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THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION OF 1789
THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION OF 1789
AND THE CAUSES WHICH LED TO THAT EVENT By ALEXIS de TOCQUEVILLE MEMBER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY TRANSLATED BY HENRY REEVE, D.C.L. THIRD EDITION LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1888 THIRD EDITION LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1888 PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON...
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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION. An interval of about seventeen years has elapsed since the first publication of this book in France, and of the translation of it, which appeared simultaneously, in England. The English version has not been republished, and has long been out of print. But the work itself has retained a lasting place in the political literature of Europe. The historical events which have occurred since the date of its first publication have again riveted the attention of every thinking man
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PRELIMINARY NOTICE
PRELIMINARY NOTICE
The book I now publish is not a history of the French Revolution; that history has been written with too much success for me to attempt to write it again. This volume is a study on the Revolution. The French people made, in 1789, the greatest effort which was ever attempted by any nation to cut, so to speak, their destiny in halves, and to separate by an abyss that which they had heretofore been from that which they sought to become hereafter. For this purpose they took all sorts of precautions
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
OPPOSING JUDGMENTS PASSED ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AT ITS ORIGIN. Nothing is better fitted to give a lesson in modesty to philosophers and statesmen than the history of the French Revolution; for never were there events more important, longer in ripening, more fully prepared, or less foreseen. The great Frederick himself, with all his genius, failed to perceive what was coming, and was almost in contact with the event without seeing it. Nay, more, he even acted in the spirit of the Revolution be
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
THE FUNDAMENTAL AND FINAL OBJECT OF THE REVOLUTION WAS NOT, AS HAS BEEN SUPPOSED, THE DESTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AND THE WEAKENING OF POLITICAL POWER. One of the first acts of the French Revolution was to attack the Church; and amongst all the passions born of the Revolution the first to be excited and the last to be allayed were the passions hostile to religion. Even when the enthusiasm for liberty had vanished, and tranquillity had been purchased at the price of servitude, the nation s
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
SHOWING THAT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION WAS A POLITICAL REVOLUTION WHICH FOLLOWED THE COURSE OF RELIGIOUS REVOLUTIONS, AND FOR WHAT REASONS. All mere civil and political revolutions have had some country for their birth-place, and have remained circumscribed within its limits. The French Revolution, however, had no territorial boundary—far from it; one of its effects has been to efface as it were all ancient frontiers from the map of Europe. It united or it divided mankind in spite of laws, tradition
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
SHOWING THAT NEARLY THE WHOLE OF EUROPE HAD HAD PRECISELY THE SAME INSTITUTIONS, AND THAT THESE INSTITUTIONS WERE EVERYWHERE FALLING TO PIECES. The tribes which overthrew the Roman Empire, and which in the end formed all the modern nations of Europe, differed among each other in race, in country, and in language; they only resembled each other in barbarism. Once established in the dominions of the empire they engaged in a long and fierce struggle, and when at length they had gained a firm footin
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
WHAT WAS THE PECULIAR SCOPE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. The preceding pages have had no other purpose than to throw some light on the subject in hand, and to facilitate the solution of the questions which I laid down in the beginning, namely, what was the real object of the Revolution? What was its peculiar character? For what precise reason it was made, and what did it effect? The Revolution was not made, as some have supposed, in order to destroy the authority of religious belief. In spite of ap
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
WHY FEUDAL RIGHTS HAD BECOME MORE ODIOUS TO THE PEOPLE IN FRANCE THAN IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY. It must at first sight excite surprise that the Revolution, whose peculiar object it was, as we have seen, everywhere to abolish the remnant of the institutions of the Middle Ages, did not break out in the countries in which these institutions, still in better preservation, caused the people most to feel their constraint and their rigour, but, on the contrary, in the countries where their effects were lea
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
SHOWING THAT ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRALISATION IS AN INSTITUTION ANTERIOR IN FRANCE TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1789, AND NOT THE PRODUCT OF THE REVOLUTION OR OF THE EMPIRE, AS IS COMMONLY SAID. At a period when political assemblies still existed in France, I once heard an orator, in speaking of administrative centralisation, call it, ‘that admirable achievement of the Revolution which Europe envies us.’ I will concede the fact that centralisation is an admirable achievement; I will admit that Europe envie
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
SHOWING THAT WHAT IS NOW CALLED ADMINISTRATIVE TUTELAGE WAS AN INSTITUTION IN FRANCE ANTERIOR TO THE REVOLUTION. In France municipal freedom outlived the feudal system. Long after the landlords were no longer the rulers of the country districts, the towns still retained the right of self-government. Some of the towns of France continued down to nearly the close of the seventeenth century to form, as it were, small democratic commonwealths, in which the magistrates were freely elected by the whol
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
ADMINISTRATIVE JURISDICTION AND THE IMMUNITY OF PUBLIC OFFICERS ARE INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE ANTERIOR TO THE REVOLUTION. [26] In no country in Europe were the ordinary courts of justice less dependent on the Government than in France; but in no country were extraordinary courts of justice more extensively employed. These two circumstances were more nearly connected than might be imagined. As the King was almost entirely powerless in relation to the judges of the land—as he could neither dismiss th
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
SHOWING HOW CENTRALISATION HAD BEEN ABLE TO INTRODUCE ITSELF AMONG THE ANCIENT INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE, AND TO SUPPLANT WITHOUT DESTROYING THEM. Let us now briefly recapitulate what has been said in the three preceding chapters. A single body or institution placed in the centre of the kingdom regulated the public administration of the whole country; the same Minister directed almost all the internal affairs of the kingdom; in each province a single Government agent managed all the details; no sec
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ADMINISTRATIVE HABITS OF FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. It is impossible to read the letters addressed by an Intendant of one of the provinces of France, under the old monarchy, to his superiors and his subordinates, without admiring the similitude engendered by similar institutions between the administrators of those times and the administrators of our own. They seem to join hands across the abyss of the Revolution which lies between them. The same may be said of the people they govern. The
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
OF ALL EUROPEAN NATIONS FRANCE WAS ALREADY THAT IN WHICH THE METROPOLIS HAD ACQUIRED THE GREATEST PREPONDERANCE OVER THE PROVINCES, AND HAD MOST COMPLETELY ABSORBED THE WHOLE EMPIRE. The political preponderance of capital cities over the rest of the empire is caused neither by their situation, their size, nor their wealth, but by the nature of the government. London, which contains the population of a kingdom, has never hitherto exercised a sovereign influence over the destinies of Great Britain
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
FRANCE WAS THE COUNTRY IN WHICH MEN HAD BECOME THE MOST ALIKE. If we carefully examine the state of society in France before the Revolution we may see it under two very contrary aspects. It would seem that the men of that time, especially those belonging to the middle and upper ranks of society, who alone were at all conspicuous, were all exactly alike. Nevertheless we find that this monotonous crowd was divided into many different parts by a prodigious number of small barriers, and that each of
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CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
SHOWING HOW MEN THUS SIMILAR WERE MORE DIVIDED THAN EVER INTO SMALL GROUPS, ESTRANGED FROM AND INDIFFERENT TO EACH OTHER. Let us now look at the other side of the picture, and we shall see that these same Frenchmen, who had so many points of resemblance amongst themselves, were, nevertheless, more completely isolated from each other than perhaps the inhabitants of any other country, or than had ever been the case before in France. It seems extremely probable that, at the time of the first establ
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
THE DESTRUCTION OF POLITICAL LIBERTY AND THE ESTRANGEMENT OF CLASSES WERE THE CAUSES OF ALMOST ALL THE DISORDERS WHICH LED TO THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD SOCIETY OF FRANCE. Of all the disorders which attacked the constitution of society in France, as it existed before the Revolution, and led to the dissolution of that society, that which I have just described was the most fatal. But I must pursue the inquiry to the source of so dangerous and strange an evil, and show how many other evils took the
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE SPECIES OF LIBERTY WHICH EXISTED UNDER THE OLD MONARCHY, AND OF THE INFLUENCE OF THAT LIBERTY ON THE REVOLUTION. If the reader were here to interrupt the perusal of this book, he would have but a very imperfect impression of the government of the old French monarchy, and he would not understand the state of society produced by the Revolution. Since the citizens of France were thus divided and thus contracted within themselves, since the power of the Crown was so extensive and so great, it
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CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
SHOWING THAT THE CONDITION OF THE FRENCH PEASANTRY, NOTWITHSTANDING THE PROGRESS OF CIVILISATION, WAS SOMETIMES WORSE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THAN IT HAD BEEN IN THE THIRTEENTH. In the eighteenth century the French peasantry could no longer be preyed upon by petty feudal despots; they were seldom the object of violence on the part of the Government; they enjoyed civil liberty, and were owners of a portion of the soil; but all the other classes of society stood aloof from this class, and perhap
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CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
SHOWING THAT TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MEN OF LETTERS BECAME THE LEADING POLITICAL MEN OF FRANCE, AND OF THE EFFECTS OF THIS OCCURRENCE. France had long been the most literary of all the nations of Europe; although her literary men had never exhibited such intellectual powers as they displayed about the middle of the eighteenth century, or occupied such a position as that which they then assumed. Nothing of the kind had ever been seen in France, or perhaps in any other country
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CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XIV.
SHOWING HOW IRRELIGION HAD BECOME A GENERAL AND DOMINANT PASSION AMONGST THE FRENCH OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND WHAT INFLUENCE THIS FACT HAD ON THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION. From the time of the great Revolution of the sixteenth century, when the spirit of free inquiry undertook to decide which were false and which were true among the different traditions of Christianity, it had never ceased to engender certain minds of a more curious or a bolder stamp, who contested or rejected them all.
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CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV.
THAT THE FRENCH AIMED AT REFORM BEFORE LIBERTY. It is worthy of observation that amongst all the ideas and all the feelings which led to the French Revolution, the idea and the taste for political liberty, properly so called, were the last to manifest themselves and the first to disappear. For some time past the ancient fabric of the Government had begun to be shaken; it tottered already, but liberty was not yet thought of. Even Voltaire had scarcely thought about it; three years’ residence in E
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CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
SHOWING THAT THE REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. WAS THE MOST PROSPEROUS EPOCH OF THE OLD FRENCH MONARCHY, AND HOW THIS VERY PROSPERITY ACCELERATED THE REVOLUTION. It cannot be doubted that the exhaustion of the kingdom under Louis XIV. began long before the reverses of that monarch. The first indication of it is to be perceived in the most glorious years of his reign. France was ruined long before she had ceased to conquer. Vauban left behind him an alarming essay on the administrative statistics of his ti
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CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII.
SHOWING THAT THE FRENCH PEOPLE WERE EXCITED TO REVOLT BY THE MEANS TAKEN TO RELIEVE THEM. As the common people of France had not appeared for one single moment on the theatre of public affairs for upwards of one hundred and forty years, no one any longer imagined that they could ever again resume their position. They appeared unconscious, and were therefore believed to be deaf; accordingly, those who began to take an interest in their condition talked about them in their presence just as if they
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CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CONCERNING SOME PRACTICES BY WHICH THE GOVERNMENT COMPLETED THE REVOLUTIONARY EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE OF FRANCE. The Government itself had long been at work to instil into and rivet upon the mind of the common people many of the ideas which have been called revolutionary—ideas hostile to individual liberty, opposed to private rights, and favourable to violence. The King was the first to show with how much contempt it was possible to treat the most ancient, and apparently the best established, in
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CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XIX.
SHOWING THAT A GREAT ADMINISTRATIVE REVOLUTION HAD PRECEDED THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION, AND WHAT WERE THE CONSEQUENCES IT PRODUCED. Nothing had yet been changed in the form of the French Government, but already the greater part of the secondary laws which regulated the condition of persons and the administration of affairs had been abolished or modified. The destruction of the Guilds, followed by their partial and incomplete restoration, had totally changed all the old relations between workmen an
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CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XX.
SHOWING THAT THE REVOLUTION PROCEEDED NATURALLY FROM THE EXISTING STATE OF FRANCE. I propose ere I conclude to gather up some of the characteristics which I have already separately described, and to trace the Revolution, proceeding as it were of itself from the state of society in France which I have already pourtrayed. If it be remembered that in France the Feudal system, though it still kept unchanged all that could irritate or could injure, had most effectually lost all that could protect or
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SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
ON THE PAYS D’ÉTATS, AND ESPECIALLY ON THE CONSTITUTIONS OF LANGUEDOC. It is not my intention minutely to investigate in this place how public business was carried on in each of the provinces called Pays d’États, which were still in existence at the outbreak of the Revolution. I wish only to indicate the number of them; to point out those in which local life was still most active; to show what were the relations of these provinces with the administration of the Crown; how far they formed an exce
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE VIOLENT AND UNDEFINED AGITATION OF THE HUMAN MIND AT THE MOMENT WHEN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BROKE OUT. What I have previously said of France is applicable to the whole Continent. In the ten or fifteen years preceding the French Revolution, the human mind was abandoned, throughout Europe, to strange, incoherent, and irregular impulses, symptoms of a new and extraordinary disease, which would have singularly alarmed the world if the world had understood them. A conception of the greatness of
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
HOW THIS VAGUE PERTURBATION OF THE HUMAN MIND SUDDENLY BECAME IN FRANCE A POSITIVE PASSION, AND WHAT FORM THIS PASSION AT FIRST ASSUMED. In the year 1787 this vague perturbation of the human mind, which I have just described, and which had for some time past been agitating the whole of Europe without any precise direction, suddenly became in France an active passion directed to a positive object. But, strange to say, this object was not that which the French Revolution was to attain: and the men
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
HOW THE PARLIAMENTS OF FRANCE, FOLLOWING PRECEDENT, OVERTHREW THE MONARCHY. The feudal Government, whose ruins still sheltered the nation, had been a government in which arbitrary power, violence, and great freedom were commingled. Under its laws, if actions had often been restricted, speech was habitually independent and bold. The legislative power was exercised by kings, but never without control. When the great political assemblies of France ceased to be, the Parliaments took, in some sort, t
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PARLIAMENTS DISCOVER THAT THEY HAVE LOST ALL AUTHORITY, JUST WHEN THEY THOUGHT THEMSELVES MASTERS OF THE KINGDOM. When the Royal authority had been conquered, the Parliaments at first conceived that the triumph was their own. They returned to the bench, less as reprieved delinquents than as conquerors, and thought that they had only to enjoy the sweets of victory. The King, when he withdrew the edicts which had raised to the bench new judges, ordered that at least the judgments and decrees o
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
ABSOLUTE POWER BEING SUBDUED, THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION FORTHWITH BECAME MANIFEST. The bond of a common passion had for an instant linked all classes together. No sooner was that bond relaxed than they flew asunder, and the veritable spirit of the Revolution, disguised before, was suddenly unveiled. After the triumph which had been obtained over the King, the next thing was to ascertain who should win the fruits of the victory; the States-General having been conceded, who should predomin
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PREPARATION OF THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE STATES-GENERAL DROVE THE CONCEPTION OF A RADICAL REVOLUTION HOME TO THE MIND OF THE PEOPLE. Almost all the institutions of the Middle Ages had a stamp of boldness and truth. Those laws were imperfect, but they were sincere. They had little art, but they had less cunning. They always gave all the rights they seemed to promise. When the commons were convoked to form part of the assemblies of the nation, they were at the same time invested w
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW, ON THE EVE OF THE CONVOCATION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, THE MIND OF THE NATION WAS MORE ENLARGED, AND ITS SPIRIT RAISED. Two questions had thus far divided all classes—that of the reduplication of the commons, and that of the voting of the Orders in one body: the first was settled, the second was postponed. That great Assembly which every man had regarded in his own heart as the fulfilment of his hopes, and which all had demanded with equal fervour, was about to meet. The event had long bee
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