The Eve of the French Revolution

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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 Menil-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 Carre, 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 _Pere 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. Cherest, 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: Cherest, 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'Etats_ 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._, Alencon, _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'Assemblee 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. Cherest
(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._, Alencon, _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. Perigny en Brie (Paris, _ex. m._)
_A. P._, v. 14, Sections 5-11, and many others.]

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