Part 19 (2/2)

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 n.o.bility of the sword confined to families in which the men bear arms in every generation. A commoner, having bought n.o.ble 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 a.s.sembly 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 abolis.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances 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 t.i.tles 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 const.i.tution. 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 const.i.tutions 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.sage of a law,” said the n.o.bles. ”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 a.s.sembly. 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 a.s.sembly, 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 n.o.bles. ”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 const.i.tuents not to yield in this matter. But while the Commons were practically a unit on this question, the n.o.bles 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 circ.u.mstances, or on questions which did not concern the privileges of the superior Orders. In a few provinces the n.o.bles 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 n.o.bility, 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 const.i.tution. The king, in addition to his concurrence in legislation, was to have nominally the whole executive power. Many are the expressions of love and grat.i.tude for Louis XVI. He is requested to adopt the t.i.tle 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 const.i.tution. The next year he acquired the kingdom of Wess.e.x, 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 const.i.tution 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 t.i.tle 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 fas.h.i.+on much to admire in France, had appointed its deputies to draw up its const.i.tution. 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 const.i.tution 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 const.i.tuents to retire unless such and such of their demands were complied with. The American const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution, 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 Const.i.tutional History of the United States for the purpose of showing that a man may know all about a subject without understanding it.] The French const.i.tution made by the body which met in 1789, with the name of Estates General, Const.i.tuent, or National a.s.sembly, 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 const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sessment 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 n.o.bility itself, should be granted only on the nomination of the Provincial Estates. Many cahiers ask for elective munic.i.p.al 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, x.x.xix.]

It is a mistake to a.s.sume 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 n.o.bility 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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 const.i.tution 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 cla.s.s 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, x.x.xv. Poncins, 286. Desjardins (xl.) says that the n.o.bility 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 cla.s.ses, and that the death penalty should be decapitation, a form of execution which had previously been reserved for the n.o.bility. 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'a.s.semblee des Notables_, a good, sensible, middle-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 owners.h.i.+p; 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bility, 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 n.o.ble, 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 a.s.sumed 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 n.o.bles 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 quant.i.ty 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 cla.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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.

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