The French Revolution - Volume 1

IV.—Refusal to supply the ministry

Generally in an omnipotent assembly, when a party takes the lead and forms a majority, it furnishes the Ministry; and this fact suffices to give, or to bring back to it, some glimpse of common sense. For its leaders, with the Government in their own hands, become responsible for it, and when they propose or pass a law, they are obliged to anticipate its effect. Rarely will a Secretary of War or of the Navy adopt a military code which goes to establish permanent disobedience in the army or in the navy. Rarely will a Secretary of the Treasury propose an expenditure for which there is not a sufficient revenue, or a system of taxation that provides no returns. Placed where full information can be procured, daily advised of every details, surrounded by skillful counselors and expert clerks, the chiefs of the majority, who thus become heads of the administration, immediately drop theory for practice; and the fumes of political speculation must be pretty dense in their minds if they exclude the multiplied rays of light which experience constantly sheds upon them. Let the most stubborn of theorists take his stand at the helm of a ship, and, whatever be the obstinacy of his principles or his prejudices, he will never, unless he is blind or led by the blind, persist in steering always to the right or always to the left. Just so after the flight to Varennes, when the Assembly, in full possession of the executive power, directly controls the Ministry, it comes to recognize for itself that its constitutional machine will not work, except in the way of destruction; and it is the principal revolutionaries, Barnave, Duport, the Lameths, Chapelier, and Thouret,2147 who undertake to make alterations in the mechanisms so as to lessen its friction. But this source of knowledge and reason, however, to which they are momentarily induced to draw, in spite of themselves and too late, has been turned off by themselves from the very beginning. On the 6th of November, 1789, in deference to principle and in dread of corruption, the Assembly had declared that none of its members should hold ministerial office. We see it in consequence deprived of all the instruction which comes from direct contact with affairs, surrendered without any counterpoise to the seductions of theory, reduced by its own decision to become a mere academy of legislation only.

Nay, still worse, through another effect of the same error, it condemns itself by its own act to constant fits of panic. For, having allowed the power which it was not willing to assume to slip into indifferent or suspect hands, it is always uneasy, and all its decrees bear an uniform stamp, not only of the willful ignorance within which it confines itself, but also of the exaggerated or chimerical fears in which its life is passed.—Imagine a ship conveying a company of lawyers, literary men, and other passengers, who, supported by a mutinous and poorly fed crew, take full command, but refuse to select one of their own number for a pilot or for the officer of the watch. The former captain continues to nominate them; through very shame, and because he is a good sort of man, his title is left to him, and he is retained for the transmission of orders. If these orders are absurd, so much the worse for him; if he resists them, a fresh mutiny forces him to yield; and even when they cannot be executed, he has to answer for their being carried out. In the meantime, in a room between decks, far away from the helm and the compass, our club of amateurs discuss the equilibrium of floating bodies, decree a new system of navigation, have the ballast thrown overboard, crowd on all sail, and are astonished to find that the ship heels over on its side. The officer of the watch and the pilot must, evidently, have managed the maneuver badly. They are accordingly dismissed and others put in their place, while the ship heels over farther yet and begins to leak in every joint. Enough: it is the fault of the captain and the old staff of officers, They are not well-disposed; for a beautiful system of navigation like this ought to work well; and if it fails to do so, it is because some one interferes with it. It is positively certain that some of those people belonging to the former régime must be traitors, who would rather have the ship go down than submit; they are public enemies and monsters. They must be seized, disarmed, put under surveillance, and punished.—Such is the reasoning of the Assembly. Evidently, to reassure it, a message from the Minister of the Interior chosen by the Assembly, to the lieutenant of police whom he had appointed, to come to his office every morning, would be all that was necessary. But it is deprived of this simple resource by its own act, and has no other expedient than to appoint a committee of investigation to discover crimes of "treason against the nation."2148 What could be more vague than such a term? What could be more mischievous than such an institution?—Renewed every month, deprived of special agents, composed of credulous and inexperienced deputies, this committee, set to perform the work of a Lenoir or a Fouché, makes up for its incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of the Jacobine inquisition.2149 Alarmist and suspicious, it encourages accusations, and, for lack of plots to discover, it invents them. Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects become accomplished outrages. On the denunciation of a domestic who has listened at a door, on the gossip of a washerwoman who has found a scrap of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false interpretation of a letter, on vague indications which it completes and patches together by the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'état, makes examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises and arrests;2150 it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in public session to denounce the whole affair to the National Assembly. First comes the plot of the Breton nobles to deliver Brest to the English;2151 then the plot for hiring brigands to destroy the crops; then the plot of 14th of July to burn Paris; then the plot of Favras to murder Lafayette, Necker, and Bailly; then the plot of Augeard to carry off the King, and many others, week after week, not counting those which swarm in the brains of the journalists, and which Desmoulins, Fréron, and Marat reveal with a flourish of trumpets in each of their publications.

"All these alarms are cried daily in the streets like cabbages and turnips, the good people of Paris inhaling them along with the pestilential vapors of our mud."2152

..............Now, in this aspect, as well as in a good many others, the Assembly is the people; satisfied that it is in danger,2153 it makes laws as the former make their insurrections, and protects itself by strokes of legislation as the former protects itself by blows with pikes. Failing to take hold of the motor spring by which it might direct the government machine, it distrusts all the old and all the new wheels. The old ones seem to it an obstacle, and, instead of utilizing them, it breaks them one by one—parliaments, provincial states, religious orders, the church, the nobles, and royalty. The new ones are suspicious, and instead of harmonizing them, it puts them out of gear in advance—the executive power, administrative powers, judicial powers, the police, the gendarmerie, and the army.2154 Thanks to these precautions it is impossible for any of them to be turned against itself; but, also, thanks to these precautions, none of them can perform their functions.2155

In building, as well as in destroying, the Assembly had two bad counselors, on the one hand fear, on the other hand theory; and on the ruins of the old machine which it had demolished without discernment, the new machine, which it has constructed without forecast, will work only to its own ruin.

2101 (return)
[ Arthur Young, June 15, 1789.—Bailly, passim,—Moniteur, IV. 522 (June 2, 1790).—Mercure de France (Feb. 11 1792).]

2102 (return)
[ Moniteur, v. 631 (Sep. 12, 1790), and September 8th (what is said by the Abbé Maury).—Marmontel, book XIII. 237.—Malouet, I. 261.—Bailly, I. 227.]

2103 (return)
[ Sir Samuel Romilly, "Mémoires," I. 102, 354.—Dumont, 158. (The official rules bear are dated July 29, 1789.)]

2104 (return)
[ Cf. Ferrières, I. 3. His repentance is affecting.]

2105 (return)
[ Letter from Morris to Washington, January 24, 1790 See page 382, "A diary of the French revolution", Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 1972.—Dumont 125—Garat, letter to Condorcet.]

2106 (return)
[ Arthur Young, I. 46. "Tame and elegant, uninteresting and polite, the mingled mass of communicated ideas has power neither to offend nor instruct..... All vigor of thought seems excluded from expression..... Where there is much polish of character there is little argument."—Cabinet des Estampes. See engravings of the day by Moreau, Prieur, Monet, representing the opening of the States-General. All the figures have a graceful, elegant, and genteel air.]

2107 (return)
[ Marmontel, book XIII. 237.—Malouet, I. 261.—Ferrières, I. 19.]

2108 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.—Likewise (De Ferrières, I.71) the decree on the abolition of nobility was not the order of the day, and was carried by surprise.]

2109 (return)
[ Ferrières, I. 189.—Dumont, 146.]

2110 (return)
[ Letter of Mirabeau to Sieyès, June 11, 1790. "Our nation of monkeys with the throats of parrots."—Dumont, 146. "Sieyès and Mirabeau always entertained a contemptible opinion of the Constituent Assembly."]

2111 (return)
[ Moniteur, I, 256, 431 (July 16 and 31, 1789).—Journal des Débats et Décrets, 105, July 16th "A member demands that M. de Lally should put his speech in writing. The whole Assembly has repeated this request."]

2112 (return)
[ Moniteur. (March 11, 1790). "A nun of St. Mandé, brought to the bar of the house, thanks the Assembly for the decree by which the cloisters are opened, and denounces the tricks, intrigues, and even violence exercised in the convents to prevent the execution of the decree."—Ibid. March 29, 1790. See the various addresses which are read. "At Lagnon, the mother of a family assembled her ten children, and swore with them and for them to be loyal to the nation and to the King."—Ibid. June 5, 1790. "M. Chambroud reads the letter of the collector of customs of Lannion, in Brittany, to a priest, a member of the National Assembly. He implores his influence to secure the acceptance of his civic oath and that of all his family, ready to wield either the censer, the cart, the scales, the sword, or the pen." On reading a number of these addresses the Assembly appears to be a supplement of the Petites Affiches (a small advertising journal in Paris).]

2113 (return)
[ Moniteur, October 23, 1789.]

2114 (return)
[ A well-known writer of children's stories.— 21Tr.]

2115 (return)
[ Ferrières, II. 65 (June 10,1790).—De Montlosier, I. 402. "One of these puppets came the following day to get his money of the Comte de Billancourt, mistaking him for the Duc de Liancourt. 'Monsieur,' says he, 'I am the man who played the Chaldean yesterday.'"]

2116 (return)
[ Buchez and Roux, X. 118 (June 16, 1791).]

2117 (return)
[ See the printed list of deputies, with the indication of their baillage or sénéchaussée, quality, condition, and profession.]

2118 (return)
[ De Bouillé, 75.—When the King first saw the list of the deputies, he exclaimed," What would the nation have said if I had made up my council or the Notables in this way?" (Buchez and Roux, IV. 39.)]

2119 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, July 31, 1789.]

2120 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, February 25, 1789.—Lafayette, "Mémoires," V. 492. Letter of Jefferson, February 14, 1815.—Arthur Young, June 27 and 29, 1789.]

2121 (return)
[ Morris, July 1, 1789.]

2122 (return)
[ Morris, July 4, 1789.]

2123 (return)
[ Mallet du Pan, Mercure, September 26, 1789.]

2124 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790; November 22, 1790.]

2125 (return)
[ Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]

2126 (return)
[ Sir Samuel. Romilly, "Mémoirs," I. 102. "It was their constant course first, decree the principle and leave the drawing up of what they had so resolved (or, as they called it, la rédaction) for later. It is astonishing how great an influence it had on their debates and measures".—Ibid. I. 354. Letter by Dumont, June 2, 1789. "They prefer their own folly to all the results of British experience. They revolt at the idea of borrowing anything from our government, which is scoffed at here as one of the iniquities of human reason; although they admit that you have two or three good laws; but that you should presume to have a constitution is not to be sustained."]

2127 (return)
[ Dumont, 138, 151.]

2128 (return)
[ Morris, January 24, 1790.]

2129 (return)
[ Marmontel, XII. 265.—Ferrières,. I. 48¸ II. 50, 58, 126.—Dumont, 74.]

2130 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.—According to Ferrières this party comprised about three hundred members.]

2131 (return)
[ Here Ambassador Morris describes the kind of man who should form the backbone of all later revolutions whether communist or fascist ones. (SR.)]

2132 (return)
[ Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]

2133 (return)
[ De Lavergne, "Les Assemblées Provinciales," 384. Deliberations of the States of Dauphiny, drawn up by Mournier and signed by two hundred gentlemen (July, 1788). "The rights of man are derived from nature alone, and are independent of human conventions."]

2134 (return)
[ Report by Merlin de Douai, February 8, 1790, p.2.—Malouet, II, 51.]

2135 (return)
[ Dumont, 133.—De Montlosier, I, 355, 361.]

2136 (return)
[ Bertrand de Molleville, II. 221 (according to a police report).—Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution," I. 215. (Report of the agent Dutard, May 13, 1793)—Lacretelle, "Dix Ans d'Epreuves," p.35. "It was about midnight when we went out in the rain, sleet, and snow, in the piercing cold, to the church of the Feuillants, to secure places for the galleries of the Assembly, which we were not to occupy till noon on the following day. We were obliged, moreover, to contend for them with a crowd animated by passions, and even by interests, very different from our own. We were not long in perceiving that a considerable part of the galleries was under pay, and that the scenes of cruelty which gave pain to us were joy to them. I cannot express the horror I felt on hearing those women, since called tricoteuses, take a delight in the already homicidal doctrines of Robespierre, enjoying his sharp voice and feasting their eyes on his ugly face, the living type of envy." (The first months of 1790.)]

2137 (return)
[ Moniteur, V. 237 (July 26, 1790); V. 594. (September 8, 1790); V. 631 (September 12, 1790); VI. 310 (October 6, 1790). (Letter of the Abbé Peretti.)]

2138 (return)
[ De Ferrières, II. 75.—Moniteur, VI. 373 (September 6, 1790).—M. de Virieu. "Those who insult certain members and hinder the freedom of debate by hooting or applause must be silenced. Is it the three hundred spectators who are to be our judges, or the nation?" M. Chasset, President: "Monsieur opinionist, I call you to order. You speak of hindrances to a free vote; there has never been anything of the kind in this Assembly."]

2139 (return)
[ Sauzay, I 140. Letter of M. Lompré, liberal deputy, to M. Séguin, chanoine (towards the end of November, 1789). "The service becomes more difficult every day; we have become objects of popular fury, and, when no other resource was left to us to avoid the tempest but to get rid of the endowments of the clergy, we yielded to force. It had become a pressing necessity, and I should have been sorry to have had you still here, exposed to the outrages and violence with which I have been repeatedly threatened."]

2140 (return)
[ Mercure de France, Nos. of January 15, 1791; October 2, 1790; May 14,1791.—Buchez and Roux, V. 343 (April 13, 1790); VII. 76 (September 2, 1790); X. 225 ( June 21, 1791).—De Montlosier, I. 357.—Moniteur, IV, 427.]

2141 (return)
[ Archives of the Police, exposed by the Committee of the district of Saint-Roch. Judgment of the Police Tribunal, May 15, 1790.]

2142 (return)
[ Malouet, II. 68.—De Montlosier, II. 217, 257 (Speech of M. Lavie, September 18, 1791).]

2143 (return)
[ I.e. members of the old local parlements.]

2144 (return)
[ Mercure, October 1, 1791. (Article by Mallet du Pan.)]

2145 (return)
[ Malouet II. 66. "Those only who were not intimidated by insults or threats, nor by actual blows, could come forward as opponents."]

2146 (return)
[ Buchez and Roux, X. 432, 465.]

2147 (return)
[ Malouet, II, 153.]

2148 (return)
[ Decrees of July 23rd and 28th, 1789.—"Archives Nationales." Papers of Committee of Investigation, passim. Among other affairs see that of Madame de Persan (Moniteur, V. 611, sitting of September 9, 1790), and that of Malouet ("Mémoires" II. 12).]

2149 (return)
[ Buchez and Roux, IV. 56 (Report of Garan de Coulon); V. 49 (Decision of the Committee of Investigation, December 28, 1789).]

2150 (return)
[ The arrests of M. de Riolles, M. de Bussy, etc., of Madame de Jumilhac, of two other ladies, one at Bar-le-Duc and the other of Nancy, etc.]

2151 (return)
[ Sitting of July 28, 1789, the speeches of Duport and Rewbell, etc.—Mercure, No. of January 1, 1791 (article by Mallet du Pan).—Buchez and Roux, V. 146l "Behold five or six successive conspiracies—that of the sacks of flour, that of the sacks of money, etc." (Article by Camille Desmoulins.)]

2152 (return)
[ "Archives de la Préfecture de Police." Extract from the registers of the deliberations of the Conseil-Général of the district of Saint-Roch, October 10 1789: Arrête: to request all the men in the commune to devote themselves, with all the prudence, activity, and force of which they are capable, to the discovery, exposure, and publication of the horrible plots and infernal treachery which are constantly meditated against the inhabitants of the capital; to denounce to the public the authors, abettors, and adherents of the said plots, whatever their rank may be; to secure their persons and insure their punishment with all the rigor which outrages of this kind call for. The commandant of the battalion and the district captains come daily to consult with the committee. "While the alarm lasts, the first story of each house is to be lighted with lamps during the night: all citizens of the district are requested to be at home by ten o'clock in the evening at the latest, unless they should be on duty... . All citizens are invited to communicate whatever they may learn or discover in relation to the abominable plots which are secretly going on in the capital."]

2153 (return)
[ Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31, 1790 ("Actes des Apôtres," V. 56). "During these two nights (July 13th and 14th, 1789) that we remained in session I heard one deputy try to get it believed that an artillery corps had been ordered to point its guns against our hall; another, that it was undermined, and that it was to be blown up; another went so far as to declare that he smelt powder, upon which M. le Comte de Virieu replied that power had no odor until it was burnt."]

2154 (return)
[ Dumont, 351. "Each constitutional law was a party triumph."]

2155 (return)
[ Here Taine indicates how subversive parties may proceed to weaken a nation prior to their take-over.(SR.)]

CHAPTER II. DESTRUCTION.

I.—Two principal vices of the ancient régime.

In the structure of the old society there were two fundamental vices which called for two reforms of corresponding importance.2201

In the first place, those who were privileged having ceased to render the services for which the advantages they enjoyed constituted their compensation and their privileges were no longer anything but a gratuitous charge imposed on one portion of the nation for the benefit of the other. Hence the necessity for suppressing them.

In the second place, the Government, being absolute, made use of public resources as if they were its own private property, arbitrarily and wastefully;2202 it was therefore necessary to impose upon it some effective and regular restraints.

To render all citizens equal before taxation, to put the purse of the tax-payers into the hands of their representatives, such was the twofold operation to be carried out in 1789; and the privileged class as well as the King willingly lent themselves to it. Not only, in this respect, were the memorials of nobles and clergy in perfect harmony, but the monarch himself; in his declaration of the 23rd of June, 1789, decreed the two articles. Henceforth, every tax or loan was to obtain the consent of the States-General; this consent was to be renewed at each new meeting of the States; the public estimates were to be annually published, discussed, specified, apportioned, voted on and verified by the States; there were to be no arbitrary assessments or use of public funds; allowances were to be specially assigned for all separate services, the household of the King included. In each province or district-general, there was to be an elected Provincial Assembly, one-half composed of ecclesiastics and nobles, and the other half of members of the Third-Estate, to apportion general taxes, to manage local affairs, to decree and direct public works, to administer hospitals, prisons, workhouses, and to continue its function, in the interval of the sessions, through an intermediary commission chosen by itself; so that, besides the principal control of the center, there were to be thirty subordinate controlling powers at the extremities. There was to be no more exemption or distinction in the matter of taxation; the roadtax (covée) was to be abolished, also the right of franc-fief2203 imposed on plebeians; the rights of mortmain,2204 subject to indemnity, and internal customs duties. There was to be a reduction of the captaincies, a modification of the salt-tax and of the excise, the transformation of civil justice, too costly for the poor, and of criminal justice, too severe for the humbler classes. Here we have, besides the principal reform, equalization of taxes; the beginning and inducement of the more complete operation which is to strike off the last of the feudal manacles. Moreover; six weeks later, on the 4th of August; the privileged, in an outburst of generosity, come forward of their own accord to cut off or undo the whole of them. This double reform thus encountered no obstacles, and, as Arthur Young reported to his friends, it merely required one vote to have it adopted.2205

This was enough; for all real necessities were now satisfied. On the one hand, through the abolition of privileges in the matter of taxation, the burden of the peasant and, in general, on the small tax-payer was diminished one-half, and perhaps two thirds; instead of paying fifty-three francs on one hundred francs of net income, he paid no more than twenty-five or even sixteen;2206 an enormous relief, and one which, with the proposed revision of the excise and salt duties, made a complete change in his condition. Add to this the gradual redemption of ecclesiastical and feudal dues: and after twenty years the peasant, already proprietor of a fifth of the soil, would, without the violent events of the Revolution, in any case have attained the same degree of independence and well-being which he was to achieve by passing through it. On the other hand, through the annual vote on the taxes, not only were waste and arbitrariness in the employment of the public funds put a stop to, but also the foundations of the parliamentary system of government were laid: whoever holds the purse-strings is, or becomes, master of the rest; henceforth in the maintenance or establishment of any service, the assent of the States was to be necessary. Now, in the three Chambers which the three orders were thenceforward to form, there were two in which the plebeians predominated. Public opinion, moreover, was on their side, while the King, the true constitutional monarch, far from possessing the imperious inflexibility of a despot, did not now possess the initiative of an ordinary person. Thus the preponderance fell to the communes, and they could legally, without any collision, execute multiply, and complete, with the aid of the prince and through him, all useful reforms.2207—This was enough; for human society, like a living body, is seized with convulsions when it is subjected to operations on too great a scale, and these, although restricted, were probably all that France in 1789 could endure. To equitably reorganize afresh the whole system of direct and indirect taxation; to revise, recast, and transfer to the frontiers the customs-tariffs; to suppress, through negotiations and with indemnity, feudal and ecclesiastical claims, was an operation of the greatest magnitude, and as complex as it was delicate. Things could be satisfactorily arranged only through minute inquiries, verified calculations, prolonged essays, and mutual concessions. In England, in our day, a quarter of a century has been required to bring about a lesser reform, the transformation of tithes and manorial-rights; and time likewise was necessary for our Assemblies to perfect their political education,2208 to get of their theories, to learn, by contact with practical business, and in the study of details, the distance which separates speculation from practice; to discover that a new system of institutions works well only through a new system of habits, and that to decree a new system of habits is tantamount to attempting to build an old house.—Such, however, is the work they undertake. They reject the King's proposals, the limited reforms, the gradual transformations. According to them, it is their right and their duty to re-make society from top to bottom. Such is the command of pure reason, which has discovered the Rights of Man and the conditions of the Social Contract.

II—Nature of societies, and the principle of enduring constitutions.

Apply the Social Contract, if you like, but apply it only to those for whom it was drawn up. These were abstract beings, belonging neither to a period nor to a country, perfect creatures hatched out under the magic wand of a metaphysician. They had as a matter of fact come into existence by removing all the characteristics which distinguish one man from another,2209 a Frenchman from a Papuan, a modern Englishman from a Briton in the time of Caesar, and by retaining only the part which is common to all.2210 The essence thus obtained is a prodigiously meager one, an infinitely curtailed extract of human nature, that is, in the phraseology of the day,

"A BEING WITH A DESIRE TO BE HAPPY AND THE FACULTY OF REASONING,"

nothing more and nothing else. After this pattern several million individuals, all precisely alike, have been prepared while, through a second simplification, as extraordinary as the first one, they are all supposed to be free and all equal, without a past, without kindred, without responsibility, without traditions, without customs, like so many mathematical units, all separable and all equivalent, and then it is imagined that, assembled together for the first time, these proceed to make their primitive bargain. From the nature they are supposed to possess and the situation in which they are placed, no difficulty is found in deducing their interests, their wills, and the contract between them. But if this contract suits them, it does not follow that it suits others. On the contrary, if follows that is does not suit others; the inconvenience becomes extreme on its being imposed on a living society; the measure of that inconvenience will be the immensity of the distance which divides a hollow abstraction, a philosophical phantom, an empty insubstantial image from the real and complete man.

In any event we are not here considering a specimen, so reduced and mutilated as to be only an outline of a human being; no, we are to the contrary considering Frenchmen of the year 1789. It is for them alone that the constitution is being made: it is therefore they alone who should be considered; they are manifestly men of a particular species, having their peculiar temperament, their special aptitudes, their own inclinations, their religion, their history, all adding up into a mental and moral structure, hereditary and deeply rooted, bequeathed to them by the indigenous stock, and to which every great event, each political or literary phase for twenty centuries, has added a growth, a transformation or a custom. It is like some tree of a unique species whose trunk, thickened by age, preserves in its annual rings and in its knots, branches, and curvatures, the deposits which its sap has made and the imprint of the innumerable seasons through which it has passed. Using the philosophic definition, so vague and trite, to such an organism, is only a puerile label teaching us nothing.—And all the more because extreme diversities and inequalities show themselves on this exceedingly elaborate and complicated background,—those of age, education, faith, class and fortune; and these must be taken into account, for these contribute to the formation of interests, passions, and dispositions. To take only the most important of these, it is clear that, according to the average of human life,2211 one-half of the population is composed of children, and, besides this, one-half of the adults are women. In every twenty inhabitants eighteen are Catholic, of whom sixteen are believers, at least through habit and tradition. Twenty-five out of twenty-six millions of Frenchmen cannot read, one million at the most being able to do so; and in political matters only five or six hundred are competent. As to the condition of each class, its ideas, its sentiments, its kind and degree of culture, we should have to devote a large volume to a mere sketch of them.

There is still another feature and the most important of all. These men who are so different from each other are far from being independent, or from contracting together for the first time. They and their ancestors for eight hundred years form a national body, and it is because they belong to this body that they live, multiply, labor, make acquisitions, become enlightened and civilized, and accumulate the vast heritage of comforts and intelligence which they now enjoy. Each in this community is like the cell of an organized body; undoubtedly the body is only an accumulation of cells, but the cell is born, subsists, develops and attains its individual ends only be the healthy condition of the whole body. Its chief interest, accordingly, is the prosperity of the whole organism, and the fundamental requirement of all the little fragmentary lives, whether they know it or not, is the conservation of the great total life in which they are comprised as musical notes in a concert.—Not only is this a necessity for them, but it is also a duty. We are all born with a debt to our country, and this debt increases while we grow up; it is with the assistance of our country, under the protection of the law, upheld by the authorities, that our ancestors and parents have given us life, property, and education. Each person's faculties, ideas, attitudes, his or her entire moral and physical being are the products to which the community has contributed, directly or indirectly, at least as tutor and guardian. By virtue of this the state is his creditor, just as a destitute father is of his able-bodied son; it can lay claim to nourishment, services, and, in all the force or resources of which he disposes, it deservedly demands a share.—This he knows and feels, the notion of country is deeply implanted within him, and when occasion calls for it, it will show itself in ardent emotions, fueling steady sacrifice and heroic effort.—Such are veritable Frenchmen, and we at once see how different they are from the simple, indistinguishable, detached monads which the philosophers insist on substituting for them. Their association need not be created, for it already exists; for eight centuries they have a "common weal" (la chose publique). The safety and prosperity of this common weal is at once their interest, their need, their duty, and even their most secret wish. If it is possible to speak here of a contract, their quasi-contract is made and settled for them beforehand. The first article, at all events, is stipulated for, and this overrides all the others. The nation must not be dissolved. Public authorities must, accordingly, exist, and these must be respected. If there are a number of these, they must be so defined and so balanced as to be of mutual assistance, instead of neutralizing each other by their opposition. Whatever government is adopted, it must place matters in the hands best qualified to conduct them. The law must not exist for the advantage of the minority, nor for that of the majority, but for the entire community.—In regard to this first article no one must derogate from it, neither the minority nor the majority, neither the Assembly elected by the nation, nor the nation itself, even if unanimous. It has no right arbitrarily to dispose of the common weal, to put it in peril according to its caprice, to subordinate it to the application of a theory or to the interest of a single class, even if this class is the most numerous. For, that which is the common weal does not belong to it, but to the whole community, past, present, and to come. Each generation is simply the temporary manager and responsible trustee of a precious and glorious patrimony which it has received from the former generation, and which it has to transmit to the one that comes after it. In this perpetual endowment, to which all Frenchmen from the first days of France have brought their offerings, there is no doubt about the intentions of countless benefactors; they have made their gifts conditionally, that is, on the condition that the endowment should remain intact, and that each successive beneficiary should merely serve as the administrator of it. Should any of the beneficiaries, through presumption or levity, through rashness or one-sidedness, compromise the charge entrusted to them, they wrong all their predecessors whose sacrifices they invalidate, and all their successors whose hopes they frustrate. Accordingly, before undertaking to frame a constitution, let the whole community be considered in its entirety, not merely in the present but in the future, as far as the eye can reach. The interest of the public, viewed in this far-sighted manner, is the end to which all the rest must be subordinate, and for which a constitution provides. A constitution, whether oligarchic, monarchist, or aristocratic, is simply an instrument, good if it attains this end, and bad if it does not attain it, and which, to attain it, must, like every species of mechanism, vary according to the ground, materials, and circumstances. The most ingenious is illegitimate if it dissolves the State, while the clumsiest is legitimate if it keeps the State intact. There is none that springs out of an anterior, universal, and absolute right. According to the people, the epoch, and the degree of civilization, according to the outer or inner condition of things, all civil or political equality or inequality may, in turn, be or cease to be beneficial or hurtful, and therefore justify the legislator in removing or preserving it. It is according to this superior and salutary law, and not according to an imaginary and impossible contract, that he is to organize, limit, delegate and distribute from the center to the extremities, through inheritance or through election, through equalization or through privilege, the rights of the citizen and the power of the community.