The Ancient Regime Part 2

[Footnote 1106: "Polyptique d'Irminon," by Guerard. In this work we see the prosperity of the domain belonging to the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres at the end of the eighth century. According to M. Guerard's statistics, the peasantry of Paliseau were about as prosperous in the time of Charlemagne as at the present day.]

[Footnote 1107: Taine's definition would also fit contemporary (1999) drugs and video entertainment which also provide mankind with both hope, pleasure and entertainment. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1108: There are twenty-five thousand lives of the saints, between the sixth and the tenth centuries, collected by the Bollandists.--The last that are truly inspired are those of St. Francis of a.s.sisi and his companions at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

The same vivid sentiment extends down to the end of the fifteenth century in the works of Fra Angelico and Hans Memling.--The Sainte Chapelle in Paris, the upper church at a.s.sisi, Dante's Paradise, and the Fioretti, furnish an idea of these visions. As regards modern literature, the state of a believer's soul in the middle ages is perfectly described in the "Pelerinage a Kevlaar," by Henri Heine, and in "Les Reliques vivantes," by Tourgueneff.]

[Footnote 1109: As, for example, Tertulle, founder of the Platagenet family, Rollo, Duke of Normandy, Hugues, Abbot of St. Martin of Tours and of St. Denis.]

[Footnote 1110: See the "Cantilenes" of the tenth century in which the "Chansons de Geste" are foreshadowed.]

[Footnote 1111: Laws governing the feudal system (1372) where the feudal lord is unable to transmit his property by testament but has to leave them to the next holder of the t.i.tle. The "mainmortables" were serfs who belonged to the property. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1112: See in the "Voyages du Caillaud," in Nubia and Abyssinia, the raids for slaves made by the Pacha's armies; Europe presented about the same spectacle between the years 800 and 900.]

[Footnote 1113: See the zeal of subjects for their lords in the historians of the middle ages; Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix, and Guy, Comte de Flandres in Froissart; Raymond de Beziers and Raymond de Toulouse, in the chronicle of Toulouse. This profound sentiment of small local patrimonics is apparent at each provincial a.s.sembly in Normandy, Brittany, Franche-Comte, etc.]

[Footnote 1114: Suger, Life of Louis VI.]

[Footnote 1115: "Les Grand Jours d'Auvergne," by Flechier, ed. Cheruel.

The last feudal brigand, the Baron of Plumartin, in Poitou, was taken, tried, and beheaded under Louis XV in 1756.]

[Footnote 1116: As late as Louis XV a proces verbal is made of a number of cures of the King's evil.]

[Footnote 1117: "Memoires of Madame Campan," I. 89; II. 215.]

[Footnote 1118: In 1785 an Englishman visiting France boasts of the political liberty enjoyed in his country. As an offset to this the French reproach the English for having decapitated Charles I., and "glory in having always maintained an inviolable attachment to their own king; a fidelity, a respect which no excess or severity on his part has ever shaken." ("A Comparative View of the French and of the English Nation," by John Andrews, p.257.)]

[Footnote 1119: Memoirs of D'Augeard, private secretary of the Queen, and a former farmer-general.]

[Footnote 1120: The following is the reply of Louis XV. to the Parliament of Paris, March 3, 1766, in a lit de justice: "The sovereign authority is vested in my person. . . The legislative power, without dependence and without division, exists in myself alone. Public security emanates wholly from myself; I am its supreme custodian. My people are one only with me; national rights and interests, of which an attempt is made to form a body separate from those of the monarch, are necessarily combined with my own, and rests only in my hands."]

CHAPTER II. THE PRIVILEGED CLa.s.sES.

I. Number of the Privileged Cla.s.ses.

The privileged cla.s.ses number about 270,000 persons, comprising of the n.o.bility, 140,000 and of the clergy 130,000.[1201] This makes from 25,000 to 30,000 n.o.ble families; 23,000 monks in 2,500 monasteries, and 37,000 nuns in 1,500 convents, and 60,000 curates and vicars in as many churches and chapels. Should the reader desire a more distinct impression of them, he may imagine on each square league of territory[1202], and to each thousand of inhabitants, one n.o.ble family in its weatherc.o.c.k mansion. In each village there is a curate and his church, and, every six or seven leagues, a community of men or of women. We have here the ancient chieftains and founders of France; thus ent.i.tled, they still enjoy many possessions and many rights.

II. Their Possessions, Capital, and Revenue.

Let us always keep in mind what they were, in order to comprehend what they are. Great as their advantages may be, these are merely the remains of still greater advantages. This or that bishop or abbot, this or that count or duke, whose successors make their bows at Versailles, was formerly the equals of the Carlovingians and the first Capets. A Sire de Montlhery held King Philippe I in check.[1203] The abbey of St. Germain des Pres possessed 430,000 hectares of land (about 900,000 acres), almost the extent of an entire department. We need not be surprised that they remained powerful, and, especially, rich; no stability is greater than that of an a.s.sociative body. After eight hundred years, in spite of so many strokes of the royal ax, and the immense change in the culture of society, the old feudal root lasts and still vegetates. We remark it first in the distribution of property.[1204] A fifth of the soil belongs to the crown and the communes, a fifth to the Third-Estate, a fifth to the rural population, a fifth to the n.o.bles and a fifth to the clergy. Accordingly, if we deduct the public lands, the privileged cla.s.ses own one-half of the kingdom. This large portion, moreover, is at the same time the richest, for it comprises almost all the large and imposing buildings, the palaces, castles, convents, and cathedrals, and almost all the valuable movable property, such as furniture, plate, objects of art, the acc.u.mulated masterpieces of centuries.--We can judge of it by an estimate of the portion belonging to the clergy. Its possessions, capitalized, amount to nearly 4,000,000,000 francs.[1205]

Income from this amounts to 80 or 100 millions. To this must be added the dime (or t.i.thes), 123 millions per annum, in all 200 millions, a sum which must be doubled to show its equivalent at the present day. We must also add the chance contributions and the usual church collections.[1206] To fully realize the breadth of this golden stream let us look at some of its affluents. 399 monks at Premontre estimate their revenue at more than 1,000,000 livres, and their capital at 45,000,000. The Provincial of the Dominicans of Toulouse admits, for his two hundred and thirty-six monks, "more than 200,000 livres net revenue, not including the convent and its enclosure; also, in the colonies, real estate, Negroes and other effects, valued at several millions."

The Benedictines of Cluny, numbering 298, enjoy an income of 1,800,000 livres. Those of Saint-Maur, numbering 1672, estimate the movable property of their churches and houses at 24,000,000, and their net revenue at 8 millions, "without including that which accrues to Messieurs the abbots and priors commendatory," which means as much and perhaps more. Dom Rocourt, abbot of Clairvaux, has from 300,000 to 400,000 livres income; the Cardinal de Rohan, archbishop of Strasbourg, more than 1,000,000.[1207] In Franche-Comte, Alsace and Roussillon the clergy own one-half of the territory, in Hainaut and Artois, three-quarters, in Cambresis fourteen hundred plow-areas out of seventeen hundred.[1208] Almost the whole of Le Velay belongs to the Bishop of Puy, the abbot of La Chaise-Dieu, the n.o.ble chapter of Brionde, and to the seigniors of Polignac. The canons of St. Claude, in the Jura, are the proprietors of 12,000 serfs or 'mainmorts.'[1209]

Through fortunes of the first cla.s.s we can imagine those of the second.

As along with the n.o.ble it comprises the enn.o.bled. As the magistrates for two centuries, and the financiers for one century had acquired or purchased n.o.bility, it is clear that here are to be found almost all the great fortunes of France, old or new, transmitted by inheritance, obtained through court favors, or acquired in business. When a cla.s.s reaches the summit it is recruited out of those who are mounting or clambering up. Here, too, there is colossal wealth. It has been calculated that the possessions of the princes of the royal family, the Comtes of Artois and of Provence, the Ducs d'Orleans and de Penthievre then covered one-seventh of the territory.[1210] The princes of the blood have together a revenue of from 24 to 25 millions; the Duc d'Orleans alone has a rental of 11,500,000.[1211]--These are the vestiges of the feudal regime. Similar vestiges are found in England, in Austria, in Germany and in Russia. Proprietors.h.i.+p, indeed, survives a long time survives the circ.u.mstances on which it is founded. Sovereignty had const.i.tuted property; divorced from sovereignty it has remained in the hands formerly sovereign. In the bishop, the abbot and the count, the king respected the proprietor while overthrowing the rival, and, in the existing proprietor a hundred traits still indicate the annihilated or modified sovereign.

III. Their Immunities.

Such is the total or partial exemption from taxation. The tax-collectors halt in their presence because the king well knows that feudal property has the same origin as his own; if royalty is one privilege seigniory is another; the king himself is simply the most privileged among the privileged. The most absolute, the most infatuated with his rights, Louis XIV, entertained scruples when extreme necessity compelled him to enforce on everybody the tax of the tenth.[1212] Treaties, precedents, immemorial custom, reminiscences of ancient rights again restrain the fiscal hand. The clearer the resemblance of the proprietor to the ancient independent sovereign the greater his immunity.--In some places a recent treaty guarantees him by his position as a stranger, by his almost royal extraction. "In Alsace foreign princes in possession, with the Teutonic order and the order of Malta, enjoy exemption from all real and personal contributions." "In Lorraine the chapter of Remiremont has the privilege of a.s.sessing itself in all state impositions."[1213]

Elsewhere he is protected by the maintenance of the provincial a.s.semblies, and through the incorporation of the n.o.bility with the soil: in Languedoc and in Brittany the commoners alone paid the taille[1214]--Everywhere else his quality preserved him from it, him, his chateau and the chateau's dependencies; the taille reaches him only through his farmers. And better still, it is sufficient that he himself should work, or his steward, to communicate to the land his original independence. As soon as he touches the soil, either personally or through his agent, he exempts four plowing-areas (quatre charrues), three hundred arpents,[1215] which in other hands would pay 2,000 francs tax. Besides this he is exempt on "the woods, the meadows, the vines, the ponds and the enclosed land belonging to the chateau, of whatever extent it may be." Consequently, in Limousin and elsewhere, in regions princ.i.p.ally devoted to pasturage or to vineyards, he takes care to manage himself, or to have managed, a certain portion of his domain; in this way he exempts it from the tax collector.[1216] There is yet more.

In Alsace, through an express covenant he does not pay a cent of tax.

Thus, after the a.s.saults of four hundred and fifty years, taxation, the first of fiscal instrumentalities, the most burdensome of all, leaves feudal property almost intact.[1217]--For the last century, two new tools, the capitation-tax and the vingtiemes, appear more effective, and yet are but little more so.--First of all, through a masterstroke of ecclesiastical diplomacy, the clergy diverts or weakens the blow. As it is an organization, holding a.s.semblies, it is able to negotiate with the king and buy itself off. To avoid being taxed by others it taxes itself.

It makes it appear that its payments are not compulsory contributions, but a "free gift." It obtains then in exchange a ma.s.s of concessions, is able to diminish this gift, sometimes not to make it, in any event to reduce it to sixteen millions every five years, that is to say to a little more than three millions per annum. In 1788 it is only 1,800,000 livres, and in 1789 it is refused altogether.[1218] And still better: as it borrows to provide for this tax, and as the decimes which it raises on its property do not suffice to reduce the capital and meet the interest on its debt, it has the adroitness to secure, besides, a grant from the king. Out of the royal treasury, each year, it receives 2,500,000 livres, so that, instead of paying, it receives. In 1787 it receives in this way 1,500,000 livres.-As for the n.o.bles, they, being unable to combine together, to have representatives, and to act in a public way, operate instead in a private way. They contact ministers, intendants, sub-delegates, farmer-generals, and all others clothed with authority, their quality securing attentions, consideration and favors.

In the first place, this quality exempts themselves, their dependents, and the dependents of their dependents, from drafting in the militia, from lodging soldiers, from (la corvee) laboring on the highways. Next, the capitation being fixed according to the tax system, they pay little, because their taxation is of little account. Moreover, each one brings all his credit to bear against a.s.sessments. "Your sympathetic heart,"

writes one of them to the intendant, "will never allow a father of my condition to be taxed for the vingtiemes rigidly like a father of low birth."[1219] On the other hand, as the taxpayer pays the capitation-tax at his actual residence, often far away from his estates, and no one having any knowledge of his personal income, he may pay whatever seems to him proper. There are no proceedings against him, if he is a n.o.ble; the greatest circ.u.mspection is used towards persons of high rank. "In the provinces," says Turgot, "the capitation-tax of the privileged cla.s.ses has been successively reduced to an exceedingly small matter, whilst the capitation-tax of those who are liable to the taille is almost equal to the aggregate of that tax." And finally, "the collectors think that they are obliged to act towards them with marked consideration" even when they owe; "the result of which," says Necker, "is that very ancient, and much too large amounts, of their capitation-tax remain unpaid." Accordingly, not having been able to repel the a.s.sault of the revenue services in front they evaded it or diminished it until it became almost un.o.bjectionable. In Champagne, on nearly 1,500,000 livres provided by the capitation-tax, they paid in only 14,000 livres," that is to say, "2 sous and 2 deniers for the same purpose which costs 12 sous per livre to those chargeable with the taille." According to Calonne, "if concessions and privileges had been suppressed the vingtiemes would have furnished double the amount."

In this respect the most opulent were the most skillful in protecting themselves. "With the intendants," said the Duc d'Orleans, "I settle matters, and pay about what I please," and he calculated that the provincial administration, rigorously taxing him, would cause him to lose 300,000 livres rental. It has been proved that the princes of the blood paid, for their two-twentieths, 188,000 instead of 2,400,000 livres. In the main, in this regime, exception from taxation is the last remnant of sovereignty or, at least, of independence. The privileged person avoids or repels taxation, not merely because it despoils him, but because it belittles him; it is a mark of the commoner, that is to say, of former servitude, and he resists the fisc (the revenue services) as much through pride as through interest.

IV. Their Feudal Rights.

These advantages are the remains of primitive sovereignty.

Let us follow him home to his own domain. A bishop, an abbe, a chapter of the clergy, an abbess, each has one like a lay seignior; for, in former times, the monastery and the church were small governments like the county and the duchy.--Intact on the other bank of the Rhine, almost ruined in France, the feudal structure everywhere discloses the same plan. In certain places, better protected or less attacked, it has preserved all its ancient externals. At Cahors, the bishop-count of the town had the right, on solemnly officiating, "to place his helmet, cuira.s.s, gauntlets and sword on the altar."[1220] At Besancon, the archbishop-prince has six high officers, who owe him homage for their fiefs, and who attend at his coronation and at his obsequies. At Mende,[1221] the bishop, seignior-suzerain for Gevaudan since the eleventh century, appoints "the courts, ordinary judges and judges of appeal, the commissaries and syndics of the country." He disposes of all the places, "munic.i.p.al and judiciary." Entreated to appear in the a.s.sembly of the three orders of the province, he "replies that his place, his possessions and his rank exalting him above every individual in his diocese. He cannot sit under the presidency of any person; that, being seignior-suzerain of all estates and particularly of the baronies, he cannot give way to his va.s.sals." In brief that he is king, or but little short of it, in his own province. At Remiremont, the n.o.ble chapter of canonesses has, "inferior, superior, and ordinary judicature in fifty-two bans of seigniories," nominates seventy-five curacies and confers ten male canons.h.i.+ps. It appoints the munic.i.p.al officers of the town, and, besides these, three lower and higher courts, and everywhere the officials in the jurisdiction over woods and forests. Thirty-two bishops, without counting the chapters, are thus temporal seigniors, in whole or in part, of their episcopal town, sometimes of the surrounding district, and sometimes, like the bishop of St. Claude, of the entire country. Here the feudal tower has been preserved. Elsewhere it is plastered over anew, and more particularly in the appanages. In these domains, comprising more than twelve of our departments, the princes of the blood appoint to all offices in the judiciary and to all clerical livings. Being subst.i.tutes of the king they enjoy his serviceable and honorary rights. They are almost delegated kings, and for life; for they not only receive all that the king would receive as seignior, but again a portion of that which he would receive as monarch. For example, the house of Orleans collects the excises,[1222] that is to say the duty on liquors, on works in gold or silver, on manufactures of iron, on steel, on cards, on paper and starch, in short, on the entire sum-total of one of the most onerous indirect taxes. It is not surprising, if, having a nearly sovereign situation, they have a council, a chancellor, an organized debt, a court,[1223] a domestic ceremonial system, and that the feudal edifice in their hands should put on the luxurious and formal trappings which it had a.s.sumed in the hands of the king.

Let us turn to its inferior personages, to a seignior of medium rank, on his square league of ground, amidst the thousand inhabitants who were formerly his villeins or his serfs, within reach of the monastery, or chapter, or bishop whose rights intermingle with his rights. Whatever may have been done to abase him his position is still very high. He is yet, as the intendants say, "the first inhabitant;" a prince whom they have half despoiled of his public functions and consigned to his honorary and available rights, but who nevertheless remains a prince.[1224]--He has his bench in the church, and his right of sepulture in the choir; the tapestry bears his coat of arms; they bestow on him incense, "holy water by distinction." Often, having founded the church, he is its patron, choosing the curate and claiming to control him; in the rural districts we see him advancing or r.e.t.a.r.ding the hour of the parochial ma.s.s according to his fancy. If he bears a t.i.tle he is supreme judge, and there are entire provinces, Maine and Anjou, for example, where there is no fief without the judge. In this case he appoints the bailiff; the registrar, and other legal and judicial officers, attorneys, notaries, seigniorial sergeants, constabulary on foot or mounted, who draw up doc.u.ments or decide in his name in civil and criminal cases on the first trial. He appoints, moreover, a forest-warden, or decides forest offenses, and enforces the penalties, which this officer inflicts. He has his prison for delinquents of various kinds, and sometimes his forked gibbets. On the other hand, as compensation for his judicial costs, he obtains the property of the man condemned to death and the confiscation of his estate. He succeeds to the b.a.s.t.a.r.d born and dying in his seigniory without leaving a testament or legitimate children. He inherits from the possessor, legitimately born, dying in testate in his house without apparent heirs. He appropriates to himself movable objects, animate or inanimate, which are found astray and of which the owner is unknown; he claims one-half or one-third of treasure-trove, and, on the coast, he takes for himself the waif of wrecks. And finally, what is more fruitful, in these times of misery, he becomes the possessor of abandoned lands that have remained untilled for ten years.-Other advantages demonstrate still more clearly that he formerly possessed the government of the canton. Such are, in Auvergne, in Flanders, in Hainaut, in Artois, in Picardy, Alsace, and Lorraine, the dues de poursoin ou de sauvement (care or safety within the walls of a town), paid to him for providing general protection.

The dues of de guet et de garde (watch and guard), claimed by him for military protection; of afforage, are exacted of those who sell beer, wine and other beverages, whole-sale or retail. The dues of fouage, dues on fires, in money or grain, which, according to many common-law systems, he levies on each fireside, house or family. The dues of pulverage, quite common in Dauphiny-and Provence, are levied on pa.s.sing flocks of sheep. Those of the lods et ventes (lord's due), an almost universal tax, consist of the deduction of a sixth, often of a fifth or even a fourth, of the price of every piece of ground sold, and of every lease exceeding nine years. The dues for redemption or relief are equivalent to one year's income, aid that he receives from collateral heirs, and often from direct heirs. Finally, a rarer due, but the most burdensome of all, is that of acapte ou de plaid-a-merci, which is a double rent, or a year's yield of fruits, payable as well on the death of the seignior as on that of the copyholder. These are veritable taxes, on land, on movables, personal, for licenses, for traffic, for mutations, for successions, established formerly on the condition of performing a public service which he is no longer obliged to perform.

Other dues are also ancient taxes, but he still performs the service for which they are a quittance. The king, in fact, suppresses many of the tolls, twelve hundred in 1724, and the suppression is kept up. A good many still remain to the profit of the seignior,--on bridges, on highways, on fords, on boats ascending or descending, several being very lucrative, one of them producing 90,000 livres[1225]. He pays for the expense of keeping up bridge, road, ford and towpath. In like manner, on condition of maintaining the market-place and of providing scales and weights gratis, he levies a tax on provisions and on merchandise brought to his fair or to his market.--At Angouleme a forty-eighth of the grain sold, at Combourg near Saint-Malo, so much per head of cattle, elsewhere so much on wine, eatables and fish[1226] Having formerly built the oven, the winepress, the mill and the slaughterhouse, he obliges the inhabitants to use these or pay for their support, and he demolishes all constructions, which might enter into compet.i.tion with him[1227]. These, again, are evidently monopolies and octrois going back to the time when he was in possession of public authority.

Not only did he then possess the public authority but also possessed the soil and the men on it. Proprietor of men, he is so still, at least in many respects and in many provinces. "In Champagne proper, in the Senonais, in la Marche, in the Bourbonnais, in the Nivernais, in Burgundy, in Franche-Comte, there are none, or very few domains, no signs remaining of ancient servitude. . . . A good many personal serfs, or so const.i.tuted through their own grat.i.tude, or that of their progenitors, are still found."[1228] There, man is a serf, sometimes by virtue of his birth, and again through a territorial condition. Whether in servitude, or as mortmains, or as cotters, one way or another, 1,500,000 individuals, it is said, wore about their necks a remnant of the feudal collar; this is not surprising since, on the other side of the Rhine, almost all the peasantry still wear it. The seignior, formerly master and proprietor of all their goods and chattels and of all their labor, can still exact of them from ten to twelve corvees per annum and a fixed annual tax. In the barony of Choiseul near Chaumont in Champagne, "the inhabitants are required to plow his lands, to sow and reap them for his account and to put the products into his barns. Each plot of ground, each house, every head of cattle pays a quit-claim; children may inherit from their parents only on condition of remaining with them; if absent at the time of their decease he is the inheritor."

This is what was styled in the language of the day an estate "with excellent dues."--Elsewhere the seignior inherits from collaterals, brothers or nephews, if they were not in community with the defunct at the moment of his death, which community is only valid through his consent. In the Jura and the Nivernais, he may pursue fugitive serfs, and demand, at their death, not only the property left by them on his domain, but, again, the pittance acquired by them elsewhere. At Saint-Claude he acquires this right over any person that pa.s.ses a year and a day in a house belonging to the seigniory. As to owners.h.i.+p of the soil we see still more clearly that he once had entire possession of it.

In the district subject to his jurisdiction the public domain remains his private domain; roads, streets and open squares form a part of it; he has the right to plant trees in them and to take trees up. In many provinces, through a pasturage rent, he obliges the inhabitants to pay for permits to pasture their cattle in the fields after the crop, and in the open common lands, (les terres vaines et vagues). Unnavigable streams belong to him, as well as islets and acc.u.mulations formed in them and the fish that are found in them. He has the right of the chase over the whole extent of his jurisdiction, this or that commoner being sometimes compelled to throw open to him his park enclosed by walls.

One more trait serves to complete the picture. This head of the State, a proprietor of man and of the soil, was once a resident cultivator on his own small farm amidst others of the same cla.s.s, and, by this t.i.tle, he reserved to himself certain working privileges which he always retained.

Such is the right of banvin, still widely diffused, consisting of the privilege of selling his own wine, to the exclusion of all others, during thirty or forty days after gathering the crop. Such is, in Touraine, the right of preage, which is the right to send his horses, cows and oxen "to browse under guard in his subjects' meadows." Such is, finally, the monopoly of the great dove-cot, from which thousands of pigeons issue to feed at all times and seasons and on all grounds, without any one daring to kill or take them. Through another effect of the same qualification he imposes quit-claims on property on which he has formerly given perpetual leases, and, under the terms cens, censives (quit-rents), carpot (share in wine), champart (share in grain), agrier (a cash commission on general produce), terrage parciere (share of fruits). All these collections, in money or in kind, are as various as the local situations, accidents and transactions could possibly be. In the Bourbonnais he has one-quarter of the crop; in Berry twelve sheaves out of a hundred. Occasionally his debtor or tenant is a community: one deputy in the National a.s.sembly owned a fief of two hundred casks of wine on three thousand pieces of private property.[1229] Besides, through the retrait censuel (a species of right of redemption), he can "retain for his own account all property sold on the condition of remunerating the purchaser, but previously deducting for his benefit the lord's dues (lods and ventes)." The reader, finally, must take note that all these restrictions on property const.i.tute, for the seignior, a privileged credit as well on the product as on the price of the ground, and, for the copyholders, an unprescriptive, indivisible and irredeemable debt.-Such are the feudal. To form an idea of them in their totality we must always imagine the count, bishop or abbot of the tenth century as sovereign and proprietor in his own canton. The form which human society then takes grows out of the exigencies of near and constant danger with a view to local defense. By subordinating all interests to the necessities of living, in such a way as to protect the soil by fixing on the soil, through property and its enjoyment, a troop of brave men under the leaders.h.i.+p of a brave chieftain. The danger having pa.s.sed away the structure became dilapidated. For a pecuniary compensation the seigniors allowed the economical and tenacious peasant to pick off it a good many stones. Through constraint they suffered the king to appropriate to himself the public portion. The primitive foundation remains, property as organized in ancient times, the fettered or exhausted land supporting a social conformation that has melted away, in short, an order of privileges and of thralldom of which the cause and the purpose have disappeared. [1230]

V. They may be justified by local and general services.

All this does not suffice to render this order detrimental or even useless. In reality, the local chief who no longer performs his ancient service may perform a new one in exchange for it. Inst.i.tuted for war when life was militant, he may serve in quiet times when the regime is pacific, while the advantage to the nation is great in which this transformation is accomplished; for, retaining its chiefs, it is relieved of the uncertain and perilous operation which consists in creating others. There is nothing more difficult to establish than a government, that is to say, a stable government: this involves the command of some and the obedience of all, which is against nature. That a man in his study, often a feeble old person, should dispose of the lives and property of twenty or thirty million men, most of whom he has never seen; that he should order them to pay away a tenth or a fifth of their income and they should do it; that he should order them to go and slaughter or be slaughtered and that they should go; that they should thus continue for ten years, twenty years, through every kind of trial, defeat, misery and invasion, as with the French under Louis XIV, the English under Pitt, the Prussians under Frederick II., without either sedition or internal disturbances, is certainly a marvelous thing. And, for a people to remain free it is essential that they should be ready to do this always. Neither this fidelity nor this concord is due to sober reflection (la raison raisonnante); reason is too vacillating and too feeble to bring about such a universal and energetic result. Abandoned to itself and suddenly restored to a natural condition, the human flock is capable only of agitation, of mutual strife until pure force at length predominates, as in barbarous times, and until, amidst the dust and outcry, some military leader rises up who is, generally, a butcher.

Historically considered it is better to continue so than to begin over again. Hence, especially when the majority is uncultivated, it is beneficial to have chiefs designated beforehand through the hereditary custom by which people follow them, and through the special education by which they are qualified. In this case the public has no need to seek for them to obtain them. They are already at hand, in each canton, visible, accepted beforehand; they are known by their names, their t.i.tle, their fortune, their way of living; deference to their authority is established. They are almost always deserving of this authority; born and brought up to exercise it they find in tradition, in family example and in family pride, powerful ties that nourish public spirit in them; there is some probability of their comprehending the duties with which their prerogative endows them.