The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789

If we quit the parish, and examine the constitution of the larger rural districts, we shall find the same state of things. Nowhere did the nobles conduct public business either in their collective or their individual capacity. This was peculiar to France. Everywhere else the characteristic features of the old feudal society were partially preserved: the possession of the soil and the government of those who dwelt on the soil were still commingled.

England was administered as well as governed by the chief owners of the soil. Even in those parts of Germany, as in Prussia and in Austria, in which the reigning princes had been most successful in shaking off the control of the nobles in the general affairs of the state, they had left to that class, to a great degree, the administration of rural affairs, and though the landed proprietor was, in some places, controlled by the Government, his authority had nowhere been superseded.

To say the truth, the French nobility had long since lost all hold on the administration of public affairs, except on one single-point, that namely of justice. The principal nobles still retained the right of having judges who decided certain suits in their name, and occasionally established police regulations within the limits of their domain; but the power of the Crown had gradually cut down, limited, and subdued this seignorial jurisdiction to such a degree that the nobles who still exercised it regarded it less as a source of authority than as a source of income.

Such had been the fate of all the peculiar rights of the French nobility. The political element had disappeared; the pecuniary element alone remained, and in some instances had been largely increased.

I speak at this moment of that portion of the beneficial privileges of the aristocracy, which were especially called by the name of feudal rights, since they were the privileges which peculiarly touched the people.

It is not easy to ascertain in what these rights did precisely still consist in 1789, for the number of them had been great, their diversity amazing, and many of these rights had already vanished or undergone a transformation; so that the meaning of the terms by which they were designated was perplexing even to contemporaries, and is become obscure to us. Nevertheless by consulting the works of the domanial jurists of the eighteenth century, and from attentive researches into local customs, it will be found that all the rights still in existence at that time may be reduced to a small number of leading heads; all the others still subsisted, it is true, but only in isolated cases.

The traces of seignorial labour-rents (corvées) may almost everywhere be detected, but they were already half extinguished. Most of the tolls on roads had been reduced or abolished; yet there were few provinces in which some such tolls were not still to be met with. Everywhere too Seigneurs levied dues on fairs and markets. Throughout France they had the exclusive right of sporting. Generally they alone could keep dovecotes and pigeons; almost everywhere the peasant was compelled to grind at the seignorial mill, and to crush his grapes in the seignorial wine-press. A very universal and onerous seignorial right was that of the fine called lods et ventes, paid to the lord every time lands were bought or sold within the boundaries of his manor. All over the country the land was burdened with quit-rents, rent-charges, or dues in money or in kind, due to the lord from the copyholder, and not redeemable by the latter. Under all these differences one common feature may be traced. All these rights were more or less connected with the soil or with its produce; they all bore upon him who cultivates it.13

The spiritual lords of the soil enjoyed the same advantages; for the Church, which had a different origin, a different purpose, and a different nature from the feudal system, had nevertheless at last intimately mingled itself with that system; and though never completely incorporated with that foreign substance, it had struck so deeply into it as to be incrusted there.14

Bishops, canons, and incumbents held fiefs or charges on the land in virtue of their ecclesiastical functions. A convent had generally the lordship of the village in which it stood. The Church held serfs in the only part of France in which they still existed: it levied its labour-rents, its due on fairs and markets; it had the common oven, the common mill, the common wine-press, and the common bull. Moreover, the clergy still enjoyed in France, as in all the rest of Christendom, the right of tithe.15

But what I am here concerned to remark is, that throughout Europe at that time the same feudal rights—identically the same—existed, and that in most of the continental states they were far more onerous than in France. I may quote the single instance of the seignorial claim for labour: in France this right was unfrequent and mild; in Germany it was still universal and harsh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

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

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

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

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

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

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

These different powers were the last remains of the ancient system; but something comparatively new or greatly modified had by degrees established itself among them, and this I have yet to describe.

In the centre of the kingdom, and close to the throne, there had been gradually formed an administrative body of extraordinary authority, in the grasp of which every power was united after a new fashion: this was the King’s Council. Its origin was ancient, but the greater part of its functions were of recent date. It was at once a supreme court of justice, inasmuch as it had the right to quash the judgments of all the ordinary courts, and a superior administrative tribunal, inasmuch as every special jurisdiction was dependent on it in the last resort. It possessed, moreover, as a Council of State, subject to the pleasure of the King, a legislative power, for it discussed and proposed the greater part of the laws, and fixed and assessed the taxes. As the superior administrative board, it had to frame the general regulations which were to direct the agents of the Government. Within its walls all important affairs were decided and all secondary powers controlled. Everything finally came home to it; from that centre was derived the movement which set everything in motion. Yet it possessed no inherent jurisdiction of its own. The King alone decided, even when the Council appeared to advise, and even when it seemed to administer justice, it consisted of no more than simple ‘givers of advice’—an expression used by the Parliament in one of its remonstrances.

This Council was not composed of men of rank, but of personages of middling or even low extraction, former Intendants or other men of that class thoroughly versed in the management of business, all of whom were liable to dismissal by the Crown. It generally proceeded in its course quietly and discreetly, displaying less pretension than real power; and thus it had but little lustre of its own, or, rather, it was lost in the splendour of the throne to which it stood so near; at once so powerful that everything came within its scope, and so obscure that it has scarcely been remarked by history.

As the whole administration of the country was directed by a single body, so nearly the entire management of home affairs was entrusted to the care of one single agent—the Comptroller-General. On opening an almanack of France before the Revolution, it will be found that each province had its special minister; but on studying the administration itself in the legal records of the time, it will soon be seen that the minister of the province had but few occasions of any importance for exercising his authority. The common course of business was directed by the Comptroller-General, who gradually took upon himself all the affairs that had anything to do with money, that is to say, almost the whole public administration; and who thus performed successively the duties of minister of finance, minister of the interior, minister of public works, and minister of trade.

As, in truth, the central administration had but one agent in Paris, so it had likewise but a single agent in each province. Nobles were still to be found in the eighteenth century bearing the titles of governors of provinces; they were the ancient and often the hereditary representatives of feudal royalty. Honours were still bestowed upon them, but they no longer had any power. The Intendant was in possession of the whole reality of government.

This Intendant was a man of humble extraction, always a stranger to the province, and a young man who had his fortune to make. He never exercised his functions by any right of election, birth, or purchase of office; he was chosen by the government among the inferior members of the Council of State, and was always subject to dismissal. He represented the body from which he was thus severed, and, for that reason, was called, in the administrative language of the time, a Detached Commissioner. All the powers which the Council itself possessed were accumulated in his hands, and he exercised them all in the first instance. Like the Council, he was at once administrator and judge. He corresponded with all the ministers, and in the province was the sole agent of all the measures of the government.

In each canton was placed below him an officer nominated by himself, and removable at will, called the Sub-delegate. The Intendant was very commonly a newly-created noble; the Sub-delegate was always a plebeian. He nevertheless represented the entire Government in the small, circumscribed space assigned to him as much as the Intendant did in the whole; and he was amenable to the Intendant as the Intendant was to the minister.

The Marquis d’Argenson relates in his ‘Memoirs,’ that one day Law said to him, ‘“I never could have believed what I saw, when I was Comptroller of Finance. Do you know that this kingdom of France is governed by thirty Intendants? You have neither parliament, nor estates, nor governors. It is upon thirty Masters of Requests, despatched into the provinces, that their evil or their good, their fertility or their sterility, entirely depends.”’

These powerful officers of the Government were, however, completely eclipsed by the remnants of the ancient aristocracy, and lost in the brilliancy which that body still shed around it. So that, even in their own time, they were scarcely seen, although their finger was already on everything. In society the nobles had over such men the advantages of rank, wealth, and the consideration always attached to what is ancient. In the Government the nobility were immediately about the person of the Prince, and formed his Court, commanded the fleets, led the armies, and, in short, did all that most attracts the observation of contemporaries, and too often absorbs the attention of posterity. A man of high rank would have been insulted by the proposal to appoint him an Intendant. The poorest man of family would generally have disdained the offer. In his eyes the Intendants were the representatives of an upstart power, new men appointed to govern the middle classes and the peasantry, and, as for the rest, very sorry company. Yet, as Law said, and as we shall see, these were the men who governed France.

To commence with the right of taxation, which includes, as it were, all other rights. It is well known a part of the taxes were farmed. In these cases the King’s Council negotiated with the financial companies, fixed the terms of the contract, and regulated the mode of collection. All the other taxes, such as the taille, the capitation-tax, and the vingtièmes were fixed and levied by the agents of the central administration or under their all-powerful control.

The Council, every year, by a secret decision, fixed the amount of the taille and its numerous accessories, and likewise its distribution among the provinces. The taille had thus increased from year to year, though public attention was never called to the fact, no noise being made about it.

As the taille was an ancient tax, its assessment and collection had been formerly confided to local agents, who were all, more or less, independent of the Government by right of birth or election, or by purchase of office; they were the lords of the soil, the parochial collectors, the treasurers of France, or officers termed the élus. These authorities still existed in the eighteenth century, but some had altogether ceased to busy themselves about the taille, whilst others only did so in a very secondary and entirely subordinate manner. Even here the entire power was in the hands of the Intendant and his agents; he alone, in truth, assessed the taille in the different parishes, directed and controlled the collectors, and granted delays of payments or exemptions.

As the other taxes, such as the capitation tax, were of recent date, the Government was no longer embarrassed in respect to them by the remnants of former powers, but dealt with them without any intervention of the parties governed. The Comptroller-General, the Intendant, and the Council fixed the amount of each quota.

Let us leave the question of money for that of men.

It is sometimes a matter of astonishment how the French can have so patiently borne the yoke of the military conscription at the time of the Revolution and ever since; but it must be borne in mind that they had been already broken in to bear it for a long period of time. The conscription had been preceded by the militia, which was a heavier burden, although the amount of men required was less. From time to time the young men in the country were made to draw lots, and from among them were taken a certain number of soldiers, who were formed into militia regiments, in which they served for six years.

As the militia was a comparatively modern institution, none of the ancient feudal powers meddled with it; the whole business was intrusted to the agents of the Central Government alone. The Council fixed the general amount of men and the share of each province. The Intendant regulated the number of men to be raised in each parish; his Sub-delegate superintended the drawing of the lots, decided all cases of exemption, designated those militia-men who were allowed to remain with their families and those who were to join the regiment, and finally delivered over the latter to the military authorities. There was no appeal except to the Intendant or the Council.

It may be said with equal accuracy that, except in the pays d’état, all the public works, even those that had a very special destination, were decided upon and managed by the agents of the central power alone.

There certainly existed local and independent authorities, who, like the seigneur, the boards of finance, and the grands voyers (surveyors of public roads), had the power of taking a part in such matters of public administration. But all these ancient authorities, as may be seen by the slightest examination of the administrative documents of the time, bestirred themselves but little, or bestirred themselves no longer. All the great roads, and even the cross-roads leading from one town to another, were made and kept up at the cost of the public revenue. The Council decided the plan and contracted for its execution. The Intendant directed the engineering works, and the Sub-delegate got together the compulsory labourers who were to execute them. The care of the by-roads was alone left to the old local authorities, and they became impassable.

As in our days, the body of the Ponts et Chaussées was the great agent of the Central Government in relation to public works, and, in spite of the difference of the times, a very remarkable resemblance is to be found in their constitution now and then. The administration of the Ponts et Chaussées had a council and a school, inspectors who annually travelled over the whole of France, and engineers who resided on the spot and who were appointed to direct the works under the orders of the Intendant. A far greater number of the institutions of the old monarchy than is commonly supposed have been handed down to the modern state of French society, but in their transmission they have generally lost their names, even though they still preserve the same forms. As a rare exception, the Ponts et Chaussées have preserved both one and the other.