Elster Jon, Goldhammer Arthur. Tocqueville: The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution (ENG)
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
II.11 How Liberty Inuenced the Revolution
constitution of the Church. I contend only that it did not prepare the
priestly soul for political servility.
Many ecclesiastics were of noble blood, moreover, and brought with
them into the Church the pride and erce independence of their kind. In
addition, all enjoyed elevated rank in the state along with certain privi-
leges. The same feudal rights that proved so fatal to the moral authority
of the Church endowed those individual clergymen who used them with
a spirit of independence vis-à-vis the civil power.
What contributed most to giving priests the ideas, needs, sentiments,
and often the passions of the citizen, however, was landed property. I
have had the patience to read most of the reports and debates that have
come down to us from the old provincial estates, and in particular those
of Languedoc, where the clergy was even more involved than elsewhere
in the details of public administration, together with the minutes of the
provincial assemblies that met in 779 and 787. Reading these docu-
ments with ideas imported from my own time, I was astonished to nd
bishops and abbots, several of whom were as eminent for their holiness as
for their learning, reporting on the construction of a road or a canal, deal-
ing with the subject in a deeply informed way, discussing with an abun-
dance of knowledge and art the best way to increase agricultural yields
and secure the well-being of citizens and the prosperity of industry, and
doing so at least as well as and often better than the laymen who dealt
with the same matters alongside them.
Contrary to a widely held and rmly established opinion, I make so
bold as to believe that nations that deprive the Catholic clergy of any
participation in ownership of the land and transform all ecclesiastical
revenues into stipends serve the interests of the Holy See and secular
princes exclusively and deprive themselves of a very important compo-
nent of liberty.
A man who devotes the best part of himself to a foreign authority and
who can have no family in the country he inhabits is bound to the soil in
one way only, through landed property. Sever that tie and he no longer
belongs to any particular place. In the land in which he happens by acci-
dent to have been born, he lives as a stranger in the midst of civil society,
almost none of whose interests can affect him directly. For his conscience
he depends only on the pope, for his subsistence only on the prince. His
only fatherland is the Church. In every political event he sees little but
what serves or harms the interests of the Church. So long as it remains
free and prosperous, what does the rest matter? His most natural political
Book II
position is indifference. An excellent member of the Christian city, he is
a mediocre citizen elsewhere. Such sentiments and ideas in a body that is
the teacher of the young and moral guide of the entire nation cannot fail
to sap the nation’s soul with respect to public life.
If one wants to acquire an accurate idea of the revolutions that can be
induced in the minds of men by a change in their condition, one must
read the grievance books of the clerical order from 789.
In them, the clergy showed itself to be frequently intolerant and at
times stubbornly attached to any number of its former privileges but also
as hostile to despotism, as approving of civil liberty, and as enamored of
political liberty as the Third Estate or the nobility. It proclaimed that
individual liberty must be guaranteed not by promises but by a proce-
dure analogous to habeas corpus. It called for the destruction of political
prisons, the abolition of special courts and transfers of jurisdiction, a
public setting for all debates, life tenure for all judges, and eligibility of all
citizens for state employment, which must be open to talent alone. It also
called for military recruitment that was less oppressive and less humili-
ating to the people, and from which no one should be exempt; redemp-
tion of seigniorial dues, a product of the feudal regime that it held to be
contrary to liberty; unlimited freedom to work; elimination of internal
customs; expansion of private schools, of which there should be one in
every parish, free of charge to pupils; lay charitable organizations such as
almshouses and charity workshops in all rural areas; and a wide variety of
encouragements to agriculture.
In politics proper, the clergy proclaimed more forcefully than anyone
else that the nation has the absolute and inalienable right to assemble in
order to make laws and vote on taxes without coercion. It insisted that no
Frenchman could be forced to pay a tax on which he had not voted either
personally or through a representative. It also called for annual meetings
of the Estates General, whose members, it said, should be freely elected
and should debate all issues openly before the nation. The laws passed
by this body should be general laws, against which no custom or special
privilege could apply. The estates should also prepare the budget and
even supervise the expenditures of the royal household. Deputies should
enjoy immunity from arrest, and ministers must at all times be responsi-
ble to them. The clergy also called for similar assemblies to be established
in every province and for municipal councils in every town. Not a word
was said about divine right.
II.11 How Liberty Inuenced the Revolution
7
All things considered, and despite the glaring aws of certain of its
number, I am not sure that there was ever, anywhere in the world, a
more remarkable group of clerics than the Catholic clergy of France on
the eve of the Revolution. It was more enlightened, more wedded to the
nation, less barricaded behind its merely private virtues, and richer in
both public virtues and faith, as persecution would quite clearly dem-
onstrate. I began my study of the old society full of prejudices against it
but ended full of respect. Indeed, its faults were simply those inherent
in any tightly knit and well-organized corporate body, whether polit-
ical or religious, namely, an invasive tendency, a somewhat intolerant
spirit, and an instinctive, at times blind, attachment to special rights for
the group.
The bourgeoisie of the Ancien Régime was also far better prepared
than the bourgeoisie of today to demonstrate an independent spirit.
Indeed, even some of the aws of its organization contributed to this
independence. As we have seen, it lled even more administrative ofces
then than it does today, and the middle classes demonstrated just as much
ardor for ofcial posts. But mark well the difference between then and
now. Since most positions then were neither granted nor rescinded by
the government, they enhanced the importance of the occupant without
leaving him at the mercy of the powerful. In other words, what today
consummates the subjection of so many people was precisely what most
powerfully commanded respect in that earlier time.
The immunities of all sorts that so regrettably separated the bourgeoi-
sie from the common people tended to make the former into a false aris-
tocracy that often exhibited the pride and recalcitrance of the true one. In
each of the many small associations into which it was divided, one readily
forgot the general good but was constantly preoccupied with its interests
and rights as a body. The members of this body had a common dignity
and common privileges to defend. No one could seek refuge in the crowd
or try to conceal unseemly bargains. The stage on which each man played
his part was small but brightly lit, and he always faced the same audience,
ever ready to applaud or hiss.
The art of stiing all sounds of resistance was far less perfected then
than it is today. France had not yet become a place that mufes every
echo, as it is now. On the contrary, it resounded with them, and, even
though there was no sign of political liberty, it was enough to raise one’s
voice for it to carry far.
Book II
8
What ensured that the oppressed would have a way to make themselves
heard in those days was the constitution of the courts. We had become a
country of absolute government in our political and administrative insti-
tutions, but we remained a free people in our judicial institutions. The
judicial system of the Ancien Régime was complex, cumbersome, slow,
and costly. These were serious aws, to be sure, but there was no servility
to the government in the judicial system, servility being one of the forms
of venality, and indeed the worst. This most serious vice, which not only
corrupts the judge but soon infects the whole body of the people, was
entirely unknown. The magistrate enjoyed life tenure and did not seek
promotion, both necessary factors for ensuring his independence, for
what does it matter if one cannot compel a judge to do a thing if one has
a thousand ways of winning his assent?
It is true that the royal government had also succeeded in depriving
the regular courts of jurisdiction in nearly all cases in which the public
authorities had an interest, but it still feared the courts, even as it stripped
them of power. Although it prevented them from deciding cases, it still
did not dare to prevent them from receiving complaints and stating their
opinion. Since, moreover, judicial language retained some of the style
of old French, which liked to call things by their proper names, magis-
trates often found themselves bluntly describing the government’s meth-
ods as despotic and arbitrary. The irregular intervention of the courts in
government, which often disrupted the orderly dispatch of the public’s
affairs, thus served at times to safeguard liberty. It was a great evil that
limited a still greater one.
Within and around the judiciary, ancient mores remained vigorous
amid new ideas. The parlements were no doubt more preoccupied with
themselves than with the public interest, yet there is no denying that
in defending their independence and honor, they always proved to be
intrepid and infused their spirit into everything they touched.
When the Paris Parlement was crushed in 77, the magistrates asso-
ciated with that body suffered the loss of their status and power, yet not
one of them bowed to the king’s will. What is more, courts of a very
different kind, such as the Cour des Aides, which were neither attacked
nor threatened, voluntarily exposed themselves to the same harsh treat-
ment, even though punishment had by then become a certainty. Even
more impressive, the leading attorneys who argued before the parlement
chose to share its fate of their own free will. They gave up the basis of
their fame and fortune and condemned themselves to silence rather than
II.11 How Liberty Inuenced the Revolution
9
appear before dishonorable magistrates. In all the history of free peoples,
I know of nothing greater than what took place on that occasion, and
yet this happened in the eighteenth century, in proximity to the court
of Louis XV.
Judicial habits had in many respects become national habits. The idea
that every issue is subject to debate and every decision to appeal was
taken from the courts, as were the practice of public discussion and the
insistence on formal procedures, both impediments to servitude – only
in this one respect did the Ancien Régime contribute to the education
of a free people. The administration itself borrowed a great deal from
judicial language and custom. The king believed himself to be under
an obligation to state grounds for all his edicts and set forth his reasons
before stating his conclusions. Lengthy preambles preceded many coun-
cil decrees. Intendants dispatched bailiffs to promulgate their ordinances.
In all administrative bodies with ancient roots, such as the Treasurers of
France or municipal councils, issues were discussed publicly, and deci-
sions were issued after opposing arguments were heard. All these habits
and formalities were so many obstacles to arbitrary monarchical rule.
Only the people, especially in the countryside, found themselves nearly
always unprepared to resist oppression by other than violent means.
Most of the means of defense enumerated here were in fact beyond
the reach of the common man. To avail oneself of such weapons, one had
to occupy a place in society from which it was possible to be seen and
to make one’s voice heard. Common people aside, however, there was
no one in France who, if he had the courage, could not haggle over his
obedience and resist while seeming to bow and scrape.
The king spoke to the nation as a chief rather than a master. In the
preamble to an edict issued at the beginning of his reign, Louis XVI said,
“We glory in the idea of commanding a free and generous nation.” One
of his forebears had already expressed the same idea in older language.
Thanking the Estates General for the boldness of their remonstrances, he
said, “We would rather speak to free men than to serfs.”
The men of the eighteenth century were scarcely familiar with the
kind of passion for well-being that is in a sense the mother of servitude,
an irresolute yet tenacious and unalterable passion, which mixes readily
and, as it were, intertwines with any number of private virtues, such as
love of family, regular morals, respect for religious beliefs, and even luke-
warm, if diligent, observance of established religious practices, and which
allows for honesty, precludes heroism, and excels in making well-behaved
Book II
but craven citizens. The men of the eighteenth century were both better
and worse.
The French in those days loved joy and adored pleasure. They may
have been more undisciplined in their habits and more chaotic in their
passions and ideas than Frenchmen today, but they knew nothing of
the temperate and decent sensualism that we see today. In the upper
classes, more time was spent in embellishing life rather than in making
it comfortable, and in seeking distinction rather than acquiring wealth.
Even in the middle classes, no one allowed himself to become completely
absorbed in the pursuit of prosperity. Many people abandoned that pur-
suit in favor of loftier and more rened pleasures. Everyone invested in
some good beyond money. As one contemporary wrote in a style that,
though bizarre, still showed pride, “I know my nation: though it is skilled
in coining and squandering precious metals, to worship them is not in
its nature, and it would be quite ready to hark back to its ancient idols –
valor, glory, and I dare say magnanimity.”
We must be careful, moreover, not to measure a man’s baseness by the
degree of his submission to the sovereign power; this would prove to be a
misleading gauge. However subject the men of the Ancien Régime were
to the will of the king, they were strangers to one kind of obedience: they
did not know what it was to bow to an illegitimate or contested power,
to a government that one barely honored and frequently scorned but to
which one nevertheless submitted freely because of its power to help or
harm. That degraded form of servitude was always alien to them. The
king inspired sentiments that not even the most absolute rulers who have
arisen in the world since then have been able to evoke – sentiments that
have become all but incomprehensible to us because of the degree to which
the Revolution plucked their roots from our hearts. Toward him they felt
both the tender affection that one feels for a father and the respect that
one owes only to God. In obeying his most arbitrary commands, they
surrendered less to compulsion than to love, and often they maintained a
very free spirit even in conditions of the utmost dependence. For them,
the greatest evil in obedience was that it should be coerced; for us it is the
least. The worst part of obedience is the servile sentiment from which it
stems. Let us not despise our fathers; we have no right to do so. May it
please God that we may recover, along with their prejudices and faults, a
little of their grandeur!
It would therefore be quite wrong to believe that the Ancien Régime
was a time of servility and dependence. Liberty was far more prevalent
II.11 How Liberty Inuenced the Revolution
then than it is today, but it was a kind of irregular and intermittent lib-
erty, always limited by class distinctions, always bound up with the idea
of exception and privilege, which allowed people to defy the law almost as
much as the exercise of arbitrary power and seldom went so far as to guar-
antee to all citizens the most natural and necessary rights. Though limited
and twisted in this way, liberty remained fruitful. At a time when central-
ization tried more and more to reduce everything to equality, to bend and
besmirch every distinctive character, liberty preserved the innate origi-
nality of many individuals; it brought out their color and relief, fed their
pride, and in many cases made the desire for glory paramount among
their desires. It shaped those vigorous souls, those proud and audacious
geniuses, whose appearance on the scene we are about to witness and who
would make the French Revolution an object of admiration as well as ter-
ror to succeeding generations. It would be strange indeed if such virtues
had been able to grow on soil from which liberty had been banished.
But if liberty of this disorderly and unwholesome sort prepared
the French to overthrow despotism, it made them perhaps less apt than
any other people to establish in its place the peaceful and unfettered rule
of law.
II. – How, Despite the Progress of
Civilization, the Condition of the French
Peasant Was Sometimes Worse in the Eighteenth
Century Than It Had Been in the Thirteenth
In the eighteenth century, the French peasant may no longer have been
prey to petty feudal despots; he was only rarely the target of violence by
the government. He enjoyed civil liberty and owned a portion of land.
But all the other classes had drawn apart from him, and he lived more
isolated, perhaps, than had ever been the case anywhere else in the world.
His oppression was of a new and singular sort, and the effects of this
deserve close and particular attention.
Early in the seventeenth century, Henri IV complained, according to
Péréxe, that nobles were abandoning the countryside. By the middle
of the eighteenth century, this desertion had become almost general. All
contemporary sources mention this fact and deplore it: economists in
their books, intendants in their correspondence, and agricultural socie-
ties in their reports. Incontrovertible proof can be found in the records
of the capitation, which was collected at the actual place of residence.
Receipts from all of the upper nobility and a portion of the middling
nobility were collected in Paris.
Scarcely any nobles remained in the countryside except those with
fortunes too small to enable them to leave. These found themselves, rel-
ative to their peasant neighbors, in a position in which I do not believe
any wealthy landowner had ever found himself before. Since the noble
was no longer the peasants’ leader, he did not have the interest he once
had in getting on with them, helping them out, and showing them the
II.12 The Condition of the French Peasant
way forward. Since he was not subject to the same taxes they were, he
could not feel warm sympathy for their plight, which he did not share,
nor could he join them in their grievances, which were alien to him.
These people were no longer his subjects, but he was not yet their fellow
citizen: a historically unique situation.
This led to what might be called absenteeism of the heart – a more
common and more devastating phenomenon than absenteeism in the
usual sense. As a result, the noble who lived on his estate often expressed
views and sentiments that his steward might have expressed in his
absence. Like the steward, he saw his tenants only as debtors and insisted
on receiving everything he was due by law or custom, so that in some
cases the collection of what remained of feudal dues imposed more of a
hardship than in feudal times proper.
Often weighed down by debt and always in need, he usually lived in
quite straitened circumstances in his chateau, his every thought devoted
to amassing the money that he would spend in town during the winter.
Common folk, whose words often point directly to the essence of a thing,
referred to lesser nobles of this sort as hobereaux, or hobby-hawks, these
being the smallest of the birds of prey.
One could no doubt nd individuals who did not t this description,
but I am speaking here of classes, which ought to be the sole object of
the historian’s interest. Who would deny that there were in those days
many wealthy landowners who were concerned with the well-being of the
peasants even though they were not obliged to be and shared no common
interest with them? But those individuals, I am glad to say, successfully
rebelled against the law of their new status, which impelled them in
spite of themselves toward indifference, as it drove their former vassals
toward hatred.
The nobility’s abandonment of the countryside has often been attrib-
uted to the specic inuence of certain kings and ministers, notably Louis
XIV and Richelieu. Indeed, during the last three centuries of the mon-
archy, princes nearly always embraced the idea of separating the nobles
from the people and enticing them to the court and public employment.
This was especially apparent in the seventeenth century, when the mon-
archy still feared the nobility. Among the questions addressed to the
intendants we still nd this: “Do the nobles in your province wish to
remain in their residences or leave?”
The letter of one intendant who responded to this query has survived.
He complains that the nobles of his province are pleased to remain with
Book II
their peasants rather than fulll their obligations at court. It is worth not-
ing that the province in question was Anjou, later known as the Vendée.
The nobles who are said to have refused to do their duty toward the king
were the only ones in France who would later take up arms in defense
of the monarchy, some of whom would die in combat on its behalf.
Moreover, they owed this glorious distinction to one thing only: the fact
that they were able to retain the loyalty of those peasants among whom
they were criticized for preferring to live.
We must nevertheless beware of attributing the desertion of the coun-
tryside by what was then the leading class of the nation to the direct inu-
ence of certain kings. The primary and persistent cause of this desertion
was not the will of certain individuals but the slow and steady operation
of certain institutions. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that when the
government wanted to counter the evil in the eighteenth century, it could
not even slow its progress. As nobles lost their political rights without
acquiring others in their place, and as local liberties disappeared, the emi-
gration of nobles increased. There was no longer any need to lure them
from their homes because they no longer wished to stay in them. Country
life had become insipid for them.
What I say here about nobles should be extended to wealthy landown-
ers in all countries: centralization empties the countryside of wealthy and
educated inhabitants. Indeed, I might add that centralization leads to agri-
cultural inefciency and lack of innovation – an observation that could be
developed into a gloss on Montesquieu’s very profound remark: “What
makes land productive is not so much its fertility as the liberty of those
who live on it.” But I do not wish to wander from my subject.
We saw earlier how the bourgeois everywhere abandoned the country-
side and sought refuge in the towns. On no other point are the records
of the Ancien Régime quite so unanimous: in the countryside we almost
never nd more than one generation of rich peasants. No sooner did an
industrious farmer manage to amass a little wealth than he ordered his
son to abandon his plow, sent him to town, and purchased a minor ofce
for him. It is to this period that we can trace the origin of what remains
a common sentiment even today: the singular horror that the French
farmer often feels toward the profession that made him rich. The effect
has outlived the cause.
In fact, the only well-bred individual – the only “gentleman,” as the
English say – who continued to live among the peasants and remained in
close touch with them was the priest. Thus, the priest would have been