Volume III Part 20 (2/2)

At first view this geometrical basis of theirs presents not much to admire or to blame. It calls for no great legislative talents. Nothing more than an accurate land-surveyor, with his chain, sight, and theodolite, is requisite for such a plan as this. In the old divisions of the country, various accidents at times, and the ebb and flow of various properties and jurisdictions, settled their bounds. These bounds were not made upon any fixed system, undoubtedly. They were subject to some inconveniences; but they were inconveniences for which use had found remedies, and habit had supplied accommodation and patience. In this new pavement of square within square, and this organization and semi-organization, made on the system of Empedocles and Buffon, and not upon any politic principle, it is impossible that innumerable local inconveniences, to which men are not habituated, must not arise. But these I pa.s.s over, because it requires an accurate knowledge of the country, which I do not possess, to specify them.

When these state surveyors came to take a view of their work of measurement, they soon found that in politics the most fallacious of all things was geometrical demonstration. They had then recourse to another basis (or rather b.u.t.tress) to support the building, which tottered on that false foundation. It was evident that the goodness of the soil, the number of the people, their wealth, and the largeness of their contribution, made such infinite variations between square and square as to render mensuration a ridiculous standard of power in the commonwealth, and equality in geometry the most unequal of all measures in the distribution of men. However, they could not give it up,--but, dividing their political and civil representation into three parts, they allotted one of those parts to the square measurement, without a single fact or calculation to ascertain whether this territorial proportion of representation was fairly a.s.signed, and ought upon any principle really to be a third. Having, however, given to geometry this portion, (of a third for her dower,) out of compliment, I suppose, to that sublime science, they left the other two to be scuffled for between the other parts, population and contribution.

When they came to provide for population, they were not able to proceed quite so smoothly as they had done in the field of their geometry. Here their arithmetic came to bear upon their juridical metaphysics. Had they stuck to their metaphysic principles, the arithmetical process would be simple indeed. Men, with them, are strictly equal, and are ent.i.tled to equal rights in their own government. Each head, on this system, would have its vote, and every man would vote directly for the person who was to represent him in the legislature. ”But soft,--by regular degrees, not yet.” This metaphysic principle, to which law, custom, usage, policy, reason, were to yield, is to yield itself to their pleasure. There must be many degrees, and some stages, before the representative can come in contact with his const.i.tuent. Indeed, as we shall soon see, these two persons are to have no sort of communion with each other. First, the voters in the _Canton_, who compose what they call _primary a.s.semblies_, are to have a _qualification_. What! a qualification on the indefeasible rights of men? Yes; but it shall be a very small qualification. Our injustice shall be very little oppressive: only the local valuation of three days' labor paid to the public. Why, this is not much, I readily admit, for anything but the utter subversion of your equalizing principle. As a qualification it might as well be let alone; for it answers no one purpose for which qualifications are established; and, on your ideas, it excludes from a vote the man of all others whose natural equality stands the most in need of protection and defence: I mean the man who has nothing else but his natural equality to guard him.

You order him to buy the right which you before told him Nature had given to him gratuitously at his birth, and of which no authority on earth could lawfully deprive him. With regard to the person who cannot come up to your market, a tyrannous aristocracy, as against him, is established at the very outset, by you who pretend to be its sworn foe.

The gradation proceeds. These primary a.s.semblies of the _Canton_ elect deputies to the _Commune_,--one for every two hundred qualified inhabitants. Here is the first medium put between the primary elector and the representative legislator; and here a new turnpike is fixed for taxing the rights of men with a second qualification: for none can be elected into the _Commune_ who does not pay the amount of ten days'

labor. Nor have we yet done. There is still to be another gradation.[121] These _Communes_, chosen by the _Canton_, choose to the _Department_; and the deputies of the _Department_ choose their deputies to the _National a.s.sembly_. Here is a third barrier of a senseless qualification. Every deputy to the National a.s.sembly must pay, in direct contribution, to the value of a _mark of silver_. Of all these qualifying barriers we must think alike: that they are impotent to secure independence, strong only to destroy the rights of men.

In all this process, which in its fundamental elements affects to consider only _population_, upon a principle of natural right, there is a manifest attention to _property_,--which, however just and reasonable on other schemes, is on theirs perfectly unsupportable.

When they come to their third basis, that of _Contribution_, we find that they have more completely lost sight of the rights of men. This last basis rests _entirely_ on property. A principle totally different from the equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is thereby admitted: but no sooner is this principle admitted than (as usual) it is subverted; and it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) to approximate the inequality of riches to the level of Nature. The additional share in the third portion of representation (a portion reserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made to regard the _district_ only, and not the individuals in it who pay. It is easy to perceive, by the course of their reasonings, how much they were embarra.s.sed by their contradictory ideas of the rights of men and the privileges of riches. The Committee of Const.i.tution do as good as admit that they are wholly irreconcilable. ”The relation with regard to the contributions is without doubt _null_, (say they,) when the question is on the balance of the political rights as between individual and individual; without which _personal equality would be destroyed_, and _an aristocracy of the rich_ would be established. But this inconvenience entirely disappears, when the proportional relation of the contribution is only considered in the _great ma.s.ses_, and is solely between province and province; it serves in that case only to form a just reciprocal proportion between the cities, without affecting the personal rights of the citizens.”

Here the principle of _contribution_, as taken between man and man, is reprobated as _null_, and destructive to equality,--and as pernicious, too, because it leads to the establishment of an _aristocracy of the rich_. However, it must not be abandoned. And the way of getting rid of the difficulty is to establish the inequality as between department and department, leaving all the individuals in each department upon an exact par. Observe, that this parity between individuals had been before destroyed, when the qualifications within the departments were settled; nor does it seem a matter of great importance whether the equality of men be injured by ma.s.ses or individually. An individual is not of the same importance in a ma.s.s represented by a few as in a ma.s.s represented by many. It would be too much to tell a man jealous of his equality, that the elector has the same franchise who votes for three members as he who votes for ten.

Now take it in the other point of view, and let us suppose their principle of representation according to contribution, that is according to riches, to be well imagined, and to be a necessary basis for their republic. In this their third basis they a.s.sume that riches ought to be respected, and that justice and policy require that they should ent.i.tle men, in some mode or other, to a larger share in the administration of public affairs; it is now to be seen how the a.s.sembly provides for the preeminence, or even for the security of the rich, by conferring, in virtue of their opulence, that larger measure of power to their district which is denied to them personally. I readily admit (indeed, I should lay it down as a fundamental principle) that in a republican government, which has a democratic basis, the rich do require an additional security above what is necessary to them in monarchies. They are subject to envy, and through envy to oppression. On the present scheme it is impossible to divine what advantage they derive from the aristocratic preference upon which the unequal representation of the ma.s.ses is founded. The rich cannot feel it, either as a support to dignity or as security to fortune: for the aristocratic ma.s.s is generated from purely democratic principles; and the prevalence given to it in the general representation has no sort of reference to or connection with the persons upon account of whose property this superiority of the ma.s.s is established. If the contrivers of this scheme meant any sort of favor to the rich, in consequence of their contribution, they ought to have conferred the privilege either on the individual rich, or on some cla.s.s formed of rich persons (as historians represent Servius Tullius to have done in the early const.i.tution of Rome); because the contest between the rich and the poor is not a struggle between corporation and corporation, but a contest between men and men,--a compet.i.tion, not between districts, but between descriptions. It would answer its purpose better, if the scheme were inverted: that the votes of the ma.s.ses were rendered equal, and that the votes within each ma.s.s were proportioned to property.

Let us suppose one man in a district (it is an easy supposition) to contribute as much as a hundred of his neighbors. Against these he has but one vote. If there were but one representative for the ma.s.s, his poor neighbors would outvote him by an hundred to one for that single representative. Bad enough! But amends are to be made him. How? The district, in virtue of his wealth, is to choose, say ten members instead of one: that is to say, by paying a very large contribution he has the happiness of being outvoted, an hundred to one, by the poor, for ten representatives, instead of being outvoted exactly in the same proportion for a single member. In truth, instead of benefiting by this superior quant.i.ty of representation, the rich man is subjected to an additional hards.h.i.+p. The increase of representation within his province sets up nine persons more, and as many more than nine as there may be democratic candidates, to cabal and intrigue and to flatter the people at his expense and to his oppression. An interest is by this means held out to mult.i.tudes of the inferior sort, in obtaining a salary of eighteen livres a day, (to them a vast object,) besides the pleasure of a residence in Paris, and their share in the government of the kingdom.

The more the objects of ambition are multiplied and become democratic, just in that proportion the rich are endangered.

Thus it must fare between the poor and the rich in the province deemed aristocratic, which in its internal relation is the very reverse of that character. In its external relation, that is, in its relation to the other provinces, I cannot see how the unequal representation which is given to ma.s.ses on account of wealth becomes the means of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth. For, if it be one of the objects to secure the weak from being crushed by the strong, (as in all society undoubtedly it is,) how are the smaller and poorer of these ma.s.ses to be saved from the tyranny of the more wealthy? Is it by adding to the wealthy further and more systematical means of oppressing them?

When we come to a balance of representation between corporate bodies, provincial interests, emulations, and jealousies are full as likely to arise among them as among individuals; and their divisions are likely to produce a much hotter spirit of dissension, and something leading much more nearly to a war.

I see that these aristocratic ma.s.ses are made upon what is called the principle of direct contribution. Nothing can be a more unequal standard than this. The indirect contribution, that which arises from duties on consumption, is in truth a better standard, and follows and discovers wealth more naturally than this of direct contribution. It is difficult, indeed, to fix a standard of local preference on account of the one, or of the other, or of both, because some provinces may pay the more of either or of both on account of causes not intrinsic, but originating from those very districts over whom they have obtained a preference in consequence of their ostensible contribution. If the ma.s.ses were independent, sovereign bodies, who were to provide for a federative treasury by distinct contingents, and that the revenue had not (as it has) many impositions running through the whole, which affect men individually, and not corporately, and which, by their nature, confound all territorial limits, something might be said for the basis of contribution as founded on ma.s.ses. But, of all things, this representation, to be measured by contribution, is the most difficult to settle upon principles of equity in a country which considers its districts as members of a whole. For a great city, such as Bordeaux or Paris, appears to pay a vast body of duties, almost out of all a.s.signable proportion to other places, and its ma.s.s is considered accordingly. But are these cities the true contributors in that proportion? No. The consumers of the commodities imported into Bordeaux, who are scattered through all France, pay the import duties of Bordeaux.

The produce of the vintage in Guienne and Languedoc give to that city the means of its contribution growing out of an export commerce. The landholders who spend their estates in Paris, and are thereby the creators of that city, contribute for Paris from the provinces out of which their revenues arise. Very nearly the same arguments will apply to the representative share given on account of _direct_ contribution: because the direct contribution must be a.s.sessed on wealth, real or presumed; and that local wealth will itself arise from causes not local, and which therefore in equity ought not to produce a local preference.

It is very remarkable, that, in this fundamental regulation which settles the representation of the ma.s.s upon the direct contribution, they have not yet settled how that direct contribution shall be laid, and how apportioned. Perhaps there is some latent policy towards the continuance of the present a.s.sembly in this strange procedure. However, until they do this, they can have no certain const.i.tution. It must depend at last upon the system of taxation, and must vary with every variation in that system. As they have contrived matters, their taxation does not so much depend on their const.i.tution as their const.i.tution on their taxation. This must introduce great confusion among the ma.s.ses; as the variable qualification for votes within the district must, if ever real contested elections take place, cause infinite internal controversies.

To compare together the three bases, not on their political reason, but on the ideas on which the a.s.sembly works, and to try its consistency with itself, we cannot avoid observing that the principle which the committee call the basis of _population_ does not begin to operate from the same point with the two other principles, called the bases of _territory_ and of _contribution_, which are both of an aristocratic nature. The consequence is, that, where all three begin to operate together, there is the most absurd inequality produced by the operation of the former on the two latter principles. Every canton contains four square leagues, and is estimated to contain, on the average, 4,000 inhabitants, or 680 voters in the _primary a.s.semblies_, which vary in numbers with the population of the canton, and send _one deputy_ to the _commune_ for every 200 voters. _Nine cantons_ make a _commune_.

Now let us take _a canton_ containing _a seaport town of trade_, or _a great manufacturing town_. Let us suppose the population of this canton to be 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters, forming _three primary a.s.semblies_, and sending _ten deputies_ to the _commune_.

Oppose to this _one_ canton _two_ others of the remaining eight in the same commune. These we may suppose to have their fair population, of 4,000 inhabitants, and 680 voters each, or 8,000 inhabitants and 1,360 voters, both together. These will form only _two primary a.s.semblies_, and send only _six_ deputies to the _commune_.

When the a.s.sembly of the _commune_ comes to vote on the _basis of territory_, which principle is first admitted to operate in that a.s.sembly, the _single canton_, which has _half_ the territory of the _other two_, will have _ten_ voices to _six_ in the election of _three deputies_ to the a.s.sembly of the department, chosen on the express ground of a representation of territory. This inequality, striking as it is, will be yet highly aggravated, if we suppose, as we fairly may, the _several_ other cantons of the _commune_ to fall proportionally short of the average population, as much as the _princ.i.p.al canton_ exceeds it.

Now as to _the basis of contribution_, which also is a principle admitted first to operate in the a.s.sembly of the _commune_. Let us again take _one_ canton, such as is stated above. If the whole of the direct contributions paid by a great trading or manufacturing town be divided equally among the inhabitants, each individual will be found to pay much more than an individual living in the country according to the same average. The whole paid by the inhabitants of the former will be more than the whole paid by the inhabitants of the latter,--we may fairly a.s.sume one third more. Then the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of the canton, will pay as much as 19,050 inhabitants, or 3,289 voters of the _other cantons_, which are nearly the estimated proportion of inhabitants and voters of _five_ other cantons. Now the 2,193 voters will, as I before said, send only _ten_ deputies to the a.s.sembly; the 3,289 voters will send _sixteen_. Thus, for an _equal_ share in the contribution of the whole _commune_, there will be a difference of _sixteen_ voices to _ten_ in voting for deputies to be chosen on the principle of representing the general contribution of the whole _commune_.

By the same mode of computation, we shall find 15,875 inhabitants, or 2,741 voters of the _other_ cantons, who pay _one sixth_ LESS to the contribution of the whole _commune_, will have _three_ voices MORE than the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of the _one_ canton.

Such is the fantastical and unjust inequality between ma.s.s and ma.s.s, in this curious repart.i.tion of the rights of representation arising out of _territory_ and _contribution_. The qualifications which these confer are in truth negative qualifications, that give a right in an inverse proportion to the possession of them.

In this whole contrivance of the three bases, consider it in any light you please, I do not see a variety of objects reconciled in one consistent whole, but several contradictory principles reluctantly and irreconcilably brought and held together by your philosophers, like wild beasts shut up in a cage, to claw and bite each other to their mutual destruction.

I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of considering the formation of a Const.i.tution. They have much, but bad, metaphysics,--much, but bad, geometry,--much, but false, proportionate arithmetic; but if it were all as exact as metaphysics, geometry, and arithmetic ought to be, and if their schemes were perfectly consistent in all their parts, it would make only a more fair and sightly vision.

It is remarkable, that, in a great arrangement of mankind, not one reference whatsoever is to be found to anything moral or anything politic,--nothing that relates to the concerns, the actions, the pa.s.sions, the interests of men. _Hominem non sapiunt_.

<script>