The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789

As the Assembly sat in one house and the orders did not vote separately, but conjointly, the commons naturally acquired much importance, and their spirit gradually infused itself into the whole body. Nay, more, the three magistrates, who, under the name of Syndics-General, were charged, in the name of the States, with the ordinary management of the business, were almost always lawyers,—that is to say, commoners. The nobility was strong enough to maintain its rank, but no longer strong enough to reign alone. The clergy, though consisting to a great extent of men of gentle birth, lived on excellent terms with the commons; they eagerly adopted most of the plans of that Order, and laboured in conjunction with it to increase the material prosperity of the whole community, by encouraging trade and manufactures, thus placing their own great knowledge of mankind and their singular dexterity in the conduct of affairs at the service of the people. A priest was almost always chosen to proceed to Versailles to discuss with the Ministers of the Crown the questions which sometimes set at variance the royal authority and that of the States. It might be said that throughout the last century Languedoc was administered by the Commons, who were controlled by the Nobles and assisted by the Bishops.

Thanks to this peculiar constitution of Languedoc, the spirit of the age was enabled peacefully to pervade this ancient institution, and to modify it altogether without at all destroying it.

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 civilisation, if those sovereigns had ever had any other aim than to become and to remain the masters of France.

[The chapters which follow were not included in the work first published by M. de Tocqueville in 1855. They are the continuation of it, left unfinished at the time of his death in 1859, and published in 1865 by M. de Beaumont amongst the posthumous works of his friend. They are now translated for the first time. Although they must be regarded as incomplete, since they never received the final revision of the author, and the latter portions of them are fragmentary, yet they are not, I think, unworthy to form part of the work to which they were intended to belong, and a melancholy interest attaches to them as the last meditations of a great and original thinker. In the French text an attempt has been made to distinguish, by a different type, the passages which are more carefully finished from those which consisted merely of notes for further elaboration. But as this arrangement breaks the uniformity of the text more than is necessary, I have not adopted it.—H. R.]

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

OF THE VIOLENT AND UNDEFINED AGITATION OF THE HUMAN MIND AT THE MOMENT WHEN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BROKE OUT

What I have previously said of France is applicable to the whole Continent. In the ten or fifteen years preceding the French Revolution, the human mind was abandoned, throughout Europe, to strange, incoherent, and irregular impulses, symptoms of a new and extraordinary disease, which would have singularly alarmed the world if the world had understood them.

A conception of the greatness of man in general, and of the omnipotence of his reason and the boundless range of his intelligence, had penetrated and pervaded the spirit of the age; yet this lofty conception of mankind in general was commingled with a boundless contempt for the age in which men were living and the society to which they belonged. Never was so much humility united to so much pride—the pride of humanity was inflated to madness; the estimate each man formed of his age and country was singularly low.

All over the Continent that instinctive attachment and involuntary respect which the men of all ages and all countries are wont in general to feel for their own peculiar institutions, for their traditional customs, and for the wisdom or the virtues of their forefathers, had almost ceased to exist among the educated classes. Nothing was spoken of but the decrepitude and incoherence of existing institutions, the vices and corruption of existing society.

Traces of this state of mind may be discovered throughout the literature of Germany. The philosophy, the history, the poetry, even the novels of the time, are full of it. Every product of the intellect was so stamped by it, that the books of that epoch bear a mark that distinguishes them from the works of every other age. All the memoirs of that day, which gave birth to a profusion of memoirs—all the correspondence of the time which has been published—attest a state of mind so different from the present, that nothing short of this concurrence of certain and abundant evidence could convince us of the fact.

Every page of Schlosser’s ‘History of the Eighteenth Century’ reveals this general presentiment, that a great change was about to take place in the condition of mankind.

George Forster, one of the companions of Captain Cook, to whose expedition he had been attached with his father as a naturalist, writes to Jacobi in 1779: ‘Things cannot remain as they are: this is announced by every symptom in the world of science, in the world of theology, and in that of politics. Much as my heart has hitherto desired peace, not less do I desire to see the arrival of this crisis on which such mighty hopes are founded.’85 ‘Europe,’ he writes again in 1782, ‘seems to me on the brink of a horrible revolution; in truth the mass is so corrupt that bleeding may well be necessary.’86 ‘The present state of society,’ said Jacobi, ‘presents to me nothing but the aspect of a dead and stagnant sea: that is why I could desire an inundation, be it what it may, even of barbarians, to sweep away this reeking marsh and lay bare a fresh soil.’87 ‘We are living in the midst of shattered institutions and forms’—a monstrous chaos which everywhere reflects an image of dismay88 and of death.’ These things were written in a pretty country house, by wealthy people, surrounded by their literary friends, who passed their time in endless philosophical discussions which affected, excited, and inflamed them till they shed torrents of daily tears—in imagination.

It was not the princes, the ministers, the rulers, or those, in short, who, in different capacities, were directing the march of affairs, who perceived that some great change was at hand. The idea that government could become quite different from what government then was,—that all which had lasted so long might be destroyed and superseded by that which as yet only existed in the brain of a few men of letters—the thought that the existing order of things might be overthrown to establish a new order in the midst of disorder and ruin, would have appeared to them an absurd illusion and a fantastic dream. The gradual improvement of society seemed to them the limit of the possible.

It is a common error of the people who are called wise and practical in ordinary times, to judge by certain rules the men whose very object is to change or to destroy those rules. When a time is come at which passion takes the guidance of affairs, the beliefs of men of experience are less worthy of consideration than the schemes which engage the imagination of dreamers.

It is curious to see in the official correspondence of that epoch, civil officers of ability and foresight laying their plans, framing their measures, and calculating scientifically the use they will make of their powers, at a time when the Government they are serving, the laws they are applying, the society they are living in, and they themselves shall be no more.

‘What scenes are passing in France!’ writes Johann Müller on the 6th of August, 1789.89 ‘Blessed be the impression they produce on the nations and on their masters! I know there are excesses, but the cost of a free constitution is not too great. Is not a storm which purifies the air better than an atmosphere tainted as with the plague, even though here and there it should strike a few heads?’ ‘What an event,’ exclaimed Fox, ‘how much the greatest it is that ever happened in the world! and how much the best!’90

Can we be surprised that this conception of the Revolution as a general uprising of humanity, a conception which enlarged and invigorated so many small and feeble souls, should have taken possession at once of the mind of France, when even other countries partook of it? Nor is it astonishing that the first excesses of the Revolution should have affected the best patriots of France so little, when even foreigners who were not excited by the struggle or embittered by personal grievances could extend so much indulgence to them.

Let it not be supposed that this sort of abhorrence of themselves and of their age, which had thus strangely fallen upon almost all the inhabitants of the continent of Europe, was a superficial or a transient sentiment.

Ten years later, when the French Revolution had inflicted on Germany all sorts of violent transformations accompanied by death and destruction, even then, one of those Germans, in whom enthusiasm for France had turned to bitter hatred, exclaims, mindful of the past, in a confidential effusion, ‘What was is no more. What new edifice will be raised on the ruins, I know not. But this I know, that it would be the direst calamity if this tremendous era were again to give birth to the apathy and the worn-out forms of the past.’ ‘Yes,’ replied the person to whom these words were addressed, ‘the old social body must perish.’91

The years which preceded the French Revolution were, in almost every part of Europe, years of great national prosperity. The useful arts were everywhere more cultivated. The taste for enjoyments, which follow in the train of affluence, was more diffused. Industry and commerce, which supply these wants, were improving and spreading. It seemed as if the life of man becoming thus more busy and more sensual, the human mind would lose sight of those abstract studies which embrace society, and would centre more and more on the petty cares of daily life. But the contrary took place. Throughout Europe, almost as much as in France, all the educated classes were plunged in philosophical discussions and dogmatical theories. Even in places ordinarily the most remote from speculations of this nature, the same train of argument was eagerly pursued. In the most trading cities of Germany, in Hamburg, Lubeck, and Dantzig, the merchants, traders, and manufacturers would meet after the labours of the day to discuss amongst themselves the great questions which affect the existence, the condition, the happiness of man. Even the women, amidst their petty household cares, were sometimes distracted by these enigmas of life. ‘We thought,’ says Perthes, ‘that by becoming highly enlightened, one might become perfect.’

‘Der König sey der beste Mann, sonst sey der bessere König,’

said the poet Claudius.

This period too gave birth to a new passion, embodied in a new word—cosmopolitism—which was to swallow up patriotism. It seemed as if all classes were bent on escaping whenever they could from the care of their private affairs, to give themselves up to the grand interests of humanity.

As in France the love of letters filled a large space even in the busiest times, the publication of a new book was an event of interest in the smallest towns as well as in the chief cities. Everything was a subject of inquiry; everything was a source of emotion. Treasures of passion seemed accumulated in every breast, which sought but an occasion to break forth.

Thus, a traveller who had been round the globe was an object of general attention. When Forster went to Germany in 1774, he was received with enthusiasm. Not a town but gave him an ovation. Crowds flocked about him to hear his adventures from his own lips, but still more to hear him describe the unknown countries he had visited, and the strange customs of the men among whom he had been living. Was not their savage simplicity worthy more than all our riches and our arts: were not their instincts above our virtues?92

A certain unfrocked Lutheran priest, one Basidow, ignorant, quarrelsome, and a drunkard, a caricature of Luther, excogitated a new system of schools which was, he said, to change the ideas and manners of his countrymen. He put forth his scheme in coarse and intemperate language. The object, as he took care to announce, was not only to regenerate Germany, but the human race. Forthwith, all Germany is in movement. Princes, nobles, commons, towns, cities, abet the great innovator. Lords and ladies of high estate write to Basidow to ask his advice. Mothers of families place his books in the hands of their children. The old schools founded by Melanchthon are forsaken. A college, designed to educate these reformers of mankind, is founded under the name of the ‘Philanthropian,’ blazes for a moment, and disappears. The enthusiasm drops, leaving behind it confusion and doubt.

The real spirit of the age was to reject every form of mysticism, and to cling in all things to the evidence most palpable to the understanding. Nevertheless, in this violent perturbation of mind, men, not knowing as yet which way to look, cast themselves suddenly on the supernatural. On the eve of the French Revolution, Europe was covered with strange fraternities and secret societies, which only revived under new names delusions that had long been forgotten. Such, were the doctrines of Swedenborg, of the Martinists, of the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, the disciples of Strict Abstinence, the Mesmerists, and many other varieties of similar sects. Many of these sects originally contemplated no more than the private advantage of their members. But all of them now aspired to embrace the destinies of mankind. Most of them had been, at the time of their birth, wholly philosophical or religious: all now turned at once to politics, and were absorbed in them. By different means they all proposed to bring about the regeneration of society and the reform of governments. It is especially worthy of remark that this sense of unrest, this perturbation of the human mind which I am describing, did not manifest itself in the lower classes, which bore nevertheless the burden of existing abuses. Those classes were still motionless and inert. Not the poor man, but the rich man was tossing in this feverish condition: the movement sunk not lower than the upper rank of the middle classes. Nowadays secret societies are filled by poor workmen, obscure artisans, or ignorant peasants. At the time I am speaking of they consisted entirely of princes, great nobles, capitalists, merchants, and men of letters.

When in 1786 the secret papers of the Illuminati were seized in the hands of their principal chiefs, many anarchical documents were found among them, in which personal property was denounced as the source of all evil, and absolute equality of conditions was vaunted. In the archives of the same sect a list of adepts was found. It consisted entirely of the most distinguished names in Germany, princes, great nobles, and ministers: the founder of the sect was himself a professor of canon law. The King of Poland and Prince Frederick of Prussia were Rosicrucians. The new King of Prussia, who had just succeeded Frederick the Great on the throne, immediately sent for the leading Rosicrucians and intrusted to them important missions.93 ‘It is asserted,’ says Mounier94 in his books on these sects, ‘that several great personages of France and Germany, some of whom were Protestants, took the tonsure in order to be admitted into the sect of Strict Observance.’

Another thing well worthy of notice: it was a time when the sciences had discredited the marvellous, as they became more positive and more certain—when the inexplicable was easily taken for the false, and when in all things reason claimed to supersede authority, reality the imaginary, and free inquiry faith: nevertheless there was not one of the sects I have just mentioned but had some point of contact with the supernatural; all of them ended in some fantastic conclusion. Some of them were imbued with mystical conceptions: others fancied they had found out the secret to change some of the laws of nature. At that moment every species of enthusiasm might pass for science, every dreamer could find listeners, every impostor could find believers: nothing is more characteristic of the perplexed and agitated condition of men’s minds, running to and fro, like a benighted traveller who has lost his way, and who, instead of getting onward, doubles back upon his own footsteps. And it was not the common herd of the people who were at the head of these extravagances; men of letters, men of learning believed in alchemy, in the visible action of the demon, in the transmutation of metals, in the apparition of ghosts. Strange instance of belief in every form of absurdity, growing amidst the decay of religious convictions—of men putting faith in every invisible and supernatural influence, except in that of God!

These mountebanks were the especial delight of sovereigns. Forster writes to his father from Cassel in 1782: ‘An old French adventuress is here who shows spirits to the Landgrave, and receives 150 louis d’or. He is vain enough to think that the devil may take the trouble to tempt him in person. She has with her another Frenchman who casts out bad spirits from the afflicted,’ etc. etc. Great monarchs had at their courts charlatans of the first water—Cagliostro, the Count de St. Germain or Mesmer: the little princes were fain to put up, for want of better, with ridiculous little tricksters.

The aspect of this society was nevertheless one of the most imposing which has ever been presented to the world, in spite of the errors and follies of the age. Never had humanity been prouder of itself than at that moment, for at no other moment, from the birth of all the ages, had man believed in his own omnipotence. The whole of Europe resembled a camp, awakening at break of day, bustling at first in different directions, until the rising sun points out the destined track and illuminates the road of march. Alas! how little do those who come at the close of a great revolution resemble those who begin it,—full of lofty hopes, of generous designs, of stores of energy they are ready to pour forth, of noble delusions, of unselfish disinterestedness. Many contemporary writers, unable to discern the general causes which had produced the strange subversion of society they were witnessing, attributed it to a conspiracy of secret societies.95 As if any private conspiracy could ever explain a movement of such depth and so destructive of human institutions. The secret societies were certainly not the cause of the Revolution: but they must be considered as one of the most conspicuous signs of its approach.

They were not the only signs.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the American Revolution was hailed with ardent sympathy in France alone: the noise of it went forth to the ends of Europe: everywhere it was regarded as a beacon. Steffens, who fifty years later took so active a part in rousing Germany against France, relates in his Memoirs, that in early childhood the first thing that excited him was the cause of American independence.

‘I still remember vividly,’ says he, ‘what happened at Elsinore and in the roadstead, on the day when that peace was signed which secured the triumph of freedom. The day was fine; the roadstead was full of people of all nations. We awaited with eager impatience the very dawn. All the ships were dressed—the masts ornamented with pennons, everything covered with flags; the weather was calm, with just wind enough to cause the gay bunting to flutter in the breeze; the boom of cannon, the cheers of the crews on deck, completed the festal character of the day. My father had invited some friends to his table; they drank to the victory of the Americans and the triumph of the popular cause, whilst a dim presentiment that great events would result from this triumph mingled with their rejoicings. It was the bright and cheering dawn of a bloody day. My father sought to imbue us with the love of political freedom. Contrary to the habit of the house, he had us brought to table; where he impressed on us the importance of the event we were witnessing, and bade us drink with him and his guests to the welfare of the new commonwealth.’96

Of the men who, in every corner of old Europe, felt themselves thus moved by the deeds of a small community in the New World, not one thoroughly understood the deep and secret cause of his own emotion, yet all heard a signal in that distant sound. What it announced was still unknown. It was the voice of John crying in the wilderness that new times were at hand.

Seek not to assign to these facts which I have been relating any peculiar cause: all of them were different symptoms of the same social disease. On all hands the old institutions and the old powers no longer fitted accurately the new condition and the new wants of man. Hence that strange unrest which led even the great and the worldly to regard their own state of life as intolerable. Hence that universal thirst for change, which came unbidden to every mind, though no one knew as yet how that change could be brought about. An internal and spontaneous impulse seemed to shake at once the whole fabric of society, and disturbed to their foundations the ideas and habits of every man. To hold back was felt to be impossible: yet none knew on which side they would incline; and the whole of Europe was in the condition of a huge mass which oscillates before it falls.

CHAPTER II

HOW THIS VAGUE PERTURBATION OF THE HUMAN MIND SUDDENLY BECAME IN FRANCE A POSITIVE PASSION, AND WHAT FORM THIS PASSION AT FIRST ASSUMED

In the year 1787 this vague perturbation of the human mind, which I have just described, and which had for some time past been agitating the whole of Europe without any precise direction, suddenly became in France an active passion directed to a positive object. But, strange to say, this object was not that which the French Revolution was to attain: and the men who were first and most keenly affected by this new passion were precisely those whom the Revolution was to devour.

At first, indeed, it was not so much the equality of rights as political freedom which was looked for; and the Frenchmen who were first moved themselves, and who set society in motion, belonged not to the lower but to the highest order. Before it sunk down to the people, this new-born detestation of absolute and arbitrary power burst forth amongst the nobles, the clergy, the magistracy, the most privileged of the middle classes,—those in short who, coming nearest in the State to the master, had more than others the means of resisting him and the hope of sharing his power.

But why was the hatred of despotism the first symptom? Was it not because in this state of general dissatisfaction, the common ground on which it was most easy to agree was that of war against a political power, which either oppressed every one alike or supported that by which every one was oppressed; and because the noble and the rich found in liberty the only mode of expressing this dissatisfaction, which they felt more than any other class?

I shall not relate how Louis XVI. was led by financial considerations to convoke about him, in an assembly, the members of the nobility, the clergy, and the upper rank of the commons, and to submit to this body of ‘Notables’ the state of affairs. I am discussing history, not narrating it. It is well known that this assembly, which met at Versailles on the 22nd February, 1787, consisted of nine peers of France, twenty noblemen, eight privy councillors, four masters of requests, ten marshals of France, thirteen archbishops or bishops, eighteen chief judges, twenty-two municipal officers of different cities, twelve deputies of the provinces which had retained their local estates, and some other magistrates—in all from 125 to 130 members.97 Henry IV. had once before used the same means to postpone the meeting of the States-General and to obtain without them a sort of public sanction to his measures: but the times were changed. In 1596 France was at the close of a long revolution, wearied by her efforts, and distrustful of her powers, seeking nothing but rest, and asking of her rulers no more than an external deference. The Notables caused her without difficulty to forget the States-General. But in 1787 they only revived the recollection of them in her memory. In the reign of Henry IV., these princes, these nobles, these bishops, these wealthy commoners who were summoned to advise the King, were still the masters of society. They could therefore control the movement they had set on foot. Under Louis XVI. in 1787 these same classes retained only the externals of power. We have seen that the substance of it was lost to them for ever. They were, so to speak, hollow bodies, resonant but easily crushed: still capable of exciting the people, incapable of directing it.