IV.—On Universal Suffrage.

The National Guard as electors.—Its great power.—Its important task.—The work imposed on active citizens.—They avoid it.

Behold, then, the true sovereign, the elector, both National Guard and voter. They are the kings designed by the Constitution; there he is, in every hierarchical stage, with his suffrage, with which to delegate authority, and his gun to assure its exercise.—Through his free choice he creates all local powers, intermediary, central, legislative, administrative, ecclesiastical, and judiciary. He appoints directly, and in the primary assemblies, the mayor, the municipal board, the public prosecutor and council of the commune, the justice of the peace and his assessors, and the electors of the second degree. Indirectly, and through these elected electors, he appoints the administrators and procureurs-syndics of both district and department, the civil and criminal judges, the public prosecutor, bishops, and priests, the members of the National Assembly and jurors of the higher National Court[2326]. All these commissions which he issues are of short date, the principal ones, those of municipal officer, elector, and deputy, having but two years to run; at the end of this brief term their recipients are again subject to his vote, in order that, if he is displeased with them, he may replace them by others. He must not be fettered in his choice; in every well-conducted establishment the legitimate proprietor must be free easily and frequently to renew his staff of clerks. He is the only one in whom confidence can be placed, and, for greater security, all arms are given up to him. When his clerks wish to employ force he is the one to place it at their disposal. Whatever he desired as elector he executes as National Guard. On two occasions he interferes, both times in a decisive manner; and his control over the legal powers is irresistible because these are born out of his vote and are obeyed only through his support.—But these rights are, at the same time, burdens. The Constitution describes him as an "active citizen," and this he eminently is or should be, since public action begins and ends with him, since everything depends on his zeal and capacity, since the machine is good and only works well in proportion to his discernment, punctuality, calmness, firmness, discipline at the polls, and in the ranks. The law requires his services incessantly day and night, in body and mind, as gendarme and as elector.—How burdensome this service of gendarme must be, can be judged by the number of riots. How burdensome that of elector must be, the list of elections will show.

In February, March, April, and May, 1789, there are prolonged parish meetings, for the purpose of choosing electors and writing out grievances, also bailiwick meetings of still longer duration to choose deputies and draw up the memorial. During the months of July and August, 1789, there are spontaneous gatherings to elect or confirm the municipal bodies; other spontaneous meetings by which the militia is formed and officered; and then, following these, constant meetings of this same militia to fuse themselves into a National Guard, to renew officers and appoint deputies to the federative assemblies. In December, 1789, and January, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect municipal officers and their councils. In May, 1790, there are primary and secondary meetings, to appoint district and departmental administrators. In October, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect the justice of the peace and his assessors, also secondary meetings, to elect the district courts. In November, 1790, there are primary meetings, to renew one-half of the municipal bodies. In February and March, 1791, there are secondary meetings, to nominate the bishop and cures. In June, July, August, September, 1791, there are primary and secondary meetings, to renew one-half of the district and departmental administrators, to nominate the president, the public prosecutor, and the clerk of the criminal court, and to choose deputies. In November, 1791, there are primary meetings to renew one-half of the municipal council. Observe that many of these elections drag along because the voters lack experience, because the formalities are complicated, and because opinions are divided. In August and September, 1791, at Tours, they are prolonged for thirteen days;[2327] at Troyes, in January, 1790, instead of three days they last for three weeks; at Paris, in September and October, 1791, only for the purpose of choosing deputies, they last for thirty-seven days; in many places their proceedings are contested, annulled, and begun over again. To these universal gatherings, which put all France in motion, we must add the local gatherings by which a commune approves or gainsays its municipal officers, makes claims on the department, on the King, or on the Assembly, demands the maintenance of its parish priest, the provisioning of its market, the arrival or dispatch of a military detachment,—and think of all that these meetings, petitions, and nominations presuppose in the way of preparatory committees and preliminary meetings and debates! Every public representation begins with rehearsals in secret session. In the choice of a candidate, and, above all, of a list of candidates; in the appointment in each commune of from three to twenty-one municipal officers, and from six to forty-two notables; in the selection of twelve district administrators and thirty-six departmental administrators, especially as the list must be of a double length and contain twice as many officers as there are places to fill, immediate agreement is impossible. In every important election the electors are sure to be in a state of agitation a month beforehand, while four weeks of discussion and caucus is not too much to give to inquiries about candidates, and to canvassing voters. Let us add, accordingly, this long preface to each of the elections, so long and so often repeated, and now sum up the troubles and disturbances, all this loss of time, all the labor which the process demands. Each convocation of the primary assemblies, summons to the town-hall or principal town of the canton, for one or for several days, about three million five hundred thousand electors of the first degree. Each convocation of the assemblies of the second class compels the attendance and sojourn at the principal town of the department, and again in the principal town of the district, of about three hundred and fifty thousand elected electors. Each revision or re-election in the National Guard gathers together on the public square, or subjects to roll-call at the town-hall, three or four millions of National Guards. Each federation, after exacting the same gathering or the same roll-call, sends delegates by hundreds of thousands to the principal towns of the districts and departments, and tens of thousands to Paris.—The powers thus instituted at the cost of so great an effort, require an equal effort to make them work; one branch alone of the administration[2328] keeps 2,988 officials busy in the departments, 6,950 in the districts, 1,175,000 in the communes—in all, nearly one million two hundred thousand administrators, whose places, as we have seen above, are no sinecures. Never did a political machine require so prodigious an expenditure of force to set it up and keep it in motion. In the United States, where it is now (around 1875) deranged by its own action, it has been estimated that, to meet the intentions of the law and keep each wheel in its proper place, it would be necessary for each citizen to give one whole day in each week, or on-sixth of his time, to public business. In France, under the newly adopted system, where disorder is universal, where the duty of National Guard is added to and complicates that of elector and administrator, I estimate that two days would be necessary. This is what the Constitution comes to, this is its essential and supreme requirement: each active citizen has to give up one-third of his time to public affairs.

Now, these twelve hundred thousand administrators and three or four million electors and National Guards, are just the men in France who have the least leisure. The class of active citizens, indeed, comprises about all the men who labor with their hands or with their heads. The law exempts only domestics devoted to personal service or common laborers who, possessing no property or income, earn less than twenty-one sous a day. Every journeyman-miller, the smallest farmer, every village proprietor of a cottage or of a vegetable-garden, any ordinary workman, votes at the primary meetings, and may become a municipal officer. Again, if he pays ten francs a year direct tax, if he is a farmer or yeomen on any property which brings him in four hundred francs, if his rent is one hundred and fifty francs, he may become an elected elector and an administrator of the district or department. According to this standard the eligible are innumerable; in Doubs, in 1790,[2329] they form two-thirds of the active citizens. Thus, the way to office is open to all, or almost all, and the law has taken no precaution whatever to reserve or provide places for the elite, who could best fill them. On the contrary, the nobles, the ecclesiastical dignitaries, the members of the parliaments, the grand functionaries of the ancient regime, the upper class of the bourgeoisie, almost all the rich who possess leisure, are practically excluded from the elections by violence, and from the various offices by public opinion: they soon retire into private life, and, through discouragement or disgust, through monarchical or religious scruples, abandon entirely a public career.—The burden of the new system falls, accordingly, on the most occupied portion of the community: on merchants, manufacturers, agents of the law, employees, shopkeepers, artisans, and cultivators. They are the people who must give up one-third of their time already appropriated, neglect private for public business, leave their harvests, their bench, their shop, or their briefs to escort convoys and patrol the highways, to run off to the principal town of the canton, district, or department, and stay and sit there in the town-hall,[2330] subject to a deluge of phrases and papers, conscious that they are forced to gratuitous drudgery, and that this drudgery is of little advantage to the public.—For the first six months they do it with good grace; their zeal in penning memorials, in providing themselves with arms against "brigands," and in suppressing taxes, rents, and tithes, is active enough. But now that this much is obtained or extorted, decreed as a right, or accomplished in fact, they must not be further disturbed. They need the whole of their time: they have their crops to get in, their customers to serve, their orders to give, their books to make up, their credits to adjust, all which are urgent matters, and neither ought to be neglected or interrupted. Under the lash of necessity and of the crisis they have put their backs to it, and, if we take their word for it, they hauled the public cart out of the mud; but they had no idea of putting themselves permanently in harness to drag it along themselves. Confined as this class has been for centuries to private life, each has his own wheelbarrow to trundle along, and it is for this, before all and above all, that he holds himself responsible. From the beginning of the year 1790 the returns of the votes taken show that as many are absent as present; at Besancon there are only nine hundred and fifty-nine voters out of thirty-two hundred inscribed; four months after this more than one-half of the electors fail to come to the polls;[2331] and throughout France, even at Paris, the indifference to voting keeps on increasing. Puppets of such an administration as that of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. do not become Florentine or Athenian citizens in a single night. The hearts and heads of three or four millions of men are not suddenly endowed with faculties and habits which render them capable of diverting one-third of their energies to work which is new, disproportionate, gratuitous, and supererogatory.—A fallacy of monstrous duplicity lies at the basis of the political theories of the day and of those which were invented during the following ten years. Arbitrarily, and without any examination, a certain weight and resistance are attributed to the human metal employed. It is found on trial to have ten times less resistance and twenty times more weight than was supposed.



V.—The Ruling Minority.

The restless minority.—Its elements.—The clubs.—Their ascendancy.—How they interpret the Rights of Man.—Their usurpations and violence.

In default of the majority, who shirk their responsibilities, it is the minority which does the work and assumes the power. The majority having resigned, the minority becomes sovereign, and public business, abandoned by the hesitating, weak, and absent multitude, falls into the hands of the resolute, energetic, ever-present few who find the leisure and the disposition to assume the responsibility. In a system in which all offices are elective, and in which elections are frequent, politics becomes a profession for those who subordinate their private interests to it, and who find it of personal advantage; every village contains five or six men of this class, every borough twenty or thirty, every town its hundreds and Paris its many thousands.[2332] These are veritable active citizens They alone give all their time and attention to public matters, correspond with the newspapers and with the deputies at Paris, receive and spread abroad the party watchword on every important question, hold caucuses, get up meetings, make motions, draw up addresses, overlook, rebuke, or denounce the local magistrates, form themselves into committees, publish and push candidates, and go into the suburbs and the country to canvass for votes. They hold the power in recompense for their labor, for they manage the elections, and are elected to office or provided with places by the successful candidates. There is a prodigious number of these offices and places, not only those of officers of the National Guard and the administrators of the commune, the district, and the department, whose duties are gratuitous, or little short of it, but a quantity of others which are paid,[2333]—eighty-three bishops, seven hundred and fifty deputies, four hundred criminal judges, three thousand and seven civil judges, five thousand justices of the peace, twenty thousand assessors forty thousand communal collectors, forty-six thousand cures, without counting the accessory or insignificant places which exist by tens and hundreds of thousands, from secretaries, clerks, bailiffs and notaries, to gendarmes, constables, office-clerks, beadles, grave-diggers, and keepers of sequestered goods. The pasture is vast for the ambitious; it is not small for the needy, and they seize upon it. Such is the rule in pure democracies: hence the swarm of politicians in the United States. When the law incessantly calls all citizens to political action, there are only a few who devote themselves to it; these become expert in this particular work, and, consequently, preponderant. But they must be paid for their trouble, and the election secures to them their places because they manage the elections.

Two sorts of men furnish the recruits for this dominant minority: on the one hand the enthusiasts, and on the other those who have no social position. Towards the end of 1789, moderate people, who are minding their own business, retire into privacy, and are daily less disposed to show themselves. The public square is occupied by others who, through zeal and political passion, abandon their pursuits, and by those who, finding themselves hampered in their social sphere, or repelled from ordinary circles, were merely awaiting a new opening to take a fresh start. In these utopian and revolutionary times, there is no lack of either class. Flung out by handfuls, the dogma of popular sovereignty falls like a seed scattered around, to end up vegetating in heated brains, in the narrow and rash minds which, once possessed by an idea, adhere to it and are mastered by it. It falls amongst a class of reasoners who, starting from a principle, dash forward like a horse who has had blinders put on. This is especially the case with the legal class, whose profession accustoms them to deductions; nor less with the village attorney, the unfrocked monk, the "intruding" and excommunicated cure, and above all, the journalist and the local orator, who, for the first time in his life, finds that he has an audience, applause, influence and a future before him. These are the only people who can do the complicated and constant work which the new Constitution calls for; for they are the only men whose desires are unlimited, whose dreams are coherent, whose doctrine is explicit, whose enthusiasm is contagious, who cherish no scruples, and whose presumption is unbounded. Thus has the rigid will been wrought and tempered within them, the inward spring of energy which, being daily more tightly wound up, urges them on to propaganda and to action.—During the second half of the year 1790 we see them everywhere following the example of the Paris Jacobins, styling themselves friends of the Constitution, and grouping themselves together in popular associations. Each town and village gives birth to a club of patriots who regularly every evening, or several times a week, meet "for the purpose of co-operating for the safety of the commonwealth."[2334] This is a new and spontaneous organ,[2335] an cancer and a parasite, which develops itself in the social body alongside of its legal organizations. Its growth insensibly increases, attracting to itself the substance of the others, employing them for its own ends, substituting itself for them, acting by and for itself alone, a sort of omnivorous outgrowth the encroachment of which is irresistible, not only because circumstances and the working of the Constitution nourish it, but also because its germ, deposited at a great depth, is a living portion of the Constitution itself.

For, placed at the head of the Constitution, as well as of the decrees which are attached to it, stands the Declaration of the Rights of Man. According to this, and by the avowal of the legislators themselves, there are two parts to be distinguished in the law, the one superior, eternal, inviolable, which is the self-evident principle, and the other inferior, temporary, and open to discussion, which comprehends more or less exact or erroneous applications of this principle. No application of the law is valid if it derogates from the principle. No institution or authority is entitled to obedience if it is opposed to the rights which it aims to guarantee. These sacred rights, anterior to all society, take precedence of every social convention, and whenever we would know if a legal order is legitimate, we have merely to ascertain if it is in conformity with natural right. Let us, accordingly, in every doubtful or difficult case, refer to this philosophic gospel, to this incontestable catechism, this primordial creed proclaimed by the National Assembly.—The National Assembly itself invites us to do so. For it announces that

"ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public misfortune, and of the corruption of governments."

It declares that

"the object of every political association is the preservation of natural and imprescriptible rights."

It enumerates them, "in order that the acts of legislative power and the acts of executive power may at once be compared with the purpose of every political institution." It desires "that every member of the social body should have its declaration constantly in mind."—Thus we are told to control all acts of application by the principle, and also we are provided with the rule by which we may and should accord, measure, or even refuse our submission to, deference for, and toleration of established institutions and legal authority.

What are these superior rights, and, in case of dispute, who will decide as arbitrator?—There is nothing here like the precise declarations of the American Constitution,[2336] those positive prescriptions which serve to sustain a judicial appeal, those express prohibitions which prevent beforehand certain species of laws from being passed, which prescribe limits to public powers, which mark out the province not to be invaded by the State because it is reserved to the individual.

On the contrary, in the declaration of the national Assembly, most of the articles are abstract dogmas,[2337] metaphysical definitions, more or less literary axioms, that is to say, more or less false, now vague and now contradictory, open to various interpretations and to opposite constructions, These are good for platform display but bad in practice, mere stage effect, a sort of pompous standard, useless and heavy, which, hoisted in front of the Constitutional house and shaken every day by violent hands, cannot fail soon to tumble on the heads of passers by.[2338]—Nothing is done to ward off this visible danger. There is nothing here like that Supreme Court which, in the United States, guards the Constitution even against its Congress, and which, in the name of the Constitution, actually invalidates a law, even when it has passed through all formalities and been voted on by all the powers; which listens to the complaints of the individual affected by an unconstitutional law; which stays the sheriff's or collector's hand raised against him, and which above their heads gives judgment on his interests and wrongs. Ill-defined and discordant laws are proclaimed without any provision being made for their interpretation, application or sanction. No means are taken to have them specially expounded. No district tribunal is assigned to consider the claims which grow out of them, to put an end to litigation legally, peacefully, on a last appeal, and through a final decision which becomes a precedent and fixes the loose sense of the text. All this is made the duty of everybody, that is to say of those who are disposed to charge themselves with it,—in other words, the active minority in council assembled.—Thus, in each town or village it is the local club which, by the authorization of the legislator himself, becomes the champion, judge, interpreter and administrator of the rights of man, and which, in the name of these superior rights, may protest or rebel, as it seems best, not only against the legitimate acts of legal powers, but also against the authentic text of the Constitution and the Laws.[2339]

Consider, indeed, these rights as they are proclaimed, along with the commentary of the speaker who expounds them at the club before an audience of heated and daring spirits, or in the street to the rude and fanatical multitude. Every article in the Declaration is a dagger pointed at human society, and the handle has only to be pressed to make the blade enter the flesh.[2340] Among "these natural and imprescriptible rights" the legislator has placed "resistance to oppression." We are oppressed: let us resist and take up arms. According to this legislator, "society has the right to bring every public agent of the Administration to account." Let us away to the Hotel-de-Ville, and interrogate our lukewarm or suspected magistrates, and watch their sessions to see if they prosecute priests and disarm the aristocrats; let us stop their intrigues against the people; let us force these slow clerks to hasten their steps.—According to this legislator "all citizens have the right to take part in person, or through their representatives, in the formation of the law." There must thus be no more electors privileged by their payment of a three-franc tax. Down with the new aristocracy of active citizens! Let us restore to the two millions of proletarians the right of suffrage, of which the Constitution has unjustly defrauded them!—According to this legislator, "men are born and remain free, and equal in their rights." Consequently, let no one be excluded from the National Guard; let everybody, even the pauper, have some kind of weapon, a pike or gun, to defend his freedom!—In the very terms of the Declaration, "the law is the expression of the universal will." Listen to these clamors in the open streets, to these petitions flowing in from the towns on all sides; behold the universal will, the living law which abolishes the written law! On the strength of this the leader of a few clubs in Paris are to depose the King, to violate the Legislative Assembly and decimate the National Convention.—In other terms, the turbulent, factious minority is to supplant the sovereign nation, and henceforth there is nothing to hinder it from doing what it pleases just when it pleases. The operation of the Constitution has given to it the reality of power, while the preamble of the Constitution clothes it with the semblance of right.



VI.—Summary of the work of the Constituent Assembly.

Such is the work of the Constituent Assembly. In several of its laws, especially those which relate to private interests, in the institution of civil regulations, in the penal and rural codes,[2341] in the first attempts at, and the promise of, a uniform civil code, in the enunciation of a few simple regulations regarding taxation, procedure, and administration, it planted good seed. But in all that relates to political institutions and social organization its proceedings are those of an academy of Utopians, and not those of practical legislators.—On the sick body entrusted to it, it performed amputations which were as useless as they were excessive, and applied bandages as inadequate as they were injurious. With the exception of two or three restrictions admitted inadvertently, and the maintenance of the show of royalty, also the obligation of a small electoral qualification, it carried out its principle to the end, the principle of Rousseau. It deliberately refused to consider man as he really was under its own eyes, and persisted in seeing nothing in him but the abstract being created in books. Consequently, with the blindness and obstinacy characteristic of a speculative surgeon, it destroyed, in the society submitted to its scalpel and its theories, not only the tumors, the enlargements, and the inflamed parts of the organs, but also the organs themselves, and even the vital governing centers around which cells arrange themselves to recompose an injured organ. That is, the Assembly destroyed on the one hand the time-honored, spontaneous, and lasting societies formed by geographical position, history, common occupations and interests, and on the other, those natural chiefs whose name, repute, education, independence, and earnestness designated them as the best qualified to occupy high positions. In one direction it despoils and permits the ruin and proscription of the superior class, the nobles, the members of Parliament, and the upper middle class. In another it dispossesses and breaks up all historic or natural corporations, religious congregations, clerical bodies, provinces, parliaments, societies of art and of all other professions and pursuits. This done, every tie or bond which holds men together is found to be severed; all subordination and every graduated scale of rank have disappeared. There is no longer rank and file, or commander-in-chief. Nothing remains but individual particles, 26 millions of equal and disconnected atoms. Never was so much disintegrated matter, less capable of resistance, offered to hands undertaking to mold it. Harshness and violence will be sufficient to ensure success. These brutal hands are ready for the work, and the Assembly which has reduced the material to powder has likewise provided the mortar and pestle. As awkward in destruction as it is in construction, it invents for the restoration of order in a society which is turned upside down a machine which would, of itself, create disorder in a tranquil society. The most absolute and most concentrated government would not be strong enough to effect without disturbance a similar equalization of ranks, the same dismemberment of associations, and the same displacement of property. No social transformation can be peacefully accomplished without a well-commanded army, obedient and everywhere present, as was the case in the emancipation of the Russian serfs by Emperor Alexander. The new Constitution,[2342] on the contrary, reduces the King to the position of an honorary president, suspected and called in question by a disorganized State. Between him and the legislative body it interposes nothing but sources of conflict, and suppresses all means of concord. The monarch has no hold whatever on the administrative departments which he must direct; the mutual independence of the powers, from the center to the extremities of the State, everywhere produces indifference, negligence, and disobedience between the injunctions issued and their execution. France is a federation of forty thousand municipal sovereignties, in which the authority of legal magistrates varies according to the caprice of active citizens. These active citizens, too heavily loaded, shy away from the performance of public duty; in which a minority of fanatics and ambitious men monopolize the right to speak, to vote, all influence, the power and all action. They justify their multiple ursurpations, their unbridled despotism, and their increasing encroachments by the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The masterpiece[2343] of ideal abstractions and of practical absurdities is accomplished. In accordance with the Constitution spontaneous anarchy becomes legalized anarchy. The latter is perfect; nothing finer of the kind has been seen since the ninth century.

*****

[Footnote 2301: The name for the dreaded secret Royal warrant of arrest. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2302: The initiative rests with the King on one point: war cannot be decreed by the Assembly except on his formal and preliminary proposition. This exception was secured only after a violent struggle and a supreme effort by Mirabeau.]

[Footnote 2303: Speech by Lanjuinais, November 7, 1789. "We determined on the separation of the powers. Why, then, should the proposal he made to us to unite the legislative power with the executive power in the persons of the ministers?"]

[Footnote 2304: See the attendance of the Ministers before the Legislative Assembly.]

[Footnote 2305: "Any society in which the separation of the powers is not clearly defined has no constitution." (Declaration of Rights, article XVI.)—This principle is borrowed from a text by Montesquieu, also from the American Constitution. In the rest the theory of Rousseau is followed.]

[Footnote 2306: Mercure de France, an expression by Mallet du Pan.]

[Footnote 2307: Constitution of 1791, ch. II. articles 5, 6, 7.—Decree of September 25—October 6, 1791, section III. articles, 8 to 25.]

[Footnote 2308: Speeches by Barnave and Roederer in the constituent Assembly.—Speeches by Barnave and Duport in the Jacobin Club.]

[Footnote 2309: Principal texts. (Duvergier, "Collection des Lois et Decrets.")—Laws on municipal and administrative organization, December 14 and 22, 1789; August 12-20, 1790; March 12, 1791. On the municipal organization of Paris, May 21st, June 27, 1790.—Laws on the organization of the Judiciary, August 16-24, 1790; September 16-29, 1791; September 29, October 21, 1791.—Laws on military organization, September 23, October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791; July 27, 28, 1791—Laws on the financial organization, November 14-24,.1790; November 23, 1790; March 17, 1791; September 26, October 2, 1791.]

[Footnote 2310: The removal of such managerial authority has since the second World war taken place inside the United Nations and other Western public administrations and seems to be the aim of much communist trade union effort. The result has everywhere been added cost and decreased efficiency. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2311: This principle has been introduced in Western educational systems when clever self-appointed psychologists told parents and teacher alike that they could and should not punish their children but only talk and explain to them. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2312: This description fits the staff regulations of the United Nations secretariat in which I served for 32 years. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2313: Decrees of December 14 and December 22, 1789: "In municipalities reduced to three members (communes below five hundred inhabitants), all executive functions shall belong to the mayor alone."]

[Footnote 2314: Could it be that Lenin took note of this and had it this translated in Russian and made use of it in his and later in Stalin's schools for international revolutionaries. It would in any case have weakened the Bourgeois Capitalist countries. In any case such measures have been introduced both in the international organizations and in most Western Democratic Governments after World War II. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2315: This was in the United Nations called 'Rotation' and made the administration of missions and forces difficult, expensive and inefficient. This rotation was also used in the Indian and other armies in order to prevent the officers to reach an understanding or achieve any power over the troops under their command. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2316: Laws of September 23—October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791. (Titles II. And VII.)—Cf. the legal prescriptions in relation to the military tribunals. In every prosecuting or judicial jury one-seventh of the sworn members are taken from the non-commissioned officers, and one-seventh from the soldiers, and again, according to the rank of the accused, the number of those of the same rank is doubled.]

[Footnote 2317: Law of July 28th, August 12, 1791.]

[Footnote 2318: Laws of November 24, 1789 (article 52), August 10-14, 1789.—Instruction of August 10-20, 1790; Sec. 8—Law of October 21, November 21, 1789.]

[Footnote 2319: Laws of November 14 and 23, 1790; January 13th, September 26th, October 9, 1792.]

[Footnote 2320: Albert Babeau, I. 327 (Fete of the Federation, July 14, 1790).—"Archives Nationales," F7, 3215 (May 17,1791, Deliberation of the council-general of the commune of Brest. May 17 and 19, Letters of the directory of the district).—Mercure, March 5, 1791. "Mesdames are stopped until the return of the two deputies, whom the Republic of Arnay-le-Duc has sent to the representatives of the nation to demonstrate to them the necessity of keeping the king's aunts in the kingdom."]

[Footnote 2321: Moniteur, X. 132. Speech by M. Labergerie, November 8, 1791.]

[Footnote 2322: At Montauban, in the intendant's salon, the ladies of the place spoke patois only, the grandmother of the gentleman who has informed me of this fact did not understand any other language.]

[Footnote 2323: Moniteur, V.163, sitting of July 18, 1791. Speech by M. Lecoulteux, reporter.]

[Footnote 2324: Moniteur, XI. 283, sitting of February 2, 1792. Speech by Cambon: "They go away thinking that they understand what is explained to them, but return the following day to obtain fresh explanations. The attorneys refuse to give the municipalities any assistance, stating that they know nothing about these matters."]

[Footnote 2325: The same may happen when a subordinate is promoted to be placed in charge of his or her former equals and colleagues. This is why it is often preferably to transfer someone who is recognized as being of superior talent whenever a promotions is to take place. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2326: Law of May 11-15, 1791.]

[Footnote 2327: Minutes of the meeting of the Electoral Assembly of the Department of Indre-et-Loire (1791, printed).]

[Footnote 2328: De Ferrieres, I. 367.]

[Footnote 2329: Suzay, I, 191 (21,711 are eligible out of 32,288 inscribed citizens).]

[Footnote 2330: Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Department of Indre-et-Loire, Aug. 27, 1791. "A member of the Assembly made a motion that all the members composing it should be indemnified for the expenses which would be incurred by their absence from home and the long sojourn they had to make in the town where the Assembly was held. He remarked that the inhabitants of the country were those who suffered the most, their labor being their sole riches; that if no attention was paid to this demand, they would be obliged, in spite of their patriotism, to withdraw and abandon their important mission; that the electoral assemblies would then be deserted, or would be composed of those whose resources permitted them to make this sacrifice."]

[Footnote 2331: Sauzay, I. 147, 192.]

[Footnote 2332: For the detail of these figures, see vol. II. Book IV.]

[Footnote 2333: De Ferrieres, I. 367. Cf. The various laws above mentioned.]

[Footnote 2334: Constant, "Histoire d'un Club Jacobin en Province" (Fontainebleau) p.15. (Proces-verbaux of the founding of the clubs of Moret, Thomery, Nemours, and Montereau.)]

[Footnote 2335: Later to change and become socialist and communist parties everywhere. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2336: Cf. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 (except the first phrase, which is a catchword thrown out for the European philosophers).—Jefferson proposed a Declaration of Rights for the Constitution of March 4, 1789, but it was refused. They were content to add to it the eleven amendments which set forth the fundamental rights of the citizen.]

[Footnote 2337: Article I. "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights common to all. Social distinctions are founded solely on public utility." The first phrase condemns the hereditary royalty which is sanctioned by the Constitution. The second phrase can be used to legitimate hereditary monarchy and an aristocracy.—Articles 10 and 11 bear upon the manifestations of religious convictions and on freedom of speech and of the press. By virtue of these two articles worship, speech, and the press may be made subject to the most repressive restrictions, etc.]

[Footnote 2338: The International Bill of Human Rights of 1948 is quite different from the one approved in 1789. In 1948 there is no more any mention of any "right to resistance to oppression", there is a softening of the position on the right of property and new rights, to free education, to a country, to rest and leisure, to a high standard of health and to an adequate standard of living have been introduced. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2339: Stalin and his successors organized such a system of "clubs" world-wide which even today remain active as "protectors" of the environment, refugees, prisoners, animals and the environment. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2340: Buchez and Roux, XI. 237. (Speech by Malouet in relation to the revision, August 5, 1791.) "You constantly tempt the people with sovereignty without giving them the immediate use of it."]

[Footnote 2341: Decrees of September 25—October 6, 1791; September 28—October 6, 1791.]

[Footnote 2342: Impartial contemporaries, those well qualified to judge, agree as to the absurdity of the Constitution. "The Constitution was a veritable monster. There was too much of monarchy in it for a republic, and too much of a republic for a monarchy. The King was a side-dish, un hors d'oeuvre, everywhere present in appearance but without any actual power." (Dumont, 339.) "It is a general and almost universal conviction that this Constitution is inexecutable. The makers of it to a man condemn it." (G. Morris, September 30, 1791.) "Every day proves more clearly that their new Constitution is good for nothing." (ibid. December 27, 1791.) Cf. The sensible and prophetic speech made by Malouet (August 5, 1791, Buchez and Roux, XI. 237).]

[Footnote 2343: Taine's vivid description is likely to have encouraged any radical revolutionary having the luck to read his explicit description of how to proceed with the destruction of a naive corrupt capitalist, bourgeois society. (SR.)]



BOOK THIRD. THE APPLICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. [3101]



CHAPTER I.



I.—The Federations.

Popular application of philosophic theory.—Idyllic celebration of the Contrat-Social.—The two strata of the human mind.—Permanent disorder.

If there ever was an Utopia which seemed capable of realization, or, what is still more to the purpose, was really applied, converted into a fact, fully established, it is that of Rousseau, in 1789 and during the three following years. For, not only are his principles embodied in the laws, and the Constitution throughout animated with his spirit, but it seems as if the nation looked upon his ideological gambols, his abstract fiction, as serious. This fiction it carried out in every particular. A social contract, at one spontaneous and practical, an immense gathering of men associating together freely for the first time for the recognition of their respective rights, forming a specific compact, and binding themselves by a solemn oath: such is the social recipe prescribed by the philosophers, and which is carried out to the letter. Moreover, as this recipe is esteemed infallible, the imagination is worked upon and the sensibilities of the day are brought into play. It is admitted that men, on again becoming equals, have again become brothers.[3102] A sudden and amazing harmony of all volitions and all intelligences will restore the golden age on earth. It is proper, accordingly, to regard the social contract as a festival, an affecting, sublime idyll, in which, from one end of France to the other, all, hand in hand, should assemble and swear to the new compact, with song, with dance, with tears of joy, with shouts of gladness, the worthy beginning of public felicity. With unanimous assent, indeed, the idyll is performed as if according to a written program.

On the 29th of November, 1789, at Etoile, near Valence, the federations began.[3103] Twelve thousand National Guards, from the two banks of the Rhone, promise "to remain for ever united, to insure the circulation of grain, and to maintain the laws passed by the National Assembly." On the 13th of December, at Montelimart, six thousand men, the representatives of 27 000 other men, take a similar oath and confederate themselves with the foregoing.—Upon this the excitement spreads from month to month and from province to province. Fourteen towns of the bailiwicks of Franche-Comte form a patriotic league. At Pontivy, Brittany enters into federal relations with Anjou. One thousand National Guards of Vivarais and Languedoc send their delegates to Voute. 48 000 in the Vosges send their deputies to Epinal. During February, March, April, and May, 1790, in Alsace, Champagne, Dauphiny, Orleanais, Touraine, Lyonnais, and Provence, there is the same spectacle. At Draguignan eight thousand National Guards take the oath in the presence of 20 000 spectators. At Lyons 50 000 men, delegates of more than 500 000 others take the civic oath.—But local unions are not sufficient to complete the organization of France; a general union of all Frenchmen must take place. Many of the various National Guards have already written to Paris for the purpose of affiliating themselves with the National Guard there; and, one the 5th of June, the Parisian municipal body having proposed it, the Assembly decrees the universal federation. It is to take place on the 14th of July, everywhere on the same day, both at the center and at the extremities of the kingdom. There is to be one in the principal town of each district and of each department, and one in the capital. To the latter each body of the National Guards is to send deputies in the proportion of one man to every two hundred; and each regiment one officer, one non-commissioned officer, and four privates. Fourteen thousand representatives of the National Guard of the provinces appear on the Champ de Mars, the theater of the festival; also eleven to twelve thousand representatives of the land and marine forces, besides the National Guard of Paris, and sixty thousand spectators on the surrounding slopes, with a still greater crowd on the heights of Chaillot and of Passy. All rise to their feet and swear fidelity to the nation, to the law, to the King and to the new Constitution. When the report of the cannon is heard which announces the taking of the oath, those of the Parisians who have remained at home, men, women, and children, raise their hands in the direction of the Champ de Mars and likewise make their affirmation. In every principal town of every district, department, and commune in France there is the same oath on the same day. Never was there a more perfect social compact heard of. Here, for the first time in the world, everybody beholds a veritable legitimate society, for it is founded on free pledges, on solemn stipulations, and on actual consent. They possess the authentic act and the dated official report of it.[3104]

There is still something more—the time and the occasion betoken a union of all hearts. The barriers which have hitherto separated men from each other are all removed and without effort. Provincial antagonisms are now to cease: the confederates of Brittany and Anjou write that they no longer desire to be Angevins and Bretons, but simply Frenchmen. All religious discords are to come to an end: at Saint-Jean-du-Gard, near Alais, the Catholic cure and the Protestant pastor embrace each other at the altar; the pastor occupies the best seat in the church, and at the Protestant meeting-house the cure has the place of honor, and listens to the sermon of the pastor.[3105] Distinctions of rank and condition will no longer exist; at Saint-Andeol "the honor of taking the oath in the name of the people is conferred on two old men, one ninety-three and the other ninety-four years of age, one a noble and a colonel of the National Guard, and the other a simple peasant." At Paris, two hundred thousand persons of all conditions, ages, and sexes, officers and soldiers, monks and actors, school-boys and masters, dandies and ragamuffins, elegant ladies and fishwives, workmen of every class and the peasants from the vicinity, all flocked to the Champ de Mars to dig the earth which was not ready, and in a week, trundling wheelbarrows and handling the pick-ax as equals and comrades, all voluntarily yoked in the same service, converted a flat surface into a valley between two hills.—At Strasbourg, General Luckner, commander-in-chief, worked a whole afternoon in his shirt-sleeves just like the commonest laborer. The confederates are fed, housed, and have their expenses paid everywhere on all the roads. At Paris the publicans and keepers of furnished houses lower their prices of their own accord, and do not think of robbing their new guests. "The districts," moreover, "feast the provincials to their heart's content.[3106] There are meals every day for from twelve to fifteen hundred people." Provincials and Parisians, soldiers and bourgeois, seated and mingled together, drink each other's health and embrace. The soldiers, especially, and the inferior officers are surrounded, welcomed, and entertained to such an extent that they lose their heads, their health, and more besides. One "old trooper, who had been over fifty years in the service, died on the way home, used up with cordials and excess of pleasure." In short, the joy is excessive, as it should be on the great day when the wish of an entire century is accomplished.—Behold ideal felicity, as displayed in the books and illustrations of the time! The natural man buried underneath an artificial civilization is disinterred, and again appears as in early days, as in Tahiti, as in philosophic and literary pastorals, as in bucolic and mythological operas, confiding, affectionate, and happy. "The sight of all these beings again restored to the sweet sentiments of primitive brotherhood is an exquisite delight almost too great for the soul to support," and the Frenchman, more light-hearted and far more childlike than he is to-day, gives himself up unrestrainedly to his social, sympathetic, and generous instincts. Whatever the imagination of the day offers him to increase his emotions, all the classical, rhetorical, and dramatic material at his command, are employed for the embellishment of his festival. Already wildly enthusiastic, he is anxious to increase his enthusiasm.—At Lyons, the fifty thousand confederates from the south range themselves in line of battle around an artificial rock, fifty feet high, covered with shrubs, and surmounted by a Temple of Concord in which stands a huge statue of Liberty; the steps of the rock are decked with flags, and a solemn mass precedes the administration of the oath.—At Paris, an alter dedicated to the nation is erected in the middle of the Champ de Mars, which is transformed into a colossal circus. The regular troops and the federations of the departments stand in position around it, the King being in front with the Queen and the dauphin, while near them are the princes and princesses in a gallery, and the members of the National Assembly in an amphitheater; two hundred priests, draped in their albs and with tricolored belts, officiate around Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun; three hundred drums and twelve hundred musicians all play at once; forty piece of cannon are discharged at one volley, and four hundred thousand cheers go up as if from one threat. Never was such an effort made to intoxicate the senses and strain the nerves beyond their powers of endurance!—The moral machine is made to vibrate to the same and even to a greater extent. For more than a year past, harangues, proclamations, addresses, newspapers and events have daily added one degree more to the pressure. On this occasion, thousands of speeches, multiplied by myriads of newspapers, carry the enthusiasm to the highest pitch. Declamation foams and rolls along in a steady stream of rhetoric everywhere throughout France.[3107] In this state of excitement the difference between magniloquence and sincerity, between the false and the true, between show and substance, is no longer distinguishable. The Federation becomes an opera which is seriously played in the open street—children have parts assigned them in it; it occurs to no one that they are puppets, and that the words taken for an expression of the heart are simply memorized speeches that have been put into their mouths. At Besancon, on the return of the confederates, hundreds of "youthful citizens" from twelve to fourteen years of age,[3108] in the national uniform, "with sword in hand," march up to the standard of Liberty. Three little girls from eleven to thirteen years old and two little boy of nine years each pronounce "a discourse full of fire and breathing nothing but patriotism;" after which, a young lady of fourteen, raising her voice and pointing to the flag, harangues in turn the crowd, the deputies, the National Guard, the mayor, and the commander of the troops, the scene ending with a ball. This is the universal finale—men and women, children and adults, common people and men of the world, chiefs and subordinates, all, everywhere, frisk about as in the last act of a pastoral drama. At Paris,—writes an eye-witness, "I saw chevaliers of Saint-Louis and chaplains dancing in the street with people belonging to their department."[3109] At the Champ de Mars, on the day of the Federation, notwithstanding that rain was falling in torrents, "the first arrivals began to dance, and those who came after them, joining in, formed a circle which soon spread over a portion of the Champ de Mars. . . .Three hundred thousand spectators kept time with their hands." On the following days dancing is kept up on the Champ de Mars and in the streets, and there is drinking and carousing; "there was a ball with refreshments at the Corn-Exchange, and on the site of the Bastille."—At Tours, where fifty-two detachments from the neighboring provinces are collected, about four o'clock in the afternoon,[3110] through an irresistible outburst of insane gaiety, "the officers, inferior officers, and soldiers, pell-mell, race through the streets, some with saber in hand and others dancing and shouting 'Vive le Roi!' 'Vive la Nation!' flinging up their hats and compelling every one they met to join in the dance. One of the canons of the cathedral, who happens to be passing quietly along, has a grenadier's cap put on his head," and is dragged into the circle, and after him two monks; "they are often embraced," and then allowed to depart. The carriages of the mayor and the Marquise de Montausier arrive; people mount up behind, get inside, and seat themselves in front, as many as can find room, and force the coachmen to parade through the principal streets in this fashion. There is no malice in it, nothing but sport and the overflow of spirits. "Nobody was maltreated or insulted, although almost every one was drunk."—Nevertheless, there is one bad symptom: the soldiers of the Anjou regiment leave their barracks the following day and "pass the whole night abroad, no one being able to hinder them." And there is another of still graver aspect; at Orleans, after the companies of the National Militia had danced on the square in the evening, "a large number of volunteers marched in procession through the town with drums, shouting out with all their might that the aristocracy must be destroyed, and that priests and aristocrats should be strung up to the lamp post. They enter a suspected coffee-house, drive out the inmates with insults, lay hands on a gentleman who is supposed not to have cried out as correctly and as lustily as themselves, and come near to hanging him.[3111]—Such is the fruit of the philosophy and the attitudes of the eighteenth century. Men believed that, for the organization of a perfect society and the permanent establishment of freedom, justice, and happiness on earth, an inspiration of sentiments and an act of the will would suffice. The inspiration came and the act was fulfilled; they have been carried away, delighted, affected and out of their minds. Now comes the reaction, when they have to fall back upon themselves. The effort has succeeded in accomplishing all that it could accomplish, namely, a deluge of emotional demonstrations and slogans, a verbal and not a real contract ostentatious fraternity skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade, an outpouring of feeling evaporating through its own pageantry—in short, an agreeable carnival of a day's duration.

The reason is that in the human mind there are two strata. One superficial, of which men are conscious, the other deep down, of which they are unconscious.[3112] The former unstable and vacillating like shifting sand, the latter stable and fixed like a solid rock, to which their caprices and agitation never descend. The latter alone determines the general inclination of the soil, the main current of human activity necessarily following the bent thus prepared for it.—Certainly embraces have been interchanged and oaths have been taken; but after, as before the ceremony, men are just what many centuries of administrative thralldom and one century of political literature have made them. Their ignorance and presumption, their prejudices, hatreds, and distrusts, their inveterate intellectual and emotional habits are still preserved. They are human, and their stomachs need to be filled daily. They have imagination, and, if bread be scarce, they fear that they may not get enough of it. They prefer to keep their money rather than to give it away. For this reason they spurn the claims which the State and individuals have upon them as much as possible. They avoid paying their debts. They willingly lay their hands on public property which is badly protected; finally they are disposed to regard gendarmes and proprietors as detrimental, and all the more so because this has been repeated to them over and over again, day after day, for a whole year.—On the other hand there is no change in the situation of things. They are ever living in a disorganized community, under an impracticable constitution, the passions which sap public order being only the more stimulated by the semblance of fraternity under which they seemed to be allayed. Men cannot be persuaded with impunity that the millennium has come, for they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea. Each is confident and over-confident in his own opinion; all become impassioned, imperious, and intractable. Having assumed that all obstacles are taken out of the way, they grow indignant at each obstacle they actually encounter. Whatever it may be, they shatter it on the instant, and their over-excited imagination covers with the fine name of patriotism their natural appetite for despotism and domination.

France, accordingly, in the three years which follow the taking of the Bastille, presents a strange spectacle. In the words we find charity and in the laws symmetry; while the actual events present a spectacle of disorder and violence. Afar, is the reign of philosophy; close up is the chaos of the Carlovingian era.

"Foreigners," remarks an observer,[3113] "are not aware that, with a great extension of political rights, the liberty of the individual is in law reduced to nothing, while in practice it is subject to the caprice of sixty thousand constitutional assemblies; that no citizen enjoys any protection against the annoyances of these popular assemblies; that, according to the opinions which they entertain of persons and things, they act in one place in one way and in another place in another way. Here, a department, acting for itself and without referring elsewhere, puts an embargo on vessels, while another orders the expulsion of a military detachment essential for the security of places devastated by ruffians; and the minister, who responds to the demands of those interested, replies: 'Such are the orders of the department.' Elsewhere are administrative bodies which, the moment the Assembly decrees relief of consciences and the freedom of nonjuring priests, order the latter out of their homes within 24 hours. Always in advance of or lagging behind the laws; alternately bold and cowardly; daring all things when seconded by public license, and daring nothing to repress it; eager to abuse their momentary authority against the weak in order to acquire titles to popularity in the future; incapable of maintaining order except at the expense of public safety and tranquility; entangled in the reins of their new and complex administration, adding the fury of passion to incapacity and inexperience; such are, for the most part, the men sprung from nothing, void of ideas and drunk with pretension, on whom now rests responsibility for public powers and resources, the interest of security, and the foundations of the power of government. In all sections of the nation, in every branch of the administration, in every report, we detect the confusion of authorities, the uncertainty of obedience, the dissolution of all restraints, the absence of all resources, the deplorable complication of enervated springs, without any of the means of real power, and, for their sole support, laws which, in supposing France to be peopled with men without vices or passions, abandon humanity to its primitive state of independence."

A few months after this, in the beginning of 1792, Malouet sums up all in one phrase:

"It is the Government of Algiers without the Dey."



II.—Independence of the municipalities.

The causes of their initiative.—Sentiment of danger. —Issy-l'Eveque in 1789.—Exalted pride.—Brittany in 1790. —Usurpations of the municipalities.—Capture of the citadels.—Violence increased against their commanders. —Stoppage of convoys.—Powerlessness of the Directories and the ministers.—Marseilles in 1790.

Things could not work otherwise. For, before the 6th of October, and the King's captivity in Paris, the Government had already been destroyed. Now, through the successive decrees of the Assembly, it is legally done away with, and each local group is left to itself.—The intendants have fled, military commanders are not obeyed, the bailiwicks dare hold no courts, the parliaments are suspended, and seven months elapse before the district and department administrations are elected, a year before the new judgeships are instituted, while afterwards, as well as before, the real power is in the hands of the communes.—The commune must arm itself, appoint its own chiefs, provide its own supplies, protect itself against brigands, and feed its own poor. It has to sell its national property, install the constitutional priest, and, amidst so many eager passions and injured interest, accomplish the transformation by which a new society replaces the ancient one. It alone has to ward off the perpetual and constantly reviving dangers which assail it or which it imagines. These are great, and it exaggerates them. It is inexperienced and alarmed. It is not surprising that, in the exercise of its extemporized power, it should pass beyond its natural or legal limit, and without being aware of it, overstep the metaphysical line which the Constitution defines between its rights and the rights of the State. Neither hunger, fear, rage, nor any of the popular passions can wait; there is no time to refer to Paris. Action is necessary, immediate action, and, with the means at hand, they must save themselves as well as they can. This or that mayor of a village is soon to find himself a general and a legislator. This or that petty town is to give itself a charter like Laon or Vezelay in the twelfth century. "On the 6th of October, 1789,[3114] near Autun, the market-town of Issy-l'Eveque declares itself an independent State. The parish assembly is convoked by the priest, M. Carion, who is appointed member of the administrative committee and of the new military staff. In full session he secures the adoption of a complete code, political, judiciary, penal and military, consisting of sixty articles. Nothing is overlooked; we find ordinances concerning

"the town police, the laying out of streets and public squares, the repairs of prisons, the road taxes and price of grain, the administration of justice, fines, confiscations, and the diet of the National Guards."

He is a provincial Solon,[3115] zealous for the public welfare, and a man of executive power, he expounds his ordinances from the pulpit, and threatens the refractory. He passes decrees and renders judgments in the town-hall: outside the town limits, at the head of the National Guard, saber in hand, he will enforce his own decisions. He causes it to be decided that, on the written order of the committee, every citizen may be imprisoned. He imposes and collects taxes; he has boundary walls torn down; he goes in person to the houses of cultivators and makes requisitions for grain; he seizes the convoys which have not deposited their quote in his own richly stored granaries. One day, preceded by a drummer, he marches outside the walls, makes proclamation of "his agrarian laws," and proceeds at once to the partition of the territory, and, by virtue of the ancient communal or church property rights, to assign to himself a portion of it. All this is done in public and consciously, the notary and the scrivener being called in to draw up the official record of his acts; he is satisfied that human society has come to an end, and that each local group has the right to begin over again and apply in its own way the Constitution which it has accorded to itself without reference to anybody else.—This man, undoubtedly, talks too loudly, an proceeds too quickly; and first the bailiwick, next the Chatelet, and afterwards the National Assembly temporarily put a stop to his proceedings; but his principle is a popular one, and the forty thousand communes of France are about to act like so many distinct republics, under the sentimental and constantly more powerless reprimands of the central authority.

Excited and invigorated by a new sentiment, men now abandon themselves to the proud consciousness of their own power and independence. Nowhere is greater satisfaction found than among the new local chiefs, the municipal officers and commanders of the National Guard, for never before has such supreme authority and such great dignity fallen upon men previously so submissive and so insignificant.—Formerly the subordinates of an intendant or sub-delegate, appointed, maintained, and ill-used by him, kept aloof from transactions of any importance, unable to defend themselves except by humble protestations against the aggravation of taxation, concerned with precedence and the conflicts of etiquette,[3116] plain townspeople or peasants who never dreamt of interfering in military matters, henceforth become sovereigns in all military and civil affairs. This or that mayor or syndic of a little town or parish, a petty bourgeois or villager in a blouse, whom the intendant or military commander could imprison at will, now orders a gentleman, a captain of dragoons, to march or stand still, and the captain stands still or marches at his command. On the same bourgeois or villager depends the safety of the neighboring chateau, of the large land-owner and his family, of the prelate, and of all the prominent personages of the district in order that they may be out of harm's way he must protect them; they will be pillaged if, in case of insurrection, he does not send troops and the National Guard to their assistance. It is he who, lending or refusing public force to the collection of their rents, gives them or deprives them of the means of living. He accordingly rules, and on the sole condition of ruling according to the wishes of his equals, the vociferous multitude, the restless, dominant mob which has elected him.—In the towns, especially, and notably in the large towns, the contrast between what he was and what he is immense, since to the plenitude of his power is added the extent of his jurisdiction. Judge of the effect on his brain in cities like those of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen and Lyons, where he holds in his hand the lives and property of eighty or a hundred thousand men. And the more as, amid the municipal officers of the towns, three-quarters of them, prosecutors or lawyers, are imbued with the new dogmas, and are persuaded that in themselves alone, the directly elected of the people, is vested all legitimate authority. Bewildered by their recent elevation, distrustful as upstarts, in revolt against all ancient or rival powers, they are additionally alarmed by their imagination and ignorance, their minds being vaguely disturbed by the contrast between their role in the past and their present role: anxious on their own account, they find no security but in abuse and use of power. The municipalities, on the strength of the reports emanating from the coffee-houses, decide that the ministry are traitors. With an obstinacy of conviction and a boldness of presumption alike extraordinary, they believe that they have the right to act without and against their orders, and against the orders of the National Assembly itself, as if, in the now disintegrated France, each municipality constituted the nation.

Thus, if the armed force of the country is now obedient to any body, it is to them and to them alone, and not only the National Guard, but also the regular troops which, placed under the orders of municipalities by a decree of the National Assembly,[3117] will comply with no other. Military commanders in the provinces, after September, 1787, declare themselves powerless; when they and the municipality give orders, it is only those of the municipality which the troops recognize. "However pressing may be the necessity for moving the troops where their presence is required, they are stopped by the resistance of the village committee."[3118] "Without any reasonable motive," writes the commander of the forces in Brittany, "Vannes and Auray made opposition to the detachment which I thought it prudent to send to Belle-Ile, to replace another one. . . The Government cannot move without encountering obstacles. . . . The Minister of War no longer has the direction of the army. . . . No orders are executed. . . Every one wants to command, and no one to obey. . . How could the King, the Government, or the Minister of War send troops where they are wanted if the towns believe that they have the right to countermand the orders given to the regiments and change their destination?"-And it is still worse, for, "on the false supposition of brigands and conspiracies which do not exist,[3119] the towns and villages make demands on me for arms and even cannon. . . The whole of Brittany will soon be in a frightful belligerent state on this account, for, having no real enemies, they will turn their arms against each other."—This is of no consequence. The panic is an "epidemic." People are determined to believe in "brigands and enemies." At Nantes, the assertion is constantly repeated that the Spaniards are going to land, that the French regiments are going to make an attack, that an army of brigands is approaching, that the castle is threatened, that it is threatening, and that it contains too many engines of war. The commandant of the province writes in vain to the mayor to reassure him, and to explain to him that "the municipality, being master of the chateau, is likewise master of its magazine. Why then should it entertain fear about that which is in its own possession? Why should any surprise be manifested at an arsenal containing arms and gunpowder?"—Nothing is of any effect. The chateau is invaded; two hundred workmen set to work to demolish the fortifications; they listen only to their fears, and cannot exercise too great precaution. However inoffensive the citadels may be, they are held to be dangerous; however accommodating the commanders may be, they are regarded with suspicion. The people chafe against the bridle, relaxed and slack as it is. It is broken and cast aside, that it may not be used again when occasion requires. Each municipal body, each company of the National Guard, wants to reign on its own plot of ground out of the way of any foreign control; and this is what is called liberty. Its adversary, therefore, is the central power. This must be disarmed for fear that it may interpose. On all sides, with a sure and persistent instinct, through the capture of fortresses, the pillage of arsenals, the seduction of the soldiery, and the expulsion of generals, the municipality ensures its omnipotence by guaranteeing itself beforehand against all repression.

At Brest the municipal authorities insist that a naval officer shall be surrendered to the people, and on the refusal of the King's lieutenant to give him up, the permanent committee orders the National Guard to load its guns.[3120] At Nantes the municipal body refuses to recognize M. d'Hervilly, sent to take command of a camp, and the towns of the province write to declare that they will suffer no other than the federated troops on their territory. At Lille the permanent committee insists that the military authorities shall place the keys of the town in its keeping every evening, and, a few months after this, the National Guard, joined by mutinous soldiers, seize the citadel and the person of Livarot, its commander. At Toulon the commander of the arsenal, M. de Rioms, and several naval officers, are put in the dungeon. At Montpellier the citadel is surprised, and the club writes to the National Assembly to demand its demolition. At Valence, the commandant, M. de Voisin, on taking measures of defense, is massacred, and henceforth the municipality issues all orders to the garrison. At Bastia, Colonel de Rully falls under a shower of bullets, and the National Guard takes possession of the citadel and the powder magazine. These are not passing outbursts: at the end of two years the same insubordinate spirit is apparent everywhere.[3121] In vain do the commissioners of the National Assembly seek to transfer the Nassau regiment from Metz. Sedan refuses to receive it; while Thionville declares that, if it comes, she will blow up the bridges, and Sarrebuis threatens, if it approaches, that it will open fire on it. At Caen neither the municipality nor the directory dares enforce the law which assigns the castle to the troops of the line; the National Guard refuses to leave it, and forbids the director of the artillery to inspect the munitions.—In this state of things a Government subsists in name but not in fact, for it no longer possesses the means of enforcing obedience. Each commune arrogates to itself the right of suspending or preventing the execution of the simplest and most urgent orders. Arnay-le-Duc, in spite of passports and legal injunctions, persists in retaining Mesdames; Arcis-sur-Aube retains Necker, and Montigny is about to retain M. Caillard, Ambassador of France.[3122]—In the month of June, 1791, a convoy of eighty thousand crowns of six livres sets out from Paris for Switzerland; this is a repayment by the French Government to that of Soleure; the date of payment is fixed, the itinerary marked out; all the necessary documents are provided; it is important that it should arrive on the day when the bill falls due. But they have counted without the municipalities and the National Guards. Arrested at Bar-sur-Aube, it is only at the end of a month, and on a decree of the National Assembly, that the convoy can resume its march. At Belfort it is seized again, and it still remains there in the month of November. In vain has the directory of the Bas-Rhin ordered its release; the Belfort municipality paid no attention to the order. In vain the same directory dispatches a commissioner, who is near being cut to pieces. The personal interference of General Luckner, with the strong arm, is necessary, before the convoy can pass the frontier, after five months of delay.[3123] In the month of July 1791, a French vessel on the way from Rouen to Caudebec, said to be loaded with kegs of gold and silver, is stopped. On the examination being made, it has a right to leave; its papers are all correct, and the department enjoins the district to respect the law. The district, however, replies that it is impossible, since "all the municipalities on the banks of the Seine have armed and are awaiting the passing of the vessel," and the National Assembly itself is obliged to pass a decree that the vessel shall be discharged.

If the rebellion of the small communes is of this stamp, what must be that of the larger ones?[3124] The departments and districts summon the municipality in vain; it disobeys or pays no attention to the summons.

"Since the session began," writes the directory of Saone-et-Loire; "the municipality of Macon has taken no step in relation to us which has not been an encroachment. It has not uttered a word, which has not been an insult. It has not entered upon a deliberation which has not been an outrage."

"If the regiment of Aunis is not ordered here immediately," writes the directory of Calvados, "if prompt and efficient measures are not taken to provide us with an armed force, we shall abandon a post which we can not longer hold due to insubordination, license, contempt for all the authorities. We shall in this case be unable to perform the duties which were imposed upon us."

The directory of the Bouches-du-Rhone, on being attacked, flies before the bayonets of Marseilles. The members of the directory of Gers, in conflict with the municipality of Auch, are almost beaten to death. As to the ministers, who are distrusted by virtue of their office, they are still less respected than the directories, They are constantly denounced to the Assembly, while the municipalities send back their dispatches without deigning to open them,[3125] and, towards the end of 1791, their increasing powerlessness ends in complete annihilation. We can judge of this by one example. In the month of December 1791, Limoges is not allowed to carry away the grain, which it had just purchased in Indre, a force of sixty horsemen being necessary to protect its transportation. The directory of Indre at once calls upon the ministers to furnish them with this small troop.[3126] After trying for three weeks, the minister replies that it is out of his power; he has knocked at all doors in vain. "I have pointed out one way," he says, "to the deputies of your department in the National Assembly, namely, to withdraw the 20th regiment of cavalry from Orleans, and I have recommended them to broach the matter to the deputies of Loiret." The answer is still delayed: the deputies of the two departments have to come to an agreement, for, otherwise, the minister dares not displace sixty men to protect a convoy of grain. It is plain enough that there is no longer any executive power. There is no longer a central authority. There is no longer a France, but merely so many disintegrated and independent communes, like Orleans and Limoges, which, through their representatives, carry on negotiations with each other, one to secure itself from a deficiency of troops, and the other to secure itself from a want of bread.

Let us consider this general dissolution on the spot, and take up a case in detail. On the 18th of January 1790, the new municipal authorities of Marseilles enter upon their duties. As is generally the case, the majority of the electors have had nothing to do with the balloting. The mayor, Martin, having been elected by only an eighth of the active citizens.[3127] If, however, the dominant minority is a small one, it is resolute and not inclined to stop at trifles. "Scarcely is it organized,"[3128] when it sends deputies to the King to have him withdraw his troops from Marseilles. The King, always weak and accommodating, finally consents; and, the orders to march being prepared, the municipality is duly advised of them. But the municipality will tolerate no delay, and immediately "draws up, prints, and issues a denunciation to the National Assembly" against the commandant and the two ministers who, according to it, are guilty of having forged or suppressed the King's orders. In the meantime it equips and fortifies itself as for a combat. At its first establishment the municipality broke up the bourgeois guard, which was too great a lover of order, and organized a National Guard, in which those who have no property are soon to be admitted. "Daily additions are made to its military apparatus;[3129] entrenchments and barricades at the Hotel-de-Ville, are increasing, the artillery is increased; the town is filled with the excitement of a military camp in the immediate presence of an enemy." Thus, in possession of force, it makes use of it, and in the first place against justice.—A popular insurrection had been suppressed in the month of August 1789, and the three principal leaders, Rebecqui, Pascal, and Granet, had been imprisoned in the Chateau d'If. They are the friends of the municipal authorities, and they must be set free. At the demand of this body the affair is taken out of the hands of the grand-prevot and put into those of the senechaussee, the former, meanwhile, together with his councilors, undergoing punishment for having performed their duty. The municipality, on its own authority, forbids them from further exercise of their functions. They are publicly denounced, "threatened with poniards, the scaffold, and every species of assassination." [3130] No printer dares publish their defense, for fear of "municipal annoyances." It is not long before the royal procureur and a councillor are reduced to seeking refuge in Fort Saint-Jean, while the grand-prevot after having resisted a little longer, leaves Marseilles in order to save his life. As to the three imprisoned men, the municipal authorities visit them in a body and demand their provisional release. One of them having made his escape, they refuse to give the commandant the order for his re-arrest. The other two triumphantly leave the chateau on the 11th of April, escorted by eight hundred National Guards. They go, for form's sake, to the prisons of the senechaussee but the next day are set at liberty, and further prosecution ceases. As an offset to this, M. d'Ambert, colonel in the Royal Marine, guilty of expressing himself too warmly against the National Guard, although acquitted by the tribunal before which he was brought, can be set at liberty only in secret and under the protection of two thousand soldiers. The populace want to burn the house of the criminal lieutenant that dared absolve him. The magistrate himself is in danger, and is forced to take refuge in the house of the military commander.[3131] Meanwhile, printed and written papers, insulting libels by the municipal body and the club, the seditious or violent discussions of the district assemblies, and a lot of pamphlets, are freely distributed among the people and the soldiers: the latter are purposely stirred up in advance against their chiefs.—In vain are the officers mild, conciliatory, and cautious. In vain does the commander-in-chief depart with a portion of the troops. The object now is to dislodge the regiment occupying the three forts. The club sets the ball in motion, and, forcibly or otherwise, the will of the people must be carried out. On the 29th of April, two actors, supported by fifty volunteers, surprise a sentinel and get possession of Notre-Dame de la Garde. On the same day, six thousand National Guards invest the forts of Saint-Jean and Saint-Nicolas. The municipal authorities, summoned to respect the fortresses, reply by demanding the opening of the gates to the National Guard, that it may do duty jointly with the soldiers. The commandants hesitate, refer to the law, and demand time to consult their superiors. A second requisition, more urgent, is made; the commandants are held responsible for the disturbances they provoke by their refusal. If they resist they are declared promoters of civil war.[3132] They accordingly yield and sign a capitulation. One among them, the Chevalier de Beausset, major in Fort Saint-Jean, is opposed to this, and refuses his signature. On the following day he is seized as he is about to enter the Hotel-de-Ville, and massacred, his head being borne about on the end of a pike, while the band of assassins, the soldiers, and the rabble dance about and shout over his remains.—" It is a sad accident," writes the municipality.[3133] How does it happen that, "after having thus far merited and obtained all praise, a Beausset, whom we were unable to protect against the decrees of Providence, should sully our laurels? Having had nothing to do with this tragic affair, it is not for us to prosecute the authors of it." Moreover, he was "culpable. . .. rebellious, condemned by public opinion, and Providence itself seems to have abandoned him to the irrevocable decrees of its vengeance."—As to the taking of the forts, nothing is more legitimate. "These places were in the hands of the enemies of the State, while now they are in the hands of the defenders of the Constitution of the empire. Woe to whoever would take them from us again, to convert them into a focus of counter-revolution "—M. de Miran, commandant of the province, has, it is true, made a demand for them. But, "is it not somewhat pitiable to see the requisition of a Sieur de Miran, made in the name of the King he betrays, to surrender to his Majesty's troops places which, henceforth in our hands, guarantee public security to the nation, to the law, and to the King?" In vain does the King, at the request of the National Assembly,[3134] order the municipality to restore the forts to the commandants, and to make the National Guards leave them. The municipal authorities become indignant, and resist. According to them the wrong is all on the side of the commandant and the ministers. It is the commandants who, "with the threatening equipment of their citadels, their stores of provisions and of artillery, are disturbers of the public peace. What does the minister mean by driving the national troops out of the forts, in order to entrust their guardianship to foreign troops? His object is apparent in this plan. . . . he wants to kindle civil war."—"All the misfortunes of Marseilles originate in the secret under-standing existing between the ministers and the enemies of the State." The municipal corps is at last obliged to evacuate the forts, but it is determined not to give them up. The day following that on which it receives the decree of the National Assembly, it conceives the design of demolishing them. On the 17th of May, two hundred laborers, paid in advance, begin the work of destruction. To save appearances the municipal body betakes itself at eleven o'clock in the morning to the different localities, and orders them to stop. But, on its departure, the laborers keep on; and, at six o'clock in the evening, a resolution is passed that, "to prevent the entire demolition of the citadel, it is deemed advisable to authorize only that of the part overlooking the town." On the 18th of May the Jacobin club, at once agent, accomplice, and councilor of the municipal body, compels private individuals to contribute something towards defraying the expenses of the demolition. It "sends round to every house, and to the syndics of all corporations, exacting their quotas, and making all citizens subscribe a document by which they appear to sanction the action of the municipal body, and to express their thanks to it. People had to sign it, pay, and keep silent. Woe to any one that refused!" On the 20th of May the municipal body presumes to write to the Assembly, that "this threatening citadel, this odious monument of a stupendous despotism, is about to disappear." To justify its disobedience, it takes occasion to remark, "that the love of country is the most powerful and most enduring of an empire's ramparts." On the 28th of May it secures the performance in two theaters of a piece representing the capture of the forts of Marseilles, for the benefit of the men engaged in their demolition. Meanwhile, it has summoned the Paris Jacobins to its support; it has proposed to invite the Lyons federation and all the municipalities of the kingdom to denounce the minister. It has forced M. de Miran, threatened with death and watched by a party in ambush on the road, to quit Aix, and then demands his recall.[3135] Only on the 6th of June does it decide, at the express command of the National Assembly, to suspend the almost completed demolition.—Authorities to which obedience is due could not be treated more insolently. The end, however, is attained; there is no longer a citadel, and the troops have departed; the regiment commanded by Ernest alone remains, to be tampered with, insulted, and then sent off. It is ordered to Aix, and the National Guard of Marseilles will go there to disarm and disband it. Henceforth the municipal body has full sway. It "observes only those laws which suit it, makes others to its own liking, and, in short, governs in the most despotic and arbitrary manner."[3136] And not only at Marseilles, but throughout the department where, under no authority but its own, it undertakes armed expeditions and makes raids and sudden attacks.



III.—Independent Assemblies.

Why they took the initiative.—The people in council. —Powerlessness of the municipalities.—the violence to which they are subject.—Aix in 1790.—Government disobeyed and perverted everywhere.

Were it but possible for the dissolution to stop here! But each commune is far from being a tranquil little state under the rule of a body of respected magistrates. The same causes which render municipalities rebellious against the central authority render individuals rebellious against local authority. They also feel that they are in danger and want to provide for their own safety. They also, in virtue of the Constitution and of circumstances, believe themselves appointed to save the country. They also consider themselves qualified to judge for themselves on all points and entitled to carry out their judgments with their own hands. The shopkeeper, workman or peasant, at once elector and National Guard, furnished with his vote and a musket, suddenly becomes the equal and master of his superiors; instead of obeying, he commands, while all who see him again after some years' absence, find that "in his demeanor and manner all is changed." "There was great agitation everywhere,"[3137] says M. de Segur; "I noticed groups of men talking earnestly in the streets and on the squares. The sound of the drum struck my ear in the villages, while I was astonished at the great number of armed men I encountered in the little towns. On interrogating various persons among the lower classes they would reply with a proud look and in a bold and confident tone. I observed everywhere the effect of those sentiments of equality and liberty which had then become such violent passions."—Thus exalted in their own eyes they believed themselves qualified to take the lead in everything, not only in local affairs, but also in general matters. France is to be governed by them; by virtue of the Constitution they arrogate to themselves the right, and, by dint of ignorance, attribute to themselves the capacity, to govern it. A torrent of new, shapeless, and disproportionate ideas have taken possession of their brains in the space of a few months. Vast interests about which they have never thought, have to be considered. Government, royalty, the church, creeds, foreign powers, internal and external dangers, what is occurring at Paris and at Coblentz, the insurrection in the Low Countries, the acts of the cabinets of London, Vienna, Madrid, Berlin; and, of all this, they inform themselves as they best can. An officer,[3138] who traverses France at this time, narrates that at the post-stations they made him wait for horses until he had "given them details. The peasants stopped my carriage in the middle of the road and overwhelmed me with questions. At Autun, I was obliged, in spite of the cold, to talk out of a window opening upon the square and tell what I knew about the Assembly."—These on-dits are all changed and amplified in passing from mouth to mouth. They finally become circumstantial stories adapted to the caliber of the minds they pass into and to the dominant passion that propagates them. Trace the effect of these fables in the house of a peasant or fish-woman in an outlying village or a populous suburb, on brutish or almost brutal minds, especially when they are lively, heated, and over-excited—the effect is tremendous. For, in minds of this stamp, belief is at once converted into action, and into rude and destructive action. It is an acquired self-control, reflection, and culture which interposes between belief and action the solicitude for social interests, the observance of forms and respect for the law. These restraints are all wanting in the new sovereign. He does not know how to stop and will not suffer himself to be stopped. Why so many delays when the peril is urgent? What is the use of observing formalities when the safety of the people is at stake? What is there sacred in the law when it protects public enemies? What is more pernicious than passive deference and patient waiting under timid or blind officials? What can be more just than to do one's self justice at once and on the spot?—Precipitation and passion, in their eyes, are both duties and merits. One day "the militia of Lorient decide upon marching to Versailles and to Paris without considering how they are to get over the ground or what they will do on their arrival."[3139] Were the central government within reach they would lay their hands on it. In default of this they substitute themselves for it on their own territory, and exercise its functions with a full conviction of right, principally those of gendarme, judge, and executioner.