
+Serfdom still existed in some remote French provinces, especially in the
+Jura mountains. Its principal characteristic was the escheating to the
+lord of the property of all serfs dying childless.] And in France
+prosperity was growing. The peasant's taxes were constantly getting
+heavier, but his means of bearing them increased faster yet. The rising
+tide of material prosperity, the great change of modern times, could be
+felt, though feebly as yet, in the provinces of France.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+TAXATION.[Footnote: "I must again remark that clear accounts are not to
+be looked for in the complex mountain of French finances." A. Young, i.
+578. Young reckons the revenue at the entire command of Louis XVI. at
+680,664,943 livres, i. 575. See also Stourm, ii. 182.]
+
+
+The gross amount paid in taxes by the French nation before the
+Revolution will never be accurately known; the subject is too vast and
+complicated, and the accounts were too loosely kept. Necker in his work
+on the "Administration of the Finances" reckons the sum annually paid by
+the people at five hundred and eighty-five million livres. Bailly (whose
+book appeared in 1830 and has not been superseded) makes the gross
+amount eight hundred and eighty millions. But from this should be
+deducted feudal dues and fees for membership of trade guilds, which
+Bailly includes in his estimate, and which were certainly private
+property, however objectionable in their character. There will remain
+less than eight hundred and thirty-seven million livres as the amount
+paid by about twenty-six million Frenchmen, in general and local
+taxation, including tithes; an average of about thirty-two livres a
+head. Was this amount excessive? Probably not, if the load had been
+rightly distributed. If we allow the franc of to-day one half of the
+purchasing power of the livre of 1789, the modern Frenchman yet pays
+more than his great-grandfather did. But there can be little doubt that
+he pays it more easily to himself. In the eighteenth century the
+Englishman was probably better off than his French neighbor, but his
+advantage was not undoubted. Grenville, in 1769, speaks of the
+comparative lightness of taxes and cheapness of living which, he says,
+must make France an asylum for British manufacturers and artificers.
+Young, twenty years later, asserts that the taxes in England are much
+more than double those in France, but more easily borne. Necker says
+that England bears as large a burden of taxation as France, in spite of
+a smaller number of inhabitants and a less amount of money in
+circulation; but bears it more readily because it is better distributed.
+And Chastellux, while arriving at a similar conclusion, remarks that
+after all the French is, of all nations, the one that suffers most from
+taxation.[Footnote: Necker, _De l'Administration_, i. 35, 51.
+Bailly, ii. 275. Grenville, _The Present State of the Nation_, 35;
+but this statement is made in a political pamphlet, answered and
+apparently refuted by Burke, _Observations on a Late State of the
+Nation._ A. Young, i. 596. Chastellux, ii. 169. For 1891 the average
+taxation per head amounts to 86 francs, for 1789 to 34 livres,
+_Statesman's Year Book_, 1891, p. 472, and Bailly.]
+
+Under the old monarchy the taxes were unequally assessed in two ways.
+There were differences of places and differences of persons. This is
+pretty sure to be true of all countries, but in France the differences
+were very large and were not sanctioned by the popular conscience. In a
+country which had become strongly conscious of its unity, and which was
+full of national feeling, some provinces were taxed much more heavily
+than others, not for their own local purposes, but for the support of
+the central government. In the first place came those provinces which
+were included in the general assessment of taxes. These were divided
+into twenty-four districts (_generalités_), over each of which was
+an intendant. Twenty of these districts formed the heart of old France,
+extending irregularly from Amiens on the north to Bordeaux on the south,
+and from Grenoble on the east to the sea. To these were added the
+conquered or ceded provinces: Alsace, Lorraine, Bar, the Three
+Bishoprics, Franche Comté, Flanders, and Hainault, forming among them
+four districts and enjoying privileges superior to those of old France.
+All these formed the Lands of Election (_pays d'Election_). On the
+other hand were the Lands of Estates (_pays d'États_), provinces
+which had retained their assemblies, and with them some of their ancient
+rights of taxing themselves, or at least of levying in their own way
+those taxes which the central government imposed. This was a privilege
+highly prized by the provinces which possessed it. These provinces
+formed a fringe round France, and included Languedoc, Provence, the
+duchy of Burgundy, Artois, Brittany, and some others. The central
+administration was so oppressive, at the same time that it was clumsy
+and inefficient, that every province and city was anxious to compound
+for its taxes, and to settle them at a fixed rate, though a high one.
+This was accomplished on the largest scale by the Lands of Estates, but
+similar privileges, to a greater or less extent, were maintained by most
+of the cities. We must remember, here as elsewhere, that France had not
+sprung into being as a homogeneous nation with her modern boundaries.
+From the accession of the House of Capet in the tenth century, province
+after province had been added to the dominions of the crown. Many of
+them had preserved ancient rights. Customs and tolls differed among
+them, duties were exacted in passing from one to the other. Privileges,
+the prizes of old wars, rights assured in some cases by solemn treaties,
+had to be regarded. The wars of the Middle Ages were waged chiefly
+concerning legal claims. The end of the period found all Europe full of
+privileged territories, persons, or corporations. Privileges and rights
+were regarded as property. Modern struggles have been for ideas, and
+among the most cherished of these have been equality and uniformity. The
+sacredness of property and of contract have in a measure gone down
+before them.[Footnote: Necker, _De l'Administration_, i. ix.
+Bailly, ii. 276. Horn, 258. Bois-Guillebert, 207. _(La détail de la
+France Partie_, ii. c. vii.); Stubbs _Lectures_, 217. Walloon
+Flanders was in the anomalous position of forming part of a
+_généralité_, but possessing Estates. _Bailly_, ii. 327.]
+
+Although the Provincial Estates differed in the various provinces which
+possessed them, they included in almost every case members of the three
+orders. The Clergy were usually represented by bishops, abbots, and
+persons deputed by chapters; the Nobility either by all nobles whose
+title was not less than a hundred years old, or by the possessors of
+certain fiefs; the third estate, or Commons, by the mayors and deputies
+of the towns. The three Orders sometimes sat apart, sometimes together.
+In the intervals between their sessions their powers were delegated to
+intermediate commissions, small boards for the regulation of current
+affairs. There was nothing democratic in such a constitution. Even the
+representatives of the commonalty were taken from among the most
+privileged members of their order. Nor were the powers of the Estates
+extensive. They bargained with the royal intendants for the gross amount
+of the taxes to be assessed on their provinces. They divided this sum
+and charged it to the various subdivisions of their territory. They
+levied it by taxes similar to those of the general government.
+[Footnote: Lucay, _Les assemblées provinciales_, 111. Necker,
+_Mémoire au roi sur l'établissement des administrations provinciales,
+passim_.]
+
+But in spite of all drawbacks the Provincial Estates were much valued by
+the provinces which possessed them. They were at least a guarantee that
+some local knowledge and local patriotism would be applied to local
+affairs. Moreover, they had the right of petition, a right essential to
+good government, both for the information of rulers and for giving vent
+to the feelings of subjects. This right is, and has long been, so nearly
+free in English-speaking countries, that it is hard to realize that
+there are civilized lands where men may not quietly and respectfully
+express their wishes. Yet in old France, as in a large part of
+Continental Europe to-day, the citizen who publicly gave an opinion on
+public matters, or who pointed out a well-known public grievance, was
+considered a disturber of the peace. Under such circumstances, a body of
+men who were allowed to discuss and recommend might render a great
+service to their country by simply using that freedom. The complaints of
+the Estates of each province were transmitted to the king in council, by
+a document known as a _cahier_, and the wishes thus expressed often
+formed a basis of legislation, or of administrative orders.
+
+Among the spasmodic efforts at reform made under Louis XVI. were two
+attempts to extend the system of local self-government. The first was
+made by Necker in 1778 and 1779. Provincial assemblies were established
+in those years by way of experiment in two provinces, Berry and Haute
+Guyenne. These assemblies were composed of forty-eight and fifty-two
+members respectively, one half being taken from among the clergy and
+nobility, one half from the Third Estate of the towns and the country. A
+third of the members of the Assembly of Berry were appointed by the
+king, and these elected their fellow-members, care being taken to
+preserve the equality of classes. One third of the members were to be
+renewed by the assembly itself once in three years. The body was,
+therefore, in no way dependent on popular election. The assembly met and
+voted as one chamber. Its functions were almost purely administrative,
+the assessment of taxes, the care of roads and the management of
+charitable institutions. All this was done under close supervision of
+the intendant and, through him, of the minister. The assembly sat only
+once in two years, for a time not exceeding one month, but an
+intermediate commission carried on its work between its sessions. The
+general plan of the Assembly of Haute Guyenne was similar to that of the
+Assembly of Berry.
+
+Eight years passed between the establishment of these experimental
+assemblies and the convocation of the first Assembly of Notables at
+Versailles,--eight important years in French history. Necker was driven
+from power, but the two new bodies survived the reactionary policy of
+his successors, and did some good service. The fallen minister kept his
+popularity and his influence with the public at large. His great book on
+the "Administration of the Finances" was in all hands, eighty thousand
+copies having been rapidly sold. In it he expounds his favorite scheme
+of Provincial Assemblies, and praises the working of the two that have
+been established. He points out that they are not representative bodies,
+empowered to make bargains with the king and to impede the government,
+but administrative boards, entrusted by the sovereign with the duty of
+watching over the interests of the people of their districts. The
+Assembly of Notables of 1787 and the minister Brienne adopted Necker's
+views, but not completely. They established provincial assemblies
+throughout France on a plan of their own. One half of the members of
+these new bodies were to be chosen in the first place by the king; the
+second half being elected by the first. But at the end of three years
+one quarter part of the assembly was to retire, and its place was to be
+filled by a true election. This, however, was not to be direct, but in
+three stages. A parochial board was to be created in every village,
+composed of the lord and the priest ex officio, and of several elected
+members. These parochial boards were to elect the district boards,
+(_assemblées d'élection_) and the latter were to elect the new
+members of the Provincial Assembly. The march of events after 1787
+prevented these elections from taking place. But the nominated
+assemblies met twice, once for organization and once for business. They
+came too late to prevent a catastrophe, but lasted long enough to give
+well-founded hopes of usefulness. The great National Assembly of 1789
+and its successors might have had a far less stormy history, had all
+France been accustomed, though only for one generation, to political
+bodies restrained by law.[Footnote: Necker, _Compte rendu_, 74.
+Ibid., _De l'Administration_, ii. 225, 292. Lavergne, _Les
+Assemblées provinciales sous Louis XVI_. Lucay, _Les Assemblées
+provinciales sous Louis XVI_., 163.]
+
+Within a given province or district, there was no proportional equality
+among persons in the matter of taxation. It was sometimes said that the
+noble paid with his blood, the villein with his money. But the order of
+the Nobility had come to include many persons who never thought of
+shedding their blood for their country; to include, in fact, the rich
+and prosperous generally. These were not (as they are sometimes
+represented to have been), quite free from taxation. Something like one
+half of the taxes were indirect, and might be supposed to be paid by all
+classes in proportion to their consumption. Yet even for the indirect
+taxes, privileged persons managed to find ways partially to escape. Some
+of the direct taxes were deducted from salaries, or imposed on incomes,
+but it was said that the rich and powerful often succeeded in having
+their incomes lightly assessed. By way of increasing the inequality of
+taxation, the government had a habit, when in need of more money than
+usual, of adding a percentage to some old tax, instead of devising a new
+one, thus bearing most heavily with the new impost on those classes
+which were most severely taxed already.
+
+First among French taxes, both in blundering unfairness and in evil
+fame, came the Land Tax or _Taille_, producing for the twenty-four
+districts a revenue of about forty-five million livres, or with its
+accessory taxes, of about seventy-five millions.[Footnote: Bailly, ii.
+307. Necker, _De l'Administration_, i. 6, 35, puts the taille at 91
+millions, but I think he includes the tailles abonnées, paid by the Pays
+d'états, although not those paid by cities.]
+
+The taille was of feudal origin, and in the Middle Ages was paid to the
+lord by his tenants. In the fifteenth century, however, it had already
+been diverted to the royal treasury, and its product was employed in the
+maintenance of troops. It was therefore paid only by villeins, for the
+nobles served in person, and the clergy by substitute, if at all.
+
+The exemption of the upper orders from liability to the taille clung
+to that tax after the reason for such freedom had ceased to exist. The
+tax itself early grew to be of two kinds, real and personal. The
+_taille réele_, common in the southern provinces of France, was a true
+land-tax, assessed according to a survey and valuation on all lands
+not accounted noble, nor belonging to the church, nor to the
+public. The distinction between noble and peasant lands was an old
+one; and the peasant lands paid the tax even when owned by privileged
+persons. [Footnote: Turgot, iv. 74.]
+
+Over the greater part of France, however, the _taille réele_ did
+not exist, and only the _taille personelle_ was in force. This bore
+on the profits of the land and on all forms of industry; but the
+churchmen and the nobles were exempt, at least in part.[Footnote: There
+appears to have been a limit to the exemption of nobles cultivating
+their own lands.] Owing to its personal nature, the tax was payable at
+the residence of the person taxed. If a peasant lived in one parish and
+derived most of his income from land situated in another, he was taxable
+at the place of his residence, at a rate perhaps entirely different from
+that of the parish in which his farm was situated. It might happen that
+a large part of the lands of a parish were owned by non-residents, and
+that the ability of the parish to pay its taxes was thus reduced. But
+there were exceptions to the rule by which the tax followed the person,
+and the whole matter was so complicated as to be a fertile cause of
+dispute and of double taxation.[Footnote: Turgot, iv. 76.]
+
+The method of assessment and levy was peculiar. The gross amount of the
+taille was determined twice a year by the royal council, and apportioned
+arbitrarily among the twenty-four districts (generalités) of France, and
+then subdivided by various officials among the sub-districts (élections)
+and the parishes. The divisions thus made were very unequal; some
+provinces, sub-districts, and parishes being treated much more severely
+than others, apparently rather by accident or custom than for any
+equitable reason. An influential person could often obtain a diminution
+of the tax of his village. When the work of subdivision was completed,
+the syndics and other parish officers were notified of the tax laid on
+their parishes, which were thenceforth liable for the amount. But the
+taille had still to be apportioned among the inhabitants. For this
+purpose from three to seven collectors were elected in every rural
+community by popular vote. The collectors assessed their neighbors at
+their own discretion, and were personally responsible to the government
+for the whole amount assessed on the parish. In consideration of this,
+and of their labor, they were allowed to collect a percentage in
+addition to the taille, for their own pay.[Footnote: "Six deniers par
+livre" = 2 1/2 per cent. Turgot, vii. 125. Sometimes 5 per cent. Babeau,
+Le Village, 225.] The whole process was the cause of endless bickerings
+and disputes, lawsuits and appeals, and the collectors were frequently
+ruined in spite of all their efforts. They were ignorant peasants,
+unused to accounts, sometimes unable to read. In some of the mountain
+parishes of the Pyrenees their accounts were kept on notched sticks to a
+period not very long before the Revolution.[Footnote: Bailly, ii. 159.
+Horn, 224 Babeau, Le Village, 222, 224. Turgot, vii. 122, iv. 51.
+_Encyclopédie_, xv. 841 (_Taille_). A similar practice existed
+in the English Court of Exchequer, to a later date.]
+
+The liability to the taille was joint. A gross sum was laid on the
+parish, and if one person escaped, or was unable to pay, his share had
+to be borne by the rest. On the other hand, if one man were
+overcharged, the burden of his neighbors was lightened. Thus it was
+every one's interest to seem poor. And the taxes were so important a
+matter, taking so large a part of the yearly income, that they
+modified the whole conduct of life. People dared not appear at their
+ease, lest their shares should be increased. They hid their wealth and
+took their luxuries in secret. One day, Jean Jacques Rousseau,
+traveling on foot, as was his wont, entered a solitary farm-house, and
+asked for a meal. A pot of skimmed milk and some coarse barley bread
+were set before him, the peasant who lived in the house saying that
+this was all he had. After a while, however, the man took courage on
+observing the manners and the appetite of his guest. Telling Rousseau
+that he was sure he was a good, honest fellow, and no spy, he
+disappeared through a trap-door, and presently came back with good
+wheaten bread, a little dark with bran, a ham, and a bottle of wine.
+An omelet was soon sizzling in the dish. When the time came for
+Rousseau to pay and depart, the peasant's fears returned. He refused
+money, he was evidently distressed. Rousseau made out that the bread
+and the wine were hidden for fear of the tax-gatherer; that the man
+believed he would be ruined, if he were known to have anything.
+[Footnote: Rousseau, xvii. 281 (_Confessions_, Part i. liv. iv.).
+Vauban, 51, and _passim_. Bois-Guillebert, 191.]
+
+As it was for the advantage of individuals to be thought poor, so it was
+best for villages to appear squalid. The Marquis of Argenson writes in
+his journal: "An officer of the _élection_ has come into the
+village where my country-house is, and has said that the taille of the
+parish would be much raised this year; he had noticed that the peasants
+looked fatter than elsewhere, had seen hens' feathers lying about the
+doors, that people were living well and were comfortable, that I spent a
+great deal of money in the village for my household expenses, etc. This
+is what discourages the peasants. This is what causes the misfortunes of
+the kingdom. This is what Henry IV. would weep over were he living now."
+[Footnote: D'Argenson, vi. 256 (Sept. 12, 1750). See also vi. 425, vii.
+55, viii. 8, 35, 53.]
+
+The country people had grown to be very distrustful and suspicious
+wherever officials of the government were concerned. "I remember a
+singular feature of this subject," says Necker. "I think it was twenty
+years ago that an intendant, with the laudable intention of encouraging
+the manufacture of honey and the cultivation of bees, began by asking
+for statistics as to the number of hives kept in the province. The
+people did not understand his intentions, they were, perhaps, suspicious
+of them, and in a few days almost all the hives were destroyed."
+[Footnote: _De l'Administration_, iii. 232.]
+
+No one could be induced to pay promptly, lest he should be thought to
+have money. The tax was due in four payments, from the first of October
+to the last of April, but the collection of one instalment was seldom
+completed before the following one was due; that of one year seldom made
+before the next had come. The peasants obliged the collectors to wring
+out the hard-earned copper pieces one or two at a time. The tardy were
+vexed with fines and distraints. Furniture, doors, the very rafters and
+floors were sold for unpaid taxes. In the time of Louis XV., if a whole
+village fell too much behindhand, its four principal inhabitants might
+be seized and carried off to jail. This corporal joint-liability was
+ended by a law passed under the ministry of Turgot, and apparently not
+repealed on his fall.[Footnote: Horn, 238; Vauban; Bailly, ii. 203;
+Stourm, i. 52; Turgot, vii. 119.]
+
+The assessment and collection of the taille presented many anomalies. In
+some places commissioners had been appointed by the intendant, for the
+purpose of assessing estates and of reckoning the value of day's labor
+of artisans. This method worked well and gave satisfaction, but it
+extended only to a few provinces.[Footnote: Babeau, _Le Village_,
+214.]
+
+From the land tax we pass to the Twentieths (_vingtièmes_
+[Footnote: Not to be confounded with the _Droit de vingtième_, an
+indirect tax on wine. Kaufmann, 33. Notice that the two
+_vingtièmes_ are constantly spoken of as the _dixième_.]),
+which, as their name implies, were in theory taxes of five per cent. on
+incomes. From these the clergy only were freed (having bought of the
+crown a perpetual exemption). Two twentieths and four sous in the livre
+of the first twentieth, or eleven per cent., was the regular rate in the
+reign of Louis XVI., and was expected to bring in from fifty-five to
+sixty million livres a year. A third twentieth was laid in 1782, to last
+for three years after the end of the war of the American Revolution,
+then in progress. This twentieth brought in twenty-one and a half
+millions only, on account of various exemptions that were allowed. The
+liability to the twentieths was not joint but individual; so that when a
+deduction was made from the amount charged to one tax-payer, the sum
+demanded of the others was not increased.
+
+An attempt was made to levy the twentieths on the various sorts of
+income. The product of agriculture paid the largest part, but a
+percentage was retained on salaries and pensions paid by the government,
+and the incomes of public officers receiving fees was estimated. In
+spite of the desire to include every income in the operation of this
+tax, it was generally believed that valuations were habitually made too
+low, and that unfair discrimination took place. The inhabitants of some
+provinces, on the other hand, were thought to be overcharged. Attempts
+at rectification were resisted by the courts of law, the doctrine being
+asserted that the valuation of a man's income for the purposes of this
+tax could not legally be increased. It is instructive to compare the
+interest thus shown in the rights of the upper classes, who shared in
+the payment of the twentieths, with the indifference manifested to the
+arbitrary manner in which the common people were treated in levying the
+Land Tax.[Footnote: Necker reckons the two _vingtièmes_ and four
+sous at 55,000,000 livres. _De l'Administration_, i. 5, 6.
+_Compte rendu_, 61. Ibid., _Mémoire au roi sur l'establissement
+des administrations provinciales_, 25. Necker abolished the
+_vingtième d'industrie_ applied to manufactures and commerce.
+_Compte rendu_, 64. In his later book he speaks of it as subsisting
+in a few provinces only. _De l'Administration_, i. 159. Turgot, iv.
+289. Stourm, i. 54.]
+
+The poll tax (_capitation_) was one only in name. It was in fact a
+roughly reckoned income tax, and the inhabitants of France were for its
+purposes divided into twenty-two classes, according to their supposed
+ability to pay. In the country, the amount demanded for this tax was
+usually proportioned to that of the personal taille. People who paid no
+taille were assessed according to their public office, military rank,
+business, or profession. The rules were complicated, giving rise to
+endless disputes. In theory the very poor were exempt, but the exemption
+was not very generous, for maid-servants were charged at the rate of
+three livres and twelve sous a year, and there were yet poorer people
+who paid less than half that amount. If the poor man failed to pay, a
+garrison (_garnison_) was lodged upon him. A man in blue, with a
+gun, came and sat by his fire, slept in his bed, and laid hands on any
+money that might come into the house, thus collecting the tax and his
+own wages. The amount levied by the poll-tax and accessories was from
+thirty-six to forty-two million livres a year.[Footnote: Bailly, ii.
+307. Necker, _De l'Administration_, i. 8. Mercier, iii. 98, xi. 96.
+Mercier thinks that the _capitation_ was more feared than the
+_dixième_, and than the _entrées_, because it attached more
+directly to the individual and to his person. Does this mean greater
+severity in collection? Notice that he writes of Paris, where there is
+no taille.]
+
+The indirect taxes of France were mostly farmed. Once in six years the
+Controller General of the Finances for the time being entered into a
+contract, nominally with a man of straw, but actually with a body of
+rich financiers, who appeared as the man's sureties, and who were known
+as the Farmers General. The first operation of the Farmers, after
+entering into the contract, was to raise a capital sum for the purpose
+of buying out their predecessors, of taking over the material on hand,
+and of paying an advance to the government; for although many individual
+Farmers General held over from one contract to the next, the association
+was a new one for each lease. In 1774, just before the death of King
+Louis XV., a new contract was made, and the capital advanced amounted to
+93,600,000 livres. The Farmers were allowed interest on this sum at the
+rate of ten per cent. for the first sixty millions, and of seven per
+cent. for the remaining 33,600,000 livres. This interest was, however,
+taxed by the government for the two twentieths.
+
+The rent paid by the Farmers under this contract was 152,000,000 livres
+a year, for which consideration they were allowed to collect the
+indirect taxes and keep the product. This system, which is at least as
+old as the New Testament, is now generally condemned, but in the
+eighteenth century it found defenders even among liberal writers.
+
+The Farmers General in the contract of 1774 were sixty in number, but
+they did not divide among themselves all the profits of the enterprise.
+It was the habit to accord to many people a share in the operations of
+the farm, without any voice in its management. The people thus favored
+were called croupiers; king Louis XV. himself was one of them. His
+Controller General, the Abbé Terray, received a fee of three hundred
+thousand livres on concluding the contract, and the promise of one
+thousand livres for every million of profits. When the bargain had been
+struck and the advance paid, he announced to the Farmers that further
+croupes would be granted, and that sundry payments must be made to the
+treasury. The profits of the undertaking were thus materially reduced.
+The Farmers at first threatened to throw up their bargain, but the
+Controller told them that if they did so he would not return their
+advances, but only pay interest on them. In spite of this swindle, the
+lease turned out on the whole much to the benefit of the Farmers.
+
+In 1780, when the lease above mentioned expired, Necker was Director of
+the Finances. He introduced reforms into the General Farm, cutting down
+the number of Farmers from sixty to forty, and reducing their gains. The
+collection of certain taxes was taken from them, and entrusted to new
+companies. His contract was for a rent of 122,900,000 livres and the
+advance was forty-eight millions, for which the Farmers received seven
+per cent. Moreover, the latter were not to take the whole profit above
+the rent of the Farm. The first three millions of that profit went to
+the treasury, which also received one half of the remaining gains, but
+croupes and pensions on the Farm were totally abolished. Necker reckons
+the total sum drawn yearly by the Farmers from the people under his
+administration at 184,000,000 livres, and the sums collected by the two
+new companies of his own devising, for the collection of the excise on
+drinkables and for the administration of the royal domains at 92,000,000
+more.
+
+The Farmers General were the most conspicuous representatives in
+France of the moneyed class, which was just rising into importance
+beside the old aristocracy, by whose members it was despised but
+courted. Many of the Farmers were of low origin and had risen to
+fortune by their own abilities. Others belonged to families which had
+long made a mark in the financial world. Their luxurious style of life
+was admired by the vulgar and derided by the envious. The offices of
+the Farm occupied several historic houses in Paris. In the chief of
+these the French Academy had once held its sittings under the
+presidency of Séguier, and the walls and ceilings shone with pictures
+from the brushes of Lebrun and Mignard. The warehouses and offices for
+the monopoly of tobacco occupied a fine building between the Louvre
+and the Tuileries, where once the duchesses of Chevreuse and of
+Longueville had prosecuted their political and amorous intrigues. The
+discontented tax-payers grumbled the louder at seeing the hated
+publicans so handsomely lodged.[Footnote: The total receipts of the
+Farm, according to Necker, were 186,000,000 livres. Against this sum
+must be set 2,000,000 for salt and tobacco sold to foreigners;
+16,000,000 for the cost of salt and tobacco, and 8,000,000 for the
+cost of other articles to the Farm. The amount of actual taxation
+collected by the Farm would therefore seem to have been about
+160,000,000. Necker, _De l'Administration,_, i. 9, 14, iii. 122.
+Lemoine, _Les derniers fermiers généraux, passim._ Bailly, ii. 185,
+_n_. and _passim_. _Encyclopédie_, vi. 515 (_Fermes, Cinq grosses_)
+vi. 513, etc. (_Fermes du roi_). Bertin, 480. Mercier, xii. 89.]
+
+The first and most dreaded of the indirect taxes was the Salt Tax
+(_gabelle_). As salt is necessary for all, it has from early days
+been considered by some governments a good article for a tax, no one
+being able to escape payment by going entirely without it. To make the
+revenue more secure, every householder in certain parts of France was
+obliged to buy seven pounds of salt a year at the warehouses of the
+Farm, for every member of his family more than seven years old. In spite
+of this, a certain economy in the use of the article became the habit of
+the French nation, and the traveler of the nineteenth century may bless
+the government of the Bourbons when for once in his life he finds
+himself in a country where the cooks do not habitually oversalt the
+soup.
+
+The unfortunate Frenchmen of the eighteenth century had to pay dear for
+this culinary lesson. But in this matter as in others they did not all
+pay alike. The whole product of the salt tax to the treasury was about
+sixty million livres, of which two thirds, or forty millions, was taken
+from provinces containing a little more than one third of the population
+of the kingdom. Necker, who much desired to equalize the impost,
+mentions six principal categories of provinces in regard to the salt
+tax; varying from those in which the sale was free, and the article
+worth from two to nine livres the hundred weight, to those where it was
+a monopoly of the Farm, and the salt cost the consumer about sixty-two
+livres. Salt being thus worth thirty times as much in one province as in
+another, it was possible for a successful smuggler to make a living by a
+very few trips. The opportunity was largely used; children were trained
+by their parents for the illicit traffic, but the penalties were very
+severe. In the galleys were many salt-smugglers; people were shut up on
+mere suspicion, and in the crowded prisons of that day were carried off
+by jail-fevers.[Footnote: Necker, _De l'Administration_, ii. 1.
+Ibid., _Compte rendu_, 82, and see the map of France divided
+according to the _gabelle_ in the same volume. Bailly, ii. 163.
+Clamageran, iii. 84 _n._, 296, 406. For the numerous officers and
+complicated system of the _gabelle_, see _Encyclopédie_, vii.
+942 (_Grenier a sel_); _Quintal_=100 French pounds; but which
+of the numerous French pounds, I know not.] Of all known stimulants,
+tobacco is perhaps the most agreeable and the least injurious to the
+person who takes it; but no method of taking it has yet been devised
+which is not liable to be offensive to the delicate nerves of some
+bystander. It is probably on this account that a certain discredit has
+always attached to this most soothing herb, and that it seldom gets fair
+treatment in the matter of taxation. Over a large part of France,
+containing some twenty-two millions of inhabitants, tobacco had been
+subject to monopoly for a hundred years when Louis XVI. came to the
+throne,[Footnote: With an interval of two years, during which it was
+subject to a high duty. Stourm, i. 361.] yet the use of the article had
+become so general that this population bought fifteen million pounds
+yearly, or between five eighths and three quarters of a pound per head.
+Of this amount about one twelfth was used for smoking in pipes, and the
+remainder was consumed in the pleasant form of snuff. Three livres
+fifteen sous a pound was the price set by the government and collected
+by the Farmers, and the tobacco was often mouldy.[Footnote: Necker,
+_De l'Administration_, ii. 100. Babeau, _La vie rurale_, 78.]
+
+The excise on wine and cider (_aides_) was levied not only on the
+producer, but also on the consumer, in a most vexatious manner, so that
+the revenue officers were continually forcing their way into private
+houses, and so that the poor peasant who quietly diluted his measure of
+cider with two measures of water was lucky if he got off with a triple
+tax, and did not undergo fine and forfeiture for having untaxed cider in
+his house. It was moreover a principle with the officers of the excise
+that wine was never given away; and as a tax was due on every sale the
+poor vine-dresser could not give a part of the produce of his vineyard
+to his married children, or even bestow a few bottles in alms on a poor,
+sick woman without getting into trouble, and all this notwithstanding
+the fact that in France in the eighteenth century, when tea and coffee
+were unknown to the rural classes, and when drinking water was often
+taken from polluted wells, wine or cider was generally considered
+necessary to health and to life.
+
+It is needless to consider in detail the duties on imports and exports
+(_traites_). From the beginning of the eighteenth century until
+three years after the end of the American War, commerce between France
+and England was totally prohibited as to most articles, and subjected to
+prohibitory duties in the case of the few that remained. This state of
+things was tempered by a great system of smuggling, so successfully
+conducted that insurance in many cases was as low as ten and even as
+five per cent. Goods were sometimes taken directly from one coast to the
+other on dark nights, and no reader of the literature of the last
+century will need to be reminded that the "free traders" who brought
+them were favorably received by the people among whom they might come to
+land. Sometimes the articles were sent by circuitous routes through
+Holland or Germany, on whose frontiers the same walls of prohibition did
+not exist. But there were many things which could not conveniently be
+smuggled, and in their case the want of competition, and still more the
+lack of standards of comparison, tended to retard and injure production.
+While improved machinery for spinning and weaving was common in England,
+the old spindle, wheel, and house-loom still held their own in France.
+In the year 1786, a commercial treaty was signed between the two
+countries. By its provisions French wines were put on a better footing,
+and many manufactured articles, as hardware, cutlery, linen, gauze, and
+millinery were to pay but ten or twelve per cent. The confusion of
+business which was the natural result of so great a change had not
+ceased to be felt when the great Revolution began to disturb all
+commercial relations.
+
+It was not at the frontiers alone that commerce was subject to tolls and
+duties. Trade was hampered on every road and river in the kingdom, and
+so complicated were these local dues that it was said that not more than
+two or three men in a generation understood them thoroughly.
+
+Duties on food were then as now collected at the entrance of many
+French cities (_octrois_). In the last century they were often partial
+in their operation; such of the burghers as owned farms or gardens
+outside the walls being allowed to bring in their produce without
+charge, while their poorer neighbors were obliged to pay duties on all
+they ate. In Paris some kinds of food, and notably fish, were both bad
+and dear, because the charges at the city gate were many times as
+great as the original value.[Footnote: See the pathetic _cahier_ of
+the village of Pavaut, _Archives parlementaires_, v. 9. Vauban, _Dîme
+royale_, 26, 51. Montesquieu, iv. 122 (_Esprit des Lois,_, liv. xiii.
+c. 7). Necker, _De l'Administration_, ii. 113. _Encyclopédie
+méthodique, Finance_, iii. 709 (_Traites_). Turgot, vii. 37. Mercier,
+xi. 100. Stourm, i. 325.]
+
+There was another burden which shared with the taille and the gabelle
+the especial hatred of the French peasantry. This was the villein
+service (_corvée_) which was exacted of the farmers and agricultural
+laborers. The service was of feudal origin, and, while still demanded
+in many cases by the lords, in accordance with ancient charters or
+customs, was now also required by the state for the building of roads
+and the transportation of soldiers' baggage. The demand was based on
+no general law, but was imposed arbitrarily by intendants and military
+commanders. The amount due by every parish was settled without appeal
+by the same authorities. The peasant and his draft-cattle were ordered
+away from home, perhaps just at the time of harvest. On the roads
+might be seen the overloaded carts, where the tired soldiers had piled
+themselves on top of their baggage, while their comrades goaded the
+slow teams with swords and bayonets, and jeered at the remonstrances
+of the unhappy owner. The oxen were often injured by unusual labor and
+harsh treatment, and one sick ox would throw a whole team out of work.
+The burden, imposed on the parish collectively, was distributed among
+the peasants by their syndics, political officers, often partial, who
+were sometimes accompanied in their work of selection by files of
+soldiers, equally rough and impatient with the refractory peasants and
+the wretched official. Turgot, who was keenly alive to the hardships
+of the _corvée_, abolished it during his short term of power,
+substituting a tax, but it was restored by his successor immediately
+on his fall, and was not discontinued until the end of the monarchy.
+[Footnote: The _corvées_ owned by the lords were limited by legal
+custom to twelve days a year. _Encyclopédie_, iv. 280 (_Corvée_). I
+can find no such limitations of _corvées_ imposed by the government.
+Some regard seems to have been paid to peasants' convenience in fixing
+the season of _corvées_ of road building, but none in those of
+military transportation. Compensation was given for the latter, but it
+was inadequate, hardly amounting to one fourth of the market price of
+such labor. Turgot, iv. 367. Bailly, ii. 215.]
+
+It is entirely impossible to discover, even approximately, what
+proportion of a Frenchman's income was taken in taxes by the government
+of Louis XVI. We may guess that the burden was too large, we may be sure
+that it was ill distributed, yet under it prosperity and population were
+slowly increasing.
+
+Let us take the figures of Necker, as the most moderate. It is the
+fashion to make light of Necker, and he certainly was not a man of
+sufficient strength and genius to overcome all the difficulties with
+which he was surrounded, but he probably knew more about the condition
+of France than any other man then living. Let us then take his figures
+and suppose that the two twentieths, and the four sous per livre of the
+first twentieth, produced the eleven per cent. which they should
+theoretically have given. In that case eleven per cent. of the country's
+income was equal to fifty-five million livres. But at that rate the
+direct taxes and tithes would have taken more than half the income, and
+the indirect taxes more than the other half, and French subjects would
+have been left with less than nothing to live on. Clearly, then, the
+twentieths did not produce anything like the theoretical eleven per
+cent.
+
+M. Taine has gone into the question with apparent care, and his figures
+are adopted by recent writers, but they would seem to be open to the
+same objection. He reckons that some of the peasants paid over eighty
+per cent. of their income. But if a man could pay that proportion to the
+government year after year and not die of want, how very prosperous a
+man living on the same land must be to-day if his taxes amount only to
+one quarter or one third of his income. The real difficulty is one of
+assessment. We can tell approximately how much the country paid; we can
+never know the amount of its wealth.
+
+How far did the rich escape taxation? The clergy of France as a body did
+so in a great measure. They paid none of the direct taxes levied on
+their fellow subjects. They made gifts and loans to the state, however,
+and borrowed money for the purpose. For this money they paid interest,
+which must be looked on as their real contribution to the expenses of
+the state. But in this again they were assisted by the treasury. The
+amount which finally came out of the pockets of the clergy by direct
+taxation would appear to have been less than ten per cent. of their
+income from invested property.
+
+The nobility bore a larger share. The only great tax from which the
+members of that order were exempted was the taille, forming less than
+one half of the direct taxation, less than one sixth of the whole. But
+in the other direct taxes, their wealth and influence sometimes enabled
+them to escape a fair assessment.
+
+The indirect taxes also bore heavily on the poor. They were levied
+largely on necessaries, such as salt and food, or on those simple
+luxuries, wine and tobacco, on which Frenchmen of all classes depend for
+their daily sense of well-being. The gabelle, with its obligatory seven
+pounds of salt, approached a poll-tax in its operation.
+
+The worst features of French taxation were the arbitrary spirit which
+pervaded the financial administration, the regulations never submitted
+to public criticism, and the tyranny and fraud of subordinates, for
+which redress was seldom attainable.[Footnote: Horn, 254.] We groan
+sometimes, and with reason, at the publicity with which all life is
+carried on to-day. We turn wearily from the wilderness of printed words
+which surrounds the simplest matters. But only publicity and free
+discussion will prevent every unscrupulous assessor and every arbitrary
+clerk in the custom-house from being a petty tyrant. They will not by
+themselves procure good government, but they will prevent bad government
+from growing intolerable. In France, as we have seen, to print anything
+which might stir the public mind was a capital offense; and while the
+writer of an abstract treatise subversive of religion and government
+might hope to escape punishment, the citizen who earned the resentment
+of a petty official was likely to be prosecuted with virulence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+FINANCE.
+
+
+Certain financial practices, not immediately connected with taxation,
+call for a short notice; for they are among the most famous errors of
+the government of old France. One of these was the habit of issuing what
+were called anticipations.[Footnote: Anticipations. "On entendait par
+là des assignations sur les revenus futurs, remises aux fournisseurs et
+autres creanciers du Trésor et negociables entre leurs mains."
+Clamageran, iii. 30. Necker, _Compte rendu_, 20. Stourm (ii. 200)
+thinks the amount not excessive, while acknowledging that it was so
+considered. The Anticipations formed in fact the floating debt of the
+government. Gomel, 287.] These were securities with a limited time to
+run, payable from a definite portion of the future revenue. They were a
+favorite form of investment with certain people, and a great convenience
+to the treasury, but they constantly tended to increase to an amount
+which was considered dangerous. Thus the revenue of each year was spent
+before it was collected; and loans were contracted, not for any urgent
+and exceptional necessity of the state, but for ordinary running
+expenses. Another practice was the issuing by the king in person of
+drafts on the treasury. Such drafts (_acquits de comptant_) were
+made payable to bearer, and it was therefore impossible for the
+controller of the finances to know for what purpose they had been drawn.
+Originally a device for the payment of the private expenses of the king,
+these drafts had become favorite objects of the cupidity of the
+courtiers; because from their form it was impossible to trace them and
+discover the recipient. Under Louis XVI. they absorbed more money than
+ever before. It was very easy for that weak prince to give a check to
+any one who might ask him. Turgot made him promise to stop doing so, but
+he had not the strength to keep his word.[Footnote: Clamageran, in.
+380, n. Bailly, i. 221, ii. 214, 259. The foreign office made use of
+ordonnances de comptant to the amount of several millions annually, for
+subsidies to foreign governments, expenses of ambassadors, secret
+service, etc. Stourm, ii. 153.]
+
+From an early time the custom of selling public offices had taken root
+in France. Before the middle of the fourteenth century we find Louis X.
+selling judicial places to the highest bidder, and less than a hundred
+years later the practice had extended so that all manner of petty
+offices were sold by the government. This method of raising money was so
+easy that, in spite of the remonstrances of estates general and the
+promises of kings, it was continually extended. In the sixteenth
+century, as a greater inducement to purchasers, the offices were made
+transferable on certain conditions, and in 1605 they became subjects of
+inheritance. Places under government were thus assimilated to other
+property and passed from the holder to his heirs. The law which
+established this state of things was called _Édit de la Paulette_,
+after one Paulet, a farmer of the revenue.
+
+This sale of offices bore a certain resemblance to a loan and to a tax.
+The services to be performed were often unimportant, sometimes worse
+than useless. But the salary attached to the office might be considered
+the interest of money lent to the crown; or if the office-holder were
+paid by fees, he was enabled to make good to himself the advance made to
+the government by drawing money from the tax-payers. Very generally the
+two forms of profit to the incumbent were combined, together with a
+third, the possession, namely, of privileges, or exemption from
+taxation, attached to the office.
+
+In managing its revenue from this source, the treasury dealt fairly
+neither with the office holders nor with the public. Places were created
+only to be sold, and before long were abolished, either without any
+promise of compensation to the buyers, or with promises destined never
+to be fulfilled. This want of faith kept down the price, which was often
+but ten years' purchase of the income of the place. Yet rich and poor
+were eager to buy. "Sir," said a minister of finance to King Louis XIV.,
+"as often as it pleases your Majesty to make an office, it pleases God
+to make a fool to fill it."
+
+Thus it came to pass that most places about the royal person, in the
+courts of justice and in the treasury, and many in the municipal
+governments, the professions, and the trades, were subject to sale and
+purchase. Numberless persons waited at the royal table, sat in the high
+courts of Parliament, weighed, measured, gauged, sold horses, oysters,
+fish, or sucking pigs, shaved customers or gave hot baths, as public
+functionaries and by virtue of letters patent sold to them by the crown.
+The clerk kept his register, not because the information it contained
+would be useful to the government, but because he or some one else had
+lent money, on which the public was now paying interest in the form of
+registration fees. Thus the custom of selling offices was cumbrous and
+objectionable.[Footnote: Montesquieu defends the custom, however. He
+maintains that the offices in a monarchy should be venal; because people
+do as a family business what they would not undertake from virtue; every
+one is trained to his duty, and orders in the state are more permanent.
+If offices were not sold by the government they would be by the
+courtiers. Montesquieu, iii. 217 (_Esprit des Lois_, liv. v.
+cxix.). See also De Tocqueville, iv. 171 (_Anc. Reg_. ch. xi.). In
+many cases offices were desired more for the sake of distinction and
+privilege than for profit. The income was often very small. Clamageran,
+ii. 196, 378, 569, 615, 665; iii. 23, 24, 102, 155, 200, 319. Necker,
+_De l'Administration_, iii. 147. Thierry, i. 163. Pierre de
+Lestoile, 390, _n_.]
+
+While the taxes of France were thus devised without system and levied
+without skill, the attention of a thoughtful part of the nation had been
+turned to financial matters. About the middle of the century arose the
+Physiocrats, the founders of modern political economy. Their leader,
+Quesnay, believed that positive legislation should consist in the
+declaration of the natural laws constituting the order evidently most
+advantageous for men in society. When once these were understood, all
+would be well, for the absurdity of all unreasonable legislation would
+become manifest. He taught two cardinal principles; first, "that the
+land was the only source of riches, and that these were multiplied by
+agriculture;" and, second, that agriculture and commerce should be
+entirely free. The former of these doctrines, after exercising a good
+deal of influence by calling attention to the injustice and oppression
+with which the agricultural class in France was treated, has ceased to
+be believed as a statement of absolute truth. The latter, adopted with
+great enthusiasm by many generous minds, has exercised a deep influence
+on modern thought.
+
+Manufactures, according to Quesnay, do no more than pay the wages and
+expenses of the workmen engaged in them. But agriculture not only pays
+wages and expenses, but produces a surplus, which is the revenue of the
+land. He divides the nation into three classes: (1) the productive,
+which cultivates the soil; (2) the proprietary, which includes the
+sovereign, the land-owners, and those who live by tithes, in other words
+the nobility and the clergy; and (3) the sterile, which embraces all men
+who labor otherwise than in agriculture, and whose expenses are paid by
+the productive and proprietary classes. Therefore he argues that taxes
+should be based directly on the net product of real estate, and not on
+wages nor on chattels. In other words, all taxes should be levied
+directly on the income derived from land, and indirect taxation in every
+shape should be abolished.
+
+Liberty of agriculture, liberty of commerce! "Let every man be free to
+cultivate in his field such crops as his interest, his means, the
+nature of the ground may suggest as rendering the greatest possible
+return." "Let complete liberty of commerce be maintained; for the
+regulation of commerce, both internal and external, which is most
+safe, most accurate, most profitable to the nation, consists in full
+liberty of competition." These doctrines of Quesnay, joined with the
+ideas of property and security, form the basis of the modern school of
+individualism. [Footnote: Lavergne, _Les Économistes,_ 105. Quesnay,
+_Oeuvres,_ 233, 306, 331 _(Maximes du gouvernement économique d'un
+royaume agricole Maxime,_ iii. v. xiii. xxv.). Turgot, iv. 305.
+Bois-Guillebert appears to have been the principal precursor of the
+Physiocrats. Horn, _L'Économie politique avant les Physiocrates,
+passim;[Greek physis] = nature,[Greek kratos] = power.]
+
+The body of doctrines long known as "political economy," (for the words
+seem now to be used in a larger sense), bore the mark of their origin in
+the eighteenth century. Here, as elsewhere, it was the belief of
+Frenchmen of that age that the application of a few simple rules derived
+from natural laws would solve the difficulties of a complicated subject.
+The principles of political economy were conceived as forming "a true
+science, which does not yield to geometry itself in the conviction which
+it carries to the soul, and which certainly surpasses all others in its
+object, since that is the greatest well-being, the greatest prosperity
+of the human race upon the earth."[Footnote: 2. Abbé Beaudeau, quoted
+in Lavergne, _Les Économistes,_ 179.] Quesnay and Gournay founded
+branches of the economic school. The latter, who printed nothing, is
+chiefly known through the encomiums of Turgot. Gournay was a merchant,
+and recognized that commerce and manufactures are hardly less
+advantageous to a state than agriculture. This is the chief difference
+of his teaching from that of Quesnay. Gournay is the author of the
+famous maxim: _Laissez faire; laissez passer;_ and his whole
+system depended on the idea "that in general every man knows his own
+interest better than another man to whom that interest is entirely
+indifferent;" and that "hence, when the interest of individuals is
+exactly the same as the general interest, the best thing to do is to
+leave every man to do as he likes."[Footnote: Turgot, iii. 336
+(_Éloge de M. de Gournay_).]
+
+The best known member of the economic school in France was Anne Robert
+Jacques Turgot, born in Paris on the 10th of May, 1727, of a family
+belonging to the higher middle class. His father was _prevost des
+marchands_, or chief magistrate of the city. Young Turgot was at
+first educated for the ecclesiastical life, and indeed pursued his
+studies in that direction until a bishopric seemed close at hand. But he
+felt no vocation to enter the priesthood. Turgot was too much the child
+of his century to be content to put his great powers into the harness of
+the Roman Church; he was, as he told his friends who remonstrated with
+him on abandoning his brilliant prospects, too honest a man to wear a
+mask all his life.
+
+At the age of twenty-four, Turgot turned finally from the study of
+divinity to that of law and administration. He was rapidly promoted to
+the place of a _maître des requêtes_, a member of the lowest board
+of the royal council, and nine years later he became intendant of the
+district of Limoges. It was the poorest in France, but Turgot soon
+became so much interested in its welfare that he refused to exchange it
+for a richer one. In spite of years of dearth and of the extraordinary
+measures of relief which they made necessary, he went energetically to
+work at all manner of permanent reforms. He effected improvements in the
+apportionment and levy of the taille. He abolished the onerous
+_corvée_. He diminished the terror of compulsory service in the
+militia, by permitting the engagement of substitutes. He encouraged
+agriculture by distributing seeds and offering prizes for the
+destruction of wolves, which were still numerous in his district, and he
+waged a successful war on a moth that was ravaging the wheat crop. He
+assisted in the introduction of the manufacture of pottery, still one of
+the leading industries of Limoges. His reports are among the most
+valuable material in existence for the study of the condition of old
+France.
+
+Soon after the accession of Louis XVI., Turgot was called to the
+ministry, first, for a very short time, as secretary of the navy, and
+then as Controller of the Finances. Two courses were open to the new
+minister. Malesherbes, his close adherent, standing in high official
+position, urged him to summon the Estates General, or at least the
+Provincial Estates, and rule constitutionally. Such action would have
+been a great, a serious innovation, but it was not on this ground that
+Turgot opposed it. Like most of the economists of his day, he believed
+at once in freedom and in despotism. "The republican constitution of
+England," he had said, "sets obstacles in the way of the reform of
+certain abuses." Turgot had a plan for the benefit of mankind. None but
+a despot could carry it out for him. France and the world were to be set
+right; and it would take absolute power to compel them into the best
+course.
+
+The new Controller of the Finances could not afford to wait. "You
+accuse me of too great haste," he said to a friend, "and you forget
+that in my family we die of the gout at fifty." But this haste,
+combined with his awkward and haughty manners, proved the cause of his
+ruin. The courtiers, whose perquisites were in danger, were disgusted
+at his simplicity and economy. Although he was the friend of absolute
+government, he was accused of republican austerity. And his measures
+were not more popular than his manners. The harvest of 1774 had been
+bad, and famine was in the land. Turgot met the situation by declaring
+commerce in grain free throughout the kingdom. The harvest was again
+bad in 1775, and riots broke out, for the common people had it firmly
+in their minds that the price of bread was fixed by the
+government. Turgot put down disturbances with a high hand, and
+persevered in his measures. He abolished the _corvée_ on roads and
+public works throughout France. In truth it would have been better to
+modify and regulate it, for in poor countries many men had rather work
+on the roads than pay for them, but such considerations as this were
+foreign to his mind. He, moreover, abolished the trade-guilds
+(_jurandes_), which possessed the monopoly of most kinds of
+manufactures and trades, saying that God, in giving man needs and
+making labor his necessary resource, had made the right to work the
+property of every man, and that this property is the most sacred and
+inalienable of all.[Footnote: Turgot, viii. 330. Yet the monopolies
+in certain trades, as those of apothecaries, jewelers, printers, and
+booksellers, were retained, probably because their strict regulation
+and supervision was considered necessary. The guilds were
+reestablished, with modifications, on the fall of Turgot.
+_Encyclopédie méthodique, Commerce_, ii. 760, 790.] But Turgot's ideal
+of freedom was entirely industrial and commercial, and not at all
+political or social. He forbade all associations or assemblies of
+masters or workmen, holding that the faculty granted to artisans of
+the same trade to meet and join in one body is a source of evil. Under
+Turgot's system, the individual workman would not have escaped the
+tyranny of the masters' guild only to fall under that of the
+trades-union; but one of the most essential privileges of a freeman
+would have been denied him. Individual liberty to work, and political
+liberty to combine, have not yet been made perfectly to coincide.
+
+The innovations thus introduced were great; the interests threatened
+were powerful. The Parliament of Paris rallied to the defense of vested
+rights. It refused to register the edicts issued to enforce the
+minister's innovations.
+
+The king held a bed of justice and forced their registration; but his
+weak nature was tiring of the struggle. Turgot was unpopular on all
+sides, and Louis never supported a truly unpopular minister. "Only M.
+Turgot and I love the people," he cried, in his impotent despair; and
+then he gave way. Malesherbes, the principal supporter in the royal
+council of the Controller General of the Finances, was the first to go.
+Thereupon Turgot wrote the king a long and harsh letter, blaming him for
+Malesherbes's resignation. "Do not forget, sir," said he, "that it was
+weakness which put the head of Charles I. on the block; it was weakness
+which formed the League under Henry III., which made crowned slaves of
+Louis XIII. and of the present king of Portugal; it was weakness which
+caused all the misfortunes of the late reign." Kings to whom such
+language as this can be used are not strong enough to bear it. Turgot
+was dismissed twelve days after sending the letter.[Footnote: May 12,
+1776. Lavergne, _les Économistes_, 219. Turgot, iii. 335; viii.
+273, 330. Bailly, ii. 210.]
+
+The financial situation of France was undoubtedly serious. The cause of
+this was far less the amount of the debt, or the excess of expenditure
+over revenue, than the total demoralization of the public service. The
+annual deficit at the accession of Louis XVI. is variously stated at
+from twenty to forty million livres a year.[Footnote: From four to
+eight million dollars.] Such a deficiency would have nothing very
+appalling for a strong minister of finance, supported by a determined
+sovereign, and could have been overcome by economy alone. The expenses
+of the court were not less than thirty millions. Turgot proposed to
+reduce them by five millions immediately and by nine millions more in
+the course of a few years. Twenty-eight millions were spent in pensions,
+and it requires but a superficial knowledge of the state of France to
+assure us that many of these were bestowed without sufficient reason.
+[Footnote: Stourm sets the pensions at thirty-two millions, and thinks
+that the improper ones did not exceed six or seven millions, ii. 134.]
+Important reductions might have been made in the expenditures of most of
+the departments without impairing their efficiency. But to have done
+this many interests would have had to be disturbed, many hardships
+inflicted. Amiable persons, living without labor at the public cost,
+would have been deprived of their revenues. Other agreeable and
+influential men and women would have had to live without pleasant things
+which they had been brought up to expect. The good-nature of the king
+made him shrink from inflicting pain. He would approve of the best plans
+of economy, he would promise his minister of finance to adhere to them,
+he would depart from them secretly at the solicitation of his wife or of
+his courtiers. The poor man wanted "to make his people happy," and he
+could not bear to see those of his people who came nearest to him
+discontented. The successor of Turgot was a mere courtier, not even
+personally honest, whose career was fortunately cut short by death
+within a few months of his nomination.
+
+The war of the American Revolution was drawing near, and old Maurepas,
+the prime minister, felt the need of a competent man to take charge of
+the finances. A name was suggested to him,--that of Necker, a successful
+banker. But Necker was a Protestant, a Swiss, a nobody. The title of
+Controller was too high for him, so a new post was created, and he was
+made Director-General of the Finances, coming into office in October,
+1776.
+
+It has been the fate of Necker to excite strong enthusiasm and violent
+objurgation; but in fact he was little more than commonplace. An
+ambitious man, he wanted to make a reputation, to build up the royal
+credit, to found a national debt, like that of England. Did he really
+believe that such a debt would pay its own interest, without additional
+taxes, or did he rely on economy of expenditure and good administration,
+not only to balance the ordinary accounts, but to cover the interest of
+the war-loans which he was obliged to contract? How far did his cheerful
+manifestoes deceive himself? What might he not really have accomplished
+if the royal support had been anything more solid than a shifting
+quicksand? These questions cannot be answered satisfactorily. Neither
+Necker, nor anybody else, knew exactly what the government owed, or what
+it borrowed. The loans contracted by Necker himself are believed to have
+amounted to five hundred and thirty million livres. Of this sum it is
+thought that about two hundred millions were employed in covering the
+annual deficit for five years, and that three hundred and thirty
+millions were spent for the extraordinary demands of the war. The money
+was raised chiefly by state lotteries and by the sale of life annuities,
+although many other means also were employed.
+
+The royal lottery had been a favorite device earlier in the century. As
+practiced by Necker and some of his predecessors it combined the
+features of gambling and of investment. Every ticket, in addition to its
+chance of drawing a prize, was in itself a pecuniary obligation of the
+government, either carrying perpetual interest at four per cent., or to
+be repaid at its full price in seven or nine years without interest. The
+prizes were sums of money or annuities. Thus the ticket-holder did not
+lose his whole stake, and ran the chance of winning a fortune. But the
+operation was not brilliant for the government.
+
+Nor was the sale of annuities more judiciously managed. Here, as in the
+lotteries, Necker copied old models, without making any improvements of
+importance. No account was taken of the age of the annuitants, but
+incomes were sold at a fixed rate of ten per cent, of the capital
+deposited for one life, nine per cent, for two lives, eight and a half
+for three, eight for four. The bankers and financiers of the day were
+shrewd enough to profit by this arrangement.
+
+They bought up the obligations, and named healthy children as the
+annuitants. The chance of life of these selected persons was more than
+fifty years, and as the children were usually chosen at about the age of
+seven, the treasury would be called on to pay its annuities for an
+average term of between forty and forty-five years. As the current rate
+of interest on good security was about six per cent, the operation was
+not a very promising one for the state.
+
+In spite of all these blunders Necker was liked by the nation. He
+recognized the need of economy and honestly tried to reduce expenses. He
+succeeded in cutting off a little of the extravagance of the court and
+in simplifying the collection of the revenue. He tried to establish
+provincial assemblies and to equalize the incidence of the salt-tax. And
+above all, in order to sustain the royal credit, he took the country
+into his confidence to some extent, and prophesied pleasant things. But
+he did not stop there. The national accounts had long been considered a
+government secret; Necker resolved to publish them to the world. His
+famous "Compte rendu au roi" appeared in February, 1781. The portrait of
+the author, excellently engraved on copper, stares complacently from the
+frontispiece, above an allegorical picture, where we can make out
+Justice and Abundance, while Avarice appears to bring her treasures, and
+a lady in high, powdered hair, and no visible clothing, gazes astonished
+from the background. The contents of the report are not such as we are
+in the habit of expecting in financial documents, but are rhetorical and
+self-complacent. The ordinary revenues of the country are said to exceed
+the expenditures by ten million livres. As a matter of fact, no such
+surplus existed, but Necker was an optimist by temperament, and was
+moreover anxious to bolster credit. The nation was delighted, but
+Maurepas and the court were shocked. The cupidity of the courtiers was
+painted in the account in glowing language. Such a publication was
+dangerous in itself, and the economical measures already taken, with
+those announced as to follow, threatened many interests. Even the old
+prime minister trembled for his personal power. Necker had obtained the
+removal from office of one of the adherents of Maurepas, while the
+latter was kept in Paris by the gout. So the usual machinery of
+detraction was put in motion. Letters, pamphlets, and epigrams flew
+about. While the larger part of the public was singing Necker's praises,
+the smaller and more influential inner circle was conspiring against
+him. He might yet have prevailed but for an act of imprudence. Although
+the most conspicuous and popular man in the kingdom, he had hitherto
+been excluded from the Council of State. He now asked to be admitted to
+it. Louis XVI., whose Catholicism was his strongest conviction, replied
+that Necker, as a Protestant, was inadmissible by law. Thereupon the
+latter offered to resign his place as Director of the Finances, and the
+king, by the advice of Maurepas, accepted his resignation.[Footnote:
+Gomel, _passim._]
+
+From this time all real chance of the extrication of Louis XVI. from his
+financial difficulties, without a radical change of government,
+disappeared forever. The controllers that succeeded Necker only plunged
+deeper and deeper into debt and deficit. It is needless to follow them
+in their flounderings. A long experience of the vacillation of the
+government both as to persons and as to systems had discouraged the
+hopes of conscientious patriotism, and strengthened the opposition to
+reform of all those who were interested in abuses. From the well-meaning
+king, if left to his own ways, nothing more could be hoped. Pecuniary
+embarrassment, with Louis, as with many less important people, was quite
+as much a symptom of weakness as a result of unmerited misfortune.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+"THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA."
+
+
+We have seen that the church had an irreconcilable enemy in Voltaire;
+that the government of France had found a critic of weight and
+importance in Montesquieu; that the Economists had attacked the
+financial organization of the country. But the assaults of the
+Philosophic school were not leveled at the religious and civil
+administration alone. The very foundations of French thought, slowly
+laid through previous ages, were made in the reign of Louis XV. the
+subject of examination, and by a very dogmatic set of thinkers were
+pronounced to be valueless. Nor were men left at a loss for something to
+put in the place of what was thus destroyed. The teachings of Locke,
+explained and amplified by Condillac and many others, obtained an
+authority which was but feebly disputed. The laws against free speech
+and free printing, intended for the defense of the old doctrines,
+deterred no one from expressing radical opinions. Only persons of
+conservative and law-abiding temperament, the natural defenders of
+things existing, were restrained by legal and ecclesiastical terrors.
+The champions of the old modes of thought stood like mediaeval men at
+arms before a discharge of artillery, prevented from rushing on the guns
+of the enemy by the weight of the armor that protected them no longer.
+The new philosophy, stimulated and hardly impeded by feeble attempts at
+persecution, was therefore able to overrun the intellectual life of the
+nation, until it found its most formidable opponent in one who was half
+its ally, and who had sprung from its midst, the mighty heretic,
+Rousseau.
+
+The most voluminous work of the Philosophers is the "Encyclopaedia," a
+book of great importance in the history of the human mind. The
+conception of its originators was not a new one. The attempt to bring
+human knowledge into a system, and to set it forth in a series of folio
+volumes, had been made before. The endeavor is one which can never meet
+with complete success, yet which should sometimes be made in a
+philosophic spirit. The universe is too vast and too varied to be
+successfully classified and described by one man, or under the
+supervision of one editor. But the attempt may bring to light some
+relation of things hitherto unnoticed, and the task is one of practical
+utility.
+
+The great French "Encyclopaedia" may claim two immediate progenitors.
+The first is found in the works of Lord Bacon, where there is a
+"Description of a Natural and Experimental History, such as may serve
+for the foundation of a true philosophy," with a "Catalogue of
+particular histories by titles." The second is Chambers's Cyclopaedia,
+first published in 1727, a translation of which Diderot was engaged to
+edit by the publisher Le Breton. Diderot, who freely acknowledges his
+obligation to Bacon, makes light of that to Chambers, saying in his
+prospectus that the latter owed much to French sources, that his work is
+not the basis of the one proposed, that many of the articles have been
+rewritten, and almost all the others corrected and altered. There is no
+doubt that the whole plan of the "Encyclopaedia" was much enlarged by
+Denis Diderot himself.[Footnote: Bacon, iv. 251, 265. Morley,
+_Diderot_, i., 116. Diderot, _Oeuvres_, xiii. 6, 8. "If we
+come out successfully we shall be principally indebted to Chancellor
+Bacon, who laid out the plan of a universal dictionary of sciences and
+arts _at a time when there were, so to speak, neither sciences nor
+arts_."]
+
+This eminent man was born at Langres in 1713, the son of a worthy
+cutler. He was educated by the Jesuits, and on his refusal to enter
+either of the learned professions of law or medicine, was set adrift by
+his father,--who hoped that a little hardship would bring him to
+reason,--and found himself in Paris with no resource but the precarious
+one of letters. Diderot lived from hand to mouth for a time, sleeping
+sometimes in a garret of his own, sometimes on the floor of a friend's
+room. Once he got a place of tutor to the children of a financier, but
+could not bear the life of confinement, and soon threw up his
+appointment and returned to freedom. When any friend of his father
+turned up on a visit to the town, he would borrow, and the old cutler at
+Langres would grumble and repay. Gradually the young author rose above
+want. He became one of the first literary men of his day and one of the
+most brilliant talkers, rich in ideas, overflowing in language, subtle
+without obscurity, suggestive, and satisfying; yet always retaining a
+certain shyness, and "able to say anything, but good-morning." Yet he
+was soon carried away by the excitement of conversation and of
+discussion. He had a trick of tapping his interlocutor on the knee, by
+way of giving point to his remarks, and the Empress Catharine II. of
+Russia complained that he mauled her black and blue by the use of this
+familiar gesture, so that she had to put a table between herself and him
+for protection. Diderot was fond of the young, and especially of
+struggling authors. To them his purse and his literary assistance were
+freely given. He was delighted when a writer came to consult him on his
+work. If the subject were interesting he would recognize its
+capabilities at a glance. As the author read, Diderot's imagination
+would fill in all deficiencies, construct new scenes in the tragedy, new
+incidents, new characters in the tale. To him all these beauties would
+seem to belong to the work itself, and his friends would be astonished,
+after hearing him praise some new book, to find in it but few of the
+good things which he had quoted from it.
+
+Diderot's good nature was boundless. One morning a young man, quite
+unknown to him, came with a manuscript, and begged him to read and
+correct it. He prepared to comply with the request on the spot. The
+paper, when opened, turned out to be a satire on himself and his
+writings.
+
+"Sir," said Diderot to the young man, "I do not know you; I can never
+have offended you. Will you tell me the motive which has impelled you to
+make me read a libel for the first time in my life? I generally throw
+such things into the waste-paper basket."
+
+"I am starving. I hoped that you would give me a few crowns not to print
+it."
+
+Instead of flying into a passion, Diderot simply remarked: "You would
+not be the first author that ever was bought off; but you can do better
+with this stuff. The brother of the Duke of Orleans is in retreat at
+Saint Genevieve. He is religious; he hates me. Dedicate your satire to
+him; have it bound with his arms on the cover; carry it to him yourself
+some fine morning, and he will help you."
+
+"But I don't know the prince; and I don't see how I can write the
+dedicatory epistle."
+
+"Sit down; I'll do it for you."
+
+And Diderot writes the dedication, and gives it to the young man, who
+carries the libel to the prince, receives a present of twenty-five
+louis, and comes back after a few days to thank Diderot, who advises him
+to find a more decent means of living.
+
+The people whom the great writer helped were not always so polite. One
+day he was seeing to the door a young man who had deceived him, and to
+whom, after discovering it, he had given both assistance and advice.
+
+"Monsieur Diderot," said the swindler, "do you know natural history?"
+
+"A little; I can distinguish an aloe from a head of lettuce, and a
+pigeon from a humming-bird."
+
+"Do you know the formica leo?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It is a very clever little insect. It digs a hole in the ground, shaped
+like a funnel. It covers the surface with fine, light sand. It attracts
+silly insects and gets them to tumble in. It seizes them, sucks them
+dry, and then says: `Monsieur Diderot, I have the honor to wish you
+good-morning.'" Whereupon the young man ran downstairs, leaving the
+philosopher in fits of laughter.[Footnote: Morley, Diderot and the
+Encyclopaedists. Scherer, Diderot, passim. Morrellet, i. 29. Marmontel,
+ii. 313. Mémoire sur Diderot, par Mme. de Vandeul, sa fille (a charming
+sketch only 64 pages long) in Diderot, Mémoires, Corresp., etc., vol.
+i.]
+
+As a writer, the great fault of Diderot is one not common in France. He
+is verbose. As we read his productions, even the cleverest, we feel that
+the same thing could have been better said in fewer words. There is also
+a lack of arrangement. Diderot would never take time to plan his books
+before writing them. But these faults, although probably fatal to the
+permanent fame of an author, are less injurious to his immediate success
+than might be expected. A large part of the public does not dislike a
+copious admixture of water in its intellectual drink. And Diderot
+reconciles the reader to his excessive flow of words by the
+effervescence of his enthusiasm. It is because his mind is overfull of
+his subject that the sentences burst forth so copiously.
+
+The first writing of Diderot that need engage our attention is his
+"Letter on the Blind," published in 1749. This letter deals with the
+question, how far congenital deprivation of one of the senses, and
+especially blindness, would modify the conceptions of the person
+affected; how far the ideas of one born blind would differ from the
+ideas of those who can see. The bearing of this question on Locke's
+theory that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection is
+obvious. Diderot, in a manner quite characteristic of him, took pains to
+examine the cases of persons who had actually been blind and had
+recovered their sight, and where these failed him, supplied their places
+by inventions of his own.[Footnote: Condorcet says of Diderot, "faisant
+toujours aimer la verité, même lorsqu'entraîné par son imagination il
+avait le malheur de la méconnaître." D'Alembert, _Oeuvres_, i. 79
+(_Éloge par Condorcet_). There is a great deal in this remark.
+Unless we can enter into the state of mind of men who tell great lies
+from a genuine love of abstract truth, we shall never understand the
+French Philosophers of the 18th century.]
+
+Diderot's principal witness is Nicholas Saunderson, a blind man with a
+talent for mathematics, who between 1711 and 1739 was a professor at the
+University of Cambridge. Diderot quotes at some length the atheistic
+opinions of Saunderson, giving as his authority the Life of the latter
+by "Dr. Inchlif." No such book ever existed, and the opinions are the
+product of Diderot's own reasoning. When an author treats us in this way
+our confidence in his facts is hopelessly lost. His reasons, however,
+remain, and the most striking of these, in the "Letter on the Blind," is
+the answer given to one who attempts to prove the existence of God by
+pointing out the order found in nature, whence an intelligent Creator is
+presumed. In answer to this, the dying Saunderson is made to say: "Let
+me believe... that if we were to go back to the birth of things and of
+times, and if we should feel matter move and chaos arrange itself, we
+should meet a multitude of shapeless beings, instead of a few beings
+that were well organized.... I can maintain that these had no stomach,
+and those no intestines; that some, to which their stomach, palate, and
+teeth seemed to promise duration, have ceased to exist from some vice of
+the heart or the lungs; that the abortions were successively destroyed;
+that all the faulty combinations of matter have disappeared, and that
+only those have survived whose mechanism implied no important
+contradiction, and which could live by themselves and perpetuate their
+species."[Footnote: Diderot, i. 328.] The step from the idea here
+conveyed to that of the struggle for existence and of the survival of
+the most fit is not a very long one.
+
+For his "Letter on the Blind," Diderot was imprisoned at Vincennes. The
+real cause of this punishment is said to have been a slight allusion in
+the "Letter" to the mistress of a minister of state. But this may not
+have been the only cause. There occurred about this time one of those
+temporary seasons of severity which are necessary under all governments
+to meet occasional outbursts of crime, but to which weak and corrupt
+governments are liable with capricious frequency. Diderot sturdily
+denied the authorship of the "Letter," lying as thoroughly as he had
+done in that piece of writing itself, when he invented the name of
+Inchlif and forged the ideas of Saunderson. This time there was more
+excuse for his untruth; for the disclosure of his printer's name might
+have sent that unfortunate man to prison or to the galleys. The
+imprisonment of Diderot himself, at first severe, was soon lightened at
+the instance of Voltaire's mistress, Madame du Châtelet. Diderot was
+allowed to see his friends, and even to wander about the park of
+Vincennes on parole. After three months of captivity he was released by
+the influence of the booksellers interested in the "Encyclopaedia."
+[Footnote: Morley, _Diderot_, i. 105.]
+
+The first volume of that great work was in preparation. Diderot, whose
+untiring energy was unequal to the task of editing the whole, and who
+was, moreover, insufficiently trained for the work in some branches, and
+notably in mathematics, gathered about him a band of workers which
+increased as time went on, until it included a great number of
+remarkable men. First in importance to the enterprise, acting with
+Diderot on equal terms, was D'Alembert, an almost typical example of the
+gentle scholar, who refused one brilliant position after another to
+devote himself to mathematics and to literature. Next, perhaps, should
+be mentioned the Chevalier de Jaucourt, a man of encyclopaedic learning,
+who helped in the preparation of the book with patient enthusiasm,
+reading, dictating, and working with three or four secretaries for
+thirteen or fourteen hours a day. Montesquieu, whose end was
+approaching, left behind him an unfinished article on Taste. Voltaire
+not only sent in contributions of his own, but constantly gave
+encouragement and advice, as became the recognized head of the
+Philosophic school. Rousseau, whose literary reputation had recently
+been made by his "Discourses," contributed articles on music for a time;
+but subsequently chose to quarrel with the Encyclopaedists, whose minds
+worked very differently from his. Turgot wrote several papers on
+economic subjects, and in the latter part of the work, Haller, the
+physiologist, and Condorcet were engaged.
+
+The publication of the "Encyclopaedia" lasted many years, and met with
+many vicissitudes. The first volume appeared in 1751, the second in
+January, 1752. The book immediately excited the antagonism of the church
+and of conservative Frenchmen generally. On the 12th of February, 1752,
+the two volumes were suppressed by an edict of the Council, as
+containing maxims contrary to royal authority and to religion. The edict
+forbade their being reprinted and their being delivered to such
+subscribers as had not already received their copies. The continuation
+of the work, however, was not forbidden. It was believed at the time
+that the administration took this step in order to silence the Jesuits,
+to please the Archbishop of Paris, and perhaps to be beforehand with the
+Parliament, which might have taken severer measures. It was also
+intimated that certain booksellers, jealous of the success of the
+undertaking, were exerting influence on the authorities. All these
+enemies of the "Encyclopaedia" were not content with their first
+triumph. A few days after the appearance of the edict, the manuscripts
+and plates were seized by the police. They were restored to the editors
+three months later. The work was one in the performance of which many
+Frenchmen took pride. It is said that the Jesuits had tried to continue
+it, but had failed even to decipher the papers that had been taken from
+Diderot. The attack of the archbishop, who had fulminated against the
+great book in an episcopal charge, had served the purpose of an
+advertisement; such was the wisdom and consistency of the repressive
+police of that age.
+
+From 1753 to 1757 the publication went on without interruption, one
+volume appearing every year. Seven volumes had now been published,
+bringing the work to the end of the letter G. The subscription list,
+originally consisting of less than two thousand names, had nearly
+doubled. But the forces of conservatism rallied. In 1758 appeared
+Helvetius's book "De l'Esprit," of which an account will be given in the
+next chapter, and which shocked the feelings of many persons, even of
+the Philosophic school. Few things could, indeed, have made the
+Philosophers more unpopular than the publication by one of their own
+party of a very readable book, in which the attempt was made to push
+their favorite ideas to their last conclusions. This is a process which
+few abstract theories can bear, for the limitations of any statement are
+in fact essential parts of it. But human laziness so loves formulas, so
+hates distinctions, that extreme and unmodified expressions are seized
+with avidity by injudicious friends and exulting foes.
+
+The feeling of indignation awakened in the public by the doctrines of
+Helvetius gave opportunity to the opponents of the "Encyclopaedia." That
+work was denounced to the Parliament of Paris, together with the book
+"De l'Esprit." The learned court promptly condemned the latter to the
+flames. The great compilation, on the other hand, of which the volume of
+Helvetius was said to be a mere abridgment, was submitted to nine
+commissioners for examination, and further publication was suspended
+until they should report. While proceedings before the Parliament were
+still pending, the Council of State intervened, and the "Encyclopaedia"
+was arbitrarily interdicted, its privilege taken away, the sale of the
+volumes already printed, and the printing of any more, alike forbidden.
+
+It is characteristic of the condition of things existing under the weak
+and vacillating government of Louis XV, that the interdict pronounced
+against the "Encyclopaedia" did not stop its printing. The editor and
+the publishers determined to prepare in private the ten volumes that
+were still unmade, and to launch them on the world at one time. To this
+work Diderot turned with boundless energy. D'Alembert, however, was
+discouraged, and retired from the undertaking. For six years Diderot
+labored on, never safe from interference on the part of the government,
+and managing a great enterprise, with its staff of contributors and its
+scores of workmen, while constantly liable to arrest and imprisonment.
+Diderot worked indefatigably also with his pen; writing articles on all
+sorts of subjects,--philosophy, arts, trades, and manufactures. To learn
+how things were made he visited workshops and handled tools, baffled at
+times by the jealousy and distrust of the workmen, who were afraid of
+his disclosing their secret processes, or of his giving information to
+the tax-gatherer.
+
+The sharpest blow was yet to fall. The "Encyclopaedia" was issued by an
+association of publishers which paid Diderot a moderate salary for his
+services. Of these publishers one, named Le Breton, was the chief. He is
+said to have been a dull man, incapable of understanding any work of
+literature. It was his maxim that literary men labor for glory, and
+publishers for pay, and consequently he divided the income of the
+"Encyclopaedia" into two parts, giving to Diderot the glory, the danger,
+and the persecution, and reserving the money for himself and his
+partners. From his position in Paris he felt sure of being able to
+foresee any new order launched against the "Encyclopaedia" while the
+printing was in progress, and of providing against it. But the time of
+publication was likely to be marked by a new storm. Under these
+circumstances Le Breton resorted to a trick. After Diderot had read the
+last proof of every sheet, the publisher and his foreman secretly took
+it in hand, erased and cut out all that seemed rash or calculated to
+excite the anger of religious or conservative people, and thus reduced
+many of the principal articles to fragments. Then, to make the wrong
+irremediable, they burned the manuscripts, and quietly proceeded with
+the printing. This process would seem to have been continued for more
+than a year. One day in 1764, when the time of publication was drawing
+near, Diderot, having occasion to consult an article under the letter S,
+found it badly mutilated. Puzzled at first, he presently recognized the
+nature of the trick that had been played him. He turned to various parts
+of the book, to his own articles and to those of other writers, and
+found in many places the marks of the outrage. Diderot was in despair.
+His first thought was to throw up the undertaking and to announce the
+fraud to the public. The injury that would have been done to Le Breton's
+innocent partners, the danger of publishing the fact that the
+"Encyclopaedia" was still in process of printing,--a fact of which the
+officers of the government had only personal and not official
+knowledge,--determined him to go on with the publication. It may be that
+Le Breton's changes had been less extensive than Diderot, in his first
+excitement on making the discovery, had been led to believe. In
+examining the "Encyclopaedia" no alteration of tone is observable
+between the first seven and the subsequent volumes; and Grimm, to whom
+we owe the story, acknowledges that none of the authors engaged with
+Diderot in the work complained or even noticed that their articles had
+been altered.
+
+In 1765 the ten volumes which completed the alphabet (making seventeen
+of this part of the work) were delivered to the subscribers. As a
+precautionary measure, those for foreign countries were sent out first,
+then those for the provinces, and lastly those for Paris. The eleven
+volumes of plates were not published until 1772. A supplement of four
+volumes of text and one of plates appeared in 1776 and 1777, and three
+years later a table of contents in two volumes.[Footnote: Several
+volumes of the original edition have the imprint of Neufchatel, and the
+supplement has that of Amsterdam, although all were actually printed in
+Paris. The _Encyclopaedia_ was reprinted as a whole at Geneva and
+at Lausanne. Editions also appeared at Leghorn and at Lucca; besides
+volumes of selections and abbreviations. Morley, _Diderot_, i. 169.
+For the _Encyclopaedia_, see Morley, _Diderot_, _passim._
+Soberer, _Diderot_; the correspondence of D'Alembert and Voltaire
+in the works of the latter. Diderot, _Mémoires_, i. 431 (Nov. 10,
+1760). Grimm, vii. 44, and especially ix. 203-217, an excellent article.
+Barbier, v. 159, 169; vii. 125, 138, 141; also in the work itself the
+word _Encyclopédie_ in vol. v. Mr. Morley thinks that the article
+_Genève_, in vol. vii. of the _Encyclopaedia_, especially
+excited the church and the Parliament to desire its suppression. The
+same article drew from Rousseau his letter to D'Alembert on the theatre
+at Geneva, which marks the separation between Rousseau and the
+Philosophers. But in the _Discours préliminaire_ D'Alembert had
+attacked Rousseau's _First Discourse_. For the excitement caused at
+Geneva by the article, see Voltaire, lvii. 438 (Voltaire to D'Alembert,
+Jan. 8, 1758). It is perhaps superfluous to remark that Grimm's account
+of the character and ideas of Le Breton, which has been followed above,
+is probably not unbiased.]
+
+What was the great book whose history was so full of vicissitudes? Why
+did the French government, the church, and the literary world so excite
+themselves about a dictionary? The "Encyclopaedia" had in fact two
+functions; it was a repository of information and a polemical writing.
+Condorcet has thus stated the purpose of the book. Diderot, he says,
+"intended to bring together in a dictionary all that had been discovered
+in the sciences, what was known of the productions of the globe, the
+details of the arts which men have invented, the principles of morals,
+those of legislation, the laws which govern society, the metaphysics of
+language and the rules of grammar, the analysis of our faculties, and
+even the history of our opinions."[Footnote: D'Alembert,
+_Oeuvres_, i. 79 (_Éloge par Condorcet_).] So comprehensive a
+scheme was not without danger to those classes which claimed an
+exclusive right to direct men's minds. As for the double nature of the
+book, we have the words of two of the men most concerned in its
+preparation. First there is an anecdote by Voltaire, certainly
+inaccurate, probably quite imaginary, but setting forth most clearly one
+cause of the interest which the "Encyclopaedia" excited.
+
+"A servant of Louis XV. has told me that one day when the king his
+master was supping at Trianon with a small party, the conversation
+turned on shooting and then on gunpowder. Somebody said that the best
+powder was made of equal parts of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal. The
+Duke of La Vallière, better informed, maintained that for cannon the
+proper proportion was one part of sulphur, one of charcoal, and five of
+well-filtered, well-evaporated, and well-crystallized saltpetre.
+
+"`It is absurd,' said the Duke of Nivernois, `that we should amuse
+ourselves every day with killing partridges in the park of Versailles,
+and sometimes with killing men or getting ourselves killed on the
+frontier, and not know exactly what we kill with.'
+
+"`Alas! we are in the same state about all things in the world,'
+answered Madame de Pompadour. `I don't know of what the rouge is
+composed that I put on my cheeks, and I should be much puzzled to say
+how my stockings are made.'
+
+"`It is a pity,' then said the Duke of La Vallière, `that His Majesty
+should have confiscated our encyclopaedic dictionaries, which cost us a
+hundred pistoles apiece. We should soon find in them the answers to all
+our questions.'
+
+"The king justified his confiscation. He had been warned that the
+twenty-one volumes in folio, that were to be found on all the ladies'
+dressing-tables, were the most dangerous thing in the world for the
+French monarchy; and he wished to see for himself if that were true
+before he allowed the book to be read. After supper he sent for a copy,
+by three servants of his bed-chamber, each of whom brought in seven
+volumes, with a good deal of difficulty.
+
+"They saw, in the article on gunpowder, that the Duke of La Vallière
+was right. Madame de Pompadour soon learned the difference between the
+old-fashioned Spanish rouge, with which the ladies of Madrid colored
+their cheeks, and the rouge of the ladies of Paris. She learned that
+the Greek and Roman ladies were painted with the purple that came from
+the murex, and consequently that our scarlet was the purple of the
+ancients; that there was more saffron in the Spanish rouge and more
+cochineal in the French.
+
+"She saw how her stockings were made on the loom, and the machine used
+for the purpose filled her with astonishment. `Oh, what a fine book,
+sir!' she cried. `Have you confiscated this store-house of all useful
+things in order to own it alone, and to be the only wise man in your
+kingdom?'
+
+"They all threw themselves upon the volumes, like the daughters of
+Lycomedes on the jewels of Ulysses. Each found at once whatever he
+sought. Those that had lawsuits on hand were surprised to find the
+decision of their cases. The king read all the rights of his crown.
+'But, really,' said he, `I don't know why they spoke so ill of this
+book.'
+
+"`Do you not see, sir,' said the Duke of Nivernois, `that it is because
+it is very good? People do not attack poor and flat things of any kind.
+When the women try to make a new-comer appear ridiculous, she is sure to
+be prettier than they are.'
+
+"All this time they were turning over the pages, and the Count of C----
+said aloud, `Sir, you are too happy that men should have been found in
+your reign able to know all the arts and to transmit them to posterity.
+Everything is here, from the way of making a pin to that of casting and
+of aiming your cannon; from the infinitesimal to the infinite. Thank God
+for having given birth in your kingdom to men who have thus served the
+whole world. Other nations are obliged to buy the "Encyclopaedia," or to
+imitate it. Take all I have, if you like, but give me back my
+"Encyclopaedia."'
+
+"`But they say,' rejoined the king, `that this necessary and admirable
+work has many faults.'
+
+"`Sir,' replied the Count of C----, `at your supper there were two
+ragouts that were failures. We did not eat them, but we had a very good
+supper. Would you have had the whole of it thrown out of the window on
+account of those two ragouts?' The king felt the force of this
+reasoning, each one took back his book, and it was a happy day.
+
+"But Envy and Ignorance did not consider themselves beaten; those two
+immortal sisters kept up their cries, their cabals, their persecutions.
+Ignorance is very learned in that way.
+
+"What happened? Foreigners bought out four editions of this French work
+which was proscribed in France, and made about eighteen hundred thousand
+dollars.
+
+"Frenchmen, try hereafter to understand your own interests."[Footnote:
+This story is printed among "Faceties." Morley points out that Mme. de
+Pompadour died before the volumes containing "Poudre" and "Rouge" were
+published. Voltaire, xlviii. 57.]
+
+We see by this anecdote, written probably to puff the book, that the
+"Encyclopaedia" was recommended for the same advantages which have since
+given value to scores of similar works. No other collection of general
+information so large and so useful was then in existence. Elaborate
+descriptions of mechanism abound in it, and are illustrated by beautiful
+plates. We see before us the simple beginnings of the great
+manufacturing movement of modern times. There are articles on looms, on
+cabinet work, on jewelry, side by side with all that the science of that
+day could teach of anatomy, medicine, and natural history. Nor were more
+frivolous subjects forgotten. Nine plates are given to billiards and
+tennis. Choregraphy, or the art of expressing the figures of the dance
+on paper, occupies six pages of text and two of illustrations, with the
+remark that it is one of the arts of which the ancients were ignorant,
+or which they have not transmitted to us. There is a proposal for a new
+and universal language, based of course on French; and we are reminded
+by an article on Alcahest, a mysterious drug of the alchemists, to which
+two columns and a half are devoted, that the eighteenth century was
+nearer to the Middle Ages than the nineteenth. It was an idea of the
+compilers of the "Encyclopaedia" that if ever civilization should be
+destroyed mankind might turn to their volumes to learn to restore it.
+[Footnote: History and geography are almost passed over in the
+Encyclopaedia, while the arts and sciences are fully treated. The
+contempt for history, as the tale of human errors, was common among the
+Philosophers.]
+
+Yet all this mere learning was not what came nearest to the heart of
+Diderot and his fellow-workers. In a moment of excitement, when smarting
+from the excisions of the publisher Le Breton, he was able to write that
+the success of the book was owing in no degree to ordinary, sensible,
+and common things; that perhaps there were not two men in the world who
+had taken the trouble to read in it a line of history, geography,
+mathematics, or even of the arts; and that what all sought in the
+"Encyclopaedia" was the firm and bold philosophy of some of its writers.
+[Footnote: When in a cooler mood Diderot boasts that there are people
+who have read the book through. See the word _Encyclopédie_, vol.
+v.]
+
+This philosophy appears in the Preliminary Discourse by D'Alembert; it
+comes up again time after time throughout the volumes. The metaphysics
+are founded chiefly on those of Locke, who "may be said to have created
+metaphysics as Newton created physics," by reducing them to "what in
+fact they should be, the experimental physics of the soul." Beyond this
+there is little unity of opinion, although much agreement of spirit. We
+have articles on government and on taxation, liberally conceived, but
+not agreeing as to actual measures. We have a prejudice in favor of
+democracy, as the ideal form of government, and the worship of
+theoretical equality, but contempt for the populace, "which discerns
+nothing;" the reduction of religion to the sentiments of morality and
+benevolence, and great dislike for its ministers and especially for the
+members of monastic orders; the belief in the Legislator, in natural
+laws and liberties, including the inalienable right of every man to
+dispose of his own person and property and to do all things that the
+laws allow; faith in the Philosopher, a man governed entirely by reason
+as the Christian is governed by grace. To him, Truth is not a mistress
+corrupting his imagination. He knows how to distinguish what is true,
+what is false, what is doubtful, and he glories in being willing to
+remain undetermined when he has not the material for judgment. The
+Philosopher understands as well the doctrines that he rejects as those
+that he adopts. His spirit brings everything to its true principles. The
+nations will be happy when kings are Philosophers, or when Philosophers
+are kings.
+
+There was no uniformity of execution in the "Encyclopaedia." The editors
+were not free to reject all that they did not approve. They had to
+consider the feelings of their writers, and sometimes, no doubt, to
+print a poor article by a valued hand. There were many long
+dissertations where short articles would have been more to the purpose.
+Diderot was not the man to repress the natural tendency of contributors
+to wordiness. Then official censors and possible prosecutors had to be
+considered. "Doubtless," says D'Alembert to Voltaire, in reply to the
+latter's remonstrances, "doubtless we have bad articles on theology and
+metaphysics; but with theological censors and a privilege, I defy you to
+make them better. There are other articles less conspicuous where all is
+repaired. Time will enable people to distinguish what we thought from
+what we have said." ... "It is certain," he says in another place, "that
+several of our workers have put in worthless things, and sometimes
+declamation; but it is still more certain that I have not had it in my
+power to alter this state of things. I flatter myself that the same
+judgment will not be passed on what several of our authors and I myself
+have furnished for this work, which apparently will go down to posterity
+as a monument of what we would and what we could not do." On the whole
+the chief of the Philosophers was satisfied. "Oh, how sorry I am," he
+exclaims, "to see so much paste among your fine diamonds; but you shed
+your lustre on the paste."[Footnote: Correspondence of Voltaire and
+D'Alembert (A. to V., July 21, 1757; Jan. 11, 1758; V. to A., Dec. 29,
+1757). Voltaire, lvii. 296, 444, 421.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+HELVETIUS, HOLBACH AND CHASTELLUX.
+
+
+There are two books issuing so directly from what may be called the
+orthodox school of Philosophers, and so closely connected with the
+"Encyclopaedia" and its authors, that they should be noticed next to the
+great compilation itself. One of them has already been mentioned. It
+bears the untranslatable title "De l'Esprit," a word which in this
+simple and unmodified form means exactly neither wit nor spirit, but
+something between the two and different from either.
+
+The author, Helvetius, was one of those clever men whose ambition it is
+to shine. The son of a fashionable physician, he had made a fortune as a
+farmer of the revenue. He had been addicted, in his youth, to the
+pursuit of women and of literature, and had subsequently shown
+moderation in leaving his lucrative office and the dissipations of the
+town and retiring into the country with a charming wife. For eight
+months in the year they lived at Vore, not unvisited by Philosophers;
+for four they kept open house in Paris. Both were good natured,
+charitable, and benevolent. Among the Philosophers Helvetius held the
+place of the rich and clever worldling, so often found in literary
+circles.
+
+The treatise "De l'Esprit" has for its object the setting forth of the
+doctrine of utility in its extreme form. As a preliminary argument all
+the operations of the mind are reduced to sensation. "When by a
+succession of my ideas, or by the vibration which certain sounds cause
+in the organ of my ears, I recall the image of an oak, then my interior
+organs must necessarily be nearly in the same situation as they were at
+the sight of that oak. Now this situation of the organs must necessarily
+produce a sensation; it is, therefore, evident that memory is sensation.
+
+"Having stated this principle, I say further that it is in the capacity
+which we have of perceiving the resemblances or the differences, the
+agreement or the disagreement, which different objects have with each
+other, that all the operations of the mind consist. Now this capacity is
+nothing else than physical sensibility; therefore everything is reduced
+to sensation."
+
+Utility, according to Helvetius, is the foundation of all our moral
+feelings. Each person praises as just in others only those actions which
+are useful to himself; every nation or society praises what is useful to
+it in its corporate capacity. "If a judge acquits a guilty man, if a
+minister of state promotes an unworthy one, each is just, according to
+the man protected. But if the judge punishes, or the minister refuses,
+they will always be unjust in the eyes of the criminal and of the
+unsuccessful."... "The Christians who justly spoke of the cruelties
+practiced on them by the pagans as barbarity and crime, did they not
+give the name of zeal to the cruelties which they, in their turn,
+practiced on these same pagans?" As the physical world is subject to
+laws of motion, so is the moral world to those of interest. All men
+alike strive after their own happiness. It is the diversity of passions
+and tastes, some of which are in accordance with the public interest and
+others in opposition to it, which form our virtues and our vices. We
+should, therefore, not despise the wicked, but pity them, and thank
+heaven that it has given us none of those tastes and passions which
+would have obliged us to seek our happiness in other people's
+misfortunes. This opinion, although extravagantly stated, was, as we
+have seen, but the caricature of the doctrine of utility, as taught by
+Locke and held by his followers.
+
+Helvetius took great pains to make the treatment of his theme
+interesting. He labored long over every chapter. His pages overflow with
+anecdotes, with sneers at monks, and with excuses for lust. They show
+the belief in the omnipotence of legislation which was common in his
+day. A large space is devoted to minimizing the natural inequality of
+mankind, and attributing the differences observable among men to chance
+or to education. If Galileo had not happened to be walking in a garden
+in Florence where certain workmen asked him a question about a pump, he
+would not, according to Helvetius, have discovered the weight of the
+atmosphere. It was the fall of the apple which gave Newton his theory of
+gravitation. Such puerilities as these disgust us in the book; yet the
+theory that greatness is but the result of an inconsiderable accident,
+was not unnatural in one who had probably hit on an idea which struck
+him as telling, and believed that he had thereby achieved greatness.
+[Footnote: Helvetius, i. 130, 183; ii. 7, and passim. For Helvetius, see
+Nouvelle Biographie universelle. Morley, Diderot, ii. 141. Grimm, iv.
+80. Morellet, i. 71, 140. Morellet represents himself as a tame cat in
+Helvetius's house. Marmontel, ii. 115 (liv. vi.) an excellent
+description. Compare Locke, i. 261, ii. 97. The doctrine of utility is
+probably nearly as old as philosophy itself. It has been well suggested
+that although not the ultimate motive of virtue, utility may be the test
+of morals. It was, in a measure, Helvetius that inspired Bentham.
+Morley, Diderot, ii. 154.]
+
+Helvetius had endeavored to carry the doctrines of the French followers
+of Locke to their last logical conclusions, but the successful
+accomplishment of that task was reserved for a stronger and steadier
+hand than his. Baron Holbach was an amiable and good man, the constant
+friend of the Encyclopaedists. At his house they often met, so that it
+came to be known among them as the Café de l'Europe, and its master as
+the "maître d'hôtel" of Philosophy. But these nicknames were used in
+good part. Holbach had none of the flippancy of Helvetius. His book, the
+"System of Nature," is a solemn, earnest argument, proceeding from a
+clear brain and a pure heart. Our nature may revolt at his theories, but
+we cannot question his honesty or his benevolence. The book, published,
+as the fashion was, under a false name, yet expresses the inmost
+convictions of the writer.[Footnote: The name assumed was that of
+Mirabaud, once secretary to the Academy, who had died before the book
+appeared. See Morley, _Diderot_, ii. 173, as to the authorship of
+the _System of Nature_. It has sometimes been attributed to
+Diderot, but it seems clear from internal evidence that Diderot could
+not have written it. The style and the thought are both too compact to
+proceed from that diffuse thinker and writer. But Diderot, who had great
+influence on many men, may have suggested some of the ideas.]
+
+"Men," he says, "will always make mistakes, when they abandon experience
+for systems born of the imagination." Man exists in nature and can
+imagine nothing outside of nature. Let him, therefore, cease to seek
+beyond the world he inhabits for beings which shall procure for him that
+happiness which nature refuses to give him. "Man is a being purely
+physical. Moral man is but that being considered from a certain point of
+view, that is to say, relatively to some of his ways of acting, due to
+his particular organization." All human actions, visible and invisible,
+are the necessary consequences of man's mechanism, and of the impulsions
+which it receives from surrounding entities.
+
+The universe is made up of matter and motion, cause and effect. Nature
+is the great whole, resulting from the assemblage of different matters,
+combinations, and motions. By motion only do we know the existence and
+properties of other beings and distinguish them from each other. There
+is continual action and reaction in all things. Love and hate in men are
+like attraction and repulsion in physics, with causes more obscure. All
+beings, organic and inorganic, tend to self-preservation. This tendency
+in man is called self-love.
+
+There is in reality no order nor disorder, since all things are
+necessary. It is only in our minds that there exists the model of what
+we call order; like other abstract ideas, it corresponds to nothing
+outside of ourselves. Order is no more than the faculty of coordinating
+ourselves with the beings that surround us, or with the whole of which
+we form a part. But if we wish to apply the word to nature, it may stand
+for a succession of actions or motions which we suppose to contribute to
+a given end. We call beings intelligent when they are organized like
+ourselves, and can act toward an end which we understand.
+
+No two beings are exactly alike; differences, whether called physical or
+moral, being the result of their bodily qualities. These differences are
+the cause and the support of human society. If all men were alike they
+would not need each other. It is a mistake to complain of this
+inequality, by which we are put under the fortunate necessity of
+combining. In coming together men have made an explicit or implied
+compact, by which they have bound themselves to render mutual services
+and not to injure each other. But as each man's nature leads him to seek
+to satisfy his own passions or caprices without regard to others, law
+was established to bring him back to his duty. This law is the sum of
+the wills of the society, united to fix the conduct of its members, or
+to direct their actions towards the common aim of the association. For
+convenience, certain citizens are made executors of the popular will,
+and are called monarchs, magistrates, or representatives, according to
+the form of the government. But that form may be changed, and all the
+powers of all persons under it revoked, at the will of the society
+itself, by which and for which all government is established. Laws, to
+be just, must have for their invariable end the general interests of
+society; they must procure for the greatest number of citizens the
+advantages for which those citizens have combined. A society whose
+chiefs and whose laws do not benefit its members loses all rights over
+them. Chiefs who do harm to any society lose the right to command it. By
+not applying these maxims the nations are made unhappy. By the
+imprudence of nations, and by the craft of those to whom power had been
+entrusted, sovereigns have become absolute masters. They have claimed to
+hold their powers from Heaven and not to be responsible to any one on
+earth. Hence politics have become corrupt and no more than a form of
+brigandage. Man unrestrained soon turns to evil. Only by fear can
+society control the passions of its rulers. It must, therefore, confer
+but limited powers on any one of them, and divide those forces which, if
+united, would necessarily crush it.[Footnote: Holbach is clearly
+indebted both to Rousseau and to Montesquieu.]
+
+Government influences alike, and necessarily, the physical and moral
+welfare of nations. As its care produces labor, activity, abundance, and
+health, its neglect and its injustice produce indolence, discouragement,
+famine, contagion, vices, and crimes. It can bring to light, or can
+smother talents, skill, and virtue. In fact the government, distributing
+rank, wealth, rewards and punishments; master of the things in which men
+have learned from childhood to place their happiness, acquires a
+necessary influence on their conduct, inflames their passions, turns
+them as it will, modifies and settles their manners and customs.
+[Footnote: _Moeurs_, a word for which we have no exact equivalent.
+It includes the idea of morals as well as that of customs.] These are,
+in whole nations, as in individuals, but the conduct, or general system
+of will and action which necessarily results from their education, their
+government, their laws, their religious opinions, their wise or foolish
+institutions. In short, manners and customs are the habits of nations;
+good when they produce solid and true happiness for society, and
+detestable in the eyes of reason, in spite of the sanction of laws,
+usage, religion, public opinion or example, when they have the support
+only of habit and prejudice, which seldom consult experience and good
+sense. No action is so abominable that it is not, or has not been,
+approved by some nation. Parricide, infanticide, theft, usurpation,
+cruelty, intolerance, prostitution, have been allowed and even
+considered meritorious by some of the peoples of the earth. Religion
+especially has consecrated the most revolting and unreasonable customs.
+
+The cause of the wickedness and corruption of men is that nowhere are
+they governed according to their nature. Men are bad, not because they
+are born bad, but because they are made so. The great and powerful
+safely crush the poor and unfortunate, who try, at the risk of their
+lives, to return the evil they have suffered. The poor attack openly, or
+in secret, that unjust society which gives all to some of its children
+and takes all from others.
+
+The rights of a man over his fellows can be founded only on the
+happiness which he procures for them, or for which he gives them cause
+to hope. No mortal receives from nature the right to command. The
+authority which the father exercises over his family is founded on the
+advantages which he is supposed to bestow upon it. Ranks in political
+society have their basis in real or imaginary utility. The rich man has
+rights over the poor man solely by virtue of the well-being which he may
+bestow upon him. Genius, talents, art, and skill have claims only on
+account of the pleasant and useful things with which they furnish
+society. To be virtuous is to make people happy.
+
+A society enjoys all the happiness of which it is capable when the
+greater number of its members is fed, clothed, and lodged; when most men
+can, without excessive labor, satisfy the cravings of nature. Men's
+imagination should be satisfied when they are sure that the fruits of
+their labor cannot be taken from them, and that they are working for
+themselves. Beyond this all is superfluity, and it is foolish that a
+whole nation should sweat to give luxuries to a few persons who can
+never be content because their imaginations have become boundless.
+
+Religion is a delusion. The soul, born with the body, is childish in
+children, adult in manhood, grows old with advancing years. It is vain
+to suppose that the soul survives the body. To die is to think, to feel,
+to enjoy, to suffer, no more. Let us reflect on death, not to encourage
+fear and melancholy, but to accustom ourselves to look at it with
+peaceful eyes, and to throw off the false terror with which the enemies
+of our peace try to inspire us.
+
+Utility is the touchstone of systems, opinions, and actions; it is the
+measure of our very love of truth. The most useful truths are the most
+admired; we call those truths great which most concern the human race;
+those futile which concern only a few men whose ideas we do not share.
+
+The doctrine of utility is combined with that of necessity. Most of the
+French Philosophers were necessarians, but Holbach expressed the
+doctrine in a more extreme form than the others. Will, according to him,
+is a modification of the brain by which it is disposed, or prepared, to
+set our other organs in motion. The will is necessarily determined by
+the quality and pleasantness of the ideas which act upon it.
+Deliberation is the oscillation of the will when moved in different
+directions by opposing forces; determination is the final prevalence of
+one force over the other. There is no difference between the man who
+throws himself out of a window and the man who is thrown out, except
+that the impulse on the latter comes from something outside of himself,
+and that of the former from something within his own mechanism.
+[Footnote: Chaudon, the Benedictine, probably the cleverest of the
+clerical writers of the time, thus attacks the doctrine of necessity, as
+set forth by Holbach. The author of the _System_ has certainly
+given out very fine maxims of morality, very pathetic exhortations to
+virtue; but with his principles this can be but a joke. It is an
+absurdity, like that of a man who, recognizing that his watch was only a
+machine, should not fail to exhort it every day to prevent its getting
+out of order. Grosse, Diet. d'antiphilosophisme, 923. Holbach would
+probably have replied that he was necessarily obliged to exhort, and
+that Chaudon was fatally forced to answer.]
+
+Nature has made men neither good nor bad; it has made them machines. Man
+is virtuous only in obedience to the call of interest. Morals are
+founded on our approbation of those actions which are advantageous to
+the race. When good actions benefit others and not ourselves our
+approbation of them is similar to the admiration we feel for a fine
+picture belonging to some one else. The good man is he whose true ideas
+have shown him that his happiness lies in a line of conduct which others
+are forced by their own interests to like and approve. By virtue we
+acquire the good will of our neighbors, and no man can be happy without
+it. Our self-love becomes a hundred times more delightful when to it is
+joined the love of others for us. Let us remember that the most
+impracticable of all designs is that of being happy alone.
+
+To this point in his argument Holbach had only repeated with strength,
+clearness and consistency what the school of the Philosophers from
+Voltaire to Helvetius had either affirmed or hinted. In his second
+volume, however, he boldly cut loose from his predecessors and avowed
+his disbelief in any God. Voltaire and Rousseau were theists, with
+different sorts of faith, and the Philosophers, although treating all
+churches, and especially all priests, with contempt, had retained, at
+least in speech, some remnant of theism. But Holbach declared that God
+was an illusion, devised by the fears and the ignorance of mankind. "The
+idea of Divinity," he says, "always awakens afflicting ideas in our
+minds. "By the word "God" men mean the most hidden or remote cause; they
+use the word only when the chain of material and known causes ceases to
+be visible to them. It is a vague name which they apply to a cause short
+of which their indolence, or the limits of their knowledge, forces them
+to stop. Men found nature deaf to their cries; they therefore imagined
+an intelligent master over it, hoping that he would listen to them.
+
+This theme is elaborated by Holbach throughout his second volume. Here
+as elsewhere he writes with seriousness and conviction, although some of
+his logical positions are assailable. Never before in France had
+materialism, necessarianism and atheism been so clearly and forcibly
+expounded. The very Philosophers were alarmed. Voltaire hastened to
+write an article on God so unconvincing, that it can hardly have
+convinced himself. It amounts to little more than an argument that God
+is the most probable of hypotheses, and it admits that there may be two
+or several gods as well as one. It is not unlikely that Voltaire thought
+it necessary for his peace in the world to protest against so outspoken
+a book as the "System of Nature."
+
+The true answer to Holbach is to be found in a different order of ideas
+from any that Voltaire was prepared to accept. Yet Locke might have
+taught him that if there is no logical reason to believe in the
+existence of mind, there is as little to believe in the existence of
+matter. Experience might have shown him that men do not always seek the
+thing which they believe most useful to themselves. The old and favorite
+doctrine of utility labors under the disadvantage that it has never
+shown, nor ever can show, an adequate reason why any man should care for
+another or for the race. And as for the existence of God,--that can no
+more be proved by argument than the existence of matter, mind, or the
+_non-ego_.
+
+Helvetius and Holbach had worked out the theories of the school to their
+last philosophical conclusion. A younger writer in the last years of the
+reign of Louis XV. was to furnish the complete application of them. The
+Chevalier de Chastellux is well known in America by the book of travels
+which he wrote when he accompanied the Marquis of Rochambeau in the
+Revolutionary War. Chastellux was just then at the height of his
+reputation. He had published in 1772 a book which, although now almost
+forgotten, is still interesting as a link between the thought of the
+last century and that of a large school of thinkers to-day. The title is
+"Of Public Felicity, or considerations on the fate of men in the
+different Epochs of History," and the motto is _Nil Desperandum_.
+"So many people have written the history of men," says Chastellux; "will
+not that of humanity be read with pleasure?" And again: "Several authors
+have carefully examined if such a Nation were more religious, more
+sober, more war-like than another; none has yet sought to discover which
+was the happiest."
+
+The object of inquiry being thus indicated, it becomes of the first
+importance to consider what test of happiness Chastellux will propose.
+He leaves us in no doubt on this point. "A happy nation is not one which
+lives with little; the Goths and Vandals lived with little, and they
+sought abundance in other regions. A happy nation is not one which is
+hardened to trouble and labor; the Goths and Vandals were hardened to
+labor, and they sought elsewhere for softness and rest. A happy nation
+is not one which is strongest in battle; it fights only to obtain peace
+and the commodities of life. A happy nation is one which enjoys ease and
+liberty, which is attached to its possessions, and, above all things,
+which does not desire to change its condition." And in another place he
+asks, what are some of the indications, the symptoms of public felicity.
+Two of them, he says, are naturally presented: agriculture and
+population. "I name agriculture before population," he continues,
+"because if it happens that a nation which is not numerous cultivates
+carefully a great quantity of land, it will result that this nation
+consumes much, and adds to the food necessary to life the ease and
+commodity which make its happiness. If, on the other hand, the increase
+of the people is in proportion to that of the agriculture, what can we
+conclude except that this multiplication of the human race, as of all
+other species, comes solely from its well-being. Agriculture is,
+therefore, an indication of the happiness of the nations anterior and
+preferable to population." The most certain indication of felicity is a
+large proportional consumption of products; a high rate of living. The
+marvelous and even the sublime are to be dreaded; but "all that
+multiplies men in the nations, and harvests on the surface of the earth,
+is good in itself, is good above all things, and preferable to all that
+seems fine in the eyes of prejudice."[Footnote: Chastellux finds it
+hard to stick quite close to his definition of felicity. Of the English
+he says, "Such are the true advantages of this nation; which, joined to
+the safety of its property and the inestimable privilege of depending
+only on the law, would make it the happiest on earth, if its climate,
+its ancient manners and customs, and its frequent revolutions had not
+turned it toward discontent and melancholy. But these considerations do
+not belong to our subject." ii. 144.]
+
+And as material good is the only good, so it is in modern times and in
+civilized countries that the highest point reached by humanity is to be
+found. "If wisdom be the art of happy living; if philosophy be truly the
+love of wisdom, as its name alone would give us to understand, the
+Greeks were never philosophers."
+
+To show that modern nations are increasing the ease and comfort of life
+to a point unknown before is no difficult task. Chastellux enumerates
+the discoveries of physical science, and touches on the achievements of
+learning and the arts, then calls on his readers to look on all these
+but as payments on account in the progress of our knowledge; as so much
+of the road already passed in the vast course of the human mind. Here we
+have the truly modern ideal of progress; the end of government the
+greatest happiness of the greatest number, and happiness dependent
+merely on material conditions. Morals under this system are but a branch
+of medicine. Religion is an old-fashioned prejudice. Let us push on and
+unite the world in one great, comfortable, well-fed family. Such is the
+last practical advice of the French Philosophic school of the eighteenth
+century and of its unconscious followers in this. If the conclusion does
+not satisfy the highest aspirations of the human race, that is perhaps
+because of some flaw in the premises.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ROUSSEAU'S POLITICAL WRITINGS.
+
+
+In passing from the study of the Philosophers to that of Rousseau, we
+turn from talent to genius, from system to impulse. The theories of the
+great Genevan were drawn from his own strange nature, with little regard
+for consistency. They belong together much as the features of a
+distorted and changeful countenance may do; their unity is personal
+rather than systematic. And while Rousseau was, from certain aspects and
+chiefly in respect to his conduct, the most contemptible of the great
+thinkers of his day, he surpassed most of the others in constant
+literary sincerity, and in occasional elevation of thought and feeling.
+Voltaire, although never swerving long from his own general
+philosophical scheme, would lie without hesitation for any purpose.
+Diderot would quote from non-existent books to establish his theories.
+But no one can read Rousseau without being convinced that he believed
+what he wrote, at least at the moment of writing it. Truthfulness of
+this kind is quite consistent with inaccuracy, and it is probable that
+some incidents in Rousseau's autobiographical writings have been wrongly
+remembered, colored by prejudice, or embellished by vanity. Some of them
+may even be completely fictitious; the author caring little for facts
+except as the ornaments and illustrations of ideas. But what he thought
+in the abstract Rousseau was quite ready to write down, caring little
+for the feelings or the opinions of any sect or party; or even of that
+great public whose thought was as law to the Philosophers. He deserved
+to profit by his sincerity, and he has done so. His many and great
+faults were well known to his contemporaries; they are told in his
+posthumous "Confessions" in a way to show them more dark than any
+contemporary could have imagined; yet such is the evident frankness of
+those evil and repugnant volumes that many decent men have got from them
+a sneaking kindness for Rousseau, and an inclination to take him at his
+own estimate, as one no worse than other people.
+
+This estimate of himself is never to be forgotten in reading his books.
+"You see what I am," he seems to say at every turn; "now, I am a good
+man." In the belief in his own comparative goodness he was firmly fixed.
+His theories of life were largely founded on it. For Rousseau was an
+introspective thinker, and thus in seeming opposition to the
+intellectual tendency of his age. Voltaire and Diderot were interested
+chiefly in the world around them. Locke had viewed his own mind
+objectively; he had attempted the feat of getting outside of it, in
+order to take a good look at it; and in so doing he had missed seeing
+some important parts of it, because they were internal. Rousseau studied
+himself and the world within himself. Thus while he was as immoral in
+his actions as any of the Philosophers, he was more religious than any
+of them. Voltaire's theism was little more than a remnant of early
+habit, strengthened by a notion that some sort of religion was necessary
+for purposes of police. To Rousseau, a world without a God would have
+been truly empty. But as his religion was theistic, and not orthodox;
+as, with characteristic meanness, he was ready to profess Catholicism or
+Calvinism as he might find it convenient, he has been classed among
+atheists by churchmen. In so far as this is mere vituperation it is
+perhaps deserved, for Rousseau's life deserved almost any conceivable
+vituperation; but as an historical fact, Rousseau's faith was quite as
+living as that of many of his revilers.[Footnote: Rousseau looked on
+Catholicism and Calvinism rather as civil systems than as ideas, and
+accepted them in the same way in which a man may live under a foreign
+government, of whose principles he does not approve.]
+
+Every thinking human being has a philosophy and a theology,--a
+metaphysical foundation for his beliefs, and an opinion concerning the
+Deity. The only escape from having these is to think of nothing
+outside of the daily routine of life. The attempt to be without them
+on any other terms generally ends in having but crude and
+contradictory opinions on the most important subjects of human
+interest. The theology of Rousseau will be considered later.
+Philosophical systems were his especial bugbear, and it is only
+incidentally that he formulates his metaphysical ideas. His general
+tendency of belief was toward intuition. Justice and virtue he
+believed to be written in the hearts of men, disturbed rather than
+elucidated by the observation of the learned and the reflection of the
+ingenious. As to the ground of our actions he was less at one with
+himself. Sometimes, in agreement with the prevalent philosophy of his
+day, he assumed that men are moved only by their own interest. At
+times, however, he recognized two principles of human action anterior
+to reason; the first of which is care for our own well-being; the
+second, a natural repugnance to see others suffer. In making this
+distinction he separated from the school of thinkers to whom pity and
+affection are but refined forms of self-love. This is characteristic
+of Rousseau, who was free from that craving for system which is the
+snare of those minds in which logic and pure reason prevail over
+acuteness of self-observation.
+
+The society of the eighteenth century had grown very rigid and
+artificial. The struggle of the Philosophers was to bring men back in
+one way and another to a life founded rationally on a few simple laws
+derived from the nature of things. Of these laws the leaders themselves
+had not always a true perception, nor did they always derive the right
+rules from such laws as they perceived. But their struggle was ever for
+reason, as they understood it, and generally for simplicity. In this
+work Rousseau was a leader. He was constantly preaching the merits and
+the charms of a simple life. In his denunciations of elaborateness, of
+luxury, and even of civilization, he was often mistaken, sometimes
+absurd. But his authority was great. He set a fashion of simplicity, and
+he exerted an influence which went far beyond fashion, and has helped to
+modify the world to this day.
+
+There was another quality beside introspection in which Rousseau was the
+precursor of the literary men of the nineteenth century, and that is the
+love of nature. To say that he was the first great writer to enjoy and
+describe natural scenery would be a gross exaggeration. But most of
+Rousseau's predecessors valued the world out of doors principally for
+its usefulness, and in proportion to its fertility. Rousseau is perhaps
+the first great writer who fairly reveled in country life; for whom lake
+and mountain, rock and cloud, tree and flower, had a constant joy and
+meaning. The true enjoyment of natural scenery, generally affected
+nowadays, is not given in a high degree to most people; in a very few it
+may be as intense as the enjoyment of music is in many more; but most
+people can get from scenery, as from other beautiful things, a
+reasonable and modest enjoyment, if the object for their admiration be
+well pointed out to them. Rousseau needed no such instruction. To some
+extent he furnished it to the modern world. The genuineness of his love
+of nature is partly shown by the fact that she was as dear to him in her
+simpler as in her grander aspects. The grass filled him with delight as
+truly as the mountain-peak; indeed, he felt contempt for those who look
+afar for the beauty that is all about us, and his admiration was not
+reserved for the unusual. Nor did he fill his pages with description. It
+is in his autobiographical writings and in reference to its effect on
+himself that he most often mentions natural scenery. Recognizing
+instinctively that the principal subjects of language are thought and
+action, as the chief interests of painting are form and color, this
+writer so keenly alive to natural beauty is guiltless of word painting.
+
+Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva on the 28th of June, 1712. His
+mother, the daughter of a Protestant minister, died at his birth. His
+father, a clockmaker by trade, a man of eccentric disposition, had
+little real control over the boy, and, moreover, soon moved away from
+the city on account of a quarrel with its government, leaving his son
+behind him. Jean Jacques was first put under the care of a minister in a
+neighboring village; then passed two or three years with an uncle in the
+town. At the age of eleven he was sent to a notary's office, whence he
+was dismissed for dullness and inaptitude. He was next apprenticed to an
+engraver, a man of violent temper, who by his cruelty brought out the
+meanness inherent in the boy's weak nature. Rousseau had not been
+incapable of generosity; perhaps he never quite became so. But, with a
+cowardly temperament, he especially needed firm kindness and judicious
+reproof, and these he did not receive. He took to pilfering from his
+master, who, in return, used to beat him. Rousseau's thefts were, in
+fact, not very considerable,--apples from the larder, graving tools from
+the closet. His worst offenses at this time were not such as would make
+us condemn very harshly a lad of spirit. But Jean Jacques was not such a
+lad. The last of his scrapes as an apprentice was important only from
+its consequences. One afternoon he had gone with some comrades on an
+expedition beyond the city gates. "Half a league from the town," say the
+"Confessions," "I hear the retreat sounded, and hasten my steps; I hear
+the drum beat, and run with all my might; I arrive out of breath, all in
+a sweat; my heart beats; I see from a distance the soldiers at their
+posts; I rush on; I cry with a failing voice. It was too late. When
+twenty yards from the outpost I see the first drawbridge going up. I
+tremble as I see in the air those terrible horns, sinister and fatal
+augury of that terrible fate which was at that moment beginning for me.
+
+"In the first violence of my grief I threw myself on the glacis and bit
+the earth. My comrades laughed at their misfortune and made the best of
+it at once. I also made up my mind, but in another way. On the very spot
+I swore that I would never go back to my master, and on the morrow, when
+the gates were opened and they returned to town, I bade them adieu
+forever."
+
+Thus did Rousseau become a wanderer at the age of sixteen. The duchy of
+Savoy, into which he first passed, adjoined the republic of Geneva, and
+was a country as fervently Catholic as the other was ardently
+Calvinistic. The young runaway soon fell in with a proselytizing priest,
+who gave him a good dinner and dispatched him, for the furtherance of
+his conversion, to a singular lady, living not far off, at Annecy. This
+lady, named Madame de Warens, about twelve years older than Rousseau,
+was not long after to occupy a large place in his life. She belonged to
+a Protestant family of Vevay, on the north side of the Lake of Geneva.
+She, like him, had fled from her country, and apparently for no more
+serious reason. In her flight she had left her husband and abjured her
+religion. In morals she had a system of her own, and gave herself to
+many men, without interested motives, but with little passion. She was a
+sentimental, active-minded woman, of small judgment; pleasing rather
+than beautiful, short of stature, thickset, but with a fine head and
+arms. Madame de Warens received the boy kindly, and on this first
+occasion of their meeting did little more than speed him on his way to
+Turin, where he entered a monastery for the express purpose of being
+converted to Catholicism. In nine days the farce was completed, and the
+new Catholic turned out into the town, with about twenty francs of small
+change in his pocket, charitably contributed by the witnesses of the
+ceremony of his abjuration. It is needless to dwell on his adventures at
+this time. He was a servant in two different families. After something
+more than a year he left Turin on foot, and wandered back to Annecy and
+to Madame de Warens.
+
+The period of Rousseau's life in which that lady was the ruling
+influence lasted ten or twelve years. The situation was one from which
+any man of manly instincts would have shrunk, a condition of dependence
+on a mistress, and on a mistress who made no pretense of fidelity. In a
+desultory way Rousseau learned something of music at this time, and made
+some long journeys on foot, one of them taking him as far as Paris. This
+man, morally of soft fibre, was able to endure and enjoy moderate
+physical hardship; and from early education felt most at home in simple
+houses and amid rude surroundings. At last, disgusted with the
+appearance of a new rival in Madame de Warens's changeable household,
+Rousseau left that lady and drifted off to Lyons; then, after once
+trying the experiment of returning to his mistress and finding it a
+failure, to Paris.
+
+For more than eight years after his final separation from Madame de
+Warens, Rousseau did nothing to make any one suppose him to be a man of
+genius. He obtained and threw up the position of secretary to the French
+ambassador at Venice; he supported himself as a musician and as a
+private secretary; he lived from hand to mouth, having as a companion
+one Therese Levasseur, a grotesquely illiterate maid servant, picked up
+at an inn. Their five children he successively took to the Foundling,
+losing sight of them forever. To the mother he was faithful for the most
+part, although not without some amorous wanderings, for many years.
+
+Up to 1749, then, when Rousseau was thirty-seven years old, he had
+published nothing of importance. He had, however, some acquaintance
+with literary men, being known merely as one of those adventurers
+without any settled means of existence, who may always be found in
+cities, and with whom Paris at this time appears to have been
+over-furnished. In features he was plain, in manners awkward; much
+given to making compliments to women, but generally displeasing to
+them, although at times interesting when roused to excitement. The
+Swiss Jean Jacques had little of the sparkling wit which the Frenchmen
+of his day rated very high, but he had much subtlety of observation
+and many ideas. He constantly applauded himself in his writings on
+being sensible rather than witty. In fact he was neither, but very
+ingenious and eloquent. In character he was self-indulgent but not
+luxurious, sensitive, vain, and sentimental. To this man,--if we may
+believe his own account, and I think in the main we may do so,--there
+came by a sudden flash an idea which altered his whole life, and which
+has materially affected millions of lives since he died. The idea was
+an evil seed, and it found an evil soil to grow in.
+
+The summer of 1749 was a hot one. Diderot, just rising into notice as a
+man of letters, had been imprisoned in the Castle of Vincennes, for his
+"Letter on the Blind," and his friends were allowed to come and see him.
+Rousseau used to visit him every other afternoon, walking the four or
+five miles which lie between the centre of Paris and the castle. The
+trees along the road were trimmed after the dreary French fashion, and
+gave little shade. From time to time Rousseau would stop, lie down on
+the grass and rest, and he had got into the habit of taking a book or a
+newspaper in his pocket. It was in this way that his eye happened to
+fall on a paragraph in the "Mercure de France," announcing that the
+Academy of Dijon would give a prize the next year for the best essay on
+the following subject: "Whether the Progress of the Arts and Sciences
+has tended to corrupt or to improve Morals."
+
+From that moment, according to Rousseau, a complete change came over
+him. Struck with sudden giddiness, he was like a drunken man. His heart
+palpitated and he could hardly walk or draw breath. Throwing himself at
+the foot of a tree, he spent half an hour in such agitation that when he
+arose he found the whole front of his waistcoat wet with tears, although
+he had not known that he was shedding any. Thus did his great theory of
+the degeneracy of man under civilization burst upon him.[Footnote:
+Rousseau, xviii. 135 (Confessions, Part. ii. liv. viii); xix. 358
+(Seconde Lettre à M. de Malesherbes). Exaggerated as the above story
+probably is, we may reasonably believe that it comes nearer the truth
+than that told by Diderot in after years, when he and Rousseau had
+quarreled. In that version, Rousseau, desiring to compete for the prize,
+consulted Diderot as to which side he should take, and was advised to
+assume that which other people would avoid. Diderot, Oeuvres, xi. 148.
+Rousseau's thoughts had been wandering into subjects akin to that of the
+prize essay before he had seen the announcement in the Mercure de
+France. Musset-Pathay, ii. 363. Moreover, if Rousseau was imaginative,
+and not always to be believed about facts, Diderot was a tremendous
+liar.]
+
+The very question asked by the academy suggests the possibility of an
+answer unfavorable to civilization, but Rousseau's treatment of it was
+such as to form the beginning of an epoch in the history of thought. It
+is under the rough coat of the laborer, he says, and not under the
+tinsel of the courtier, that strength and vigor of body will be found.
+Before art had shaped our manners, they were rustic but natural, and
+men's actions freely expressed their feelings. Human nature was no
+better, at bottom, than now, but men were safer because they could more
+easily read each other's minds, and thus they avoided many vices. The
+advance of civilization brings increase of corruption. Constantinople,
+where learning was preserved during the dark ages, was full of murder,
+debauchery, and crime. Contrast with its inhabitants those primitive
+nations which have been kept from the contagion of vain knowledge: the
+early Persians, the Germans described by Tacitus, the modern Swiss, the
+American Indians, whose simple institutions Montaigne prefers to all the
+laws of Plato. These nations know well that in other lands idle men
+spend their time in disputing about vice and virtue, but they have
+considered the morals of these argumentative persons and have learned to
+despise their doctrine.
+
+"Astronomy is born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred,
+flattery, and lying; geometry of avarice; physics of a vain curiosity;
+all, and morals themselves, of human pride. The arts and sciences,
+therefore, owe their birth in our vices; we should have less doubt of
+the advantage to be derived from them if they sprang from our virtues."
+... "Answer me, illustrious philosophers, you from whom we know why
+bodies attract each other in a vacuum; what are the relations of areas
+traversed in equal times in the revolutions of the planets; what curves
+have conjugate points, points of inflection and reflection; how man sees
+all things in God; how the soul and body correspond without
+communication, as two clocks would do; what stars maybe inhabited; what
+insects reproduce their kind in extraordinary ways,--tell me, I say, you
+to whom we owe so much sublime knowledge--if you had taught us none of
+these things, should we be less numerous, less well-governed, less
+redoubtable, less flourishing, or more perverse?"
+
+This is the theme of the First Discourse, a theme most congenial to the
+nature of Rousseau. His ill-health, his dreamy habit of mind, his
+vanity, all made him long for a state of things as different as possible
+from that about him.
+
+"Among us," he says, "it is true that Socrates would not have drunk the
+hemlock; but he would have drunk from a more bitter cup of insulting
+mockery and of contempt a hundred times worse than death." Such
+sensitiveness as this belongs to Rousseau himself. With what disdain
+would the healthy-minded Socrates have laughed at the suggestion that he
+was troubled by the contempt or the mockery of those about him. How
+gayly would he have turned the weapons of the mockers on themselves.
+Rousseau had neither the sense of humor nor the joy of living, which
+added so much to the greatness of the Atheman. His theories are
+especially pleasing to the disappointed and the weak, and therein lies
+their danger; for they tend, not to manly effort, for the improvement of
+individual circumstances or of mankind, but to vain dreaming of
+impossible ideals. There is a luxury that softens, but there is also a
+luxury that causes labor. A nation without astronomy, or geography, or
+physics, is generally less numerous, less redoubtable, less flourishing,
+and sometimes less well governed than a civilized nation. It is true
+that in the arts and sciences, in the deeds and in the condition of men,
+there is an admixture of what is base; but there is no baser nor more
+dangerous habit of mind than that which for every action seeks out the
+worst motive, for every state the most selfish reason.[Footnote: Long
+after the publication of the First Discourse, Rousseau insisted that he
+had never intended to plunge civilized states into barbarism, but only
+to arrest the decay of primitive ones, and perhaps to retard that of the
+more advanced, by changing their ideals. Oeuvres, xx. 275 (II.
+Dialogue); xxi. 34 (III. Dialogue). Rousseau's writings generally must
+be taken as expressions of feeling, quite as much as attempts to change
+the world. They are growls or sighs, rather than sermons.]
+
+While Rousseau's First Discourse is pernicious in its general teaching,
+it is rich in eloquent passages, and it contains some of those sensible
+remarks which we seldom fail to find in its author's works. At the time
+of writing it, as later, he was interested in education,--the subject on
+which his influence has been, on the whole, most useful.
+
+"I see on every side," he says, "enormous establishments where youth is
+brought up at great expense to learn everything but its duties. Your
+children will be ignorant of their own language, but will speak others
+which are not in use anywhere; they will know how to make verses which
+they will hardly be able to understand themselves; without knowing how
+to distinguish truth from falsehood, they will possess the art of
+disguising both from others by specious arguments; but those words,
+magnanimity, equity, temperance, humanity, courage, will be unknown to
+them; that sweet name of country[Footnote: Patrie,--a word seemingly
+necessary, but which the English language manages to do without.] will
+never strike their ears; and if they hear of God, it will be less to
+fear Him than to be afraid of Him. `I would as lief,' said a sage, `that
+my schoolboy had spent his time in a tennis-court; at least his body
+would be more active.' I know that children must be kept busy, and that
+idleness is the danger most to be feared for them. What, then, should
+they learn? A fine question surely! Let them learn what they must do
+when they are men, and not what they must forget."[Footnote: Compare
+Montaigne, i. 135 (liv. i. chap. xxv.).]
+
+The First Discourse not only took the prize at Dijon, but attracted a
+great deal of notice in Paris, and immediately gave Rousseau a
+distinguished place among men of letters. Controversy was excited,
+refutations attempted. In 1753 the Academy of Dijon again offered a
+prize for an essay on a subject evidently connected with the former one:
+"What is the Origin of Inequality among Men, and whether it is
+authorized by Natural Law." Again Rousseau competed, and this time the
+prize was given to some one else, but Rousseau's essay was published,
+and takes rank among the important writings of its author and of its
+time. In the Second Discourse we see the development of the ideas of the
+First. Rousseau composed an imaginary history of mankind, starting from
+that being of his own creation, the happy savage. He thinks that man in
+the primitive condition, having no moral relations nor known duties,
+could be neither good nor bad; unless these words are taken in a purely
+physical sense, and those things are called vices in the individual
+which may interfere with his own preservation, and those are called
+virtues which may contribute to it. In this case, Rousseau believes that
+he must be called the most virtuous who least resists the simple
+impulses of nature; a mistake surely, for what natural impulses are more
+simple than those which turn a man aside from all sustained exertion,
+and what impulses tend more than these to the destruction of the
+individual and of the species?
+
+Rousseau's savage has but few desires, and those of the simplest, and he
+is dependent on no one for their satisfaction. In him natural pity is
+awake, although obscure, while in civilized man it is developed, but
+weak. The Philosopher will not leave his bed although his fellow-beings
+be slaughtered under his window, but will clap his hands to his ears and
+quiet himself with arguments. The savage is not so tranquil, and gives
+way to the first impulse. In street fights the populace assembles and
+prudent folk get out of the way. It is the rabble and the fishwives who
+separate the combatants, and prevent respectable people from cutting
+each other's throats.[Footnote: Rousseau says in his Confessions
+(Oeuvres, xviii. 205 n. Part. ii. liv. viii.), that this heartless
+philosopher was suggested to him by Diderot, who abused his confidence,
+and gave his writings at this time a hard tone and a black appearance.
+The abuse of confidence is nonsense, but the comic picture of the
+philosopher, with his hands on his ears, may well have come from
+Diderot. Rousseau was always in deadly earnest.]
+
+Love, he says, is physical and moral. The physical side is that general
+desire which leads to the union of the sexes. The moral side is that
+which fixes that desire on one exclusive object, or at least that which
+gives the exclusive desire a greater energy. Now it is easy to see that
+this moral side of love is a factitious feeling, born of the usage of
+society, and vaunted by women with much skill and care in order to
+establish their empire, and to give dominion to the sex which ought to
+obey. This feeling is dull in the savage, who has no abstract ideas of
+regularity or beauty; he is not troubled with imagination, which causes
+so many woes to civilized man. "Let us conclude that the savage man,
+wandering in forests, without manufactures, without language, without a
+home, without war, and without connections, with no need of his kind,
+and no desire to injure it, perhaps never recognizing one person
+individually, subject to few passions, and sufficient to himself, had
+only the feeling and the intelligence proper to his state; that he felt
+only his real needs; he looked only at those things which he thought it
+was for his interest to see, and his intelligence made no more progress
+than his vanity. If, by chance, he made some discovery, he could not
+communicate it, not recognizing even his own children. The art perished
+with the inventor. There was neither education nor progress; the
+generations multiplied uselessly; and, as all started from the same
+point, the centuries went by with all the rudeness of the first age; the
+species was already old, and man still remained a child."
+
+Inequalities among savage men would be small. Those which are physical
+are often caused by a hardening or an effeminate life; those of the
+mind, by education, which not only divides men into the rude and the
+cultivated, but increases the natural differences which nature has
+allowed among the latter; for if a giant and a dwarf walk in the same
+road, every step they take will separate them more widely. And if there
+are no relations among men, their inequalities will trouble them very
+little. Where there is no love, what is the use of beauty? What
+advantage can people who do not speak derive from wit; or those who have
+no dealings from craft? "I constantly hear it said," cries Rousseau,
+"that the strong will oppress the weak. But explain to me what is meant
+by the word "oppression." Some men will rule with violence, others will
+groan in their service, obeying all their caprices. This is exactly what
+I observe among us; but I do not see how it could be said of savage men,
+who could hardly be made to understand the meaning of servitude and
+domination. One man may well take away the fruit that another has
+picked, the game he has killed, the cave that was his shelter; but how
+will he ever succeed in making him obey? And what can be the chains of
+dependence among men that possess nothing? If I am driven from one tree,
+I need only go to another; if I am tormented in any place, who will
+prevent my moving elsewhere? Is there a man so much stronger than I, and
+moreover so depraved, so lazy, and so fierce as to compel me to provide
+for his maintenance while he remains idle? He must make up his mind not
+to lose sight of me for a single moment, to have me tied up with great
+care while he is asleep, for fear I should escape or kill him; that is
+to say, he is obliged to expose himself willingly to much greater
+trouble than that which he wishes to avoid, and than that which he gives
+me. And after all, if his vigilance is relaxed for a moment, if he turns
+his head at a sudden noise, I take twenty steps through the forest, my
+chains are broken, and he never sees me again as long as he lives."
+
+Rousseau recognized that his state of nature was not like anything that
+had existed on our planet.[Footnote: This concession probably took the
+form it did, partly to satisfy the censor, or the Academy of Dijon,
+jealous for Genesis. "Religion commands us to believe that God himself
+having removed men from the state of nature, immediately after the
+creation, they are unequal because he has willed that they should be
+so." Such remarks as this are common in all the writings of the time,
+although less so in those of Rousseau than in those of most of his
+contemporaries. They are evidently intended to satisfy the authorities,
+and to be simply over looked by the intelligent reader.] But that
+consideration troubled him not at all. Let us begin, he says, by putting
+aside all facts; they do not touch the question. This is the constant
+practice of the philosophers of certain schools, but few of them
+acknowledge it as frankly as Rousseau. Had the facts of human nature and
+human history been seriously considered, we should have no Republic of
+Plato, no Utopia of More; the world would be a very different place from
+what it is; for these cloudy cities, the laws of whose architecture seem
+contrary to all the teachings of physics, yet gild with their glory and
+darken with their shadows the solid temples and streets beneath them.
+
+In the second part of his essay, Rousseau follows the development of
+human society. "The first man," he says, "who, having enclosed a piece
+of ground, undertook to say, `This is mine,' and found people simple
+enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many
+crimes, wars, murders, how much misery and horror would not he have
+spared the human race, who, pulling up the stakes or filling the ditch,
+should have cried to his fellows, `Beware of listening to that impostor.
+You are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all, and the land
+to none.'"
+
+But this benefactor did not make his appearance. Soon all the land was
+divided among a certain number of occupiers. Those whose weakness or
+indolence had prevented their getting a share were obliged to sink into
+slavery, or to rob their richer neighbors. Then followed civil wars,
+tumult and rapine. At last those who had the land conceived the most
+deliberate plot that ever entered into the human mind. They persuaded
+the poorer people to join with them in establishing an association which
+should defend all its members and ensure to each one the peaceful
+possession of his property. "Such was the origin of society and laws,
+which gave new bonds to the weak, new strength to the rich, irrevocably
+destroyed natural liberty, established forever the laws of property and
+inequality, turned adroit usurpation into settled right, and, for the
+profit of a few ambitious men, subjected thenceforth all the human race
+to labor, servitude, and misery."
+
+But on the whole the stage of development which seemed to Rousseau the
+happiest was not the state of complete isolation. He supposes that at
+one time mankind had assembled in herds, and had made some simple
+inventions. A rude language had been formed, huts were built. Men had
+become more fierce and cruel than at first. The condition was
+intermediate between the indolence of the primitive state, and the
+petulant activity of self-love now seen in the world. This, he thought,
+was the stage reached by most savages known to Europeans; it was the
+most desirable; and he remarks that no savage has yet adopted
+civilization, whereas many Frenchmen have joined Indian tribes, and
+taken up a savage mode of life.
+
+In closing the Second Discourse, Rousseau thus sums up his conclusions.
+"It follows from this exposition that inequality, being almost nothing
+in the state of nature, draws its force and growth from the development
+of our faculties and from the progress of the human spirit, and becomes
+at last stable and legal by the establishment of property and the laws.
+It follows also that moral inequality, authorized by positive law only,
+is contrary to natural law whenever it does not coincide in the same
+proportion with physical inequality; a distinction which shows
+sufficiently what should be thought in this respect of the kind of
+inequality which reigns among all civilized nations, since it is
+manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a child
+should command an old man, a fool lead a wise man, and a handful of
+people be glutted with superfluity, while the hungry multitude is in
+want of necessaries."
+
+The Discourse on Inequality was sent by Rousseau to Voltaire, and drew
+forth a characteristic letter from the pontiff of the Philosophers. "I
+have received, sir, your new book against the human race. I thank you
+for it. You will please the men to whom you tell disagreeable truths,
+but you will not correct them. It is impossible to paint in stronger
+colors the horrors of human society, from which our ignorance and
+weakness promise themselves so many consolations. No one ever spent so
+much wit in trying to make us stupid; when we read your book we feel
+like going on all fours. Nevertheless, as it is more than sixty years
+since I lost the habit, I am conscious that it is impossible for me to
+take it up again, and I leave this natural attitude to those who are
+more worthy of it than you and I. Nor can I take ship to go out and join
+the savages in Canada; first, because the diseases which bear me down
+oblige me to stay near the greatest physician in Europe, and because I
+should not find the same relief among the Missouris; secondly, because
+there is war in those regions, and the example of our nations has made
+the savages almost as cruel as we are." Voltaire then goes on to
+complain of his own sufferings as an author, but to vaunt the influence
+of letters. It is not Petrarch and Boccaccio, he says, that made the
+wars of Italy; the pleasantries of Marot did not cause the massacre of
+Saint Bartholomew's Day; nor the tragedy of the Cid produce the riots of
+the Fronde. Great crimes have generally been committed by ignorant great
+men. It is the insatiable cupidity, the indomitable pride of mankind,
+which have made this world a vale of tears; from Thamas Kouli-Kan, who
+could not read, to the custom-house clerk, who only knows how to cipher.
+[Footnote: August 30, 1755. Voltaire, lvi. 714.]
+
+This letter is neither very complimentary nor very conclusive in its
+treatment of Rousseau's position, but it may be said to mark his
+official reception into the guild of literary men. He was presently
+engaged in new work. He wrote an article on Political Economy for the
+great "Encyclopaedia," in which, reversing the teaching of the Second
+Discourse, he maintains that "it is certain that the right of property
+is the most sacred of all the rights of citizens, and more important in
+some respects than liberty itself; either because it more closely
+concerns the preservation of life, or because, property being easier to
+take away and harder to defend than persons, that should be most
+respected which is most easily ravished; or again, because property is
+the true foundation of civil society, and the true guarantee of the
+engagements of the citizens; for if property did not answer for
+persons, nothing would be so easy as to elude duties and to laugh at
+the laws."[Footnote: Rousseau, _Oeuvres_, xii. 41.] And further
+on, in the same article, he calls property the foundation of the social
+compact, whose first condition is that every one be maintained in the
+peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to him. We must not wonder at seeing
+Rousseau thus change sides from day to day. A dreamer and not a
+philosophic thinker, he perceived some truths and uttered many
+sophistries, speaking always with the fire of conviction and a fatal
+eloquence.
+
+It is needless to enter into the detail of Rousseau's life at this
+time, the time when his most remarkable work was done. Labor was
+always painful and irritating to him, and it was perhaps the
+irksomeness of his tasks that drove him into something not unlike
+madness.[Footnote: There is little doubt that Rousseau was at one time
+really insane, subject to the delusion that he was being persecuted.
+His insanity did not become very marked until the time of the real
+persecutions undergone after the publication of _Émile_. See his
+Biographies and _Le Docteur Châtelain, La folie de J. J. Rousseau_,
+Paris, 1890. He was, of course, always eccentric and ill balanced; and
+was often rendered irritable by a painful disease, caused by a
+malformation of the bladder. Morley, _Rousseau_, i. 277, etc.
+_Oeuvres_, xviii. 155 (_Conf._ Part. ii. liv. viii.).]
+
+Yet he kept on writing with enthusiasm. He speaks of himself as moved in
+these years by the contemplation of great objects; ridiculously hoping
+to bring about the triumph of reason and truth over prejudice and lies,
+and to make men wiser by showing them their true interests. He learned
+at this time, he says, to meditate profoundly, and for a moment
+astonished Europe by productions in which vulgar souls saw only
+eloquence and wit, but in which those persons who inhabit ethereal
+regions joyfully recognized one of their own kind.[Footnote: Rousseau,
+_Oeuvres_, xx. 275 (II. Dialogue).]
+
+The best known and probably the most important of Rousseau's political
+writings is the "Contrat Social," or "Social Compact," which followed
+the Second Discourse after an interval of eight years, thus coming out
+near the end of the period of its author's greatest literary activity.
+In this essay, which is intended to be but a fragment of a larger work
+on government, Rousseau lays down the conditions which should, as he
+thinks, govern the lives of men united to form a true state. Indeed, he
+believes that any government not founded on these principles is
+illegitimate, resting merely on force and not on right. A nation thus
+wrongly governed is but an aggregation, not an association. It is
+without public weal or body politic.
+
+There was nothing original with Rousseau in the idea of a social
+compact. That idea may be traced in the writings of Plato, who speaks of
+it as one already familiar. But it did not become a leading doctrine
+with writers on politics until the publication of Hooker's
+"Ecclesiastical Polity" in 1594. In that book it was contended that
+there is no escape from the anarchy which exists before the
+establishment of law, but by men "growing into composition and agreement
+amongst themselves, by ordaining some kind of government public, and
+yielding themselves subject thereunto." Through the seventeenth century
+the theory grew and flourished. It was treated as the foundation of
+absolute government by Hobbes, of free government by Locke; it was
+recognized by Grotius. It received its embodiment in the cabin of the
+Mayflower, when the Pilgrims did solemnly and mutually, in the presence
+of God and one another, covenant and combine themselves together into a
+civil body politic. By the time of Rousseau the social compact had
+become one of the commonplaces of political thought.[Footnote: See a
+history of the social compact in A. Lawrence Lowell, _Essays on
+Government_. Plato, ii. 229 (_The Republic_, Book ii.). Hooker,
+i. 241. Hobbes, _Leviathan, passim._ Locke, v. 388 (_Of Civil
+Government_, Section 87). Morion's _New England's Memorial_,
+37.] Men recognized, more or less vaguely, that in the case of most
+countries no definite solemn agreement could actually be shown to have
+been made, but in their inability to find the record of such a contract
+writers were willing to assume one, express or implied. What, then, were
+the exact conditions of the compact? Rousseau put the question as
+follows: "To find a form of association which shall protect with all the
+common strength the person and property of each associate, and by which
+each one, uniting himself to all, may yet obey only himself and remain
+as free as before." And he undertook to solve the problem by proposing
+"the total alienation of every associate, with all his rights, to the
+whole community," which he supported by saying that, as every one gave
+himself up entirely, the condition was equal for all; and that as the
+condition was equal for all, no one was interested in making it onerous
+for others.
+
+It will be noticed that there is a variation between the thing sought
+and the thing found. Rousseau, having promised that each man shall obey
+only himself, presently puts us off with a condition equal for all. That
+is to say, instead of liberty we are given equality. The difference is
+one generally recognized by Anglo-Saxons and often invisible to
+Continentals. It was seldom seen by Frenchmen in the eighteenth century.
+This confusion of thought was a cause of many of the troubles of the
+French Revolution. We shall see that Rousseau, who had been carried by
+the love of liberty beyond the verge of the ridiculous in his
+Discourses, was brought back, in his "Social Compact," by his love of
+equality, so far as to become the advocate of an intolerable tyranny,
+yet was quite unaware that he was inconsistent. He composed, in fact, a
+description of liberty strangely compounded of truth and falsehood. He
+reckoned that man to be free who was not under the control of any
+person, but only of the law, and then he provided for the most arbitrary
+and capricious kind of law-making.
+
+The first task of Rousseau, after settling the conditions of his
+compact, is to provide a sovereign power in the state. This he finds in
+the association of the citizens united, as above described, in a body
+politic. This sovereign cannot be bound by its own actions or resolves,
+except in case of an agreement with strangers, for none can make a
+contract with himself. By the original compact the action of the
+individual citizens as independent agents was exhausted. They can act
+henceforth only as parts of the whole. There is no contract possible
+between one or several of them and the community of which they form a
+part.[Footnote: In an epitome of the _Social Compact_, inserted by
+Rousseau in the fifth book of _Émile_, he thus defines the terms of
+that compact. "Each of us puts into a common stock his property, his
+person, his life and all his power, under the supreme direction of the
+general will, and we receive as a body each member as an indivisible
+part of the whole." _Oeuvres_, v. 254.] The sovereign must not,
+however, act directly on individuals, for in so doing it would represent
+a part only of the community acting on another part, and it would thus
+lose its moral right. It must act in general matters exclusively, by
+means of general decrees, which only can properly be called laws. "Now
+the sovereign, being made up only of the individuals which compose it,
+has and can have no interest opposed to theirs; therefore the sovereign
+power need not provide its subject with any guarantee, because it is
+impossible that the body should wish to injure its members," and as the
+nature of its action is general and not particular, it cannot injure one
+individual without doing harm to all the others at the same time. "The
+sovereign, by the very fact of its existence, is always what it ought to
+be."
+
+The general will is always right and always tends to public utility,
+says Rousseau, but it does not follow that the decisions of the people
+are always equally correct. Man always wills his own good, but does not
+always see it. The people is never corrupt, but often deceived, and in
+the latter case only does it seem to will what is evil. If there were no
+parties in the state, the people, if sufficiently informed, would always
+vote rightly, for the little differences in private interests would
+balance each other, and the resulting average would be the general will.
+But through parties and associations this result is prevented. A nation
+may change its laws when it pleases, even the best of them; for if it
+likes to hurt itself, who has the right to say it nay?
+
+Sovereignty is inalienable, for power is transmissible, but not will.
+Sovereignty consists essentially in the general will, and the general
+will cannot be represented. It is the same, or it is other; there is no
+intermediate point. The deputies of the people cannot be its
+representatives; they can only be its agents; they can conclude nothing
+definitely. Any law that the people has not ratified in its assembly is
+null; it is not a law. The English nation thinks itself free. It is much
+mistaken. It is free only during the election of members of Parliament.
+As soon as these are elected the nation is enslaved; it is nothing.
+Sovereignty is indivisible, its powers being legislative only, and the
+executive function of the state being but its emanation.
+
+Such being the essential conditions of the social compact, what are the
+states to which it may be applied? Although Rousseau gives many
+directions for the government of larger countries, we see that his
+system is truly applicable only to nations so small that the whole body
+of voters can be united in one meeting. These popular assemblies, he
+says, should be held frequently, at times fixed by law and independent
+of any summons, and also at irregular times when needed. Let no one
+object that such frequent meetings would take up too much time. He
+answers that "as soon as the public service ceases to be the principal
+business of the citizens, and they prefer to serve with their purses
+rather than with their persons, the state is already near to ruin. If it
+be necessary to march to battle, they pay soldiers and stay at home; if
+it be necessary to attend the council, they choose deputies and stay at
+home. By laziness and money they have at last got troops to enslave
+their country and representatives to betray her."
+
+The only law that requires unanimity is the social compact itself. When
+that is once formed, each citizen consents to every law, even to those
+which are passed in spite of him. When a law is proposed in the assembly
+of the people, the question is not exactly whether the proposal is
+approved or rejected, but whether it is in accordance with the general
+will, which is the will of the people. Every man by his vote declares
+his opinion on that point, and by counting the votes the declaration of
+the general will is ascertained. When, therefore, the opinion which is
+opposed to mine prevails, it proves nothing more than that I was
+mistaken, and that what I took to be the general will was not so. If my
+private opinion had carried the day against the general will, I should
+have done what I did not wish; and then I should not have been free.
+
+It has been said that the sovereign must not act in particular cases. To
+do so would be to confound law and fact, and the body politic would soon
+be a prey to violence. It is, therefore, necessary to institute an
+executive branch, which Rousseau calls indifferently _government_
+or _prince_, explaining that the latter word may be used
+collectively. But, differing in this from older writers, he denies that
+the establishment of an executive power gives rise to any contract
+between the body of the people and the persons appointed to govern. He
+considers these persons to be intermediate between the nation considered
+as sovereign, and the people considered as subject, and to hold but a
+delegated power. In this opinion, Rousseau has been followed by most
+liberal governments instituted since his day. But he carries this theory
+much farther than it is safe to do in practice. The sovereign, he says,
+may at any moment revoke the powers of its agents, and the first act of
+every public assembly should be to answer these two questions: first,
+whether it pleases the sovereign to maintain the present form of
+government; and second, whether it pleases the people to leave the
+administration to those persons who now exercise it.
+
+The chapters on the form of government are far less important than those
+on sovereignty. Rousseau recognized democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy
+as applicable respectively to small, middle-sized, and large states. He
+says that democracy is the most difficult form to manage, requiring for
+its perfect working a state so small that every citizen can know every
+other personally, and also great simplicity of manners, great equality
+of ranks and fortunes, and little luxury. This applies, of course, only
+to democracy in its extreme form, in which the people exercises all the
+functions of government without delegating any of them. Rousseau's
+preference was for what he calls aristocracy, a government of the most
+wise and experienced. The first societies, he says, were thus governed,
+and the American Indians are so governed still. It is noticeable that
+the Indians take in the works of Rousseau a place similar to that taken
+by the Chinese in those of Voltaire; they are distant people, living in
+an ideal condition. The freedom of the savage, the literary civilization
+of the Oriental, were held up to admiration by these two writers,
+diametrically opposed in their way of looking at life, but similar in
+their utter want of comprehension of all that was not European and
+contemporary. Next after the government of the sages and the elders
+Rousseau placed elective government, which, in common with some other
+abstract writers, he classes as aristocratic. An hereditary aristocracy
+he calls the worst of all governments. He intimated that his remedy for
+the weakness of small countries, as against foreign enemies, would be
+found in federation, but he postponed the discussion of this subject to
+a larger treatise, which was never written.[Footnote: Rousseau has
+himself given two summaries of the Social Compact; one very short, in
+the Sixth Letter from the Mountain (_Oeuvres_, vii. 378). This was
+written after the condemnation of the book by the authorities of Geneva,
+and he points out in his remonstrance that he has taken Geneva as the
+model state, in the Social Compact. The other summary, much fuller, is
+in the fifth book of _Émile_ (_Oeuvres_, v. 248). Here we find
+the following growl at the whole social order: "Nous examinerons si l'on
+n'a pas fait trop ou trop peu dans l'institution sociale. Si les
+individus soumis aux loix et aux hommes, tandis que les societes gardent
+entre elles l'independance de la nature, ne restent pas exposes aux maux
+des deux états sans en avoir les avantages, et s'il ne vaudrait pas
+mieux qu'il n'y eut point de societe civile au monde que d'y en avoir
+plusieurs."]
+
+Rousseau pointed out very forcibly the incompatibility with civil
+government of a religion depending on a priesthood whose organization
+extends beyond the territory of the country itself and forms a body
+politic. Yet he did not propose to apply the only true remedy for this
+condition of things, which is the complete separation of church and
+state, combined with liberty of speech both for the clergy and the
+laity. He recognized as possible only three sorts of religion, of which
+the first, without temples, altars, or rites, confined inwardly to the
+worship of God and externally to the moral duties, was, as he thought,
+the pure and simple religion of the Gospels, the true theism, and might
+be called the natural divine law. The next is a national religion,
+belonging to one country. It has its gods, its rites, its altars, all
+within its own land, outside of which everything is infidel, strange,
+and barbarian. Man's duties extend no farther than the boundaries of his
+own country. Such were the religions of the early nations. The third
+kind gives to its votaries two systems of legislation, two chiefs, two
+homes, makes them submit to contradictory duties, prevents their being
+at once devout worshipers and good citizens. Such a religion is the
+Roman Catholic.
+
+The Roman clergy, he says, is united, not by its formal assemblies, but
+by communion and excommunication, which are its social compact, and by
+means of which it will always retain the mastery over kings and nations.
+All the priests who are in communion are citizens, although at the ends
+of the earth. This invention is a masterpiece of politics.
+
+On some religion our author believes that the state has a right to
+insist. There is a purely civil profession of faith, whose articles the
+sovereign may fix, not exactly as dogmas of religion, but as principles
+of sociability. These must be few, simple and clear, and announced
+without explanation or commentary. The existence of a deity, powerful,
+intelligent, beneficent, foreseeing, and providing; the life to come,
+with the happiness of the good and the punishment of the wicked; the
+sacredness of the Social Compact and of the laws,--these are the
+positive dogmas. Of things forbidden there should be but one:
+intolerance. Whosoever says that there is no salvation but in the church
+should be driven from the state; for such teaching is dangerous to the
+sovereign, except, indeed, in a theocracy. Any one who does not hold to
+the simple creed above described may properly be banished, not as
+impious but as unsociable, incapable of loving justice and the laws
+sincerely, or of sacrificing his life to his duty. And if any one, after
+having publicly accepted these dogmas, behaves as if he did not believe
+them, let him be put to death; he has committed the greatest of crimes;
+he has lied before the laws.
+
+In the short essay on the Social Compact, Rousseau has brought
+together, as we have seen, several of the most dangerous errors which
+have afflicted modern society. The people, according to him, is not
+only all powerful, but always righteous; sometimes deceived, but never
+corrupt. Why the whole community should be better or wiser than the
+best of the persons who compose it; why our errors should balance or
+counteract each other and our virtues not do so, Rousseau probably
+never asked himself; or if the question occurred to his mind, he
+dismissed it with a merely specious answer. There is hardly a limit to
+the tyranny which he allows to the multitude. The individual citizen
+is made free from the interference of a single master only that he may
+be the more dependent on that corporate despot who is to control his
+every action and his very thoughts. Manners, customs, above all public
+opinion, are declared to be the most important of laws. Individuality
+is, therefore, to be absolutely banished. Nor is security provided
+for. It is the advantage of a stationary system that a man may know
+this year what the world will expect of him ten years hence and may
+lay his plans accordingly. Human laws may sometimes be pardoned for
+being as inflexible as the laws of physics if they are as surely to be
+relied on. But Rousseau, while hoping that his state will change very
+little, carefully reserves for his tyrant the right to be
+capricious. And lest that right should ever be forgotten he takes care
+that the whole form of government shall be brought in question at
+every public meeting. What the multitude has to-day decided it may
+reverse to-morrow. The unfortunate citizen is not left even the right
+to protest. The general will, when once proved by the popular vote, is
+his own will. The very desires of his heart must loyally follow the
+changing caprices of his many-headed master.
+
+Yet here as elsewhere Rousseau has joined a noble conception to a base
+one. The law, once promulgated by the sovereign power, is to be
+universal throughout the state and superior to all human rulers. The
+idea was not novel, but it was well that it should again be distinctly
+formulated.
+
+It is quite in accordance with the general spirit of the essay that
+while intolerance is said to be the only religious crime, it is in fact
+the foundation of the whole ecclesiastical system of the republic.
+Whoever dares to say that there is no salvation outside of the church is
+to be driven from the state. By this means Rousseau would have exiled
+nearly every Christian of the eighteenth century. On the other hand,
+whoever doubts the existence of God, His providence, and His rewards and
+punishments, is to be treated in the same manner. Some of the
+Philosophers of the age are thus excluded. Verily, few are the just that
+remain, and Rousseau is quite right in his opinion that those who
+distinguish between civil and theological intolerance are mistaken. In
+his system, at least, the two are closely connected.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+"LA NOUVELLE HÉLOÏSE" AND "ÉMILE."
+
+
+It was not alone by his political writings that Jean Jacques Rousseau
+exercised a great influence over Europe. Of all his books, the two which
+are perhaps most famous take the form of loose and disjointed fiction,
+and deal not with government, but with life, passion, society, and
+education. Yet the characters of "La Nouvelle Héloïse," and of "Émile,"
+are not mere frames of scarecrows clothed with abstract qualities and
+fine sentiments. Saint-Preux, Émile and the Tutor, Julie, Sophie,
+Claire, and Lord Edward Bomston are live persons, whom the reader may
+like or dislike. In the first three Rousseau would seem to have
+incorporated himself, and the result is interesting, but repulsive. In
+Julie we have Jean Jacques' ideal woman, a being of a noble nature,
+tinged and defiled with something low and morbid; but Claire and Sophie
+seem taken only from observation, not introspection, and although far
+from faultless are often charming.
+
+"La Nouvelle Héloïse" is a novel written in letters, a form of writing
+more tedious than any other. But it should be remembered that in the
+early days of fiction novels were so few that to occupy a long time in
+the reading was not an impediment to the popularity of one of them. If
+we may believe Rousseau, the "New Heloisa" produced a great sensation.
+All Paris was impatient for its appearance. When at last it was
+published, men of letters were divided in opinion, but society was
+unanimous in its praise, and women were so much delighted with it that
+there were few even of high rank whose conquest the author might not
+have achieved had he chosen to undertake it. While making due
+allowance for the morbid vanity of Jean Jacques, we may entirely
+believe him when he says that the book captivated the reading
+public. One lady, he tells us, had dressed after supper for the ball
+at the Opera House, and sat down to read the new novel while waiting
+for the time to go. At midnight she ordered her carriage, but did not
+put down the book. The coach came to the door, but she kept on. At two
+her servants warned her of the hour. She answered that there was no
+hurry. At four she undressed, and continued to read for the rest of
+the night. On the first appearance of the story the booksellers used
+to let out copies at twelve sous the hour.[Footnote: Rousseau,
+xix. 101 (_Confessions_, liv. xi.).] To-day its charm is gone. Few
+indeed are the works of pure literature which are read a hundred years
+after publication, except by the authors of literary histories and the
+unfortunate pupils of injudicious school-mistresses (and the "New
+Heloisa" will not form a part of any scheme of female education); but
+a good style and a true enthusiasm may lighten the task even of these
+sufferers.
+
+It is a singular fact that in some matters of feeling no age seems so
+far from our own as that of our great-grandfathers. The lovers of the
+Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century appear to us natural and
+healthy beings. Those of the eighteenth seem sentimental and foolish. In
+the case of Rousseau's great novel this effect is increased by the
+morbid strain of the author's mind. With him all passion tends to assume
+unhealthy shapes, and the very breezes of Lake Leman come laden with
+close and sickly odors.
+
+It is not worth while to deal here with the story of the "New
+Heloisa,"--a story of illicit passion in the first part; and in the
+second, of the happy marriage of the heroine to a man who is not her
+lover. The visit paid by that lover to his old mistress and her
+husband in their home at Clarens, with all the trials of virtue which
+it involves, is a disagreeable piece of sentimentality. The members of
+the trio fall on each other's necks with unpleasant frequency and
+fervor. But the picture of that home itself, with its well-ordered
+housekeeping, its liberality and its plainness, is interesting and
+attractive. "Since the masters of this house have taken it for their
+dwelling, they have turned to their use all that served only for
+ornament; it is no longer a house made to be seen, but to be lived
+in. They have built up the long lines of doors by which rooms opened
+one out of another, and made new doorways in convenient places; they
+have cut up rooms that were too large, and improved the arrangement;
+they have substituted simple and convenient furniture for what was old
+and expensive. Everything is agreeable and smiling, everything
+breathes abundance and cleanliness; nothing shows costliness or
+luxury; there is no room where you do not feel yourself in the country
+and where you do not find all the conveniences of town. The same
+changes are noticeable outside; the poultry-yard has been enlarged at
+the expense of the carriage-house. In the place of an old broken-down
+billiard-table they have built a fine wine-press, and they have got
+rid of some screeching peacocks to make room for a dairy. The kitchen
+garden was too small for the kitchen; a second one has been made of
+the parterre, but so neat and so well laid out that thus transformed
+it is more pleasing to the eye than before. Good espaliers have been
+substituted for the doleful yews that covered the wall. Instead of the
+useless horse-chestnut tree, young black mulberries are beginning to
+shade the courtyard, and two rows of walnut trees, running to the
+road, have been planted in place of the old lindens which bordered the
+avenue. Everywhere the useful has been substituted for the agreeable,
+and almost everywhere the agreeable has gained by it." The description
+is masterly, but we cannot quite forgive Rousseau for sacrificing the
+horse-chestnut and the lindens.[Footnote: Rousseau, ix. 235
+(Nouv. Hél. Part. iv. Let. x.).]
+
+But not quite all the land is treated in this utilitarian manner. The
+heroine has an "Elysium." This place is near the house, but separated
+from the rest of the grounds by a thick hedge. It is full of native
+plants forming a deep shade, yet the ground is covered with grass like
+velvet, and flowers spring up on all sides. Vines climb from tree to
+tree, rooted, it may be, in the trunks of the trees themselves. A stream
+of clear water meanders through the place, sometimes divided into
+several channels, sometimes united in one, rippling here over a bed of
+gravel, there reflecting the trees and the sky. A colony of birds,
+protected from all disturbance, charms the solitude with song. Nature is
+here encouraged, not thwarted; little is left to the gardener; much to
+the intelligent and loving care of the mistress.
+
+The account of the garden covers many pages of the "New Heloisa," pages
+at once eloquent and interesting. Artificial as are many of its details,
+the letter is a plea for nature against artificiality. The readers in
+the eighteenth century were charmed, and hastened to imitate Rousseau's
+heroine. The straight gravel walks, the formal flower-beds, the clipped
+hedges of old France, became tiresome in the eyes of their possessors. A
+dreamer had told them that all these things made a very fine place,
+where the owner would scarcely care to go, and they believed him. The
+new fashion brought with it a new affectation, perhaps the most
+offensive of all, the affectation of simplicity. The garden, as truly a
+product of man's hand and brain as the house or the picture-gallery, was
+made to mimic the forest, losing, in too many cases, its own peculiar
+beauty, without gaining the true charm of wild nature. On the other
+hand, the eyes of Rousseau's admirers were opened to many things not
+noticed before. The real woods received their appropriate worship. The
+novel of Jean Jacques combined with the exhortations of the economists
+to turn the attention of the educated classes to rural matters.
+
+The life led by the model couple in the "New Heloisa" is one of
+humdrum, conscientious respectability. It is a country life, fairly
+simple and without ostentation; but it is as far removed as possible
+from all that can be connected with the noble savage. Julie and
+Monsieur de Wolmar, her husband, rule their little world strictly and
+kindly. They try to make life profitable and pleasant to their
+children and their servants. To the poor they are patronizing and
+benevolent. Apart from their overflowing sentimentality they are
+honest, self-sufficient, commonplace people. Rousseau, born in the
+middle class, had a middle-class, respectable ideal, lying beside many
+very different ideals in his ill-ordered brain. And this novel which
+begins with passion ends with something not far removed from
+priggishness.
+
+It is quite needless to discuss here how much Rousseau owed in his
+"Émile" to the teachings of Locke, of Montaigne, or of others. His
+ideas, wherever he may have got them, were always sufficiently colored
+by his own personality. "Émile," which has even less structure of
+fiction than the "New Heloisa," is a treatise on education, or rather on
+the ideal education, for Rousseau distinctly disclaims the intention of
+writing a handbook. It is on the whole the most agreeable and the most
+useful of the works of its author; although not without deplorable marks
+of his baseness. The book shows an amount of careful observation of
+children not a little astonishing in a man who sent his own infants to
+the Foundling lest they should disturb him; it contains remarks about
+good women equally remarkable in one whose dealings in life were
+principally with bad ones.
+
+"All is good coming from the hands of the Author of things; everything
+degenerates in the hands of man;" thus begins "Émile." "He makes one
+land nourish the productions of another, one tree bear another's fruit;
+he mixes and confounds the climates, the elements, the seasons; he
+mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave; he overturns, he disfigures
+everything; he loves deformity and monstrosities; he wants nothing such
+as nature made it, not even man, who has to be trained for him like a
+managed horse, trimmed to his fashion, like a tree of his garden."
+
+Ignorance is harmless; error only is pernicious. Men do not go astray on
+account of the things of which they are ignorant, but of those which
+they think they know. The time which we spend in learning what others
+have thought is lost for learning to think ourselves; we have more
+information and less vigor of mind.
+
+Let us seek out the kind of education proper for the formation of a
+vigorous and, above all, of an independent man. We will call our pupil
+Émile. The author himself shall be his tutor and shall devote himself
+exclusively to the education of this single boy. A father, however, is
+the best of tutors, for zeal is far more valuable in this place than
+talent. But whoever it be that undertakes the education, he must be
+always the same and always absolute. If a child ever gets the idea that
+there are grown people that have no more reason than children, the
+authority of age is lost, the education has failed.
+
+The position of the tutor is one of the most curious and one of the most
+mistaken things in "Émile." While in many respects the training
+described in the book would tend to make a manly and independent boy,
+the pervading presence of the tutor would perhaps undo all the good of
+the system. It is true that absolute truth is recommended, that "a
+single lie which the master was shown to have told the pupil would ruin
+forever the fruit of the education." Yet the tutor is to interfere
+openly or secretly in every part of Émile's life. "It is important that
+the disciple shall do nothing without the master's knowing and willing
+it, not even what is wrong; and it is a hundred times better that the
+governor approve of a fault and be mistaken, than that he should be
+deceived by his pupil and the fault committed without his knowledge."
+Let the tutor, therefore, be the pupil's confidant, even; if necessary,
+his companion in vice. You must be a man to speak strongly to the human
+heart. The tutor is constantly deceiving Émile, and some of his tricks
+are so transparent that it is wonderful that Rousseau could have
+expected the simplest of boys to be taken in by them. Here is an
+instance.
+
+The object is to show Émile the origin of property, and to give him the
+first idea of its obligations. "The child, living in the country, will
+have got some notion of field-work; for that he will need only eyes and
+leisure, and both of these he will have. It belongs to every age, and
+especially to his, to wish to create, to imitate, to produce, to show
+signs of power and activity. He will not twice have seen a garden dug,
+vegetables sown, sprouting and growing, before he will want to be
+gardening too.
+
+"On the principles heretofore established, I do not oppose his desire;
+on the contrary, I favor it, I share his taste, I work with him, not
+for his pleasure, but for mine; at least he thinks so; I become his
+under-gardener; as his arms are not strong yet, I dig the earth for
+him; he takes possession of it by planting a bean; and surely that
+possession is more sacred and worthy of respect than that which Nunes
+Balbao took of South America, in the name of the king of Spain, by
+planting his standard on the shores of the South Sea.
+
+"We come every day to water the beans, we see them sprout with ecstasies
+of joy. I increase that joy by telling him, `This belongs to you;' and
+by explaining to him this term, `to belong,' I make him feel that he has
+spent here his time, his labor, his pains, his very person; that in this
+earth there is something of himself, which he can claim against every
+one, as he could draw his arm from the hand of a man who should try to
+hold it in spite of him.
+
+"One fine day he comes out eagerly, with his watering-pot in his hand.
+Oh horrible sight! Oh grief! All the beans are torn up, all the ground
+is turned over; you could not recognize the very place. `Oh, what has
+become of my labor, my work, the sweet fruit of my care and of my sweat?
+Who has robbed me of my property? Who has taken my beans?' His young
+heart rises; the first feeling of injustice comes to pour its sad
+bitterness into it; tears flow in streams; the desolate child fills the
+air with groans and cries. I share his pain, his indignation; we seek,
+we inquire, we examine. At last we discover that the gardener has done
+the deed; we summon him.
+
+"But here we are very far out of our reckoning. The gardener, learning
+of what we complain, begins to complain louder than we. `What!
+gentlemen; it is you that have thus spoiled my work! I had sown in that
+place some Maltese melons, whose seed had been given me as a treasure,
+and which I hoped to serve up to you for a feast when they were ripe;
+but now, to plant your miserable beans, you have destroyed my melons
+after they had sprouted, and I can never replace them. You have done me
+an irreparable injury, and you have deprived yourselves of the pleasure
+of eating delicious melons.'
+
+"Jean Jacques. Excuse us, my poor Robert. You had put there your labor
+and your pains. I see that we were wrong to spoil your work; we will get
+you some more Maltese seed, and we will dig no more in the ground,
+without knowing if some one has not set his hand to it before us.
+
+"Robert. Well, gentlemen, at that rate you may take your rest, for there
+is very little wild land left. I work on what my father improved;
+everybody does the same by his own, and all the land you see has long
+been occupied.
+
+"Émile. In that case, Robert, is melon seed often lost?
+
+"Robert. I beg your pardon, my young sir; little gentlemen do not often
+come along who are so thoughtless as you. No one touches his neighbor's
+garden; each man respects the work of others, so that his own may be
+safe.
+
+"Émile. But I have no garden.
+
+"Robert. What difference does that make to me? If you spoil mine, I will
+no longer let you walk in it; for, you see, I do not want to lose my
+labor.
+
+"Jean Jacques. Could we not make an arrangement with our good Robert?
+Let him grant my young friend and me a corner of his garden to
+cultivate, on condition that he shall have half the produce.
+
+"Robert. I grant it without conditions. But remember that I shall go and
+dig up your beans if you touch my melons."
+
+It is perhaps wrong to hold Rousseau in any part of his writings to any
+approach to consistency. We have seen some of the mistakes in Émile's
+education. Let us look at some of its strong points. Yet we shall find
+the tares so thoroughly mixed with the wheat that to separate them
+entirely may be impossible. Rousseau insists that from the earliest
+infancy the child's body shall be free. The swaddling bands, common all
+over the continent in the last century, in which the poor little being
+was bound and bundled so that he could not move hand or foot, were to be
+absolutely discontinued. The child, nursed if possible by its own
+mother, was to have free limbs. It was to be brought up in the country,
+and as it grew older was to run about bareheaded and barefoot. Too much
+clothing, thought Rousseau, makes the body tender; and he seems to have
+carried the theory unreasonably far.
+
+Cleanliness and cold baths were recommended to a generation singularly
+in need of them. Émile was brought up to enjoy fresh air, perhaps to be
+almost a slave to the need of it. He was given plenty of sleep, but his
+bed was hard, his food coarse. Everything was done to make him strong,
+hardy, and active.
+
+"The only habit which the child should be allowed to form is that of
+forming none." He should not use one hand more than the other; he should
+not be accustomed to want to eat or to sleep at the same hours every
+day, nor should he fear to be alone. He should be gradually taught not
+to be afraid of masks, to overcome his fright at firearms. He should be
+helped in all that is really useful, but not encouraged to indulge vain
+fancies. Children should be given as much real liberty as possible, and
+as little dominion over others as may be. They should do as much as
+possible by themselves, and ask as little as they can of others. "The
+only person who does his own will is he who does not need, in doing it,
+to put another's arms at the end of his own; whence it follows that the
+first of all good things is not authority, but liberty."
+
+Émile's desire to learn is to be excited. He is to see the reason for
+the steps he takes. The talent of teaching is that of making the pupil
+pleased with the instruction. Something must be left to the boy's own
+mind and reflection. He is not to be given much to read. For a long
+time, let "Robinson Crusoe" be his only book. But Émile shall learn a
+trade, a good mechanical trade, which is always needed, in which there
+is always employment. He shall also learn to draw; less for the art
+itself than to make his eye accurate and his hand obedient; for in
+general it is less important for him to know this or that than to
+acquire the clearness of sense and the good habit of body which the
+various studies give.
+
+Having brought up Émile to manhood, it becomes necessary to provide him
+with a wife. Here the tutor is still active, and prepares the meeting
+with Sophie which Émile takes for accidental. It is needless to remark
+again on the young man's gullibility. He is Rousseau's creature, and
+fashioned as his maker pleases. Nothing is more disturbing than to
+submit the dreams of such a man as Jean Jacques to the unsympathetic
+rules of common sense. Our concern is with the effect they produced on
+the minds of other people, who undertook in some measure to live them
+out. Let us then pause over some of the considerations suggested by the
+necessity of admitting into the scheme of education a being so
+disturbing as a woman.
+
+Rousseau saw more, I think, than most persons who have undertaken to
+deal with the subject in a reforming spirit, what is the true and
+proper relation between the sexes. While boys are to exercise the
+manly trades that require physical strength, he would leave to women
+the lighter employments, and more especially those connected with
+dress and its materials. It is the usual mistake of those who in our
+day set themselves up as champions of woman, to seek to make the sexes
+not coordinate and mutually helpful, but identical and competing. "It
+is perhaps one of the marvels of nature," says Rousseau, "to have made
+two beings so similar while forming them so differently."[Footnote:
+_Oeuvres_, v. 5 (_Émile_, liv. v.). Compare viii. 203 (_Nouv. Hél._
+Letter). "A perfect man and a perfect woman should not resemble each
+other any more in their souls than in their faces."]
+
+On the whole, Sophie is a more attractive person than Émile; perhaps
+because she has been brought up by her mother, and not given over in
+her babyhood to the vigilance of Jean Jacques. The artistic quality of
+the author's mind has obliged him to make his heroine more true to
+nature than his theories have allowed him to make his hero. And his
+theories about girls are quite as good and quite as different from the
+fashionable practice of his day as those about boys. It is curious how
+his ideas approach the American customs. A certain coquetry, he says,
+is allowable in marriageable girls; amusement is their principal
+business. Married women have the cares of home to occupy them, and
+have no longer to seek husbands. Rousseau would let the girls appear
+in public, would take them to balls, entertainments, the
+theatre. Sophie is not only more vivacious than Émile, she has also
+more self-control than he; who, in spite of his virile education, is
+entirely overcome when the ever-meddling tutor insists on two years of
+travel for his pupil, in order that the young people may grow older
+and that Émile may learn to master his passions. The day of parting
+arrives, and Émile, in true eighteenth century style, utters shrieks,
+sheds torrents of tears on the hands of Sophie's father, of her
+mother, of the heroine herself, embraces with sobs all the servants of
+the family, and repeats the same things a thousand times with a
+disorder which, even to Jean Jacques's rudimentary sense of humor,
+would be laughable under circumstances less desperate. Sophie, on the
+other hand is quiet, pale and sad, without tears, insensible to the
+cries and caresses of her lover.
+
+It is in "Émile" that Rousseau gives the most elaborate expression of
+his religious opinions, putting them in the mouth of a poor curate in
+Savoy.[Footnote: The passage is known as "Profession de Foi du Vicaire
+savoyard" and is found in the fourth book of _Émile_, _Oeuvres_, iv.
+136-254.] The pupil has been kept ignorant of all religion to the age
+of eighteen, "for if he learns it earlier than he should, he runs the
+risk of never knowing it." Without stopping to consider the dangers of
+this course, let us see what answer Rousseau gives to the greatest
+questions that perplex mankind. We may expect much sublime feeling,
+some moral perversion, little logical thought.
+
+The Roman Church, he says, by calling on us to believe too much, may
+prevent our believing anything. We know not where to stop. But doubt on
+matters so important to us is a state unbearable to the human mind. It
+decides one way or another in spite of itself, and prefers to make a
+mistake rather than to believe nothing.
+
+Motion can originate only in will. "I believe, then, that a will moves
+the universe and animates nature."... "How does a will produce a
+physical and corporeal action? I do not know, but I feel within myself
+that it does produce it. I will to act, and I act; I wish to move my
+body, and my body moves; but that an inanimate body in repose should
+move itself, or should produce motion, is incomprehensible and without
+example."... "If matter moved shows me will, matter moved according to
+certain laws shows me intelligence; this is my second article of faith."
+We see that the universe has a plan, although we do not see to what it
+tends. I cannot believe that dead matter has produced living and feeling
+beings, that blind chance has produced intelligent beings, that what
+does not think has produced what thinks. "Whether matter is eternal or
+created, whether or not there is a passive principle, it is certain that
+all is one and proclaims a single intelligence; for I see nothing which
+is not ordered in the same system, and which does not concur to the same
+end, namely, the preservation of the whole in the established order.
+This Being who wills and who can, this Being active in Himself, this
+Being, whatever he may be, who moves the universe and orders all things,
+I call God. I attach to this name the ideas of intelligence, power and
+will, which I have united to form the conception, and that of
+goodness which is their necessary consequence; but I know no better the
+Being to whom I have given it; He hides Himself alike from my senses and
+my understanding; the more I think of it, the more I am confused; I know
+very certainly that He exists and that He exists by himself; I know that
+my existence is subordinated to His, and that all things that I know of
+are in the same case. I perceive God everywhere in His works; I feel Him
+in myself, I see Him about me; but as soon as I want to contemplate Him
+in Himself, as soon as I want to seek where He is, what He is, what is
+His substance, He escapes from me, and my troubled spirit perceives
+nothing more."
+
+Having considered the attributes of God, the Savoyard curate turns to
+himself. He finds that he can observe and govern other creatures; whence
+he infers that they may all be made for him. But mankind differs from
+all other things in nature by being inharmonious, disorderly, and
+miserable. Man has in himself two distinct principles, one of which
+lifts him to the study of eternal truth, to the love of justice and
+moral beauty; the other enslaves him under the rule of the senses, and
+the passions which are their servants. "No! "cries the curate, "man is
+not one; I will, and I will not; I feel myself at once enslaved, and
+free; I see good, I love it, and I do evil; I am active when I listen to
+reason, passive when my passions carry me away; my worst torture, when I
+fail, is to feel that I could have resisted."
+
+Man is free in his actions, and, therefore, animated by an immaterial
+substance. This is the third article of the curate's faith. Conscience
+is the voice of the soul; the passions are the voices of the body.
+Immortality of the soul is a pleasing doctrine and there is nothing to
+contradict it. "When, delivered from the illusions caused by the body
+and the senses, we shall enjoy the contemplation of the Supreme Being,
+and of the eternal truths whose source He is, when the beauty of order
+shall strike all the powers of our soul, and we shall be solely occupied
+in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then
+will the voice of conscience resume its force and its empire; then will
+the pure bliss which is born of self-content, and the bitter regret for
+self-debasement, distinguish by inexhaustible feelings the fate which
+each man will have prepared for himself. Ask me not, O my good friend,
+if there will be other sources of happiness and of misery; I do not
+know, and the one I imagine is enough to console me for this life and to
+make me hope for another. I do not say that the good will be rewarded;
+for what other reward can await an excellent being than to live in
+accordance with his nature; but I say that they will be happy, because
+the Author of their being, the Author of all justice, having made them
+to feel, has not made them to suffer; and because, not having abused
+their liberty on the earth, they have not changed their destiny by their
+own fault; yet they have suffered in this life, and so they will have it
+made up to them in another. This feeling is less founded on the merit of
+man than on the notion of goodness which seems to me inseparable from
+the divine essence. I only suppose the laws of order to be observed, and
+God consistent with Himself."[Footnote: "Non pas pour nous, non pas
+pour nous, Seigneur, Mais pour ton nom, mais pour ton propre honneur, O
+Dieu! fais nous revivre! Ps. 115." (Rousseau's note).]
+
+"Neither ask me if the torments of the wicked will be eternal, and
+whether it is consistent with the goodness of the Author of their being
+to condemn them to suffer forever; I do not know that either, and have
+not the vain curiosity to examine useless questions. What matters it to
+me what becomes of the wicked? I take little interest in their fate.
+Nevertheless I find it hard to believe that they are condemned to
+endless torments. If Supreme Justice avenges itself, it avenges itself
+in this life. You and your errors, O nations, are its ministers! It
+employs the ills which you make to punish the crimes which brought them
+about. It is in your insatiable hearts, gnawed with envy, avarice, and
+ambition, that the avenging passions punish your crimes, in the midst of
+your false prosperity. What need to seek hell in the other life? It is
+already here, in the hearts of the wicked."
+
+Revelation is unnecessary. Miracles need proof more than they give it.
+As soon as the nations undertook to make God speak, each made Him speak
+in its own way. If men had listened only to what He says in their
+hearts, there had been but one religion upon earth. "I meditate on the
+order of the universe, not to explain it by vain systems, but to admire
+it unceasingly, to adore the wise Author who is felt in it. I converse
+with Him, I let His divine essence penetrate all my faculties, I
+tenderly remember His benefits, I bless Him for His gifts; but I do not
+pray to Him. What should I ask Him? That He should change the course of
+things on my account; that He should perform miracles in my favor? I,
+who should love more than all things the order established by His
+wisdom, and maintained by His Providence, should I wish to see that
+order interfered with for me? No, that rash prayer would deserve to be
+punished rather than to be answered. Nor do I ask Him for the power to
+do good; why ask Him for what He has given me? Has He not given me a
+conscience to love the good; reason, to know it; liberty, to choose it?
+If I do evil, I have no excuse; I do it because I will; to ask him to
+change my will is to ask of Him what He demands of me; it is wanting Him
+to do my work, and let me take the reward; not to be content with my
+state is to want to be a man no longer, it is to want things otherwise
+than they are, it is to want disorder and evil. Source of justice and
+truth, clement and kind God! in my trust in Thee the supreme wish of my
+heart is that Thy will may be done. In uniting mine to it, I do what
+thou doest, I acquiesce in Thy goodness; I seem to share beforehand the
+supreme felicity which is its price."
+
+This appears to have been Rousseau's deliberate opinion on the subject
+of prayer. He has, however, expressed in the "New Heloisa" quite another
+view, which is found in a letter from Julie to Saint-Preux, and is
+inserted principally, perhaps, to give the latter an opportunity to
+answer it. Yet Rousseau, as we have often seen, although unable to
+understand that any one could honestly differ from himself, was quite
+capable of holding conflicting opinions. And the value of any one of his
+sayings is not much diminished by the fact that it is contradicted in
+the next chapter. "You have religion," says Julie,[Footnote:
+_Nouvelle Héloïse_, Part. vi. Let. vi. (_Oeuvres_, x. 261).]
+"but I am afraid that you do not get from it all the advantage which it
+offers in the conduct of life, and that philosophical pride may disdain
+the simplicity of the Christian. I have seen you hold opinions on prayer
+which are not to my taste. According to you, this act of humility is
+fruitless for us; and God, having given us, in our consciences, all that
+can lead us to good, afterwards leaves us to ourselves and allows our
+liberty to act. That is not, as you know, the doctrine of Saint Paul,
+nor that which is professed in our church. We are free, it is true, but
+we are ignorant, weak, inclined to evil. And whence should light and
+strength come to us, if not from Him who is their source? And why should
+we obtain them, if we do not deign to ask for them? Beware, my friend,
+lest to your sublime conceptions of the Great Being, human pride join
+low ideas, which belong but to mankind; as if the means which relieve
+our weakness were suitable to divine Power, and as if, like us, It
+required art to generalize things, so as to treat them more easily! It
+seems, to listen to you, that this Power would be embarrassed should It
+watch over every individual; you fear that a divided and continual
+attention might fatigue It, and you think it much finer that It should
+do everything by general laws, doubtless because they cost It less care.
+O great philosophers! How much God is obliged to you for your easy
+methods and for sparing Him work."
+
+Enough has been said of the theism of Rousseau to show its great
+difference from that of Voltaire and of his followers. His attitude
+toward them is not unlike that of Socrates toward the Sophists. Indeed,
+Jean Jacques, by whomever inspired, is far more of a prophet than of a
+philosopher. He speaks by an authority which he feels to be above
+argument. In opposition to Locke and to all his school, he dares to
+believe in innate ideas, although he calls them feelings.[Footnote:
+"When, first occupied with the object, we think of ourselves only by
+reflection, it is an idea; on the other hand, when the impression
+received excites our first attention and we think only by reflection on
+the object which causes it, it is a sensation." _Oeuvres_, iv. 195
+_n_. (_Émile_, liv. iv.).] These innate ideas are love of
+self, fear of pain, horror of death, the desire for well-being.
+Conscience may well be one of them.
+
+"My son," cries the Savoyard curate, "keep your soul always in a state
+to desire that there may be a God, and you will never doubt it.
+Moreover, whatever course you may adopt, consider that the true duties
+of religion are independent of the institutions of men; that a just
+heart is the true temple of Divinity; that in all countries and all
+sects, to love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself, is
+the sum of the law; that no religion dispenses with the moral duties;
+that these are the only duties really essential; that the inward worship
+is the first of these duties, and that without faith no true virtue
+exists.
+
+"Flee from those who, under the pretense of explaining nature, sow
+desolating doctrines in the hearts of men, and whose apparent skepticism
+is a hundred times more affirmative and more dogmatic than the decided
+tone of their adversaries."
+
+At the time when "Émile" was written, Jean Jacques had quarreled
+personally with most of his old associates of the Philosophic school.
+Diderot, D'Alembert, Grimm, and their master, Voltaire,--Rousseau had
+some real or fancied grievance against them all. But the difference
+between him and them was intrinsic, not accidental. By nature and
+training they belonged to the rather thin rationalism of the eighteenth
+century; a rationalism which was so eager to believe nothing not
+acquired through the senses that it preferred to leave half the
+phenomena of life not only unaccounted for but unconsidered, because to
+account for them by its own methods was difficult, if not impossible.
+Rousseau, at least, contemplated the whole of human nature, its
+affections, aspirations, and passions, as well as its observations and
+reflections, and this was the secret of his influence over men.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE PAMPHLETS.
+
+
+The reign of Louis XVI. was a time of great and rapid change. The old
+order was passing away, and the Revolution was taking place both in
+manners and laws, for fifteen years before the assembling of the Estates
+General. In the previous reigns the rich middle class had approached
+social equality with the nobles; and the sons of great families had
+consented to repair their broken fortunes by marrying the daughters of
+financiers;--"manuring their land," they called it.
+
+Next a new set of persons claimed a place in the social scale. The men
+of letters were courted even by courtiers. The doctrines of the
+Philosophers had fairly entered the public mind. The nobility and the
+middle class, with such of the poor as could read and think, had been
+deeply impressed by Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists. All men had not
+been affected in the same way. Some were blind followers of these
+leaders, eager to push the doctrines of the school to the last possible
+results, partisans of Helvetius and Holbach. These were the most
+logical. Beside them came the sentimentalists, the worshipers of
+Rousseau. They were not a whit less dogmatic than the others, but their
+dogmatism took more fanciful and less consistent forms. They believed in
+their ideal republics or their social compacts with a religious faith.
+Some of them were ready to persecute others and to die themselves for
+their chimeras, and subsequently proved it. And in not a few minds the
+teachings of Holbach and those of Rousseau were more or less confused,
+and co-existed with a lingering belief in the church and her doctrines.
+People still went to mass from habit, from education, from an uneasy
+feeling that it was a good thing to do; doubting all the while with
+Voltaire, dreaming with Rousseau, wondering what might be coming,
+believing that the world was speedily to be improved, having no very
+definite idea as to how the improvement was to be brought about, but
+trusting vaguely to the enlightenment of the age, which was taken for
+granted.
+
+For this reign of the last absolute king of France was a time of hope
+and of belief in human perfectibility. One after another, the schemers
+had come forward with their plans for regenerating society. There were
+the economists, ready to swear that the world, and especially France,
+would be rich, if free trade were adopted, and the taxes were laid--they
+could not quite agree how. There were the army reformers, burning to
+introduce Prussian discipline; if only you could reconcile blows and
+good feeling. There were people calling for Equality, and for government
+by the most enlightened; quite unaware that their demands were
+inconsistent. There were the philanthropists, perhaps the most genuine
+of all the reformers, working at the hospitals and prisons, and reducing
+in no small measure the sum of misery in France.[Footnote: Among other
+instances of this spirit of hopefulness, notice those volumes of the
+_Encyclopédie Méthodique_ which were published as early as 1789.
+They are largely devoted to telling how things ought to be. See also the
+correspondence of Lafayette, who was thoroughly steeped in the spirit of
+this time. The feeling of hope was not the only feeling, there was
+despondency also. But we must be careful not to be deceived by the tone
+of many people who wrote long afterward, when they had undergone the
+shock of the great Revolution. In the study of this period, more perhaps
+than in that of any other, it is important to distinguish between
+contemporary evidence and the evidence of contemporaries given
+subsequently.]
+
+These changes in men's minds began to bear fruit in action. The
+attempted reforms of Turgot, of Necker, of the Notables; the abolition
+of the _corvée_, of monopolies in trade, of judicial torture, the
+establishment of provincial assemblies, the civil rights given to
+Protestants, have been mentioned already. These things were done in a
+weak and inconsistent manner because of the character of the king, who
+was drawn in one direction by his courtiers and in another by his
+conscience, and satisfied neither.
+
+Man must always look outside of himself for a standard of right and
+wrong. He must have something with which to compare the dictates of his
+own conscience, some chronometer to set his watch by. In the decay of
+religious ideas, the Frenchmen of the eighteenth century had set up a
+standard of comparison independent of revelation. They had found it in
+public opinion. The sociable population of Paris was ready to accept the
+common voice as arbiter. It had always been powerful in France, where
+the desire for sympathy is strong. A pamphlet published in 1730 says
+that if the episcopate falls into error it should be "instructed,
+corrected, even judged by the people." "A halberd leads a kingdom,"
+cried a courtier to Quesnay the economist. "And who leads the halberd?"
+retorted the latter. "Public opinion." "There are circumstances," say
+the venerable and conservative lawyers of the Parliament, "when
+magistrates may look on their loss of court favor as an honor. It is
+when they are consoled by public esteem." Poor Louis himself, catching
+the fever of longing for popularity, proposes to "raise the results of
+public opinion to the rank of laws, after they have been submitted to
+ripe and profound examination."[Footnote: _Rocquain_, 54.
+Lavergne, _Économistes_, 103. Chérest, i. 454 (May 1, 1788).] The
+appeal is constantly made from old-fashioned prejudice to some new
+notion supposed to be generally current, as if the one proved more than
+the other. From this worship of public opinion come extreme irritation
+under criticism and cowardly fear of ridicule; Voltaire himself asking
+for _lettres de cachet_ against a literary opponent. Seldom,
+indeed, do we find any one ready to say: "This is right; thus men ought
+to think; and if mankind thinks differently, mankind is mistaken." Such
+a tone comes chiefly from the mouth of that exception for good and evil,
+Jean Jacques Rousseau.
+
+This dependent state of mind is far removed from virtue. But human
+nature is often better than it represents itself to be. Both Quesnay and
+the magistrates had in fact a higher standard of right and wrong than
+the average feeling of the multitude. Every sect and every party makes,
+in a measure, its own public opinion, and the consent for which we seek
+is chiefly the consent of those persons whose ideas we respect. The
+thinkers of the eighteenth century, after appealing to public opinion,
+were quite ready to cast off their allegiance to it when it decided
+against them.
+
+Yet Frenchmen paid the penalty for setting up a false god. Having agreed
+to worship public opinion, without asking themselves definitely who were
+the public, they fell into frequent and fatal errors. The mob often
+claimed the place on the pedestal of opinion, and its claims were
+allowed. The turbulent populace of Paris, clamorous now for cheap bread,
+now for the return of the Parliament from exile, anon for the blood of
+men and women whom it chose to consider its enemies, was supposed to be
+the voice of the French nation, which was superstitiously assumed to be
+the voice of God.
+
+The inhabitants of great cities love to be amused. Those of Paris, being
+quicker witted than most mortals, care much to have something happening.
+They detest dullness and are fond of wit. In countries where speech and
+the press are free, a witticism, or a clever book, is seldom a great
+event. But under Louis XVI., as has been said, you could never quite
+tell what would come of a paragraph. A minister of state might lose his
+temper.
+
+A writer might have to spend a few weeks in Holland, or even in the
+Bastille. This was not much to suffer for the sake of notoriety, but it
+gave the charm of uncertainty. There was just enough danger in saying
+"strong things" to make them attractive, and to make it popular to say
+them. With a free press, men whose opinions are either valuable or
+dangerous get very tired of "strong things," and prefer less spice in
+their intellectual fare.
+
+The most famous satirical piece of the reign is also its most remarkable
+literary production. The "Mariage de Figaro," of Beaumarchais, has
+acquired importance apart from its merits as a comedy, both from its
+political history and from its good fortune in being set to immortal
+music. The plot is poor and intricate, but the dialogue is uniformly
+sparkling, and two of the characters will live as typical. In Cherubin
+we have the dissolute boy whose vice has not yet wrinkled into ugliness,
+best known to English readers under the name of Don Juan, but fresher
+and more ingenuous than Byron's young rake. Figaro, the hero of the
+play, is the comic servant, familiar to the stage from the time of
+Plautus, impudent, daring, plausible; likely to be overreached, if at
+all, by his own unscrupulousness. But he is also the adventurer of the
+last age of the French monarchy, full of liberal ideas and ready to give
+a decided opinion on anything that concerns society or politics; a
+Scapin, who has brushed the clothes of Voltaire. He is a shabby, younger
+brother of Beaumarchais himself, immensely clever and not without kindly
+feeling, a rascal you can be fond of. "Intrigue and money; you are in
+your element!" cries Susanne to Figaro, in the first act. "A hundred
+times I have seen you march on to fortune, but never walk straight,"
+says the Count to him, in the third. We laugh when the blows meant for
+others smack loud on his cheeks; but we grudge him neither his money nor
+his pretty wife.
+
+It is through this character that Beaumarchais tells the nobility, the
+court, and the government of France what is being said about them in the
+street. He repays with bitter gibes the insolence which he himself, the
+clever, ambitious man of the middle class, has received, in his long
+struggle for notoriety and wealth, from people whose personal claims to
+respect were no better than his own. "What have you done to have so much
+wealth?" cries Figaro in his soliloquy, apostrophizing the Count, who is
+trying to steal his mistress, "You have taken the trouble to be born,
+nothing more!" "I was spoken of, for an office," he says again, "but
+unfortunately I was fitted for it. An accountant was needed, and a
+dancer got it." And in another place: "I was born to be a courtier;
+receiving, taking and asking, are the whole secret in three words."
+
+As for the limitations on the liberty of the press: "They tell me," says
+Figaro, "that if in my writing I will mention neither the government,
+nor public worship, nor politics, nor morals, nor people in office, nor
+influential corporations, nor the Opera, nor the other theatres, nor
+anybody that belongs to anything, I may print everything freely, subject
+to the approval of two or three censors." "How I should like to get hold
+of one of those people that are powerful for a few days, and that give
+evil orders so lightly, after a good reverse of favor had sobered him of
+his pride! I would tell him, that foolish things in print are important
+only where their circulation is interfered with; that without freedom to
+blame, no praise is flattering, and that none but little men are afraid
+of little writings."
+
+The "Marriage of Figaro" was accepted by the great Parisian theatre, the
+Comédie Française, toward the end of 1781. The wit of the piece itself
+and the notoriety of the author made its success almost inevitable. The
+permission of the censor was of course necessary before the play could
+be put on the boards; but the first censor to whom the work was
+submitted pronounced that, with a few alterations, it might be given.
+The piece was already exciting much attention. As an advertisement,
+Beaumarchais had read it aloud in several houses of note. It was the
+talk of the town and of the court. The nobles were enchanted. To be
+laughed at so wittily was a new sensation. Old Maurepas, the prime
+minister, heard the play and spoke of it to his royal master. The king's
+curiosity was excited. He sent for a copy, and the queen's waiting
+woman, Madame Campan, was ordered to be at Her Majesty's apartment at
+three o'clock in the afternoon, but to be sure and take her dinner
+first, as she would be kept a long time.
+
+At the appointed hour, Madame Campan found no one in the chamber but the
+king and the queen. A big pile of manuscript, covered with corrections,
+was on the table. As Madame Campan read, the king frequently
+interrupted. He praised some passages, and blamed others as in bad
+taste. At last, however, near the end of the play, occurred the long
+soliloquy in which Figaro has brought together his bitterest complaints.
+Early in the scene there is a description of the arbitrary imprisonment
+which was so common in those days. "A question arises concerning the
+nature of riches," says Figaro, "and as you do not need to have a thing
+in order to talk about it, I, who have not a penny, write on the value
+of money and its net product. Presently, from the inside of a cab, I see
+the drawbridge of a prison let down for me; and leave, as I go in, both
+hope and liberty behind." On hearing this tirade, King Louis XVI. leaped
+from his chair, and exclaimed: "It is detestable; it shall never be
+played! Not to have the production of this play a dangerous piece of
+inconsistency, we should have to destroy the Bastille. This man makes
+sport of everything that should be respected in a government."
+
+"Then it will not be played?" asked the queen.
+
+"Certainly not!" answered Louis; "you may be sure of it."
+
+For two years a contest was kept up between the king of France and the
+dramatic author as to whether the "Marriage of Figaro" should be acted
+or not. The king had on his side absolute power to forbid the
+performance or to impose any conditions he pleased; but he stood almost
+alone in his opinion, and Louis XVI. never could stand long alone. The
+author had for auxiliaries some of the princes, most of the nobility,
+the court and the town. Public curiosity was aroused, and no one knew
+better than Beaumarchais how to keep it awake. He continued to read the
+play at private parties, but it required so much begging to induce him
+to do so that the favor never became a cheap one. Those people who heard
+it were loud in its praise, and less favored persons talked of tyranny
+and oppression, because they were not permitted to see themselves and
+their neighbors delightfully laughed at by Figaro. Poor Louis held out
+against the solicitations of the people about him with a pertinacity
+which he seldom showed in greater matters. At last his resolution
+weakened, and permission was accorded to play the piece at a private
+entertainment given by the Count of Vaudreuil. After that, the public
+performance became only a question of time and of the suppression of
+obnoxious passages. On the 27th of April, 1784, the theatre-goers of
+Paris thronged from early morning about the doors of the Comedie
+Française; three persons were crushed to death; great ladies dined in
+the theatre, to keep their places. At half past five the curtain rose.
+The success was unbounded, in spite of savage criticism, which spared
+neither the play nor the author.[Footnote: Campan, i. 277. Lomenie,
+_Beaumarchais_, ii. 293. Grimm, xiii. 517. La Harpe, _Corresp.
+litt._ iv. 227.]
+
+As the people of Paris liked violent language, they also enjoyed
+opposition to the government, whatever form that opposition might
+assume. The Parliament, as we have seen, although contending for
+privileges and against measures beneficial to most people in the
+country, was yet popular, for it was continually defying the court. But
+many privileged persons went farther than the conservative lawyers of
+the city. It was indeed such people who took the lead both in
+proclaiming equality and in denouncing courtiers. From the nobility and
+the rich citizens of Paris, discontent with existing conditions and the
+habit of opposition to constituted authorities spread to the lower
+classes and to the inhabitants of provincial towns.
+
+Louis XVI. had not been long on the throne when a series of events
+occurred in a distant part of the world which excited in a high degree
+both the spirit of insubordination and the love of equality in French
+minds. The American colonies of Great Britain broke into open revolt,
+and presently declared their independence of the mother country. The
+sympathy of Frenchmen was almost universal and was loudly expressed.
+Here was a nation of farmers constituting little communities that
+Rousseau might not have disowned, at least if he had looked at them no
+nearer than across the ocean. They were in arms for their rights and
+liberties, and in revolt against arbitrary power. And the oppressor
+was the king of England, the monarch of the nation that had inflicted
+on France, only a few years before, a humiliating defeat. Much that
+was generous in French character, and much that was sentimental, love
+of liberty, admiration of equality, hatred of the hereditary enemy,
+conspired to favor the cause of the "Insurgents." The people who
+wished for political reforms could point to the model commonwealths of
+the New World. Their constitutions were translated into French, and
+several editions were sold in Paris.[Footnote: _Recueil des loix
+constitutives. Constitutions des treize États Unis de l'Amérique_.
+Franklin to Samuel Cooper, May 1, 1777. _Works_ vi. 96.] The people
+that adored King Louis could cry out for the abasement of King
+George. A few prudent heads in high places were shaken at the thought
+of assisting rebellion. The Emperor Joseph II., brother-in-law to the
+king of France, was not quite the only man whose business it was to be
+a royalist. Ministers might deprecate war on economical grounds, and
+advise that just enough help be given to the Americans to prolong
+their struggle with England until both parties should be exhausted.
+But the heart of the French nation had gone into the war. It was for
+the sake of his own country that the Count of Vergennes, the foreign
+minister of Louis XVI., induced her to take up arms against Great
+Britain, and in the negotiations for peace he would willingly have
+sacrificed the interests of his American to those of his Spanish
+allies; yet the part taken by France was the almost inevitable result
+of the sympathy and enthusiasm of the French nation. Never was a war
+not strictly of defense more completely national in its character.
+Frenchmen fought in Virginia because they loved American ideas, and
+hated the enemy of America. [Footnote: Rosenthal, _America and
+France_,--an excellent monograph.]
+
+Thus France, while still an absolute monarchy, undertook a war in
+defense of political rights. Such an action could not be without
+results. Writers of a later time, belonging to the monarchical party,
+have not liked the results and have blamed the course of the French
+upper classes in embarking in the war. But it was because they were
+already inclined to revolutionary ideas in politics that the nobility
+did so embark. Poor Louis was dragged along, feebly protesting. He was
+no radical, and to him change could mean nothing but harm; if it be harm
+to be deprived of authority beyond your strength, and of responsibility
+exceeding your moral power. The war, in its turn, fed the prevailing
+passions. Young Frenchmen, who had first become warlike because they
+were adventurous and high-spirited, adopted the cries of "liberty" and
+"equality" as the watchwords of the struggle into which they entered,
+and were then interested to study the principles which they so loudly
+proclaimed. Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, even Montesquieu, became
+more widely read than ever. Officers returning from the capture of
+Yorktown were flushed with success and ready to praise all they had
+seen. They told of the simplicity of republican manners, of the respect
+shown for virtuous women. Even Lauzun forgot to be lewd in speaking of
+the ladies of Newport. So unusual a state of mind could not last long. A
+reaction set in after the peace with England. Anglomania became the
+ruling fashion. The change was more apparent than real. London was
+nearer than Philadelphia and more easily visited. Political freedom
+existed there also, if not in so perfect a form, yet in one quite as
+well suited to the tastes of fashionable young men. Had not Montesquieu
+looked on England as the model state?[Footnote: Ségur, i. 87. The
+French officers who were in the Revolutionary war often express
+dissatisfaction with the Americans, but their voices appear to have been
+drowned in France in the chorus of praise. See Kalb's letters to Broglie
+in Stevens's MSS., vii., and Mauroy to Broglie, _ibid_., No. 838.
+The foreign politics of the reign of Louis XVI. are admirably considered
+by Albert Sorel, _L'Europe et la Révolution française_, i. 297.]
+
+Thus English political ideas were adopted with more or less accuracy and
+were accompanied by English fashions: horses and horseracing, short
+stirrups, plain clothes, linen dresses, and bread and butter. Clubs also
+are an English invention. The first one in Paris was opened in 1782. The
+Duke of Chartres had recently cut down the trees of his garden to build
+the porticoes and shops of the Palais Royal. The people who had been in
+the habit of lounging under the trees were thus dispossessed. A
+speculator opened a reading-room for their benefit, and provided them
+with newspapers, pamphlets, and current literature. The duke himself
+encouraged the enterprise, and overcame the resistance which the police
+naturally made to any new project. The reading-room, which seems to have
+had a regular list of subscribers, was called the Political Club. In
+spite of the name, the regulations of the police forbade conversation
+within its walls on the subjects of religion and politics; but such
+rules were seldom enforced in Paris. Other clubs were soon founded, some
+large and open, some small and private. A certain number of them took
+the name of literary, scientific, or benevolent associations. Some
+appear to have been secret societies with oaths and pledges. The habit
+of talking about matters of government spread more and more.[Footnote:
+Chérest, ii. 101. Droz, i. 326. See in Brissot ii. 415, an account of a
+club to discuss political questions, under pretense of studying animal
+magnetism. Lafayette, d'Espresmenil, and others were members. Their
+ideas were vague enough. Brissot was for a republic, D'Esprésmenil for
+giving the power to the Parliament, Bergasse for a new form of
+government of which he was to be the Lycurgus. Morellet, i. 346. Lameth,
+i. 34 _n_. Sainte-Beuve, x. 104 (_Sénac de Meilhan_).]
+
+It was on the approach of the meeting of the Estates General that the
+habit of political reading assumed the greatest importance. In the
+latter part of 1788 and the earlier months of 1789 a deluge of
+pamphlets, such as the world had not seen and is never likely to see
+again, burst over Paris. The newspapers of the day were few and
+completely under the control of the government, but French heads were
+seething with ideas. In vain the administration and the courts made
+feeble attempts to limit the activity of the press. From the princes of
+the blood royal (who issued a reactionary manifesto), to the most
+obscure writer who might hope for a moment's notoriety, all were rushing
+into print. The booksellers' shops were crowded from morning until
+night. The price of printing was doubled. One collector is said to have
+got together twenty-five hundred different political pamphlets in the
+last months of 1788, and to have stopped in despair at the impossibility
+of completing his collection.[Footnote: Droz, ii. 93. "Thirteen came
+out to-day, sixteen yesterday, and ninety-two last week." A. Young, i.
+118 (June 9, 1789). Chérest, ii. 248, etc.]
+
+In most political crises there is but one great question of the hour;
+but in France at this time all matters of government and social life
+were in doubt; and every man believed that he could settle them all by
+the easy and speedy application of pure reason, if only all other men
+would lay down their prejudices. And a special subject was not
+wanting. The question which called loudest for an answer was that of
+representation. Should there be one chamber in the Estates General,
+in which the Commons should have a number of votes equal to that of
+the other two orders combined, or should there be three chambers? This
+matter (which is more particularly discussed in the next chapter) and
+the general political constitution occupied the chief attention of the
+pamphleteers, but law reform and feudal abuses were not forgotten.
+
+The pamphlets came from all quarters and bore all sorts of titles.
+"Detached Thoughts;" "The Forty Wishes of the Nation;" "What has surely
+been forgotten;" "Discourse on the Estates General;" "Letter of a
+Burgundian Gentleman to a Breton Gentleman, on the Attack of the Third
+Estate, the Division of the Nobility, and the Interest of the
+Husbandmen;" "Letter of a Peasant;" "Plan for a Matrimonial Alliance
+between Monsieur Third Estate and Madam Nobility;" "When the Cock crows,
+look out for the Old Hens;" "Ultimatum of a Citizen of the Third Estate
+on the Mémoire of the Princes;" "Te Deum of the Third Estate as it will
+be sung at the First Mass of the Estates General, with the Confession of
+the Nobility," "Creed of the Third Estate;" "Magnificat of the Third
+Estate;" and "Requiem of the Farmers General."
+
+The pamphlets are generally anonymous, from a lingering fear of the
+police. The place of printing is seldom mentioned; at least, few of the
+pamphlets bear the true one. The imprint, where one appears, is London,
+Ispahan, or Concordopolis. One humorous and distinctly libelous
+publication is "sold at the Islands of Saint Margaret, and distributed
+gratis at Paris." The pamphlet entitled "Diogenes and the Estates
+General" is "sold by Diogenes in his Tub."
+
+In spite of the stringent orders against printed attacks on the
+government, in spite of the spasmodic activity of the police, the
+boldness of some of the pamphlets is remarkable. One of them, for
+instance, begins as follows: "There was once, I know not where, a king
+born with an upright spirit and a heart that loved justice, but a bad
+education had left his good qualities uncultivated and useless." The
+king is then accused of eating and hunting too much, and of swearing.
+And when we pass from personal to political subjects there is almost no
+limit to the rashness of the pamphleteers. It was not the most sane and
+judicious part of the nation which became most conspicuous by its
+writings at this time and in this manner. The pamphlets are noticeably
+less conservative than the _cahiers_, which were likewise produced
+in the spring of 1789.
+
+Yet the subversionary writers were not left to occupy the field alone.
+Nobles and magistrates took up their pens to defend old institutions.
+Moderate men tried to get a hearing in behalf of peace and good will.
+But, alas, the old constitution was a dream. France was in fact a
+despotism with civilized traditions and with a few customs that had
+almost the force of fundamental laws, and her people wanted a liberal
+government. As to the form of that government they were not entirely
+agreed; although they were not quite so subversionary as many of the
+pamphleteers wished them to be, or as their subsequent history would
+lead us to believe them to have been. But no leader appeared, for a long
+time, strong enough to dominate the factions and to keep the peace.
+
+Of the mass of political literature which saw the light in 1788 and
+1789, three lines only are commonly remembered. They are on the first
+page of a pamphlet by the famous Abbé Sieyes. Of the many persons who in
+our own time have wondered how to pronounce his name, all are aware that
+he asked and answered the following questions:
+
+"(1.) What is the Third Estate? Everything.
+
+"(2.) What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing.
+
+"(3.) What does it ask? To become something."
+
+Few have followed him farther in his inquiries. Yet his pamphlet
+excited great interest and admiration in its day. It is an eloquent
+and well-written paper, as strong in rhetoric as it is weak in
+statesmanship.
+
+In agriculture, manufactures, and trade, and in those services which are
+directly useful and agreeable to persons, and which include the most
+distinguished scientific and literary professions and the most menial
+service, the Commons, according to Sieyes, do all the work. In the army,
+the church, the law, and the administration of government, they furnish
+nineteen twentieths of the men employed, and these do all that is really
+onerous. Only the lucrative and honorary places are occupied by members
+of the nobility. These upper places would be infinitely better filled if
+they were the rewards of talents and services recognized in the lower
+ranks. The Third Estate is quite able to do all that is needful. Were
+the privileged orders taken away, the nation would not be something less
+than it is, but something more.
+
+"What is a nation?" asks Sieyes; and he answers that it is "a body of
+associates living together under a common law and represented by the
+same legislature." But the order of the nobility has privileges,
+dispensations, different rights from the great body of the citizens. It
+is outside of the common order and the common law. It is a state within
+a state.
+
+The Third Estate, therefore, embraces everything which belongs to the
+nation; and all that is not a part of the Commons cannot be considered a
+part of the nation. What, then, is the Third Estate? Everything.
+
+What has the Third Estate hitherto been? Nothing. It is but too true
+that you are nothing in France if you have only the protection of the
+common law. Without some privilege or other, you must make up your mind
+to suffer contempt, contumely, and all sorts of vexation. The
+unfortunate person who has no privileges of his own can only attach
+himself to some great man, by all sorts of meanness, and thus get the
+chance, on occasion, to demand the assistance of _somebody_.
+
+What does the Third Estate ask? To become something in the state. And in
+truth the people asks but little. It wants true representatives in the
+Estates, taken from its own order, able to interpret its wishes, and
+defend its interests. But what would it gain by taking part in the
+Estates General, if its own side were not to prevail there? It must,
+therefore, have an influence at least equal to that of the privileged
+orders; it must have half the representatives. This equality would be
+illusory if the chambers voted separately; therefore, the voting must be
+by heads. Can the Third Estate ask for less than this? And is it not
+clear that if its influence is less than that of the privileged orders
+combined, there is no hope of its emerging from its political nullity
+and becoming something?
+
+Sieyes goes on to argue that the Third Estate should be allowed to
+choose its representatives only from its own body. He has persuaded
+himself, by what seems to be a process of mental juggling, that men of
+one order cannot be truly represented by men of another. Suppose, he
+says, that France is at war with England, and that hostilities are
+conducted on our side by a Directory composed of national
+representatives. In that case, I ask, would any province be
+permitted, in the name of freedom, to choose for its delegates to the
+Directory the members of the English ministry? Surely the privileged
+classes show themselves no less hostile to the common order of people,
+than the English to the French in time of war.
+
+Three further questions are stated by Sieyes.
+
+(4.) What the ministers have attempted and what the privileged classes
+propose in favor of the Third Estate?
+
+(5.) What should have been done?
+
+(6.) What is still to be done?
+
+Under the fourth head, Sieyes considers the Provincial Assemblies
+recently established, and the Assembly of Notables, both of which he
+considers entirely incapable of doing good, because they are composed of
+privileged persons. He scorns the proposal of the nobility to pay a fair
+share of the taxes, being unwilling to accept as a favor what he wishes
+to take as a right. He fears that the Commons will be content with too
+little and will not sweep away all privilege. He attacks the English
+Constitution, which the liberal nobles of France were in the habit of
+setting up as a model, saying that it is not good in itself, but only as
+a prodigious system of props and makeshifts against disorder. The right
+of trial by jury he considers its best feature.
+
+He then passes to the question: What should have been done? and here he
+gives us the foundation of his system. Without naming Rousseau he has
+adopted the Social Compact as the basis of government. A nation is made
+up of individuals; these unite to form a community; for convenience they
+depute persons to represent them and to exercise the common power.
+[Footnote: It need hardly be pointed out that Sieyes falls short of the
+full measure of Rousseau's doctrine when he allows the law-making, or
+more correctly the constitution-making power, to be delegated at all.]
+The constitution of the state is the body of rules by which these
+representatives are governed when they legislate or administer the
+public affairs. The constitution is fundamental, not as binding the
+national will, but only as binding the bodies existing within the state.
+The nation itself is free from all such bonds. No constitution can
+control it. Its will cannot be limited. The nation assembling to
+consider its constitution is not controlled by ordinary forms. Its
+delegates meeting for that especial purpose are independent of the
+constitution. They represent the national will, and questions are
+settled by them not in accordance with constitutional laws, but as they
+might be in a meeting of the whole nation were it small enough to be
+brought together in one place; that is to say, by a vote of the
+majority.[Footnote: Sieyes and his master do not see that if unanimity
+cannot be secured, and if constitutional law be once done away, men are
+reduced under their system to a state of nature, and the will of a
+majority has no binding force but that of the strong arm.]
+
+But where find the nation? Where it is: in the forty thousand parishes
+which comprise all the territory and all the inhabitants of the country.
+They should have been arranged in groups of twenty or thirty parishes,
+and have thus formed representative districts, which should have united
+to make provinces, which should have sent true delegates, with special
+power to settle the constitution of the Estates General.
+
+This correct course has not been followed, but what now remains to be
+done? Let the Commons assemble apart from the other orders. Let them
+join with the Nobility and the Clergy neither by orders, as a part of a
+legislature of three chambers, nor by heads, in one common assembly. Two
+courses are open. Either let them appeal to the nation for increased
+powers, which would be the most frank and generous way; or let them only
+consider the enormous difference that exists between the assembly of the
+Third Estate and that of the other two orders. "The former represents
+twenty-five millions of men and deliberates on the interests of the
+nation. The other two, were they united, have received their powers from
+but about two hundred thousand individuals, and think only of their
+privileges. The Third Estate alone, you will say, cannot form the
+Estates General. So much the better! It will make a _National
+Assembly_."
+
+I have considered this famous pamphlet at some length, because it was
+eminently timely, expressing, as it did, the doctrines and the
+aspirations of the subversionary party in France. I believe, and
+principally on the evidence of the cahiers, that this party did not form
+a majority, or even, numerically, a very large minority, of the French
+nation. A constitutional convention, organized from the Commons alone as
+Sieyes would have had it, if left to itself and uncontrolled by the
+Parisian mob, would undoubtedly have settled the question of a single
+chamber in a popular sense, but it would have preserved the privileges
+of the nobility to an extent which would have disgusted the extremists,
+and perhaps have saved the country from years of violence and decades of
+reaction. But the people of violent ideas were predominant in Paris and
+in some of the towns, and were destined, for a time, to be the chief
+force in the French Revolution. The passions of this party were love of
+equality and hatred of privilege. To men of this stamp despotism may be
+comparatively indifferent; liberty is a word of sweet sound, but little
+meaning. Sieyes hardly refers to the king in his pamphlet. "The time is
+past," he says, "when the three orders, thinking only of defending
+themselves from ministerial despotism, were ready to unite against the
+common enemy." This comparative indifference to the tyranny of the court
+was not the feeling of the country, but it was that of the enthusiasts.
+Nothing is too bad according to these last, for men who hold privileges.
+They have no right to assemblies of their own, nor to a voice in the
+assemblies of the people. To ask what place they should occupy in the
+social order "is to ask what place should be assigned in a sick body to
+the malignant humor which undermines and torments it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE CAHIERS.
+
+
+It is seldom, indeed, that a great nation can express fully, frankly,
+and yet officially, all its complaints, wishes, and hopes in respect to
+its own government. Our knowledge of national ideas must generally be
+derived from the words of particular classes of men: statesmen,
+politicians, authors, or writers in the newspapers. The ideas of these
+classes are more or less in accord with those of the great mass of the
+people which they undertake to represent; yet their expressions are
+necessarily tinged by their own professional way of looking at things.
+But in the spring of 1789 all Frenchmen, with few exceptions, were
+called on to unite, not merely in choosing representatives, but in
+giving them minute instructions. The occasion was most solemn. The
+Estates General, the great central legislature of France, which had not
+met for nearly two centuries, was summoned to assemble at Versailles. It
+should be the old body and something more. It was to partake of the
+nature of a constitutional convention. It was not only to legislate, but
+to settle the principles of government. It was called by the king to
+advise and consent to all that might concern the needs of the state, the
+reform of abuses, the establishment of a fixed and lasting order in all
+parts of the administration, the general prosperity of his kingdom, and
+the welfare of all and each of his subjects.[Footnote: _Royal Letter
+of Convocation_, January 24, 1789, _A. P._ i. 611. The principal
+printed collection of cahiers, together with much preliminary matter,
+may be found in the first six volumes of the Archives Parlementaires,
+edited by MM. Mavidal et Laurent, Paris. The seventh volume consists of
+an index, which, although very imperfect, is necessary to an intelligent
+study of the cahiers. The cahiers printed in these volumes occupy about
+4,000 large octavo pages in double column. These volumes will be
+referred to in this chapter and the next as A. P. Many cahiers and
+extracts from cahiers are also found printed in other places. I have not
+undertaken to give references to all the cahiers on which my conclusions
+are founded, but only to a few typical examples. The letters C., N., and
+T indicate the three orders. Where no such letter occurs the cahier is
+generally that of a town or village.]
+
+The three orders of men, the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons, or
+Third Estate, were to hold their elections separately in every district,
+[Footnote: Saillage, sénéchaussée.] unless they should, by separate
+votes, agree to unite.[Footnote: The three orders did not often unite,
+but there is often evidence of communication between them. They all
+united at Bayonne, A. P. iii. 98. Montfort l'Amaury, A. P. iv. 37.
+Rozières, A. P. iv. 91. Fenestrange, A. P. v. 710. Mohon, A. P. v. 729.
+The Clergy and the Nobility united at Lixheim, A. P. v. 713; the
+Nobility and the Third Estate at Péronne, A. P. v. 355.] In accordance
+with ancient custom they were to draw up petitions, complaints, and
+remonstrances, which were intended to form a basis for legislation.
+These complaints were to be brought to the Estates, and were to serve as
+instructions, more or less positive, to the deputies who brought them.
+They were known in French political language as Cahiers.
+
+The cahiers of the Clergy and of the Nobility were drawn up in the
+electoral meetings which took place in every district. To these local
+assemblies of the Clergy, all bishops, abbots, and parish priests,
+holding benefices, were summoned. Chapters and monasteries sent only
+representatives. The result of this arrangement was that the parish
+priests far outnumbered the regular ecclesiastics and dignitaries, and
+that the clerical cahiers oftenest express the wishes of the lower
+portion of the secular clergy. This preponderance of the lower clergy
+appears to have been foreseen and desired by the royal advisers. The
+king had expressed his wish to call to the assemblies of the Clergy "all
+those good and faithful pastors who are occupied closely and every day
+with the poverty and the assistance of the people and who are more
+intimately acquainted with its ills and its apprehensions."[Footnote:
+Règlement du 24 Jan. 1789, A. P. i. 544. Parish priests were not allowed
+to leave their parishes to go to the assemblies if more than two leagues
+distant, unless they left curates to do their work. But this provision
+did not keep enough of them away to alter the character of the
+assemblies.]
+
+To the local assemblies of the nobles, all Frenchmen of the order, not
+less than twenty-five years of age, were summoned. Men, women, or
+children possessing fiefs might appear by proxy. The latter provision
+did not suffice to take the meetings out of the control of the more
+numerous part of the order,--the poorer nobility. To pride of race and
+intense loyalty to the king, these country gentlemen united distrust and
+dislike of the court, and the desire that all nobles at least should
+have equal rights and chances. Their cahiers differ somewhat from place
+to place, but are wonderfully alike in general current.[Footnote: N.,
+Périgord, A. P., v. 341.]
+
+For the Third Estate a more complicated system was adopted. The
+franchise extended to every French subject, neither clerical nor noble,
+twenty-five years of age, and entered on the tax rolls.[Footnote: In
+Paris only, a small property qualification was exacted.] Every town,
+parish, or village, drew up its cahier and sent it, by deputies, either
+to the assembly of the district or to an intermediate assembly. Here a
+committee was appointed to consider all the local cahiers and
+consolidate them; those of the intermediate assemblies being again
+worked over for the general cahier of the Third Estate of each electoral
+district. Thus the cahiers of the Commons finally carried to the Estates
+General at Versailles were less directly the expression of the opinions
+of the order from which they came than were the cahiers of the Clergy
+and of the Nobility. Fortunately, however, large numbers of the primary
+or village cahiers have been preserved and printed.
+
+The cahiers of the Third Estate differ far more among themselves than do
+those of the upper orders. Some of them, drawn up in the villages, are
+very simple, dealing merely with local grievances and the woes of
+peasant life. The long absence of the lord of the place causes more loss
+to one village than even the price of salt, or than the taille, with
+which the people are overburdened. Then follows the enumeration of
+broken bridges, of pastures overflowed because the bed of the stream is
+obstructed, of robbery and violence and refusal of justice, with no one
+to protect the poor, nor to direct repairs and improvements.[Footnote:
+Paroisse de Longpont, A. P., v. 334.]
+
+In another place we have the touching humility of the peasant. "The
+inhabitants of this parish have no other complaints to make than those
+which are common to folk of their rank and condition, namely, that they
+pay too many taxes of different kinds already; that they would wish that
+the disorder of the finances might not be the cause of new burdens upon
+them, because they were not able to bear any more, having a great deal
+of trouble to pay those which are now levied, but that it much rather
+belonged to those who are rich to contribute toward setting up the
+affairs of the kingdom.
+
+"As for remonstrances, they have no other wishes nor other desires than
+peace and public tranquillity: that they wish the assembly of the
+Estates General may restore the order of the finances, and bring about
+in France the order and prosperity of the state; that they are not
+skillful enough about the matters which are to be treated in the said
+assembly to give their opinion, and they trust to the intelligence and
+the good intentions of those who will be sent there as deputies.
+
+"Finally, that they know no means of providing for the necessities of
+the state, but a great economy in expenses and reciprocal love between
+the king and his subjects."[Footnote: Paroisse de Pas-Saint-Lomer, A.
+P., v. 334.]
+
+Not many of the cahiers are so modest as this one. Some of them are many
+pages long, arranged under heads, divided into numbered paragraphs.
+These contain a general scheme of legislation, and often also particular
+and local petitions. They ask that such a lawsuit be reviewed, that such
+a dispute be favorably settled. Many localities complain, not only that
+the country in general is overtaxed, but that their particular
+neighborhood pays more than its share. Their soil is poor, they say,
+water is scarce or too plenty. The cahiers of the country villages
+contain more complaints of feudal exactions, while those of the towns
+and of the electoral districts give more space to political and social
+reforms.
+
+Many models of cahiers were prepared in Paris and sent to the country
+towns. Thus the famous Abbé Sieyes, whose violent doctrines were
+considered in the last chapter, composed and distributed a form. It was
+brought to Chaumont in Champagne by the Viscount of Laval, who undertook
+to manage the election in that town in the interest of democracy and the
+Duke of Orleans. Dinners and balls were given to the voters; promises
+were made. The badges of an order of canonesses, which the duke proposed
+to found, were distributed among the ladies. The abbé's cahier was
+accepted, but the peasants of Champagne appended to its demands for
+constitutional reforms the petition that their dogs might not be obliged
+to carry a log fastened to their collars to prevent their running after
+game, and that they themselves might be allowed to have guns to kill the
+wolves.[Footnote: Beugnot, Mémoires, i. 110.]
+
+Some of the cahiers were entirely of home manufacture, drawn up by the
+lawyer or the priest of the village. The people of Essy-les-Nancy, in
+Lorraine, describe the process. "Each one of us proposed what he thought
+proper, and then we chose our deputies, Imbert Perrin and Joseph
+Jacques, whom we thought best able well to represent us. The only thing
+left was to express our wishes well, and to draw up the official report
+of the meeting. But our priest, in whom we trust, who feels our woes so
+well, and who expresses our feelings so rightly, had been obliged to go
+away. We said: `We must wait for him; we will first beg his assistant to
+begin, and then, when the priest comes back, we will give him the whole
+thing to correct, and have our affairs ready to be taken to the assembly
+of the district.' He came back in fact; we asked him to draw it all up.
+We told him all we wanted. He kept writing, and scratching out, and
+writing over, until we saw that he had got our ideas. Everything seemed
+ready for the fifteenth. But we heard that the district assembly would
+be put off until the thirtieth. We said to him: `Sir, wait again, let us
+profit by the delay, we shall think of something more, you will add it;'
+he consented."[Footnote: Mathieu, 423.]
+
+There was evidently some concert among the different districts, but
+also much freedom and originality. There are many protests on the part
+of minorities. Bishops or chapters complain of clauses which attack
+their rights; monasteries remonstrate against the proposed diversion
+of their funds to pay parish priests. Individuals take this
+opportunity to give their views on public matters. An old officer
+would have nobility of the sword confined to families in which the men
+bear arms in every generation. A commoner, having bought noble lands,
+complains of the additional taxes laid on him on this account. The
+peasants of Ménil-la-Horgne say that the lawyers have captured the
+electoral assembly of their district, and cut out their remonstrances
+from the general cahier; that although there are thirty-two rural
+communities in the bailiwick, and all agreed, the six deputies of the
+towns have managed things in their own way; and that thus the poor
+inhabitants of the country can never bring their wishes to the notice
+of their sovereign, who desires their good, and takes all means to
+accomplish it.[Footnote: No strict line appears to have been drawn as
+to who might and who might not properly issue a cahier. Jean Baptiste
+Lardier, seigneur de Saint-Gervais de Pierrefitte, A. P. v. 17.
+Messire Carré, A. P., v. 21; A. P. ii. 224.]
+
+The meetings in which the cahiers were composed were sometimes stormy.
+At Nemours the economist Dupont was one of the committee especially
+engaged in the task. The question of abolishing the old courts of law
+was a cause of strong feeling. The excitement rose so high that the
+crowd threatened to throw Dupont out of the window. Matters looked
+serious, for the room was a flight above ground, the window was already
+open, and angry men were laying hands on the economist. The latter,
+however, picked out one inoffensive person, a very fat man, who happened
+to be standing by. Dupont managed to get near him and suddenly grasped
+him round the body. "What do you want?" cried the startled fat man.
+"Sir," answered Dupont, "every one for himself. They are going to throw
+me out of the window, and you must serve as a mattress." The crowd
+laughed, and not only let Dupont alone, but came round to his opinion,
+and chose him deputy.[Footnote: Another politician under similar
+circumstances was frightened out of the room, and lost all political
+influence. Beugnot, i. 118.]
+
+The agreement of general ideas in the cahiers is all the more striking
+on account of the diversity in their details, and of the freedom of
+discussion and protest enjoyed by those concerned in composing them.
+They have been constantly referred to by writers on history, politics,
+and economics for information as to the state of France at the time when
+they were written. They are, indeed, capable of teaching a very great
+deal, but they will prove misleading if the purpose for which they were
+composed be forgotten. This purpose was to express the complaints and
+desires of the nation. It appears in their very name, "Cahiers of
+Lamentations, Complaints, and Remonstrances."[Footnote: The titles
+vary, but generally bear this meaning.] We must not, therefore, look to
+the cahiers for mention of anything good in the condition of old France;
+and we must remember that people who are advocating a change are likely
+to bring forward the worst side of the things they wish to see altered.
+Two political ideas coexisted in the minds of Frenchmen in 1789 as to
+what they and their Estates General were to do and to be. They were to
+resume their ancient constitution. They were to make a new one, in
+accordance with reason and justice. Both of these desires may well be
+present in the minds of practical legislators, even if their
+reconciliation be at the expense of strict logic and historical
+accuracy. But unfortunately the historical and the ideal constitutions
+in France were too far separated to be easily united. The chasm between
+the feudal monarchy gradually transformed into a despotism, which had
+existed, and the well governed limited monarchy, which the most
+judicious Frenchmen desired, was too wide to be bridged. "The throne of
+France is inherited only in the male line;" to that all men agreed. They
+agreed also that all existing taxes were illegal, because they had not
+been allowed by the nation, and that such taxes should remain in force
+only for convenience, and for a limited time, unless voted by the
+legislature. The legislative power resides, or is to reside in the king
+and the nation, the latter being represented by its lawful assembly or
+Estates General;[Footnote: Some say in the Estates General, without
+mentioning the king.] here also they were in accord. But how are those
+Estates General to be composed? "Of three orders, deliberating and
+voting separately, the concurrence of all three being necessary to the
+passage of a law," said the nobles. "Of one chamber," answered the Third
+Estate, "in which our numbers are to be equal to those of the other
+orders united, and in which the vote is to be counted by heads." Here
+was the first and most dangerous divergence of opinion, on a question
+which should have been answered before it was even fairly asked, by the
+king who called the assembly. But neither Louis nor Necker, his adviser,
+had the strength and foresight to settle the matter on a firm basis
+while it was yet time. Were the old form of voting by three chambers
+intended, it was folly to make the popular one as numerous as the other
+two together. Were a new form of National Assembly, with only one
+chamber, to be brought into being, it was culpable to allow the old
+orders to misunderstand their fall from power. "We are an essential part
+of the monarchy," said the nobles. "We are twenty-three twenty-fourths
+of the nation, and the more useful part at that," retorted the Commons.
+"Our claim rests on law and history," cried the one. "And ours on reason
+and justice," shouted the other. And many of the deputies on either side
+held the positive instructions of their constituents not to yield in
+this matter. But while the Commons were practically a unit on this
+question, the nobles were more divided. About half of them insisted on
+their ancient rights, declaring, in many instances, that should the vote
+by heads be adopted their deputies were immediately to retire from the
+Estates. Others wavered, or allowed discussion by a single, united
+chamber under certain circumstances, or on questions which did not
+concern the privileges of the superior Orders. In a few provinces the
+nobles frankly took the popular side. The Clergy joined in some cases
+with one party, in some with the other, but oftenest gave no opinion.
+[Footnote: I have found one cahier of the Third Estate asking for the
+vote by orders. _T._, Mantes et Meulan, _A. P._, iii. 666,
+art. 4, Section 3. A suggestion of two coordinate chambers, in one
+cahier of the Clergy and Nobility, and in one of the Third Estate.
+_T._, Bigorre, _A. P._, ii. 359, Section 3.]
+
+The cahiers on both sides took this question as settled, and
+proceeded, with a tolerable agreement, to the other parts of the
+constitution. The king, in addition to his concurrence in legislation,
+was to have nominally the whole executive power. Many are the
+expressions of love and gratitude for Louis XVI. He is requested to
+adopt the title of "Father of the People," of "Emulator of
+Charlemagne." In the latter connection we are treated to a bit of
+history. It appears that Egbert, King of Kent, came to France in the
+year 799, to learn the art of reigning from Charlemagne himself. He
+bore back to England the plan of the French constitution. The next
+year he acquired the kingdom of Wessex, in 808 that of the Mercians,
+and in time his reputation brought under his rule the four remaining
+kingdoms of Great Britain. Thus it is the basis of our French
+constitution which for nearly a thousand years has made the happiness
+and strength of all England, and which is the true origin of the
+rightful privileges of the province of Brittany. [Footnote: _T._,
+Ballainvilliers, _A. P._, iv. 336, art. 35. Triel, _A. P._ v. 147,
+art. 104. For the title of _Père du Peuple_, St. Cloud, _A. P._
+v. 68. Montaigut, _A. P._ v. 577. _T._, Rouen, _A. P._ v. 602. _T._,
+Vannes, _A. P._, vi. 107. For blessings on the king and on Necker,
+see Mathieu, 425. The sole expression of disrespect for Louis XVI.
+which I have found is given in Beugnot, i. 116. "Let us give power to
+our deputies to solicit from our lord the king his consent to the
+above requests; in case he accords them, to thank him; in case he
+refuses, to _unking_ him" (_deroiter_). This, according to Beugnot,
+was in a rural cahier and he seems to quote from memory. The
+pamphlets, as has been said, were much more violent than the cahiers.]
+
+The royal power was to be exercised through responsible ministers, but
+we must not be misled by words. The ministerial responsibility
+contemplated by Frenchmen in the cahiers was something quite different
+from what is known by that name in modern times. Under the system of
+government which was forming in England in the last century, and which
+has since been extensively copied on the Continent, the ministers,
+although nominally the advisers of the king, form in fact a governing
+committee, selected by the legislature among its own members. The
+ministers are at once the creatures and the leaders of the Parliament
+from which they spring. To it they are responsible not only for
+malfeasance in office, but for matters of opinion or policy. As soon
+as they are shown to be in disagreement with the majority of their
+fellow-members, they fall from power; but their fall is attended with
+no disgrace, and no one is shocked or astonished to see them continue
+to take part in public life, and regain, by a turn of popular favor,
+those places which they may have lost almost by accident.
+
+The idea of such a system as this had not entered the minds of the
+Frenchmen of 1789. They knew ministers only as servants of a monarch,
+chosen by him alone, to carry out his orders, or to advise him in
+affairs of which the final decision lay with him. They knew but too
+well that kings and their servants are sometimes law-breakers. They
+knew, moreover, that their own actual king was weak and well-meaning.
+The pious fiction by which the king was always spoken of as good, and
+his aberrations were ascribed to defective knowledge or to bad advice,
+had taken some real hold on the popular imagination. The nation felt
+that the person of a king should be inviolable. But the breaches of
+law committed by the king's unaided strength could not be
+far-reaching. Frenchmen, therefore, desired to make all those persons
+responsible who might abet the king in illegal acts, or who might
+commit any such acts under his orders or in his name. They feared the
+levy of illegal taxes, and it was against malfeasance of that sort
+that they especially wished to provide. They therefore asked in their
+cahiers that the ministers should be made responsible to the civil
+tribunals or to the Estates General. The voters did not conceive of
+royal ministers as members of their legislature. In fact, some cahiers
+carefully provided that deputies should accept no office nor favor of
+the court either during the continuance of their service in the
+Estates, or for some years thereafter. The demand for ministerial
+responsibility was a demand that ministers, and their master through
+them, should be amenable to law; and was in the same line with the
+demand, also made in some cahiers, that soldiers should not be used in
+suppressing riots, except at the request of the civil power.[Footnote:
+_T._, St-Gervais (Paris), _A. P._, v. 308, Section 3. _N._ Agenois,
+_A. P._, i 680, Section 15. Chérest, ii. 475.]
+
+It was universally demanded that the Estates General should meet at
+regular intervals of two, three, or five years, and should vote taxes
+for a limited time only. Thus it was hoped to keep power in the hands of
+the nation. And all debates were to be public; the proceedings were to
+be reported from day to day.[Footnote: Chérest, ii. 461.] Such
+provisions were not unnatural, for jealousy and distrust are common in
+political matters, and the less the experience of the people, the
+greater their dread of plots and cabals. But only two years before the
+cahiers were drawn up, another nation, which it had recently been the
+fashion much to admire in France, had appointed its deputies to draw up
+its constitution. This nation was at least as superior to the French in
+political experience as it was inferior in the arts and sciences that
+adorn life. Its attempts at constitution making might, therefore, well
+have served as a guide. The American convention of 1787 had many
+difficulties to encounter and many jealousies to excite; but these were
+less threatening than those which confronted the French Estates. Yet in
+Philadelphia precautions had been taken which were scorned at
+Versailles. The American deputies did not number twelve hundred, but
+less than sixty. The Americans sat with closed doors, and exacted of
+each other a pledge, most religiously kept, that their proceedings
+should be secret. The French admitted all manner of persons, not only to
+listen to their debates, but to applaud and hiss them. Their chamber
+came in a short time to be influenced, if not controlled, by its
+galleries; so that France was no longer governed by her chosen
+representatives, but by the mob of her capital. The American deputies,
+for the most part, came unpledged to their work. The French in many
+instances were commanded by their constituents to retire unless such and
+such of their demands were complied with. The American constitution was
+accepted with difficulty, and could probably never have been accepted at
+all if the public mind had been inflamed by discussion of each part
+before the whole was known. That constitution, with but few important
+amendments, is to-day regarded with a veneration incomprehensible to
+foreigners, by a nation twenty times as large as that which originally
+adopted it.[Footnote: An eminent foreign historian would almost seem to
+have written his book on the Constitutional History of the United States
+for the purpose of showing that a man may know all about a subject
+without understanding it.] The French constitution made by the body
+which met in 1789, with the name of Estates General, Constituent, or
+National Assembly, was hailed with clamorous joy by a part of the
+nation, and met with angry incredulity by another part. Many of its
+provisions have remained; but the constitution itself did not last two
+years. Could the sober deliberation of a small body of authorized men,
+sitting with closed doors, have produced in France in 1789 a
+constitution under which the nation could have prospered, and which
+could have been gradually improved and adapted to modern civilization?
+Was the enthusiasm and rush of a large popular assembly necessary to
+overcome the interested opposition of the court and the weak
+nervelessness of the monarch? It will never be known. Louis XVI. was too
+feeble to try the experiment, and no one else had the legal authority.
+
+While the Estates General were to have the exclusive right of
+legislation, and France was thus to remain a centralized monarchy,
+Provincial Estates were to be established all over the country, unless
+where local bodies of the same character already existed. These
+Provincial Estates were to exercise large administrative powers, in the
+assessment and levy of taxes, in laying out roads, granting licenses,
+encouraging commerce and manufactures. It was the prayer of many of the
+cahiers that offices of one sort and another, civil or military, or that
+nobility itself, should be granted only on the nomination of the
+Provincial Estates. Many cahiers ask for elective municipal or village
+authorities. Many would sweep away the old officers of the crown, the
+intendants and military governors, the farmers general, and the very
+clerks. These men were hated as tax-gatherers, and distrusted as members
+of the old ring which had misgoverned the country. There are, says one
+cahier, more than forty thousand of them in the kingdom, whose sole
+business it is to vex and molest the king's subjects, by false
+declarations and other means, and all for the hope of a share in the
+fines and confiscations that may be exacted.[Footnote: _T._,
+Perche, _A. P._, v. 325, Section 13. Several cahiers ask that the
+rights and privileges of the old Estates of the _Pays d'États_ be
+retained. _N._, Amont, _A. P._, i. 764. Officers of government
+called "vampires." Domfront. _A. P._, i 724, Section 21. See also
+_T._, Amiens, _A. P._, i. 751, Section 40. Desjardins, xxxix.]
+
+It is a mistake to assume that the Frenchmen of 1789 cared chiefly for
+civil and social reforms, and only incidentally for reforms of a
+political character. In most of the cahiers the political reforms are
+first mentioned and are as elaborately insisted on as any others. If
+there be any difference in this respect among the Orders, it is that the
+Nobility are more urgent for the political part of the programme than
+either the Clergy or the Third Estate. The priests were much occupied
+with their own affairs. The peasantry were thinking of the hardships
+they suffered. But all intelligent men felt that social and economic
+reforms would be unstable unless an adequate political reform were made
+also. The deputies of the three orders were in many cases instructed not
+to consider questions of state debt or taxation until the proposed
+constitution had been adopted.[Footnote: _T._, Briey, _A.P._,
+ii. 204. _N._, Ponthieu, _A.P._, v. 431. _N._, Agenois,
+_A. P._, i. 680.]
+
+Having thus fixed the legislative power in the Estates General, and
+divided the executive and administrative branches of the government
+between the king with his responsible ministers and the Provincial
+Estates, the cahiers turned to the judicial function. On the reforms
+to be here accomplished there was substantial agreement; although the
+Third Order was most emphatic in its demands, as the expensive and
+complicated machinery of law weighs more heavily on the poor than on
+the rich, on the commercial class than on the land-owner. The great
+influence of lawyers among the Commons at this time was also a cause
+of the attention given to legal matters in the cahiers of the Third
+Estate. The common demand was for the simplification of courts and
+jurisdictions, the abolition of the purchase of judicial place, more
+uniform laws and customs. The codification of the laws, both civil and
+criminal, was sometimes called for. It was an usual request that there
+should be only two degrees in the administration of justice: a simple
+court in every district of sufficient size to warrant it, and
+parliaments in reasonable numbers, with final appellate jurisdiction.
+Commercial courts (_consulats_) were, however, to be retained. The
+nation was unanimous that the writ of _committimus_, by which cases
+could be removed by privileged persons from the regular courts to be
+tried by exceptional tribunals, or by distant parliaments, should be
+totally abolished. Justices of the peace, or informal courts with
+summary processes, were to have the settlement of small cases. The
+jurisdiction of the lords' bailiffs was to be much abridged or
+entirely done away. [Footnote: _T._, Alençon, _A. P._, i. 717, Section
+4. _T._, Amiens, _A. P._, i. 747, Section 1. This cahier gives a very
+full statement of existing judicial abuses. Desjardins, xxxv. Poncins,
+286. Desjardins (xl.) says that the Nobility tried to save the
+jurisdiction of the bailiffs, and in some cases persuaded the Third
+Estate. I do not find the instances.]
+
+In the criminal law, changes were recommended in the direction of giving
+a better chance to accused persons. Trials were to be prompt and public,
+and counsel were to be allowed. The prisons were to be improved. The
+Third Estate desired that punishment should be the same for all classes,
+and that the death penalty should be decapitation, a form of execution
+which had previously been reserved for the nobility. The thoroughness
+with which this reform was carried out some years later is very
+noticeable. The guillotine treated all sorts of men and women alike. It
+was a common request of the cahiers that the family of a man convicted
+and punished for crime should not be held to be disgraced, nor the
+relations of the culprit shut out from preferment. The former request
+shows a curious ignorance of what can and what cannot be done by
+legislation. Persons acquitted were to receive damages, either from the
+accuser, or from the state. Judges were to give reasons for their
+decisions. Arbitrary imprisonment by _lettre de cachet_ was,
+according to some cahiers, to be suppressed altogether; according to
+others it was to be regulated, but the practice retained where public
+policy or family discipline might require it.[Footnote: Domfront, _A.
+P._, i. 723, Section 6. Amiens, _A. P._, i. 747, Section 7. The
+cahiers show that everybody was opposed to the use of _lettres de
+cachet_ as they then existed; but most of the cahiers that had
+anything to say about them expressed a desire to keep something of the
+kind. They are considered necessary for reasons of state, or in the
+interest of families. Desjardins, 407. The author of the _Histoire du
+gouvernment de France depuis l'Assemblée des Notables_, a good,
+sensible, middle-class man, approves of them (260). Mercier (viii. 242)
+considers them useful and even necessary.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+SOCIAL AND ECONOMICAL MATTERS IN THE CAHIERS.
+
+
+As we pass from political and administrative questions to social and
+economical ones, the difficulty of an amicable arrangement is seen to
+increase. All agree that property is sacred; but the greater part of
+the nation is firmly persuaded that privilege must be destroyed; and
+in a vast number of cases, privilege is property. This difficulty will
+not stand long in the way of the Commons of France. It is just where
+privilege has this private character that it is the most odious to
+some classes of the population. The possession of land is connected
+with feudal obligations of all sorts; a violent separation must be
+made between them. The services to be rendered by the tenant to the
+landlord may be the most important part of the latter's ownership; and
+by the system of tenure maintained for centuries over the greater part
+of Christendom, every landholder has been some one's tenant. With the
+exception of a very few sovereign princes there has been no man in
+possession of an acre of land who has not rendered therefor,
+theoretically if not practically, some rent or service. The service
+might be merely nominal; in the case of noble lands in the eighteenth
+century, it generally was so; but nominal or real, the right to exact
+it was some one's property. If such a right did not put money in his
+purse, it yet added to his dignity and self-satisfaction. But such
+rights as this had come to be looked on with deep distrust by a large
+part of the French nation. Ideas of independence and of the abstract
+rights of man had struck deep root. It was felt that land should be
+owned absolutely,--by allodial possession, as the phrase is. The
+feudal services, in fact, were often more onerous to those who paid
+them than they were beneficial to those who received them. It was time
+that they should be abolished. Those which were purely honorific,
+although valued by the nobility, who possessed them, outraged the
+sense of equality in the nation. They were felt to be badges and marks
+of the inferiority of the tenant to the landlord, of the poor to the
+rich. There is but one king, and we cannot all be noble, but let every
+man hold his farm in peace; such was the impatient cry of the common
+people. The feudal rights, which are merely honorific, offend man as
+man; some of them are degrading, some ridiculous. They must be
+abolished as fast as possible.[Footnote: _T._, Aix en Provence, _A.
+P._, i. 697, Section 8. _T._, Draguignan, _A, P._, iii. 260. Chérest
+(ii. 424) points out that the cahiers of the districts (baillages) are
+more moderate than those of the villages in matters concerning feudal
+rights, and thinks that this moderation was assumed from politic
+motives, not to frighten the privileged orders too much at this stage.
+But it seems improbable that such a piece of policy could have been so
+widely practiced.]
+
+Relief from the operation of one set of privileges, neither strictly
+pecuniary nor entirely honorific, was almost unanimously demanded by
+the farmers. These were the rights of the nobles concerning the
+preservation of game, and the cognate right of keeping pigeons. The
+country-folk speak of doves as "the scourge of laborers," and ask that
+they may be destroyed, or at least shut up during seed-time and
+harvest. One gentleman answers with the remonstrance that, being very
+warm, they are used in medicine, but that sparrows devour every year a
+bushel of grain apiece, and that each village should be obliged to
+kill a certain quantity of them. The peasants ask that wild boars and
+rabbits be alike destroyed. The royal preserves are particularly hated
+by all the agricultural population living near Paris. Land naturally
+of the first class is said to be made almost worthless by the
+abundance of the game. The hare feeds on the tender shoots of the
+growing grain. The partridge half destroys the wheat. Rabbits and
+other vermin browse on the vines, fruit-trees, and vegetables. Farmers
+are not allowed to destroy weeds for fear of disturbing game. Mounted
+keepers ride all over the fields, trampling down the crops. The king
+is begged to reduce his preserves, in so far as he can do so without
+interfering with his own amusement, or even to suppress them
+altogether.[Footnote: _T._, Pecqueuse (Paris, _extra muros_),
+_A. P._, v. 11, Section 36. _T._, Alençon, _A. P._, i. 719,
+ch. viii. Section 3. Exmes, _A. P._, i. 728, Sections 20,
+21. Verneuil, _A. P._, i. 731, Section 44. Seigneur de Pierrefitte,
+_A. P._, v. 19, Section 16. Port au Pecq (Paris, _ex. m._), _A. P._,
+v. 12, Section 18. Plaisir (Paris, _ex. m._) _A. P._ v. 25.
+Amont-Gray, _A. P._, i. 780. Périgny en Brie (Paris, _ex. m._)
+_A. P._, v. 14, Sections 5-11, and many others.]
+
+As for the feudal rights which brought in money to their owners, it
+was generally felt, at least by the Commons, that they must be
+redeemable; that the persons liable to pay on their account must be
+allowed to buy them off by the payment of a certain sum down, where
+the ownership was true and fair. Here, however, a great trouble seemed
+likely to arise from an important divergence of ideas. The French
+nobles believed, as the vast mass of property holders has believed in
+all ages, that prescription or ancient use was sufficient evidence of
+property. If it could be shown that a man, or his predecessors in
+title, had held a certain piece of land or a certain right over the
+land of another, from time immemorial, or for a very long time,
+nothing more was needed to establish his property. Unless this theory
+be admitted, at least to some extent, it would seem that all rights of
+property must perish. In respect therefore to land in actual
+possession the French nation held firmly to prescription. But in
+respect to those more subtle rights in land which had been enormously
+favored by the feudal system, another theory came in. Those rights
+were thought in the eighteenth century to be unnatural in themselves,
+and therefore abusive. It was believed, moreover, that many of them
+had been usurped without reason or justice. [Footnote: _T._, Béarn,
+_A. P._, vi. 500. Rennes, _A. P._, v. 546.] It was commonly held by
+the Third Estate that unless an express charter or agreement could be
+shown establishing such rights, they should be abolished without
+compensation, and that some of them were so unjust and objectionable
+that not even an agreement or a charter could sanction them. Such were
+many feudal payments and monopolies; common bulls, common ovens,
+rights to labor and to services. Such above all, where it lingered,
+was serfdom.[Footnote: For the desire to retain feudal rights, see
+_N._, Condom, _A. P._, iii. 38, Section 5. _N._, Dax, _A. P._, iii.
+94, Section 21. _N._, Etain, _A. P._, ii. 215, Section 10. _N._, Bas
+Vivarais, _A. P._, vi. 180, Section 19. For the desire to abolish
+them, _T._, Avesnes, A. P., ii. 153, Sections 34-40. _T._, Bar-le-duc,
+_A. P._, ii. 200, Sections 49, 50. _T._, Beaujolais, _A. P._, ii. 285,
+Section 22. _T._, Cambrai, _A. P._, ii. 520, Sections 14-16. _C._,
+Clermont en Beauvoisis, _A. P._, ii. 746. _T._, Crépy, _A. P._, iii.
+74, Section 21. _T._, Linas, _A. P._, iv. 649, Section 17. _T._,
+Ploermel, _A. P._, v. 379, Sections 14-20 (a very full exposition),
+and many others.]
+
+When we pass from the property of private persons to that of clerical
+corporations, whether sole or aggregate, we find the case still
+stronger. It has been said that the greater number of the cahiers of
+the clergy were composed under the prevailing influence of the parish
+priests. These men felt themselves to be wronged in the distribution
+of church property. They thought it outrageous that the working part
+of the clergy should receive but a pittance, while useless drones
+fattened in idleness.[Footnote: _C._, Paroisse de St. Paul, _A. P._,
+v. 270, Section 11.] Their proposals were radical. They would take
+from the few who had much and give to the many who had little. The
+salaries of those who ministered in parishes should be increased, by
+fixing a minimum, and the money should come out of the pockets of
+abbots, chapters, and monasteries. Not only are future appointments to
+be made so as to favor the parish priests, but for their benefit the
+present incumbents of fat livings are to be dispossessed. The schemes
+for this purpose were not identical everywhere, but the spirit was the
+same throughout the popular part of the order.
+
+While the Third Estate agreed with the Clergy in wishing to readjust
+clerical incomes, an attack was made in some quarters on the payment of
+the tithe itself. This, however, was not general. The people were
+willing to pay a reasonable tithe, although some of them would have
+preferred that the priests should receive salaries, paid from the
+product of ordinary taxation. Compulsory fees for religious ceremonies,
+such as weddings and funerals, were very unpopular. It was repeatedly
+asked that such fees should be abolished, when the incomes of the
+priests were made sufficient.[Footnote: Poncins, 179. _T._,
+Ploermel, _A. P._, v. 380, Section 22. Soissy-sous-Etoiles, _A.
+P._, v. 121, Section 16.]
+
+Thus the cahiers do not attack the right of property in the abstract; on
+the contrary, they maintain it. But they shake its foundations by blows
+aimed at vested rights and at prescription.
+
+The question of taxation is postponed in the cahiers to that of
+constitutional rights. But financial necessities were the very cause of
+the existence of the Estates General, the opportunity for all reforms.
+On the most important principle of taxation the country was almost
+unanimous. Thenceforth the burdens were to be borne by all. Only here
+and there did some privileged body contend for old immunities, some
+chapter put in a claim that the Clergy should still pay only in the form
+of a voluntary gift. The privileged orders generally relinquish their
+freedom from taxation. Sometimes they applaud themselves for so doing.
+The Clergy, in many cases, undertake to bear their share of taxation
+only on condition that their corporate debt shall be made a part of the
+debt of the nation.
+
+The Third Estate, on the other hand, maintains that it is but fair and
+right that all citizens shall be taxed alike. Its cahiers demand as a
+right what those of the higher orders offer as a gift.[Footnote: A few
+cahiers of the Nobility request that a certain part of the property of
+poor nobles be exempt from taxation. _N._, Clermont-Ferrand, _A. P._,
+ii. 767, Section 23. _N._, Bas Limousin, _A. P._, iii. 538, Section 14]
+
+As to the method of taxation to be employed there was some approach to
+agreement. Many of the old taxes were utterly condemned, at least in
+their old forms. The salt tax was to be equalized, if it were not
+entirely done away. The monopoly of tobacco, that "article of first
+necessity," was to receive the same treatment. Many demands were made
+concerning the excise on wine. "We find it hard to believe," cry the
+people of the village of Pavaut, "that all this multitude of duties
+goes into the king's strong-box; we rather believe that it serves to
+fatten those who are at the head of the excise; and that at the
+expense of the poor vine-dresser." All the taxes were to be converted
+as fast as possible into one on land and one on personal property. But
+the minds of the reformers had not grasped the real difficulties of
+the subject. They were in that stage of thought in which great
+questions are answered off-hand because the thinker has not fully
+apprehended them. Should the personal tax be based on capital or on
+incomes, and how should these be ascertained? It is far easier to
+formulate general principles of taxation than to apply them
+successfully.[Footnote: Salt and tobacco, _T._, Perche, _A. P._, v.
+327, Section 38. Loisail, _A. P._ v. 334, Section 7. Wine, Pavaut, _A.
+P._, v. 9.]
+
+A common demand is for the taxation of luxuries, such as servants,
+carriages, or dogs. The people of Segonzac propose a charge on rouge,
+"which destroys beauty," and strike at a fashionable folly of the day
+by suggesting a special payment by those "who allow themselves to wear
+two watches." This is perhaps not the place to mention the proposal to
+impose an additional tax on persons of both sexes who are unmarried
+after "a certain age." The great movement from the country to the
+cities was already exciting alarm. The people of Albret think that a
+tax on luxuries will have the double advantage of weighing on the
+richest and least useful citizens, and of sending the population back
+to the country from the cities, which will receive just limits. And
+the people of Domfront speak of Paris as an "awful chasm," in which
+the wealth, population, and morals of the provinces are swallowed up
+together. [Footnote: Taxation of luxuries in general, _C._, Douai, _A.
+P._, iii. 174, Section 19. _N._, Alençon, _A. P._, i. 715. _C._,
+Amiens, _A. P._, i. 735. _T._, Aix, _A. P._, i. 696. _T._, Laugon, _A.
+P._, ii. 270, Sections 26, 27, and many others. Bachelors, _T._,
+Rennes, _A. P._, v. 544, Section 115. Vicheray, _A. P._, vi. 24,
+Section 30. Cities, _T._, Albret, _A. P._, i. 706, Section 38.
+Domfront, _A. P._, i. 724, Section 14.]
+
+Theoretical attacks on luxury are common in all ages, and not very
+significant. Far more so are proposals for progressive taxation. These
+are of occasional occurrence in the cahiers. The Third Estate of Rennes,
+whose cahier is considered typical of the more revolutionary aspirations
+of the times, asks that "the tax on persons shall be established and
+assessed with reference to their powers, so that he that is twice as
+well off as the well to do people of his class shall pay three times the
+tax, and so following." The spirit of this demand is more clear than its
+application. The town of Bellocq, in the province of Béarn, is more
+explicit. It would pay the public debt by a special tax, justly
+assessed, first on farmers general and other collectors of the revenue,
+who have made fortunes quickly for themselves and their relations, by
+money drawn from the nation; next on all persons who have an income
+exceeding two hundred pistoles, whether from lands, contracts, or
+manufactures; then on the feoffees of tolls, where the amount of the
+tolls is more than double the rent paid for them; and lastly, if the
+above do not suffice, it is proposed to obtain a sum of money by seizing
+a part of all articles of luxury and superfluity, wherever found; and it
+is explained that the plate of the rich and the ornaments of churches
+are especially intended.[Footnote: _A. P._, ii. 275, Section 42
+_n._]
+
+The financial scheme outlined in the cahiers is, in the main, as
+follows. As soon as the constitution shall have been settled, the
+deputies shall call on the royal ministers for accounts and estimates.
+The latter shall be furnished in two parts. First shall come those for
+the necessary, current expenses of the government, including those of
+the king and his family and court, to be maintained in a style suitable
+to the splendor of a great monarchy. It shall then be considered what
+economies can be introduced into every department. Among these
+economies, the suppression or reduction of extravagant pensions,
+especially of such as are bestowed for mere favor, and not for service
+to the state, shall take a prominent place. When the estimates have been
+duly considered, special appropriations shall be made by the Estates,
+and ministers shall be held to a strict responsibility in expending
+them.
+
+Next, concerning the debts of the state, a separate and detailed account
+shall be rendered to the Estates General. This also shall be
+scrutinized, the justice of the various claims considered, and means
+provided for their gradual payment. It is taken for granted that,
+henceforth, the French nation is usually to live within its income; but
+if debts are contracted at any time, special provision must be made for
+the repayment of principal and interest.[Footnote: _N._, Amont,
+_A. P._, i. 766. _N._, Agenois, _A. P._, i. 682.]
+
+Having considered the general matters of constitutional government, law,
+property, and taxation, we may pass to those questions which more
+particularly interested one of the great orders of the state, or on
+which the opinions of one order might be expected to differ from those
+of another. In general policy the clergy agreed with the nobility and
+the Third Estate, but in some matters they differed. Yet the differences
+were greater in degree than in kind. I mean that the clergy, as was
+natural, had most to say about ecclesiastical, religious, and moral
+questions, and differed from the nobility and the commons more by the
+relative prominence which it gave to these, than by the nature of its
+opinions concerning them.
+
+The Roman Catholic and Apostolic Religion is the religion of the
+state; and the public worship of no other shall be allowed in France.
+This was the universal demand of the clergy, and in it the other
+orders usually acquiesced. As for the granting of civil rights to
+those who are not Catholic, the clergy is of opinion that quite
+enough, perhaps too much, has already been done in that direction.
+Such rights as have already been granted must be limited and defined,
+and a stop put to the encroachments of heresy. Sometimes the lay
+orders would go farther in toleration. One cahier of the nobility
+proposes a military cross for distinguished Protestant officers,
+another that non-Catholics may be electors, but not elected, to the
+Estates General. The inhabitants of some of the central provinces
+would restore the property of exiles for religion's sake to their
+families. The people of one quarter of Paris would allow the free
+worship of all religions. Expressions of approval of the recent
+concession of a civil status to Protestants are not unusual in the
+cahiers. But the country and all the orders are undoubtedly and
+overwhelmingly Catholic.[Footnote: For toleration, Bellocq, _A. P._,
+ii. 276, Section 59. N., Agen, _A. P._, i. 684, Section 14. _T._,
+Perigord, _A. P._, v. 343, Section 45. _T._, Poitou, _A. P._, v. 414.
+Vouvant, _A. P._, v. 427, Section 18. T. Paris-Theatins, _A. P._, v.
+316, Section 29. _T._, Montargis, _A. P._, iv. 23, Section 10.]
+
+The clergy asks that the observance of Sundays and holidays be
+enforced. The Third Estate, in some places, thinks that there are too
+many holidays already. It would abolish many of them, transferring
+their religious observances to the Sunday to which they fall nearest.
+[Footnote: _T._, St. Pierre-le-Moutier, _A. P._, v. 640, Section 63.
+_T._, Paris-hors-les-murs, _A. P._, 241, Section 2.]
+
+In regard to the liberty of the press the clergy is at variance with the
+other orders. It would maintain a stricter censorship than heretofore,
+and is inclined to attribute all the immorality of the age to the
+unbridled license of authors. The nobility and the Third Estate, on the
+other hand, would generally allow the press to be free, but would exact
+responsibility on the part of authors and printers, one or both of whom
+should always be required to sign their publications. Thus anonymous
+libels should no longer be suffered to appear, and bad books generally
+should bring down punishment on their authors.
+
+The cahiers of the clergy, more, perhaps, than any others, insist on
+the importance of education; and the ecclesiastics generally wish to
+control it themselves. Here the commons sometimes go farther than
+they; asking that all monks and nuns be obliged to give free
+instruction.[Footnote: _C._, Aix, _A. P._, i. 692, Section 6. _C._,
+Labourt, iii. _A. P._, 424, Section 27. Ornans, _A. P._, iii. 172,
+Section 4. _T._, Douai, _A. P._, iii. 181, Sections 28, 29.]
+
+As for the administration of their own order the clergy, under the
+lead of the parish priests, demand extensive reforms. There must be no
+more absenteeism; no bishops and abbots drawing large incomes and
+amusing themselves in Paris or Versailles. There must be no more
+pluralities, which are contrary to the decrees of the Council of
+Trent. Promotion must be thrown open to the parochial clergy. Faithful
+clergymen must be provided for in their old age. Frequent synods and
+provincial councils must be held. The laity agree with the clergy in
+calling for these reforms, and would in many cases go a great way in
+the suppression and consolidation of monasteries.[Footnote: Poncins,
+190, _A. P._, _passim_. _N._, Agenois, _A. P._, i. 682, Section 8.]
+
+Both clergy and laity are intensely Gallican. They do not wish to pay
+tribute to Rome, but desire that the church of France shall preserve
+her privileges and immunities. Dispensations for the marriage of
+relatives should, they think, be granted by French bishops, and the
+fees payable therefor should be kept in the country. Annats, or
+payments to the Pope on the occasion of appointment to French
+benefices, should be discontinued. An importance far beyond what their
+amount alone would seem to justify was attached in French minds to
+these payments to the Holy See. They were repugnant to the national
+sense of dignity. In some places the idea that the church of France
+was to govern herself went so far as to threaten orthodoxy. The clergy
+of the province of Poitou ask for the composition by the French
+bishops, "who would doubtless think proper to consult the
+universities," of a body of theology, "divested of all useless
+questions," which shall be exclusively taught in all seminaries,
+schools, and monasteries. We have here an instance of that impatience
+of all complicated and difficult thought, of that simple faith that
+all questions admit of short and sensible answers, which characterized
+the eighteenth century. The clergy of Poitou ask also for a great and
+little catechism, common to all dioceses. "Uniform instruction
+throughout all the Gallican Church," they say, "would have so many
+advantages that the bishops will not fail to apply themselves to
+obtain it. A common breviary and a common liturgy would be equally
+desirable."[Footnote: _A. P._, v. 391, Section 19.]
+
+The election of bishops is asked for in several cahiers, and many
+parishes wish to elect their priests. These requests were not as radical
+as they may now seem to have been,--at least they did not interfere with
+the prerogatives of Rome,--for the bishops in France were nominated by
+the crown, as they still are by the French government, and the appointment
+of the priests, then in France as now in England, was often in the hands
+of lay patrons.[Footnote: Poncins, 168.]
+
+The French nation in general wished to retain its nobility as a
+distinct part of the state. In but few cahiers do we find so much as a
+hint of the suppression of the order.[Footnote: Poncins, 111. Hippean,
+p. x., etc. My own study of the cahiers confirms this opinion. See,
+however, a long, argumentative article in the cahier of the Third
+Estate of Rennes, _A. P._, v. 540, Sections 48-50. See also that of
+Bellocq, _A. P._, ii. 276, Section 61. _T._ Aix. _A P._, i. 697.
+Villiers-sur-Marne, _A. P._, v. 216. Carri, _A. P._, vi. 280 Section
+35, etc.] The Third Estate would, however, reduce the advantage of the
+nobility to little more than a distinction and a political weight. The
+nobles, being in numbers perhaps one hundredth part of the nation, are
+to be allowed one quarter of the representatives in the Estates
+General and in the Provincial Estates. They are to have a large share
+of honors, offices, and emoluments. Their order is to be made more
+exclusive than it has been. Nobility is no longer to be bought and
+sold, but shall be accorded only for merit or long service, perhaps
+only on the nomination of the Provincial Estates. Except in the most
+democratic cahiers, these concessions are not disputed.
+
+On the other hand, the Commons ask for a share of the chances hitherto
+reserved for the nobles. The exclusive right held by the upper order,
+of serving as judges in the higher courts of justice, or as officers
+in the army, is to disappear. To the latter right the nobles strongly
+cling. The career of arms, they say, is their natural, their only
+vocation. In some cases, however, they ask to be allowed to practice
+other means of earning a livelihood without derogating from their
+nobility. But they join with the other orders in the cry for reforms
+in the army. [Footnote: _T._, Perche, _A. P._, 326, Section 17. _N._,
+Agenois, _A. P._, i. 683, Section 14]
+
+The general irritation caused by the new military regulations has been
+noticed in another chapter. The cahiers unanimously give it voice. The
+French soldier shall no longer be insulted with blows. The
+organization of the army shall be amended. It must not be subjected
+"to the versatility of the spirit of system and to the caprice of
+ministers." Many are the requests that the soldier be better treated.
+Not a few, that his necessary leisure be turned to good account by
+employment in road-building or in other public works.[Footnote: _N._,
+Ponthieu, _A. P._, v. 434, Sections 40-42. _T._, Perche, _A. P._, v.
+326, Section 19. Soldiers to work on roads, etc., Poncins, 212. Arles,
+_A. P._, ii. 61, Section 3. _T._, Bourbonnais, _A. P._, ii. 449,
+Section vi., 1. _N._, Chateau-Thierry, _A. P._, ii. 665, Section 56.
+_T._, Étampes, _A. P._, iii. 287, Section 12, etc.] More numerous,
+perhaps, are those for fairness of promotion. It was in this matter
+that the poorer nobility was most bitter in its jealousy of the great
+court families. With but one path for their ambition, the country
+nobles saw their way blocked by the glittering figures of men no
+better born than themselves. The wrinkled old soldier, descended from
+Crusaders, personally distinguished in twenty battles, stood on his
+wounded legs and presented his halberd as a captain at fifty; while a
+Noailles, or a Carignan, with no more quarterings and no service at
+all, perhaps hardly a Frenchman and only twenty years old, but with a
+duke for an uncle, or a queen's favorite for a sister, pranced on his
+managed charger at the head of the regiment as its colonel. Nor was
+this all. The worthy veteran might, on some trifling quarrel, be
+deprived of the rank he had won with his sweat and his blood, and sent
+back to his paternal hawk's nest, a broken and disgraced man. The
+cahiers demand that there shall be no more dismissals without trial;
+and many of them ask that particular cases of hardship may be
+rectified. For now the world is to be set right again; commissions and
+appointments to the military school are to be fairly distributed;
+promotion is to be by merit and term of service; and the loyal
+nobility of France is once more to be the bulwark of an adored king
+and a grateful nation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Commons also have their particular wishes. They desire not only to
+be rid of feudal oppression, but of administrative regulations. These
+are sometimes so combined with privileges, or with taxation, that it is
+not easy to distinguish their cause. The fishermen of Albret, for
+instance, ask to be allowed to use any kind of boat that may suit their
+convenience.[Footnote: _A. P._, i. 706, Section 57.] We can only
+guess why any one should have interfered with their boats. Was it a
+corporation of boat-builders having a monopoly that restricted them, or
+was it only the paternal fussiness of Continental police regulations?
+
+In matters of commerce the national feeling was far from unanimous.
+Most of the cahiers asked that trade be free within the kingdom;
+although some of the border provinces, which had enjoyed a
+comparatively free trade with Germany and had been cut off from
+France, preferred the maintenance of that state of things,[Footnote:
+Alsace, Lorraine, and the Three Bishoprics. Poncins, 282, Mathieu,
+441. _C_., Verdun, _A. P._, vi. 130.] and although the retention of
+the _octrois_, or custom-houses at the town gates, was sometimes
+contemplated. Uniformity of weights and measures was also desired; but
+was sometimes asked for in a half hopeless tone, as if so great a
+change could hardly be expected. The request was made that all loans
+with interest be not considered usurious; a request resisted in some
+cases by the clergy, which clung to the old laws of usury. The
+abolition of monopolies is generally called for; certain odious
+restrictions, such as the mark on leather and on iron, are condemned,
+but rather as taxes than as commercial regulations. On economic
+questions the nation has no very fixed opinions, nor have definite
+parties been formed. Free trade and free manufactures commend
+themselves to the ear; but regulations as to quality and protection
+against English competition may be highly desirable. Agriculture needs
+more hands, and is the first, the most necessary, the noblest of arts.
+Furnaces and foundries use wood, and make fuel dear. Trade should be
+entirely free,--but peddlers are nuisances, and interfere with regular
+shop-keepers. Manufactures are a source of wealth,--but dangerous
+unless well managed; none of them should be established without the
+consent of the Provincial Estates. If only our king and "his august
+companion" would wear none but French stuffs, and set a fashion that
+way, our languishing factories would soon be active again.[Footnote:
+Concerning usury, _T._, Agenois, _A. P._, i. 690. _T._, Comminges, _A.
+P._, iii 27, Section 24. St-Jean-des-Agneaux, _A. P._, iii. 65,
+Section 4. _C., N._, and _T._, Dôle, _A. P._, iii. 152, Section 14;
+158, Section 57; 165, Section xiv. 6. Paris, St. Eustache, _A. P._, v.
+304, Section 52. _C._, Soûle, v. 774, Section 17, etc. See also _N._,
+Agenois, _A. P._, i. 684, Section 7. _T._, Paris, _A. P._, v. 285,
+Sections 3, 4, and _n_.]
+
+Certain demands of the cahiers excite surprise by their frequent
+recurrence. Among them is that for the more severe treatment of
+bankrupts, who were able in old France to evade the law of the land
+and even to take sanctuary. Some cahiers go so far as to ask that
+those convicted of fraud be made habitually to wear a green cap in
+public, or that they be whipped, or sent to the galleys for life, or
+even put to death.[Footnote: Poncins, 285. _T._, Pont-à-Mousson, _A.
+P._, ii. 232, Section 11. _N._, Lille, _A. P._, iii. 531, Section 54.
+_T._, Lyon, _A. P._, iii. 613. _T._, Mantes et Meulan, _A. P._, iii.
+672, Section ix. 2. _C._, Lille, _A. P._, iii. 524, Sections 35, 37.]
+
+All orders ask for the suppression of begging. The demand is commonly
+accompanied by one looking to some humane provision for the poor,
+sometimes by a request for a regular poor-law, or even for regulation
+of wages. The people of the parish of Pecqueuse ask that there be
+public works always going on, where the poor may earn wages calculated
+on the price of grain; and, what is more significant, the Third Estate
+of Paris makes a similar request for public work-shops.[Footnote: _A.
+P._, v. 11, Sections 17, 18. _A. P._, v. 287, Section 28.] Yet the
+universal cry for the suppression of mendicity, and the form in which
+it was made, show that begging was considered a great evil on its own
+account, whether mendicant monks or less authorized persons were the
+beggars. The begging monks, indeed, were either to be abolished, or
+their maintenance in their own monasteries was to be provided for in
+the general readjustment of ecclesiastical benefices.
+
+Another common request is that letters in the post-office be not
+tampered with. All readers who are familiar with the history, and
+particularly with the diplomatic history of the last century, know how
+common was the practice of breaking open and taking copies of
+political correspondence. The letters of Franklin and Silas Deane, and
+of many less prominent persons, were continually opened in the mail,
+both in France and in England. Regular ambassadors were driven to the
+habitual use of bearers of dispatches; and even these might be waylaid
+and robbed, by the agents of friendly governments disguised as
+highwaymen. [Footnote: Ciphers were in common use, and governments
+employed decipherers. Great skill had been attained in opening letters
+and closing them again so that they might not appear to have been
+tampered with. "This institution, if well directed, has the property
+of serving as a compass to those who hold the reins of government,"
+writes, with a fine jumbling of metaphors, one who has been a clerk in
+the post-office. Sorel, i. 77. The _Facsimiles of MSS. in European
+Archives relating to America_, now in process of publication by
+Stevens, furnish numerous examples of these practices.] But it is
+astonishing to find that the evil had gone so far as to excite the
+fears of private persons for the maintenance of that privacy of which
+all decent Frenchmen, with their strong feeling of the sanctity of the
+family and their great dread of ridicule, are peculiarly
+jealous.[Footnote: _T._, Agenois, _A. P._, i. 690.]
+
+Again, the frequent recurrence of the request for the restraint of
+quack doctors is somewhat surprising. The need of competent surgeons
+and midwives was much felt in the country, and recourse was had to the
+Estates General to provide them. In calling for legislation to
+prohibit quackery and to forbid lotteries, the people asked to be
+protected against themselves, any extravagant theories of the liberty
+of man to the contrary notwithstanding.[Footnote: Quack doctors, _C._,
+Nemours, _A. P._, iv. 108, Section 31. Cormeilles-en-Parisis, _A. P._,
+iv. 463, Section 17. _N._, Troyes, _A. P._, vi. 79, Section 80. _T._,
+Chalons-sur-Marne, _A. P._, ii. 595, Section 24.]
+
+Such were the desires of the French nation in the spring of 1789. In
+them we may note several important points of agreement. First,
+government by the nation and the king together. France was still to be a
+monarchy; not a republic, open or disguised; but it was to be a limited
+and not an absolute monarchy. In this all the orders were agreed, and
+the king, by the mere summoning of the Estates General, as well as by
+his whole attitude, seemed to acquiesce.
+
+Then, the desires of the nation included a diminution of the privileges
+of the upper orders, not a complete abolition of them. Like all
+Catholics, Frenchmen wished to leave the control of religious affairs
+largely in the hands of the clergy. To the nobility, all but a few
+extremists were willing to concede many privileges, honors, and
+advantages.
+
+But while retaining a government of limited monarchy and moderate
+aristocracy, the nation in all its branches had determined that public
+burdens and public benefits should be more equally divided than they had
+ever been before. Proportionate equality of taxation, and a chance to
+rise--these the Commons were determined to have, and the higher orders
+were ready to concede.
+
+In another feeling all France shared. Churchmen, nobles, and common
+people alike dreaded and hated the little ring of courtiers. These had
+grown great on the substance of the nation. They should be restrained
+hereafter, and obliged as far as possible to surrender their ill-gotten
+gains.
+
+And all men wanted administrative reforms. The courts of justice, the
+army, the finances, were to be put in order and improved. Here all
+agreed as to the end sought, and if there was much difference of opinion
+as to the methods, parties had not yet formed, nor had feeling run very
+high on these subjects.
+
+What, then, were the dangers threatening France? They were to be looked
+for in the very magnitude of the changes proposed, changes which could
+not fail to startle and alarm all Europe. They were to be seen in the
+opposition of the nobles, who were ready to give up much, but were asked
+to give up more. They were to be feared most of all in a monarch so weak
+and an administration so faulty, that the first attempt at reform was
+likely to destroy them altogether.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+France had become a despotism in the attempt to escape from mediaeval
+anarchy. What she asked of her kings was security from external enemies,
+and good government at home. The first of these they had given her. No
+country in Europe was more respected and feared. In spite of occasional
+and temporary reverses, her borders had been enlarged from reign to
+reign, and her fields, for nearly three centuries, had seldom been
+trodden by foreign armies.
+
+Within the country the house of Capet had been partially successful. It
+had put down armed opposition, it had taken away the power of the feudal
+nobility, it had maintained tolerable security against violent crime.
+But here its zeal had slackened. Civilization was advancing rapidly, and
+the French internal government was not keeping pace with it.
+
+This better performance of its external than of its internal tasks is
+almost inevitable in a despotism. To protect his country, and to add to
+it, is the obvious duty and the natural ambition of a despot. His
+dignity is concerned; his pride is flattered by success; and whether he
+has succeeded or failed is obvious to himself and to every one else. To
+control and improve the internal administration is a hard and ungrateful
+labor, in which mistakes are sure to occur; and the greatest and truest
+reform when accomplished will injure and displease some persons. The
+most beneficent improvements are sometimes those which involve the most
+labor and bring the least reputation.
+
+Moreover, it is not the people who surround kings that are chiefly
+benefited by the good administration of a country. Courtiers are likely
+to be interested in abuses, and in the absence of a free press courtiers
+are the public of monarchs. If we compare the facilities possessed by
+Louis XVI. for ascertaining the true condition of his country with those
+possessed by the sovereigns of our own day, an emperor of Germany or of
+Austria, or even a Russian Czar, we shall find that the king of France
+was far worse off than they are. There were no undisputed national
+accounts or statistics in France. There was no serious periodical press
+in any country, watching events and collecting facts. There were no
+newspapers endeavoring at once to direct and to be directed by public
+opinion. True, the satirists were everywhere, with their epigrams and
+their songs; but who can form a policy by listening to the jeers of the
+splenetic?
+
+The absolute monarchy, therefore, while it protected the French nation,
+was failing to secure to it the reasonable and civilized government to
+which it felt itself to be entitled. It was failing partly from lack of
+information, but largely also from lack of will. The kings in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had beaten down the power of the
+nobility and of the Parliaments; the kings of the eighteenth century
+shrank before the influence of the very bodies which their ancestors had
+defeated. It is vain to try to eliminate the personal element from
+history. France would have been a very different country in 1789 from
+what she was, had Louis XV. and Louis XVI. been strong and able men. The
+education of a prince is not necessarily enfeebling. Perhaps the
+commonest vice of despots is willfulness; but the last absolute king of
+France might have known a far happier fate if he had had a little more
+of it.
+
+The French government was not aristocratic. There was no class in the
+country, unless it were the clergy, that was in the habit of exercising
+important political rights. But the nobility comprised all those men and
+all those families which were trained to occupy high administrative
+place. The secretaries of state, the judges of the higher courts, the
+officers in the army, were noblemen. The order also included a large
+proportion of the educated men and the possessors of a considerable part
+of the wealth of the country. It was, therefore, a true power, which
+might appropriately be considered. Moreover, it was popularly supposed
+to have political rights, although in fact these were mostly obsolete.
+Could a good deal of weight have been given, for a time at least, to the
+nobility, the result would probably have been favorable to the national
+order and prosperity.
+
+Government, to be stable, should represent the true forces of the state.
+In a country where all men are of the same race, and where a large
+portion of the population has some property and some education, numbers
+should be given weight in government; for the simple reason that, in
+such a country, many men are stronger than a few, and may choose to use
+their strength rather than that a few should govern them. What a large
+majority of the people desires, it can enforce. It is often agreed, in
+favor of peace and to end controversy, that what a small majority
+decides shall be taken as decided for all. On this agreement rests the
+legitimacy of democracy. The compromise is an arbitrary one in itself,
+but reasonable and sensible; and in a nation that has a good deal of
+practical good sense, a feeling of loyalty may gather about it. But
+sensible and practical as it may be, it remains a compromise after all.
+There is no divine right in one half the voters plus one. Some other
+proportion may be, and often is agreed on; or some compromise entirely
+different may be found to be more in accordance with the national will.
+
+In old France the conditions required for democratic government were but
+partially fulfilled. The population was fairly homogeneous. Property and
+education were more or less diffused. But of political experience there
+was little, and the democratic compromise, to be thoroughly successful,
+requires a great deal. It was rightly felt that a proper regard was not
+had to the desires of the more numerous part of the inhabitants of the
+country; that a few persons had privileges far beyond their public
+deserts or their true powers; but how was this state of things to be
+remedied? What new relations were to take the place of the old? No
+actual compromise had been effected, and the idea of the rights of a
+majority, with the limitations to which those rights are subject, was
+not clearly defined in men's minds.
+
+A government should represent the sense of duty of a country. All men
+believe that something better is imaginable than that which exists,
+and that the better things would be attainable if only men would act
+as they ought. Most men strive somewhat to improve their own condition
+and conduct. Every man believes at least that others should do so. But
+in making laws men are trying to regulate the conduct of others, and
+are willing, therefore, that the laws should be a little nearer to
+their ideals than their own practice is. All sensible men believe that
+they ought to obey the laws, and that if they suffer for not doing so
+their suffering is righteous. This opinion is one of the forces in the
+world that makes for good.
+
+Now what were the qualities considered really moral and desirable by
+the Frenchmen of 1789, and how far did the government of the Bourbons
+tend toward them? The duty first recognized by the whole country was
+patriotism. The love of France has never grown cold in French hearts.
+It is needless to insist on this, for no one who has ever met a
+Frenchman worthy of the name, or read a French book of any value, can
+doubt it. With all its noble and all its petty incidents, patriotism
+is a French virtue.
+
+Under the kings of France its aspirations were satisfied. The country
+was great and glorious.
+
+That loyalty was held to be a duty will perhaps be less generally
+recognized, but I think that enough has been written in this book to
+show it. The evidence of the cahiers is chiefly on that side. Most
+Frenchmen believed that a king should govern, and that they had a good
+and well-meaning king. Toward him their hearts were still warm and
+their sense of duty alive. He was misled, thwarted, overruled, by
+selfish and designing courtiers. If he could but have his way all
+would be well. Only a very few persons had eyes strong enough to see
+that they were worshiping a stuffed scarecrow. A man inside those
+clothes could really have led them.
+
+Next among the ideals of France, and far above loyalty in many bosoms,
+came liberty and equality. They were not very clearly comprehended. By
+liberty was chiefly meant a share of political power; few Frenchmen
+believed then, or ever have believed, in letting every man do what
+seemed good in his eyes. Such a theory of liberty does not take a very
+strong hold on a race so sociable as theirs; nor does such unbridled
+liberty seem consistent with civilization to men accustomed to the rigid
+system of Continental police. Equality of rights was an ideal, but most
+people in France were not prepared to demand its entire carrying out.
+Equality of property and of enjoyment many persons, especially such as
+considered themselves Philosophers,--persons who had read Rousseau or
+Montesquieu,--considered desirable; but no one of any weight had the
+most distant intention of trying to bring about such a state of things
+in the work-a-day world. Communistic schemes were not quite unknown in
+the eighteenth century, but they belong to the nineteenth.[Footnote:
+See for eighteenth century communism the curious essay of Morelly.]
+
+With the general growth of comfort, with the general hope of an improved
+world, _humanity_, the hatred of seeing others suffer, had begun to
+bestir itself. For many ages people had believed that another life, and
+not this one, was really to be considered. Kind-hearted men had tried to
+draw souls to heaven, stern men to drive them thither. The effort had
+absorbed the energy and enthusiasm of a great proportion of those
+persons who were willing to think of anything but their own concerns.
+But in the eighteenth century heaven was clouded. Men's eyes were fixed
+on a promised land nearer their own level. This world, which was known
+by experience to be but too often a vale of tears, was soon, very soon,
+by the operation of the fashionable philosophy, to be turned into
+something like a paradise. To bring about so desirable a condition of
+things, the tears must be stopped at their source. Nor was this all. The
+world had acquired a new interest. It was capable of improvement. Hope
+in temporal matters had led to Faith,--Faith in progress and happiness
+here below. The new direction given to Faith and Hope was followed by
+Charity. The task of relieving human pain was fairly undertaken.
+Sickness and insanity were better cared for; torture was abolished,
+punishment lightened. In these matters the government rather followed
+than led the popular aspirations. In its general inefficiency, it came
+halting behind the good intentions of the people.
+
+The virtues toward which the government of old France tried to lead the
+French nation were not, as we have seen, exactly the virtues toward
+which the national conscience led. The government upheld loyalty and
+humanity, and the people agreed with it; the government upheld a
+centralized despotism and privileges, and the popular conscience called
+for liberty and equality. In religion there was both agreement and
+divergence. The country, in spite of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists,
+believed itself to be fervently Catholic; but its ideal of Catholicism
+was of a reformed and regenerated type; while that maintained by the
+government was corrupt and lifeless in high places. The country wanted
+provincial councils, resident bishops, a purified church.
+
+And in so far as the ideals of the government differed from those of the
+people, the monarchy did not stand for something nobler and higher than
+the moral forces that attacked it. The French nation was in fact better
+than its government, more honest and more generous. The country priests
+were more self-devoted than the bishops who ruled over them; the poorer
+nobles were more public-spirited and more moral than the favored
+nobility of the court; the citizens of the Third Estate conducted their
+private business more honorably than the administration conducted the
+business of the country.
+
+If the stability and legitimacy of government depend on its
+correspondence with the real powers of the nation and with the
+national conscience, the functions of government embrace something
+harder to attain even than this agreement. No sovereign power, be it
+that of an autocrat on his throne or of a nation in its councils, can
+directly carry out the policy which it desires to adopt. The sovereign
+must act through agents; and on the proper selection of these the
+success of his undertakings will largely depend. Jurists must draft
+the laws, judges must interpret them, officers must enforce obedience.
+Generals, commanding soldiers, must defend the land. Engineers must
+construct forts and roads; marine architects must furnish plans for
+practical ship-builders. Financiers must devise schemes of taxation,
+to be submitted to the sovereign; collectors of various kinds must
+levy the taxes on the people. All these should be experts, trained to
+do their especial work. The choice of experts, then, is one of the
+most important functions of government.
+
+In this respect the administration of King Louis XVI. and his immediate
+predecessor was usually, although not uniformly bad. The army and navy,
+until the last years of disorganization, were reasonably efficient, the
+naval engineers in particular being the best then at work in the world.
+The civil and criminal laws were chaotic, more from a defect of
+legislation than of administration. Old privileges and anomalies were
+supported by the government, but good jurists and magistrates were
+produced. Those lawyers can hardly have been incompetent in whose school
+were trained the framers of the Code Napoleon, the model of modern
+Europe. Internal order and police were maintained with a thoroughness
+that was remarkable in an age when the possession of a good horse put
+the highwayman very nearly on an equality with the officer. The worst
+experts employed by the government appear to have been those connected
+with taxation and expenditure, from the Controller of the Finances to
+the last clerk in the Excise. The schemes of most of them were
+blundering, their actions were too often dishonest. They never reached
+the art of keeping accurate accounts.
+
+The condition of the people of France, both in Paris and in the
+provinces, was far less bad than it is often represented to have been.
+The foregoing chapters should have given the impression of a great,
+prosperous, modern country. The face of Europe has changed since 1789
+more through the enormous number and variety of mechanical inventions
+that have marked the nineteenth century than through a corresponding
+increase in mental or moral growth. While production and wealth have
+advanced by strides, education has taken a few faltering steps forward.
+Pecuniary honesty has probably increased, honesty and industry being the
+virtues especially fostered by commerce and manufactures. Bigotry, the
+unwillingness to permit in others thought and language unpalatable to
+ourselves, has become less virulent, but has not disappeared. It is
+shown alike by the church and by her enemies. Yet the tone of
+controversy has softened even in France. There are fewer Voltairean
+sneers, fewer episcopal anathemas. Humanity has been growing; the rich
+and prosperous becoming more alive to the suffering around them. But it
+is the material progress that is most striking, after all. The poor are
+better off than they were a hundred years ago, and the rich also. The
+minimum required by custom for the decent support of life has risen. The
+earners of wages are better housed, fed, and clothed in return for fewer
+hours of labor. In France, as in the world, there are many more things
+to divide, and things are, on the whole, more evenly divided.
+
+If we compare the France of 1789 no longer with the France of 1892, but
+with the other countries of Continental Europe as they were in the days
+preceding the great Revolution, we find that she was worse governed than
+a few of them. The administration of Prussia while the great King
+Frederick sat on the throne was probably better than that of France.
+After his death it rapidly fell off, until a series of defeats had been
+earned by mis-government at Berlin. In a few of the smaller states,
+such as Holland, the Swiss cantons, or Tuscany, the citizen was perhaps
+better governed than in France. But in general, life and property appear
+to have been less safe beyond the French border than within it. A small
+despotism, when it is bad, is more searching and interfering than a
+large one. The lords of France were tyrannous enough at times, but there
+were always courts of law and a royal court above them, and appeals for
+justice, although doubtful, might yet be attempted with a hope of
+success.
+
+The intellectual leadership of France in Europe was very clearly marked
+under Louis XV. French was unquestionably the language of the well-born
+and the witty as it was the favorite language of the learned all over
+the Continent. The reputation of Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, and
+Rousseau, was distinctly European. Frederick of Prussia was glad to
+compose his academy at Berlin of second-rate French men of letters, and
+to make his own attempts at literary distinction in the French language.
+Smaller German princes modeled their courts on that of Versailles, and
+ruined themselves in palaces and gardens that were distant copies of
+those of that famous suburb. This spirit lasted well down to 1789,
+although the masterpieces of Lessing were already twenty years old, and
+those of Goethe and Schiller had begun to appear.
+
+But while France was great, prosperous, and growing, and a model to her
+neighbors, she was deeply discontented. The condition of other countries
+was less good than hers, but the minds of the people of those countries
+had not risen above their condition. France had become conscious that
+her government did not correspond to her degree of civilization. The
+fact was emphasized in the national mind by the mediocrity of Louis XV.
+as a sovereign and by the utter incompetence of his well-meaning
+successor. In hands so feeble, the smallest excess of expenditure over
+income was important as a symptom of weakness, and for many years the
+deficit had in fact been increasing. The financial situation gave the
+nation a ground of attack against its government; it was not the cause
+of the Revolution, but its occasion. All the machinery of the state
+needed to be inspected, repaired, or renewed. The people entered into
+the task with good will, and the warmest interest. But they were
+entirely without experience. They knew and believed that old forms were
+to be respected as far as might be compatible with new conditions; they
+thought that the improvements needed were so obvious that nothing but
+fairness was required to recognize them. In their ignorance of the
+working of popular assemblies they supposed them to be inspired with
+wisdom and virtue beyond that of the individuals who compose them.
+
+This is a mistake not likely to occur to any one who has experience of
+public meetings; but among the twelve hundred deputies to the Estates
+General, and among their constituents all over France, no one had much
+experience. A hundred and forty Notables, in 1787 and 1788, had
+deliberated on public questions; but their work had been done
+principally in committee, and their conclusions were without binding
+force on anybody, their functions being merely advisory. A good many
+delegates had been members of provincial assemblies or provincial
+estates; but these, in most of the provinces, had met but a few times,
+and their powers had been very limited. Such assemblies could do some
+good, and were carefully hedged from doing much harm. As training for
+membership in a body which was to discuss all sorts of questions and
+possess almost absolute power, experience among the Notables or in the
+provincial assemblies and estates, although valuable, was insufficient,
+and comparatively few of the members had even so much. Nor was foreign
+example of avail. No great scholar had published in French a study of
+the parliamentary history of England, nor were Frenchmen prepared to
+profit by English experience. Absolute right, according to his own
+ideas, was what every man expected to obtain.
+
+A public body, although less wise than the best of its members, has one
+great advantage over a natural person, and experience has taught the
+nations that have made self-government successful to profit by this
+advantage. A public body may be so tied by its own rules that it can act
+but slowly. Thus the hot desire of to-day may be moderated by the cool
+reflection of to-morrow. To this end are arranged the three readings of
+bills and the various other dilatory devices of most parliaments and
+congresses. But when great constitutional changes are to be attempted,
+such measures as these are insufficient. Great changes should be
+introduced one by one, separately debated and fought over. Elections
+should be repeated during the process; much time should be allowed and
+many tedious forms observed. Under these circumstances the legislature
+may be no wiser than a common man, but how often would a common man do
+anything very foolish if he took several years to think about it?
+
+The French assembly did not and could not take the necessary time and
+precautions. The country was seething and bubbling. The deputies were
+honest and patriotic. They were generally men of local reputation who
+had pushed themselves forward by political agitation and by activity in
+the elections. It is probable that the proportion of violent men among
+them was larger than in the nation, for they were chosen in a time of
+excitement, when violence of thought and language was likely to be
+popular; yet the assembly comprised also most of the truly distinguished
+men in France. What was wanting was not natural ability, but experience,
+calmness, and patience.
+
+It is not the purpose of this book to follow them in their great
+undertaking. They accomplished for France much that was good; they
+prepared the way for much that was evil. Enough if the condition of the
+country before the great Revolution began has been here set down.
+
+
+
+INDEX OF EDITIONS CITED.
+
+
+ALEMBERT, _d'._ Oeuvres. 18 vols. Paris, 1805.
+
+ALLONVILLE, _Cte d'._ Mémoires secrets de 1770 a 1830. 6 vols.
+Paris, 1838-45.
+
+AMBERT, _La Calotte._ Un regiment peu connu. In Moniteur Universel,
+Nov. 25th to 30th, 1864.
+
+ANCIENNES LOIS FRANÇAISES, Recueil général des. Depuis l'an 420 jusqu'à
+la revolution de 1789. 30 vols. Paris, 1821-33.
+
+ARCHIVES PARLEMENTAIRES de 1787 a 1860. Recueil complet de débats
+législatifs et politiques des chambres françaises imprimé par ordre du
+Sénat et de la Chambre des Deputés sous la direction de M. J. Mavidal et
+de M. E. Laurent. 1ière Série; tome 1-37, 1787-92. 2de Série; tome 1-81,
+1800-33. 119 vols. Paris, 1862-91.
+
+ARGENSON, _Marquis d'._ Journal et Mémoires. 9 vols. Paris, 1859-67.
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+BABEAU, _Albert._ Les artisans et les domestiques d'autrefois.
+Paris, 1886.
+
+------Les Bourgeois d'autrefois. Paris, 1886.
+
+------L'école de village pendant la révolution. Paris, 1881.
+
+------Paris en 1789. Paris, 1890.
+
+------La vie militaire sous l'ancien régime. 2 vols. Paris, 1890.
+
+------La vie rurale dans l'ancienne France. Paris, 1883.
+
+------Le village sous l'ancien regime. Paris, 1878.
+
+------La ville sous l'ancien régime. Paris, 1880.
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+(BACHAUMONT.) Mémoires secrets pour servir a l'histoire de la république
+des lettres en France, 1762-88. 33 vols. Londres (Paris) 1784-88.
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+BACON, _Francis._ Works. Ed. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath. 7 vols.
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+BAILLY, _A._ Histoire financiere de la France. 2 vols. Paris, 1830.
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+BARBIER. Chronique de la regence et du règne de Louis XV. (1718-63) ou
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+BARRERE, _B._ Mémoires. Publies par H. Carnot et E. David
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+-----Mémoires particuliers pour servir à l'histoire de la
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+CONSTITUTIONS des Treize États-Unis de l'Amérique. À Philadelphie et se
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+(CONSTITUTIONS.) Recueil des loix constitutives des colonies anglaises
+confederées sous la dénomination d'États-Unis de l'Amerique
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+-----Bien-né. Nouvelles et anecdotes. Apologie de la
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+
+-----Ce qu'on a sûrement oublié. 1789.
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+-----Credo du Tiers-État, ou Symbole politico-moral. À l'usage de
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+-----Discours sur les États Généraux, par M. de la Boissière, Conseiller,
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+
+-----Lettre d'un paysan; à Messieurs les Censeurs du Caveau, au
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+-----Le Magnificat du Tiers-État, Tel qu'on doit le chanter le 26 Avril
+aux premières Vêpres des États Généraux. 1789.
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+-----Le monstre déchire. Vision prophétique d'un Persan qui ne dort pas
+toujours. A Ispahan et se trouve à Paris chez les MARCHANDS de vérité.
+1789.
+
+-----Pensées detachées a l'usage de la nation française depuis le Iier
+Mai, 1788.
+
+-----Projet d'alliance matrimoniale entre M. Tiers-État et Madame
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+
+-----Quand le coq chantera, gare aux vieilles poules. L. C. D. S. F.
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+
+
+
+
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