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 predominate in that assembly. The King could no longer refuse to convoke them; but he had still the power to determine the form they were to assume. One hundred and seventy-five years had elapsed since their last meeting. They had become a mere indistinct tradition. None knew precisely what should be the number of the deputies, the mutual relations of the three Orders, the mode of election, the forms of deliberation. The King alone could have settled these questions: he did not settle them. After having allowed the disputed powers, which he sought to retain, to be snatched away from him, he failed to use those which were not disputed.
M. de Brienne, the First Minister, had strange notions on this subject, and caused his master to adopt a resolution unparalleled in history. He regarded the questions, whether the electoral franchise was to be universal or limited, whether the assembly was to be numerous or restricted, whether the Orders were to be separated or united, whether they were to be equal or unequal in their rights, as a matter of erudition. Consequently an Order in Council commanded all the constituted bodies of the realm to make researches as to the structure of the old States-General and the forms used by them; and added that ‘His Majesty invited all the learned persons of the kingdom, more especially those who belonged to the Academy of Belles-lettres and Antiquities, to address to the Keeper of the Seals papers and information on this subject.’
Thus was the constitution of the country treated like an academical essay, put up to competition. The call was heard.[230] All the local powers deliberated on the answer to be given to the King. All the corporate bodies put in their claims. All classes endeavoured to rake up from the ruins of the old States-General the forms which seemed best adapted to secure their own peculiar interests. Every one had something to say; and as France was the most literary country in Europe, there was a deluge of publications. The conflict of classes was inevitable; but that conflict, which should naturally have been reserved for the States-General themselves, where it might have been kept within bounds when it arose on given questions, finding a boundless field before it, and being fed by general controversy, speedily assumed a degree of strange boldness and excessive violence, to be accounted for by the secret excitement of the public mind, but which no external symptom had as yet prepared men for. Between the time when the King renounced his absolute authority and the commencement of the elections about five months elapsed. In this interval little was changed in the actual state of things, but the movement which was driving the French nation to a total subversion of society dashed onwards with increasing velocity.
At first nothing was talked of but the constitution of the States-General; big books were hastily filled with crude erudition, in which an attempt was made to reconcile the traditions of the Middle Ages with the demands of the present time: then the question of the old States-General was dropped. This heap of mouldy precedents was flung aside, and it was asked what, on general and abstract principles, the legislative power ought to be. At each step the horizon extended: beyond the constitution of the legislature the discussion embraced the whole framework of government: beyond the frame of government the whole fabric of society was to be shaken to its foundations. At first men spoke of a better ponderation of powers, a better adjustment of the rights of classes, but soon they advanced, they hurried, they rushed to pure democracy. At first Montesquieu was cited and discussed, at last Rousseau was the only authority; he, and he alone, became and was to remain the Teacher of the first age of the Revolution. The old régime was still in complete existence, and already the institutions of England were deemed superannuated and inadequate. The root of every incident that followed was implanted in men’s minds. Scarcely an opinion was professed in the whole course of the Revolution which might not already be traced in its germ: there was not an idea realised by the Revolution, that some theory had not at once reached and even surpassed.
‘In all things the majority of numbers is to give the law’:[231] such was the keynote of the whole controversy. Nobody dreamed that the concession of political rights could be determined by any other element than that of number. ‘What can be more absurd,’ exclaims a writer who was one of the most moderate of the time, ‘than that a body which has twenty millions of heads should be represented in the same manner as one which has an hundred thousand?’[126] After having shown that there were in France eighty thousand ecclesiastics and about a hundred and twenty thousand nobles, Siéyès merely adds, ‘Compare this number of these two hundred thousand privileged persons to that of twenty-six million souls, and judge the question.’[127]
The most timid among the innovators of the Revolution, those who wished that the reasonable prerogatives of the different Orders should be respected, talked, nevertheless, as if there were neither class nor Order, and still took the numerical majority[128] as the sole basis of their calculations. Everybody framed his own statistics, but all was statistical. ‘The relation of privileged persons to those not privileged,’ said Lafon-Ladebat, ‘is as one to twenty-two.’[129] According to the city of Bourg,[130] the commons formed nineteen-twentieths of the population; according to the city of N?mes,[131] twenty-nine thirtieths. It was, as you see, a mere question of figures. From this political arithmetic, Volney deduced, as a natural consequence, universal suffrage;[132] Roederer, universal eligibility;[133] Péthion, the unity of the assembly.[134]
Many of these writers, in drawing out their figures, knew nothing of the quotient: and the calculation frequently led them beyond their hopes, and even beyond their wishes.
The most striking thing, at this passionate epoch, was not so much the passions which broke forth, as the power of the opinions that prevailed; and the opinion that prevailed above all others was, that not only there were no privileges, but even that there were no private rights. Even those who professed the largest consideration for privileges and private rights considered such privileges and rights as wholly indefensible—not only those exercised in their own time, but those existing at any time and in any[232] country. The conception of a temperate and ponderated Government, that is to say, of a Government in which the different classes of society, and the different interests which divide them, balance each other—in which men are weighed not only as individuals, but by reason of their property, their patronage, and their influence in the scale of the common weal,—these conceptions were wanting in the mind of the multitude; they were replaced by the notion of a crowd, consisting of similar elements, and they were superseded by votes, not as the representatives of interests or of persons, but of numerical force.[135]
Another thing well worthy of remark in this singular movement of the mind, was its pace, at first so easy and regulated, at last so headlong and impetuous. A few months’ interval marked this difference. Read what was written in the first weeks of 1788 by the keenest opponents of the old régime, you will be struck by the forbearance of their language: then take the publications of the most moderate reformers in the last five months of the same year, you will find them revolutionary.
The Government had challenged discussion on itself: no bounds therefore would be set to the theme. The same impulse which had been given to opinions soon drove the passions of the nation with furious rapidity in the same direction. At first the commons complained that the nobility carried their rights too far. Later on, the existence of any such rights was denied. At first it was proposed to share power with the upper classes: soon all power was refused to them. The aristocracy was to become a sort of extraneous substance in the uniform texture of the nation. Some said the privileged classes were a hundred thousand, some that they were five hundred thousand. All agreed in thinking that they formed a mere handful, foreign to the rest of the nation, only to be tolerated in the interest of public tranquillity. ‘Take away in your imagination,’ said Rabaut Saint-Etienne, ‘the whole of the clergy—take away even the whole nobility, there still remains the nation.’ The commons were a complete social body: all the rest was vain superfluity: not only the nobles had no right to be masters of the rest, they had scarcely the right to be their fellow-citizens.
[233]
For the first time perhaps in the history of the world, the upper classes had separated and isolated themselves to such a degree from all other classes, that their members could be counted one by one and set apart like sheep draughted from a flock: whilst the middle classes were bent on not mixing with the class above them, but, on the contrary, stood carefully aloof from all contact. These two symptoms, had they been understood, would have revealed the immensity of the Revolution which was about to take place, or rather which was already made.
Now follow the movement of passion in the track of opinion. At first hatred was expressed against privileges, none against persons. But by degrees the tone becomes more bitter, emulation becomes jealousy, enmity becomes detestation, a thousand conflicting associations are piled together to form the mighty mass which a thousand arms are at once to lift, and drop upon the head of the aristocracy so as to crush it.
The privileged ranks were attacked in countless publications. They were defended in so few, that it is somewhat difficult to ascertain what was said in their favour. It may seem surprising that the assailed classes, holding most of the great offices of State and owning a large portion of the land of the country, should have found so few defenders, though so many eloquent voices have pleaded their cause since they have been conquered, decimated, ruined. But this is explained by the extreme confusion into which the aristocracy was thrown, when the rest of the nation, having proceeded for a time in the track marked out by itself, suddenly turned against it. With astonishment, it perceived that the opinions used to attack it were its own opinions. The notions which compassed its annihilation were familiar to its own mind. What had been the amusement of aristocratic leisure became a terrible weapon against aristocratic society. In common with their adversaries, these nobles were ready enough to believe that the most perfect form of society would be that most nearly akin to the natural equality of man; in which merit alone, and not either birth or fortune, should determine rank; and in which government would be a simple contract, and law the creation of a numerical majority. They knew nothing of politics but what they had read in books, and in the same books; the only difference was that one party was bent on trying a great social experiment, which must be made at the expense of the other party. But, though their interests were different, their opinions were the same: those same patricians would have made the Revolution if they had been born plebeians.
When therefore they suddenly found themselves attacked, they[234] were singularly embarrassed in their defence. Not one of them had ever considered by what means an aristocracy may justify its privileges in the eyes of the people. They knew not what to say in order to show how it is that an aristocracy can alone preserve the people from oppression of the Crown and the calamities of revolution, insomuch that the privileges apparently established in the sole interest of those who possess them do constitute the best security that can be found for the tranquillity and prosperity even of those who are without them. All these arguments which are so familiar to those who have a long experience of public affairs, and who have acquired the science of government, were to those nobles of France novel and unknown.
Instead of this, they spoke of the services which their forefathers had rendered six hundred years ago; of the superstitious veneration due to a past, which was now detested; of the necessity of a nobility to uphold the honour of arms and the traditions of military valour. In opposition to a proposal to admit the peasantry to the franchise in the provincial assemblies, and even to preside over those bodies, M. de Bazancourt, a Councillor of State, declared that the kingdom of France was based upon honour and prerogative: so great was the ignorance and so deep the obscurity in which absolute power had concealed the real laws of society, even from the eyes of those to whom it was most interested in making them known.
The language of the nobles was often arrogant, because they were accustomed to be the first; but it was irresolute, because they doubted of their own right. Who can depict the endless divisions in the bosom of the assailed parties? The spirit of rivalry and contention raged amongst those who were thus isolated themselves—the nobles against the priests (the first voice raised to demand the confiscation of the property of the clergy was that of a noble[136]), the priests against the nobles, the lesser nobility against the great lords, the parish priests against the bishops.[137]
The discussion roused by the King’s Edicts, after having run round a vast circumference of institutions and laws, always ended at the two following points, which practically expressed the objects of the contest.
1. In the States-General, then about to meet, were the commons to have a greater number of representatives than each of the[235] two other Orders, so that the total number of its deputies should be equal to those of the nobility and clergy combined?
2. Were the Orders to deliberate together or separately?
This reduplication of the commons and the fusion of the three Orders in one assembly appeared, at the time, to be things less novel and less important than they were in reality. Some minor circumstances which had long existed, or were then in existence, concealed their novelty and their magnitude. For ages the provincial Estates of Languedoc had been composed and had sat in this manner, with no other result than that of giving to the middle class a larger share of public business, and of creating common interests and greater facility of intercourse between that class and the two higher Orders. This example had been copied, subsequently, in the two or three provincial assemblies which were held in 1779: instead of dividing the classes, it had been found to draw them together.
The King himself appeared to have declared in favour of this system; for he had just applied it to the provincial assemblies, which the last edict had called into being in all the provinces having previously no Estates of their own (1788). It was still imperfectly seen, without a clear perception of the fact, that an institution which had only modified the ancient constitution of the country, when established in a single province, could not fail to bring about its total and violent overthrow the moment it was applied to the whole State. It was evident that the commons, if equal in number to the two other Orders in the General Assembly of the nation, must instantly preponderate there;—not as participating in their business, but as the supreme master of it. For the commons would stand united between two bodies, not only divided against each other, but divided against themselves—the commons having the same interests, the same passions, the same object: the two other Orders having different interests, different objects, and frequently different passions: these having the current of public opinion in their favour, those having it against them. This preference from without could not fail to drive a certain number of nobles and priests to join the commons; so that whilst it banded all the commons together, it detached from the nobility and the clergy all those who were aiming at popularity or seeking to track out a new road to power.
In the States of Languedoc it was common to see the commons forsake their own body to vote with the nobles and the bishops, because the established influence of aristocracy, still prevailing in their opinions and manners, weighed upon them. But here, the[236] reverse necessarily occurred; and the commons necessarily found themselves in a majority, although the number of their own representatives was the same.
The action of such a party in the Assembly could not fail to be, not only preponderating, but violent; for it was sure to encounter there all that could excite the passions of man. To bring parties to live together in a conflict of opposite opinions is no easy task. But to enclose in the same arena political bodies, already formed, completely organised, each having its proper origin, its past, its traditions, its peculiar usages, its spirit of union—to plant them apart, always in presence of each other, and to compel them to carry on an incessant debate, with no medium between them, is not to provoke discussion but war.
Moreover, this majority, inflamed by its own passions and the passions of its antagonists, was all powerful. Nothing could, I will not say arrest, but retard its movements; for nothing remained to check it but the power of the Crown, already disarmed, and inevitably destined to yield to the strain of a single Assembly concentrated against itself.
This was not to transpose gradually the balance of power, but to upset it. It was not to impart to the commons a share in the exorbitant rights of the aristocracy, but suddenly to transfer unbounded power to other hands—to abandon the guidance of affairs to a single passion, a single idea, a single interest. This was not a reform, but a revolution. Mounier, who, alone among the reformers of that time, seems to have settled in his own mind what it was he wished to effect, and what were the conditions of a regular and free government,—Mounier, who in his plan of government had divided the three Orders, was nevertheless favourable to this union of them, and for this reason: that what was wanted before all things was an assembly to destroy the remains of the old constitution, all special privileges, and all local privileges, which could never be done with an Upper House composed of the nobles and the clergy.
It would seem at any rate that the reduplication of the votes of the commons and the fusion of the three Orders in one body must have been questions inseparable from each other; for to what end should the number of representatives of the commons be augmented, if that branch of the Assembly was to debate and vote apart from the other two?
M. Necker thought proper to separate these questions. No doubt he desired both the reduplication of the commons, and that the three Orders should vote together. It is very probable that[237] the King leaned in the same direction. By the aristocracy he had just been conquered. It was the aristocracy which pressed him hardest, which had roused the other classes against the royal authority, and had led them to victory. These blows had been felt, and the King had not sufficient penetration to perceive that his adversaries would soon be compelled to defend him, and that his friends would become his masters. Louis XVI. therefore, like his minister, was inclined to constitute the States-General in the manner which the commons desired. But they were afraid to go so far. They stopped half-way, not from any clear perception of their danger, but confused by the inarticulate clamour around them. What man or what class has ever had the penetration to see when it became necessary to come down from a lofty pinnacle, in order to avoid being hurled down from it?
It was then decided that the commons should return twice as many members as each of the other Orders, but the question of the vote in common was left unsettled. Of all courses of action, this was certainly the most dangerous.
Nothing contributes more to the maintenance of despotism than the division and mutual rivalry of classes. Absolute power lives on them: on condition, however, that these divisions are confined to a pacific bitterness, that men envy their neighbours without excessive hatred, and that these classes, though separated, are not in arms. But every Government must perish in the midst of a violent collision of classes, when once they have begun to make war on each other.
No doubt, it was very late in the day to seek to maintain the old constitution of the States-General, even if it were reformed. But this resolution, however rash, was supported by the law of the land, which had still some authority. The Government had tradition in its favour, and still had its hand upon the instrument of the law. If the double number of the commons and the vote of the three Orders in common had been conceded at once, no doubt a revolution would have been made, but it would have been made by the Crown, which by pulling down these old institutions itself might have deadened their fall. The upper classes must have submitted to an inevitable necessity. Borne in by the pressure of the Crown, simultaneously with that of the commons, they would at once have acknowledged their inability to resist. Despairing of their own ascendency, they would only have contended for equal rights, and would have learnt the lesson of fighting to save something, instead of fighting to retain everything.
Would it not have been possible to do throughout France what[238] was actually done by the Three Orders in Dauphiny? In that province the Provincial Estates chose, by a general vote, the representatives of the Three Orders to the States-General. Each Order in the provincial State had been elected separately and stood for itself alone; but all the Orders combined to name the deputies to the States-General, so that every noble had commoners among his constituents, and every commoner nobles. The three representations, though remaining distinct, thus acquired a certain resemblance. Could not the same thing have been done elsewhere than in Dauphiny? If the Orders had been constituted in this manner, might they not have co-existed in a single Assembly without coming to a violent collision?
Too much weight must not be given to these legislative expedients. The ideas and the passions of man, not the mechanism of law, are the motive force of human affairs. Doubtless whatever steps had at that time been taken to form and regulate the Assemblies of the nation, it may be thought that war would have broken forth in all its violence between classes. Their animosities were perhaps already too fierce for them to have worked in harmony, and the power of the King was already too weak to compel them to agree. But it must be admitted that nothing could have been done more calculated than what was done to render the conflict between them instantaneous and mortal. Could the utmost art, skill, and deliberate design have brought all this to pass more surely than was actually done by inexperience and temerity? An opportunity had been afforded to the commons to take courage, to prepare for the encounter, and to count their numbers. Their moral ardour had immoderately increased, and had doubled the weight of their party. They had been allured by every hope; they were intimidated by every fear. Victory had been flaunted before their eyes, not given, but they were invited to seize it. After having left the two classes for five months to exasperate their old hatreds, and repeat the long story of their grievances, until they were inflamed against each other with furious resentment, they were arrayed face to face, and the first question they had to decide was one which included all other questions; on that issue alone they might have settled at once, and in a single day, all their quarrels.
What strikes one most in the affairs of the world is not so much the genius of those who made the Revolution, because they desired it, as the singular imbecility of those who made it without desiring it,—not so much the part played by great men as the influence frequently exercised by the smallest personages in history. When I survey the French Revolution I am amazed at the immense[239] magnitude of the event, at the glare it has cast to the extremities of the earth, at the power of it, which has more or less been felt by all nations. If I turn to the Court, which had so great a share in the Revolution, I perceive there some of the most trivial scenes in history—a king, who had no greatness save that of his virtues, and those not the virtues of a king; hairbrained or narrow-minded ministers, dissolute priests, rash or money-seeking courtiers, futile women, who held in their hands the destinies of the human race. Yet these paltry personages set going, push on, precipitate prodigious events. They themselves have little share in them. They themselves are mere accidents. They might almost pass for primal causes. And I marvel at the Almighty Power which, with levers as short as these, can set rolling the mass of human society.