BOOKS.

DE TOCQIIEVILDE'S SOCIETY IN FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.* THIS inquiry into the condition of France before the great Revo- lution, in order to explain the apparent wonders of that Revolu- tion itself, is a valuable contribution to political philosophy, quite apart from its more direct objects. It reads in distinct terms the lesson of retribution, and in a manner apt to the present condi- tion of Europe. The expositions of M. Be Toequeville, though limited to the social condition of France in its relations to the Government, are a warning, if such warnings were ever regarded, against the absorption of all power by the central authority, and the deprivation of the various classes of society of their rights, yet the retention of odious privileges among certain of those classes. Whatever opinion may be passed upon the conclusions of the author as to the French Revolution in general, it is evident that the destruction by the Crown of the feudal and municipal powers of the nobles and burgesses, yet the retention and indeed extension of feudal and corporate privileges, was not only a main cause of the Revolution, but the chief reason of its destructive character. When the State took from the nobles and the municipalities the power of managing their local affairs, yet left them their insidious privileges and dis- tinctions, it split up society into separate and hostile classes, between which the bitterest feelings prevailed, while it was impossible for any man not in Government employ to act in the commonest public business. Hence, when time and opin- ion and fiscal embarrassment compelled the State to have re- course to the nation, it met with isolated and hostile classes and uninstructed individuals. The fortress of Bourbon power, which looked so imposing without, was baseless within ; it collapsed rather than fell under the first shock, because there was nothing to sustain it but a corps of administrators. Other elements were active in France, more especially an ill-judged attempt at reform- ing the provincial administration, so late as 1787. All other evils might hare subsisted, or reformed themselves, had there been a people of various orders, with various rights and the habit of exercising them, so as to act as dikes or break- waters to the revolutionary flood. But there was nothing of the kind. Beyond material differences, which must always exist, there were only nominal or titular distinctions ; while there was an equality of servitude to an administrative class. With the exception of Scandinavia, Belgium, and Sardinia, the same state of things exists on the Continent now. It is probable that Eu- rope has not seen the last of sweeping revolutions, though they may not come to the present generation. Indeed, we saw in 1848 how powerless were governments and peoples.

Independently of the great moral of retribution finally overtaking injustice, and the great political lesson that national stability can only exist with national gradations,—points which M. de Tocque- vine indicates in the consequences of the Revolution as well as by the Revolution itself,—his work is a most curious and in- forming account of the state of society in France during the better part of the eighteenth century, so far as society can be influenced by administration and fiscal regulations, both terms being used in the largest sense. Respecting some of the author's conclusions doubts may be entertained,—he probably attaches a novelty to other conclusions to which as regards the general result they are not entitled ; he perhaps carries the national peculiarity too far In generalizing his conclusions; representing the Revolution as if it were an embodied creature with distinct aims and purpose; in- stead of what he shows it in other places to have been, a succes- sion of events, the result of a long series of various causes, not only inevitable under the circumstances, but altogether unin- tended and even unsuspected by the actors themselves. The in- tellectual causes of the Revolution are touched upon, and very completely as regards the political philosophy of Paris, but no further. The moral causes, as shown in the frivolity and cor- ruption of the Court, the nobility, and the higher or fashionable clergy, are left unnoticed. The book, however, be the draw- backs what they may, is a remarkable exposition of the inner social (not domestic) life of France ; it throws a much fuller light, if not upon the actual causes of the Revolution, upon the causes which made it take the course it did, and is altogether one of the most valuable contributions to a due understanding of that great' event which has yet appeared. Two of the leading principles which M. Be Tocqueville states at the outset are, that the world is mistaken in ascribing centralization to the French Revolution—it already existed, if not in such com- plete and unchecked power as it afterwards attained ; and that,

• On the State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1789; and on the Causes which led to that Event. By Alexis De Tocqueville. Member of the French .tteademy. Translated by Henry Reeve. Published by Murray. so far from the feudal system causing the Revolution, it was en- tirely destroyed long before ; which is true as regards its power, but not as regards its rights and invidious privileges. Richelieu, or at all events Louis the Fourteenth, had given the coup de grace to the power of the nobiles. The baron could no longer lead his vassals to war against his rival, or it might be against his sove- reign; he had ceased to be the chieftain, protector, or adviser of his people ; the feudal tenure of land had ceased in many places, and the existing subdivision begun, before the Revolution : nor had the feudal power been succeeded, as in England, by legislative power and, provincial self-government, which brought the great landed proprietors into continual contact with the country. But the French privileges of blood and caste remained as against all the country ; and the seigneural rights of chase, of labour, of toll, and all the other medireval demands, subsisted in full vigour as against the tenants or peasantry, in a state of society to which they were no longer appropriate ; so that even when the noble was absent the feudal exactions were felt, though he himself might not be seen. Hence, whatever formal objection may be made to feudality as a cause, we suspect that the general opinion is right. However, M. Be Tocqueville, in support of these two opinions, has been induced to institute a wide and peculiar species of research, which in reality gives its character to his book. Without neglecting the published literature or known re- cords of the time, M. Be Tocqueville has applied himself to the investigation of the remaining muniments of the internal admin- istration of the kingdom under the old regime; the archives of the Comptroller-General in his capacity of Home Secretary, the documents of the Intendants or rulers of provinces, the reports of their Subdelegates, as well as the correspondence, petitions, sug- gestions, and complaints of the various assemblages down even to a parish meeting, all of which took their orders from the Ad- mmistration, even in such a matter as repairing a parsonage. The French nation in the pettiest matter of local administration was as helpless as the Germans are now.

Although decaying feudalism, and the centralization which had grown up beside it, are in various forms the predominant topics of this book, they are by no means the only topics. The mode is exhibited in which the administrative authority interfered with the administration of justice, by withdrawing from the regular courts all cases in which its officers were con- cerned, in order to shield them from the consequences of their excesses. The social and political evils are pointed out, which arose from the multitude of provincial or municipal offices giving status and privileges, creating the most rankling feelings, and splitting up the smallest communities into numerous cliques ; the object in the creation and retention of these posts being fiscal—they were made to be sold. The pressure of taxation, the ill effects of the numerous exemptions by the priesthood and the nobility— the gentilhomme as opposed to the roturier—are touched upon. So also are the efforts of Government to avoid further pressure upon the people by the taille, and exasperation of the higher classes by a general tax ; which efforts in reality drove itto adopt the creation and sale of offices as a regular source of extraordi- nary revenue. When, as we consider, the great influence of financial embarrasment in reference to the French Revolution is borne in mind, this subject is perhaps not sufficiently developed. No doubt, the workings of the fiscal development may readily be met with elsewhere ; but it was necessary to a full exhibition of the state of society in France before the Revolution. Many other topics of a kindred nature are expounded ; but, after all, De Tooreville arrives at the conclusion that there was more individual liberty in France for all persons above the pea- santry than there is now. The institutions of the feudal and mu- nicipal bodies, though worn out, still possessed the via inertire of resistance ; and the Administration, though absolute and all. interfering, was comparatively timid. "Whilst the central Government superseded all local powers, and filled more and more the whole sphere of public authority, some institutions which the Government had allowed to subsist, or which it had created, some old customs, some ancient manners, sonic abuses even, served to check its ac- tion, to keep alive in the hearts of a large number of persons a spirit of re- sistance, and to preserve the consistency and the independent outline of many characters. "Centralization had already the same tendency, the same mode of opera- tion, the same aims, as in our own time ; but it had not yet the same power. Government having, in its eagerness to turn everything into money, put up to sale most of the public offices, had thus deprived itself of the power of giving or withdrawing those offices at pleasure. Thus one of its passions had considerably impaired the success of another ; its rapacity had balanced its ambition. The State was therefore incessantly reduced to act through instruments which it had not forged, and which it could not break. The consequence was, that its most absolute will was frequently paralyzed in the execution of it. This strange and vicious constitution of the public offices thus stood in stead of a sort of political guarantee against the omnipotence of the central power. It was a sort of irregular and ill-constructed break- water, which divided the action and checked the stroke of the supreme power. "Nor did the Government of that day dispose as yet of that countless " The Government moreover was imperfectly acquainted with the exact limits of its power. None of its rights were regularly acknowledged or firmly established : its range of action was already immense, but that action was still hesitating and uncertain as one who gropes along a dark and un- known track. This formidable obscurity, which at that time concealed the limits of every power and enshrouded every right, though it might be fa- vourable to the designs of princes against the freedom of their subjects, was frequently net less favourable to its defence. The administrative power, conscious of the novelty of its origin and of its low extraction, was ever timid in its action when any obstacle crossed its path. It is striking to observe in reading the correspondence of the French Ministers and Intendants of the eighteenth century, how this Government, which was so absolute and so encroaching as long as its authority is not contested, deed aghast at the aspect of the least resistance ; agitated by the slightest criticism alarmed by the slightest noise, ready on all such occa- sions to stop, to hesitate, to parley, to treat, and often to fall considerably below the natural limits of its power. The nerveless egotism of Louis XV., and the mild benevolence of his successor, contributed to this state of things. It never occurred to these sovereigns that they could be dethroned. They had nothing of that harsh and restless temper which fear has since often imparted to those who govern. They trampled on none but those whom they did not see."

In connexion with this part of his subject, the author passes in review the three orders ; showing from various sources that the nobility, the clergy, and the tiers etat, were each animated by a love of freedom. It might be narrow, confined to their own class, and without a true comprehension of genuine political liberty ; still, there it was. The whole is a masterly exposition, from which we take a few passages relating to the clergy and the middle classes.

"The clergy, who have since frequently shown themselves so servilely submissive to the temporal sovereign in civil matters, whosoever that tem- poral sovereign might be, and who become his most barefaced flatterers on the slightest indication of favour to the Church, formed at that time one of the most independent bodies in the nation, and the only body whose pecu- liar liberties would have enforced respect. "The provinces had lost their franchises; the rights of the towns were reduced to a shadow. No ten noblemen could meet to deliberate together on any matter without the express permission of the Xing. But the Church of France retained to the last her periodical assemblies. Within her bosom even ecclesiastical power was circumscribed by limits which were respected. The lower clergy enjoyed the protection of solid guarantees against the ty- ranny of their superiors, and was not prepared for passive obedience to the sovereign by the uncontrolled despotism of the bishop. I do not attempt to pass any judgment on this ancient constitution of the Church; I merely assert that by this constitution the spirit of the priesthood was not fashioned to political servility.

Many of the ecclesiastics were, moreover, gentlemen of birth, and they brought with them into the Church the pride and indocility of their condi- tion. All of them had, moreover, an exalted rank in the state, and certain privileges there. The exercise of those feudal rights, which had proved so fatal to the moral power of the Church, gave to its members, in their indi- vidual capacity, a spirit of independence towards the civil authority.

"The middle classes of the time preceding the Revolution were also much better prepared than those of the present day to show a spirit of independ- ence. Many even of the defects of their social constitution contributed to this result. We have already seen that the t public employments occupied

by these classes were even more numerous at present, and that the passion for obtaining these situations was equally intense. But mark the difference of the age. Most of those places being neither given nor taken away by the Government, increased the importance of those who filled them without placing them at the mercy of the ruler; hence, the very cause which now completes the subjection of so many persons was precisely that which most powerfully enabled them at that time to maintain their inde- pendence.

"Time immunities of all kinds which so unhappily separated the middle from the lower classes, converted the former into a spurious aristocracy, which often displayed the pride and the spirit of resistance of the real aristocracy. In each of those small particular associations which divided the middle classes into so many sections, the general advantage was readily overlooked, but the interests and the rights of each body were always kept in view. The common dignity, the common privileges were to be defended. No man could ever lose himself in the crowd, or find a hiding-place for base sub- serviency. Every man stood, as it were on a stage, extremely contracted,

i it true, but in a glare of light ; and there he found himself in presence of the same audience ever ready to applaud or to condemn him.

"The art of stifling every murmur of resistance was at that time far less perfected than it is at present. France had not yet become that dumb re- gion in which we dwell : every sound, on the contrary, had an echo, though political liberty was still unknown, and every voice that was raised might

be heard afar. • "The people alone, applying that term to the lower orders of society, and especially the people of the rural districts, was almost always unable to offer any resistance to oppression except by violence. "Most of the means of defence which I have here passed in review were, in fact, beyond their reach : to employ those means a place in society where they could be seen, or a voice loud enough to make itself heard, was requisite. But above the ranks of the lower orders there was not a man in Prance who, if he had the courage, might not contest his obedience and re- sist in giving way."

It will have been seen by the reader, that reference is occasion- ally made to the present when speaking of the past. This is con- tinually taking place in the form of comment or comparison. Whether the feeling which prompts the observations may not tinge I (description of the ancient regime, we do not know. They are true enough as regards the present, and not always confined to France. Witness these remarks on the evil tendency of the love of comfort ; an evil, however, which is of the age, and springs in a measure from its material and mechanical advancement.

"The men of the eighteenth century knew little of that sort of passion for comfort which is the mother of servitude,—a relaxing passion, though it be tenacious and unalterable, which mingles and intertwines itself with many private virtues, such as domestic affections, regularity of life, respect for re- ligion, and even with the lukewarm, though assiduous, practice of public worship, which favours propriety but proscribes heroism, and excels in making decent livers but base citizens. The men of the eighteenth century were better and they were worse. ‘' The French of that age were addicted to joy and passionately fond 4741 amuzement : they were perhaps more lax in their habits, and more vehe- ment in their passions and opinions, than those of the present day ; but they were stningers to the temperate and decorous sensualism that we see about us. In the upper dosses men thought more of adorning life than of render- ing it comfortable they sought to be illustrious rather than to be rich. Even in the middle ranks the pursuit of comfort never absorbed every faculty of the mind; that pursuit was often abandoned for higher and more refined enjoyments ; every man placed some object beyond the love of money before his eyes. I know my countrymen,' said a contemporary writer, in language which, though eccentric, is spirited : apt to melt and dissipate the metals, they are not prone to pay them habitual reverence, and they will not be slow to turn again to their former idols, to valour, to glory, and, I will add, to magnanimity. "The baseness of mankind is, moreover, not to be estimated by the de- gree of their subserviency to a sovereign power : that standard would be an incorrect one. However submissive the French may have been before the Revolution to the will of the King, one sort of obedience was altogether un- known to them,—they knew not what it waste bow before an illegitimate and contested power—a power but little honoured, frequently despised, but which is willingly endured because it may be serviceable or because it may hurt. To this degrading form of servitude they were ever strangers. The King inspired them with feelings which none of the most absolute princes who have since appeared in the world have been able to callforth, and which are become incomprehensible to the present generation, so entirely has the Revolution extirpated them from the hearts of the nation. They loved him with the affection due to a father; they revered him with the respect due to God. In submitting to the most arbitrary of his commands, they yielded less to compulsion than to loyalty ; and thus they frequently preserved great freedom of mind even in the most complete dependence. To them the great- est evil of obedience was compulsion ; to us it is the least : the worst is in that servile sentiment which leads men to obey. We have no right to de- spise our forefathers. Would to God that we could recover, with their pre- judices and their faults, something of their greatness " Notwithstanding the elaborate exposition, we are not sure that the causes of the sudden collapse of the whole government are made distinct—perhaps their vastness and complexity render it impossible to be distinct. Some causes are clear enough : 1, the universal opinion in France that the State was not only supreme, but absolute in its power and unlimited in its right of inter- ference or action ; 2, the equal universality of political specula- tion, seeking the powers of government and the rights of the people in first principles. These two all-pervading sentiments necessarily encouraged the wildest experiments ; and when these once began, there was, 3, from want of subordinate powers and individual experience, no means of guiding or of checking the rushing course of destruction. Still, if these account for the sud- den downfall of the institutions of the state, they do not explain the violence the cruelty, the phrensy with which it was accom- plished. This is probably to be sought in the temper, the cha- racter, and the burning feelings of the peasantry, oppressed or neglected for eight hundred years. And here, perhaps M. De Toequeville might have been more detailed with advantage. The accounts of their fiscal and economical oppression, their isolation, their neglect, and the total misconception of their secret charac- ter, when it became the fashion to talk and write about them, are indeed vigorously and truthfully done. We should have liked more of portraiture, more exposition of the daily life of the peasantry, if means exist for giving it ; but it was perhaps too contrary to the author's plan. This seems to consist in ge- neralizing everything into the breadth, the mass, the clearness, but withal somewhat of the coldness, of the statue. It is pos- sible that the operation of the fiscal system of France may have been summarily dismissed lest the reader should have been over- whelmed by arithmetical details. Something like this feeling appears occasionally in the notes and illustrations which support the text. They are often sufficient, but more frequently curt.

Still, had the exposition been as full as it might, M. Be Tocque- ville himself would have doubted whether the action could have been explained without reference to the actors. His conclusion is that the French Revolution could have occurred nowhere but in France.

"When I consider this nation in itself, it strikes me as more extraordinary than any event in its own annals. Was there ever any nation on the face of the earth so full of contrasts and so extreme in 01 its actions ; more swayed by sensations, less by principles; led therefore always to do either worse or better than was expected of it, sometimes below the common level of humanity, sometimes greatly above it; a people so unalterable in its lead- ing instincts, that its likeness may still be recognized in descriptions written two or three thousand years ago, but at the same time so mutable in its daily thoughts and in its tastes as to become a spectacle and an amazement to it- self, and to be as much surprised as the rest of the world at the sight of what it has done ;—a people beyond all others the child of home and the slave of habit when left to itself, but when once torn against its will from the na- tive hearth and from its daily pursuits, ready to go to the end of the world and to dare all things; indocile by temperament, yet accepting the arbitrary and even the violent rule of a sovereign more readily than the free and re- gular government of the chief citizen ; today the declared enemy of all obedience, tomorrow serving with a sort of passion which the nations best adapted for servitude cannot attain : guided by a thread as long as no one resists, ungovernable when the example of resistance has once been given : always deceiving its masters, who fear it either too little or too much : never so free that it is hopeless to enslave it, or so enslaved that it may not break the yoke again ; apt for all things, but excelling only in war; adoring chance, force, success, splendour and noise, more than true glory ; more capable of heroism than of virtue of genius than of good sense ready to con- ceive immense designs rather than to consummate great undertakings; the most brilliant and the most dangerous of the nations of Europe and that best Atted to become by turns an object of admiration, of hatred, of pity, of ter- ror, but never of mdifference

"Such a nation could alone give birth to a revolution so sudden so radi- cal,. so impetuous in its course, and yet so fall of reactions of coniraclictory incidents and of contrary examples. Without the reasonsave:related, the French would never have made the Revolution ; but it must be confessed that all these reasons united would not have sufficed to account for such a revo- lution anywhere else but in France."

The question has often been put, could the French Revolution

have been prevented ? Under the given circumstances—histori- cal, social, governmental, national in the sense of character, and with thg particular idiosyncracy of the leading actors—clearly no. The isolation or rather opposition of the different jea-

lousy, bodies—the ea- lousy, for instance, between the two greatest civil bodies in the

kingdom, the Nobility and the Parliaments—would seem to have rendered a working unity of classes or even of different men, utterly impossible, as we have observed it in our own day. One fact peeps out, which indicates that the nobles might have acted with the people, though shrinking from the lawyers and the mu- nicipalities. The apparent object of the scheme of-administrative reform of 1787 was to transfer the power of the Royal Adminis- tration to local assemblies. It might have been crudely planned or badly executed ; its result was paralysis ; the officers would do nothing, the assemblies from inexperience could do nothing. Yet as soon as the peasants became even a power in the parish, their lords, perhaps in instinctive anticipation of 1789, sought to esta- blish relations.

"On the other hand, some of the chief inhabitants of parishes, and even men of rank, began at once to draw nearer to the peasantry, as soon as the peamantry had become a power in the state. A landed proprietor exercising a heritable jurisdiction over a village near Paris complained that the King's edict debarred him from taking part, even as a mere inhabitant, in the pro- ceedings of the Parochial Assembly. Others consented, from mere public spirit, as they said, to accept even the office of Syndic.

"It was too late : but as the members of the higher classes of society in France thus began to approach the rural population and to endeavour to combine with the people, the people drew back into the isolation to which it had been condemned and maintained that position. Some parochial assem- blies refused to allow the Seigneur of the place to take his seat among them : others practised every kind of trick to evade the reception of persons as low- born as themselves, but who were rich. We are informed,' said the Pro- vincial Assembly of Lower Normandy, that several municipal bodies have refused to receive among their members landowners not being noble and not domiciled in the parish, though these persons have an undoubted right to sit in such meetings. Some other bodies have even refused to admit farmers not having any property in land in the parish.'"

The local administration of the few provinces called the pays d'etats, especially of the freest Languedoc, indicate that French- men were not incapable of self-government. The province had no political rights, or at least governmental power ; but it did its own business, executed its own public works and itself levied the taxes when the amount it was to pay htui been fixed by the central authority. In a supplementary chapter, M. Be Toe.que- vine gives a favourable picture of the results of this freedom. The roads were capital ; the water-communications improved ; the province bought up and practically cancelled the offices which state cupidity set up to sale ; the credit of Languedoc was so good that it contracted loans for the King on terms which the King could not effect. The author closes his account and his work with a remark which, if it does not hit the nail, hits the central nail.

"It might have been so everywhere else in France. A small portion of the perseverance and the exertions which the sovereigns of France employed for the abolition or the dislocation of the Provincial Estates would have sufficed to perfect them in this manner, and to adapt them to all the wants of modern oivilization, if those sovereigns had ever had any other aim than to become and to remain the masters of France."

Mr. Reeve is entitled to the credit of having given to the English public one of the most philosophical works on the French Revolution since the Reflexions of Burke. The composition of M. De Toequeville is unmistakeably French ; the translation, as regards diction, for the most part reads like original writing, being firm, easy, and perspicuous.