Edmund Burke, who was followed by Hippolyte Tame, criticized those who sat in the Constituent Assembly for disrupting French society in order to apply abstract principles divorced from reality. Whether the principles of 1789 embody universal values is not at issue here, but they released new energy and moulded a society which endured. And if the Assembly’s members had read the philosophes, their educations neither obstructed nor weakened their grasp of events. Threatened with counter-revolution and outdistanced by the people, dealing cautiously with parish priests and Patriot nobles, with economic interests and especially with the colonials, the deputies never ceased to take account of circumstances. Indeed, it was for reflecting circumstances too closely that parts of their work were to prove ephemeral.
With the Old Regime destroyed, the representatives were bent on making their victory legitimate: force had been put at the service of law. At the same time, Frenchmen would be instructed in the principles of the new order through a ‘national catechism’, as Barnave termed it. The Americans had taught them how to go about it, and the French in turn promulgated a Declaration of Rights. As we shall see, however, the Declaration was not the whole of their thought: we must look further, in their laws and in the preamble to the constitution of 1791.
They had the American bills of rights before them, and Lafayette submitted his draft to Jefferson, who was then representing the United States at Versailles. A literal comparison of texts, however, does not reveal the deeper kinship they bear. In affirming the dignity of the human person and the value of individual initiative, the declarations of both countries carry the imprint that Greek philosophy and Christianity stamped upon European thought. They appeal to the protection of the Supreme Being, and most of their drafters, believers in revealed religion or followers of spiritualistic metaphysics, regarded liberty as the result and guarantee of the soul’s free will. To this interpretation, historic observation adds another: individualism symbolizes European man’s impulse to surmount all obstacles and conquer the world, to master nature through knowledge and invention, ultimately to control his conduct, government, and society. In this sense the new principles defined an ideal—the earthly well-being of man become his own God, a condition slowly drawing near as a reward for centuries of striving.
The work of the Constituents none the less shows originality. They closely joined equality to liberty, and by bringing the resounding collapse of privileges and feudalism the popular revolution highlighted equality as the Anglo-Saxons had not done. The revolutionaries and even the bourgeoisie valued the attainment of equality above all else. In their eyes, the free man was independent of all his fellows except those invested by laws voluntarily approved by the community with power to command in the community’s name. To the French peasant, disappearance of manorial dominance remained the primary result of the Revolution.
The principles of 1789 may thus be reduced to two. First, ‘Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.’ They are masters of their persons; they may exercise their physical and intellectual powers freely, provided they respect the liberty of others. They may speak and write, work and invent, acquire and possess. Law is the same for all. Professions and public offices are open to everyone regardless of birth. Second, the state does not find its end in itself; its reason for being is to preserve the citizen’s enjoyment of his rights. The sovereign is the citizenry, the nation, which delegates authority to a responsible government. If the state fails in its duty the citizens will resist oppression.
Like America’s insurgents, the Constituents invoked natural right based on philosophic, non-temporal values, which required expression in universal terms. The general formulas they employed have been used by some as a pretext to represent them as ideologues lost in abstractions. The ‘historical’ character of the Declaration is none the less evident: under each article its authors—and their contemporaries— mentally placed concrete facts which had caused their sufferings. No man is to be arrested and detained without judicial order—that is to say, no more lettres de cachet, the king’s administrative orders for arrest. Citizens are equal before the law—that is, privileges are abolished. Resistance to oppression is legitimate—thus, the insurrection of July 14 is justified. As Aulard has said, the Declaration was above all the ‘death certificate’ of the Old Regime.
The Assembly did not proclaim the principles in logical order or with equal emphasis. Freedom of the individual takes up three articles; freedom of conscience seems just as important to us, yet they were content with only a discreet allusion to religious tolerance, inserted out of respect for the Patriot priests. Gaps in the Declaration were equally conclusive. Should not property have been defined, the terms of its inheritance stipulated? It is only mentioned and not defined in Article 2. The question was not asked; the subject was not touched upon again until Article 17, added at the last moment, implicitly confirming redemption of manorial dues by requiring a just indemnity, to be previously determined, in cases of expropriation for reasons of public utility. Although economic freedom ranked first with the bourgeoisie, it was not proclaimed until 1791. This was because the Old Regime no longer threatened economic liberty and because the Third Estate was no longer united in its views towards gilds. The rights of assembly and petition were also omitted, and not until 1791 was a system of public education and poor relief promised. All that involved the future, not the past.
The principles proclaimed to condemn the Old Regime nevertheless announced a new order. There could be little debate over applying the principles to the old system, since everyone censured those circumstances towards which the principles were aimed. But the principles were vague concerning a new system, and as a result were subject to controversy. Certain deputies had argued that the Declaration should not be published until the constitution was drawn up so that the two could be reconciled. Others proposed that at least the Declaration should be expanded. Sieyes wanted to block the road to social equality by stipulating that equality did not extend to means. Abbé Grégoire wanted the duties of citizens to be listed along with their rights. These proposals were overruled by the majority, a fact which shows another aspect of the Declaration: in the minds of its authors, its meaning was not subject to debate. Warnings were considered groundless. It was the achievement of a victorious class, certain of its future, sure that the order it conceived was in accord with natural law or the rational will of God and would assure eternal well-being to humanity.
It is no less true that in decreeing liberty and equality of rights this class served its own interest and at the same time succeeded in attracting countless followers to the Revolution. By opening the gates to individual effort, to intelligence, to the spirit of enterprise, the bourgeoisie called upon the most capable to come forth from the mass and seize society’s economic and political leadership. Stimulated by competition, the selective process would rescue society from the senility that inevitably accompanied hereditary succession. By extending to all the invitation for each to try his luck, the bourgeoisie awakened fresh hope, which generates energy. The Revolution’s disruptive effects brought extraordinary force to such promises. A huge amount of land was put up for sale. Fiduciary currency multiplied assets and opened up wide horizons to speculation. Corporate ownership was abolished and perpetual leases ended; wealth was to be continually divided through equality of inheritances and suppression of the law of primogeniture, of entailed properties and trusts. In the future all goods would be available to those who had put forth the effort to acquire them. For the poor but educated, new prospects were unveiled with expanding public employment, periodic renewal of the political staff, development of journalism, advancement of learning, and promotion of machine industry. The appeal to personal initiative, issued in the face of a monarchical Europe incapable of throwing off the fetters that checked and discouraged social growth, was for the Revolution—as it was afterwards for modern society—an incomparable source of life and power. Managers, scholars, and generals defended the Revolution; in time it absorbed all who welcomed the chance to prove their talents and make a personal contribution.
The competitive unleashing of individualism involved certain inescapable results. The strong would thrust the weak aside—and in many cases the strong were the wealthy and their heirs. Equality of rights was proclaimed, and each man was left to find the means to enjoy those rights. Disenchantment was soon to set in. But concentrated capital did not yet govern the economy; not all those without inheritance at first despaired of the future. Further, the Third Estate’s solidarity in face of the aristocracy entertained a sense of unity and fraternity that partly disguised the deeper antagonism of its classes. Liberty and equality thus worked irresistible charm upon imaginations. The French people believed that their existence would improve, that their children, if not they themselves, would live in more favourable circumstances; they even hoped that other peoples would live so, and all, becoming free and equal, would be for ever reconciled. Peace would then regenerate a world freed from oppression and poverty. The mythic character of the French Revolution unfolded. A cause so noble awoke an ardour that the need for sacrifice extinguished in many, but moved others to feats of heroism and spread through the world. Michel Beaupuy brought the good news to Wordsworth before setting out to combat tyrants, and the dream still glows in the verses of the Prelude. The Revolution yoked realistic energy to enthusiasm, a twofold strength that was the secret of its triumph. In every land it awakened the minds and stirred the souls of men who forthwith offered themselves as its publicists.
At least a part of the bourgeoisie shared these hopes. It did not look upon itself as a caste, and even believed that it had suppressed classes by destroying orders and opening its ranks to all. But it never lost sight of existent realities or of the pre-eminent position it planned to occupy. To make the rights of man its challenge to the Old Regime, it declared them natural and inalienable. Were they therefore anterior to society? Were they recognized in all men? Were they unaffected even by national sovereignty? Conflicting opinions were delivered on various occasions, and the debate was never resolved. But in practice the realistic mind applied principles according to circumstances, placed public safety first, and restricted the universal content of precepts announced. The Declaration noted that rights were governed by law; no matter how absolute they seemed, they became relative, since proclaiming them did not amount to codifying them, but expressed an ideal, a direction of intent whose scope was to be determined by circumstances and, inevitably, by the interests of the ruling class. There is abundant proof that the Constituents thought themselves free to apply their principles in varying ways, even to postpone the consequences or deny them altogether.
Where individual liberty was concerned, the Assembly showed its loyalty to the Declaration by reforming criminal procedure, one of its finest titles to honour. Arrest required judicial order unless a criminal was caught in the act. Within twenty-four hours the judge would call the accused before him and would advise him to seek or would assign him a lawyer, who would have free access to his client. Judges were deprived of the power to indict or to pronounce guilt; for these functions they were replaced by citizen juries. Written procedure, the former process according to which the court made its decision on the basis of material in a dossier, was replaced with public and free debate among prosecutor, witnesses, and the accused and his lawyer.
In religious toleration the Constituent went beyond the Declaration. On December 27, 1789, Protestants were given civic rights, which were granted one month later to Jews in southern France, and to those in eastern France only on September 27, 1791. Freedom of belief, however, did not triumph completely: the Church’s register of births, marriages, and deaths was not replaced by a civil register, and public worship remained a Catholic monopoly. Because individualism distrusted associations, the corporative organization of society disappeared and most religious orders were dissolved. But, since counterrevolution threatened, political societies were allowed to flourish, their group petitions rarely being denied a hearing. Later, when the democrats began to alarm the Assembly, it adopted, shortly before breaking up, a law curbing the clubs. Economic freedom ultimately led to the suppression of trade gilds, but the bourgeoisie did not conceal the fact that it was aiming at journeymen’s associations and strikes when it prohibited combinations (coalitions).
The Declaration was clearly stretched on two points: slavery and the electoral system. Not satisfied to limit freedom by law, the Constituents thought that man should enjoy liberty according to reason and with the guidance of ‘virtue’—that is, civic spirit. Judged by this standard, a great many people seemed insufficiently mature to assume full rights; in these cases the interests of the new order together with those of the bourgeoisie led to denial or to limitation of rights. Serfdom was abolished in France without compensation, but slavery and the slave trade, essential to the maintenance of colonial plantations, remained. The deputies ended by abandoning determination of the political status of ‘people of colour’—mulattoes and free Negroes—to the colonists, whose decision could be all too easily predicted.
The Declaration recognized for ‘all’ citizens the right to take part ‘in person or through their representatives’ in the making of laws. In person? The Constituent established a wholly representative system: national sovereignty was exercised only when elections were held, and thereafter the people’s delegates wielded unlimited power. The constitution of 1791 was not even submitted to the people for ratification, and amendment, surrounded with detailed restrictions, could not be initiated by citizens. Did the deputies at least represent everyone? Not at all. Sieyes pointed out that both elector and elected carried out a function for which, as for any other function, they should qualify, and the bourgeoisie took care to conclude that qualification involved wealth, for if merit was not joined with money it could easily change into revolutionary ferment. The Assembly denied the vote to ‘passive’ citizens—domestic servants and all who did not pay taxes equivalent to at least three days’ labour—and also excluded them from the National Guard. The views of ‘active’ citizens were filtered through two-stage elections, a procedure which gave the notables even more influence, since the ‘electors’, a smaller number of men chosen in the second stage, were eligible only if they paid taxes amounting to ten livres. Finally, to be eligible for the office of national deputy, the candidate had to pay taxes of one silver mark (about fifty-two livres) and hold landed property of some sort. There were even a few who wished to make the requirements more stringent by allowing a man to hold elective office only after he had held subordinate positions in government service.
To bend principles or to contradict them altogether, sometimes in an effort to fight the aristocracy and sometimes in an attempt to restrain or court the people, was to build a structure based on reality, not on abstraction. Other examples may be found in the pages that follow.
The Declaration stipulated that all those who governed were to receive their power ‘expressly’ from the nation and that they were in turn responsible to it. Undeniably, the modern idea of a constitution took form after the October Days. Louis had only to ‘accept’ the constitution which ‘established’ his powers. Before long he was referred to as ‘first public official in the nation’, a term used not to belittle him, since public official (fonctionnaire) referred only to a political representative of the people and not the salaried employees.1 But even as a representative the king, despite the Declaration, held hereditary office, was responsible to no one, and was inviolable. No measures were taken to govern the case of high treason on his part; everyone considered that possible, but how could they admit it when agreement between king and Assembly was being celebrated? The Declaration had multiplied precautions against him: public officials were held responsible; the use of force was regulated by law; taxation was levied only with popular consent; executive, legislative, and judicial powers were separate and independent—at the risk of paralysing the government. Louis nevertheless retained significant prerogatives. A civil list of 25 million livres was placed at his disposal. He was granted diplomatic initiative and the right to appoint military leaders, ambassadors, and the six ministers according to his own choice. In defiance of separation of powers he was even given a suspensive veto to be valid for two legislatures (at least four years) over decisions of the Legislative Assembly.
Yet he was denied exercise of these wide powers. To issue an order he had to have the countersignature of a minister, who could be indicted by the Assembly and upon quitting office was required to give an account of his actions to the Assembly before he could leave Paris. The king in return had no hold over the Assembly. Permanent and inviolable, it could not be dissolved. Legislation could be initiated only by its members. The king could not veto fiscal laws, decrees of arraignment, or proclamations addressed by the Assembly to the nation. Only the Assembly had regulatory powers—that is, the power to interpret its decrees and to issue instructions about applying them. The parlements would no longer offer obstruction: courts were to obey the laws without debate, and there was no judicial body, as in the United States, to decide the constitutionality of a law. Like the purely representative system, subordination of the judiciary was to remain an unchanging principle of French public law.
The Legislative Assembly was thus made master of the state, and the Legislative Assembly was the French bourgeoisie. Despite exclusion of the estimated three million passive citizens, there remained four and a quarter million active citizens. Meeting in ‘primary assemblies’, they chose approximately 50,000 electors, who met in the main town of a district or, especially when selecting deputies, in the main town of a department. Everything was calculated to reserve seats to the notables. This constitutional monarchy was a bourgeois republic.
But it was a republic with no real government. The ministers could do nothing without the Assembly’s confidence; yet this they were unable to obtain because the king’s appointees were as suspect as the crown. Ministers were criticized in the Assembly, were summoned before it, were carefully watched by committees. The British Parliament did not appoint committees; the French Assembly multiplied its own. In addition, the Assembly received direct requests for instructions from administrative bodies and answered without consulting any minister. The administrative bodies themselves were so organized as to leave them no effective means of acting or even of obtaining compliance to their commands.
The Constituent Assembly in effect completely decentralized the administration of France. It did so gladly, because this was a way to cut off one of the king’s resources, but it also responded to the country’s heartfelt wish. Provinces and local communities, long ruled by intendants, unanimously demanded the end of that form of royal authority. In the cahiers hostility towards central power had been expressed in terms of an often narrow particularism. As has been said before, this hostility profited from the municipal revolution and after the night of August 4 did not abate. If the French surrendered local privileges and supported national unity, it was because they considered themselves thenceforth free to govern themselves.
The decree of December 14, 1789, accordingly granted wide powers to municipalities. They were to levy and collect duties, to maintain public order with direction from the National Guard; they had the right to requisition troops and proclaim martial law. They had jurisdiction over petty offences, another contradiction of separation of powers. Nevertheless, they could not do without intermediary bodies between themselves and the central government, a necessity that the drafters of the cahiers had recognized in asking for provincial estates. France was divided into eighty-three departments, the departments into districts, the districts into cantons. The monarchy had already undertaken to break down the traditional framework of provincial life by creating fiscal districts called généralités; the new organization completed that task. The immediate goal, however, was less ambitious. As Thouret described the plan in his report to the Assembly, the French simply wanted clearly defined administrative units that would group villages under the authority of easily accessible main towns where markets already existed. As soon as the principle of national representation was established, new electoral constituencies had to be created, it being generally agreed that the former bailiwicks were inadequate. Deputies of each region worked together in drafting the electoral map. There is nothing more practical or down-to-earth than their discussions.
The decree of December 22, 1789, gave each department a general council, a directory or executive body, and a procureur-général-syndic. Each district was given a council, a directory, and a procureur-syndic. The procureurs were charged with overseeing application of laws and became, to all practical purposes, secretaries-general, office directors. The ‘electors’ chose all these administrators from their own numbers; these administrative bodies also belonged to the notables; and departments were often more moderate than districts. Municipalities, in contrast, frequently showed a stronger democratic spirit than even the National Assembly because the ‘municipal body’, consisting of the mayor and a number of officials, as well as the notables and the procureur who joined them to constitute the general council of the commune, were all appointed by active citizens there, who, since those able to pay taxes amounting to ten days’ labour were hard to find in rural areas, often elected men from their own ranks despite the law. Even so, the poorer people were amazed to find that in the midst of revolutionary activity they were pushed aside—under the Old Regime they had at least taken part in local assemblies. On the other hand, during the Revolution communes were very active in public affairs, and this was one of the original features of the period.
The new organization provoked some dissatisfaction. Electoral meetings were held at relatively frequent intervals because half of the members of the administrative bodies had to stand for election every two years. The electoral meetings were time-consuming, and members had to be present to accept nomination. Most citizens lost interest. Even the ‘electors’ were not always pleased at having to finance the journey to a designated town and were reluctant to accept offices that required much time away from their own affairs. Many communes were too small to find competent municipal officials. Meetings had been postponed to a later date and then never held, and the formation of ‘large communes’, which would group several under one municipal council, was rejected because each group insisted on autonomy.
The new territorial boundaries were also the limits of administrative authority, notably court jurisdictions. Prone to litigation, the citizens of that period wanted their judges close at hand and also wanted a justice of the peace residing within the canton to handle civil trials. Districts, the next administrative level, were each given a court. Appeals were to be made from them to neighbouring district courts, because the Assembly, wishing to erase memories of the parlements, refused to create a superior jurisdiction. For criminal cases the municipality handled minor violations, justices of the peace more serious offences, and a departmental court felonies. There were two national tribunals, the Court of Appeals and the High Court. The commercial courts were preserved, but administrative disputes—which included those involving nationalized property and later the émigrés—were settled by district and departmental directories.
Venality in office was forbidden and litigants would not have tolerated royal appointment of justices from the Old Regime to the new courts. Judges were therefore elected, like administrators. The new judicial staff was usually well qualified: its members were chosen for six years and were eligible only if they had been professional lawyers for at least five years. Notaries were selected on the basis of competitive examinations. The profession of procureurs, henceforth called avoués, was opened to all, and the order of avocats disappeared. The nation might have wished to be more directly associated with the course of justice in the interest of equity, speed, and economy. The Constituent Assembly granted a jury composed of citizens only in criminal cases—in the district courts for indictment, in departmental criminal courts for deciding the offence. Civil matters could only be voluntarily arbitrated or sent to a family tribunal (tribunal de famille).1 In the former case the district court had appellate jurisdiction; in the latter it ratified the decisions.
Central authority over administrative bodies was almost entirely eliminated. The most the king could do was to suspend them, and the Assembly could reinstate them. Separating civil and criminal justice from administrative functions was an important step, yet the office of the public prosecutor was indisputably weakened by being divided among four men of different backgrounds and allegiances: the police chief; the president of the district tribunal (who presided over the indictment jury); the prosecuting magistrate (accusateur public) of the criminal court (this office like the previous one, was elective); and the king’s own commissioner, who represented the crown at each of these courts. Like the king, the Assembly had no effective means to force citizens into paying taxes or respecting the law. Elected bodies in some instances became counter-revolutionary and invoked against the Assembly the principle of resistance to oppression. Administrative decentralization would be a threat to the nation’s existence if the revolutionary crisis should deepen. The state of mind which prompted decentralization and which decentralization in turn encouraged was, basically, federalist in tendency. Fortunately for the Revolution, there was also room for initiative actions by its defenders—for what has been called Jacobin federalism.
The same principle of decentralization that favoured discord had an unfortunate influence on financial affairs. Now in arms, the people refused to pay indirect taxes and were slow in contributing the others, especially since the municipal councils did not care to force them. The Constituent has been criticized for approving abolition of indirect taxes, which alone could have filled the treasury promptly, and for undertaking to remodel other taxes. But it would have been just as difficult to collect the salt tax and the excises as to collect the tithe and manorial fees, and as for direct taxes, the previous ones could be levied only as a temporary measure, since their reform was one of the most urgent demands of the cahiers.
Land was the main source of wealth, and taxes upon it were the most important, being estimated to yield 240 million livres. In addition, the Constituent levied a tax on income and movable property (contribution personnelle et mobilière), estimated to provide 6o million livres, and a tax on commercial and industrial revenue, called the patente, which was proportional rather than fixed. In principle, these taxes were on real property and were assessed on external signs of wealth, but some taxation of office still existed in the tax on movable property. This reform provoked countless recriminations. The cahiers had asked for a land survey; the Constituent decreed that meanwhile tax registers would be based on the contributor’s declarations. This produced results within the communes—the declarations provided a fairly equitable distribution of taxes, especially since privileged groups consented on this occasion to contribute their share. But the cahiers had also attacked extreme inequalities among provinces and local communities, and without a national land survey, how could taxes be equalized? For the time being the Constituent and then the administrative bodies had to fix quotas according to the total amount paid under the old tax system, with a few corrections made by guesswork! Everyone had expected to pay less than before; instead many communes paid just as much, others sometimes more. Paradoxically, the tax on movable property weighed most heavily upon the peasants, while the town bourgeoisie still escaped with lighter amounts. Disappointment with financial reform was a grave setback to popular support of the Revolution.
Putting the new levies into operation required time, and rural municipalities had neither the desire to do it quickly nor the means to do it well. The Constituent did not hurry. Old taxes lapsed on January 1, 1791, but the land tax was not established until November 23, 1790; taxes on movable property followed at the beginning of 1791, the patente on March 2. The ‘patriotic contribution’ requiring each person to pay one-quarter of his income, levied in 1789 on the basis of declarations that long remained voluntary and unverified, could not furnish receipts in the near future. The treasury therefore remained empty. And, unfortunately, measures which even in normal circumstances had been used to obtain money while taxes were collected now failed: the two loans floated in August of 1789 were unsuccessful, and the Assembly prohibited ‘anticipations’, which would have assured loans from financiers. Under the Old Regime tax collectors had bought their offices and had taken a certain percentage out of receipts. By substituting salaried collectors, the Assembly cut off an important source of income—the advances on proceeds which former collectors had granted the treasury in the form of what were called rescriptions, discounted by bankers. Now there were new expenditures, required by ecclesiastic pensions and maintenance of public worship. In addition, besides its consolidated debt the Old Regime had left huge arrears. The Assembly ordered payment of annuities (rentes) to begin again, and within two years 370 million livres were paid out for this purpose. In the same period the floating debt rose by one billion because of new obligations: the clergy’s debt had to be paid off, compensation had to be given the officials who had owned their offices and had put up money as security, and those who had collected tithes that were subinfeudated—i.e., ceded to laymen for collection.
As early as October of 1789 the situation seemed desperate. Necker survived from day to day with advances from the Bank of Discount. Then the Bank, having in circulation 114 million livres in notes, of which 89 million were advanced to the state, declared itself out of funds. Resources had to be found if the Revolution was to be completed: under such circumstances paper money is the only resort. The Constituent at least saw a way to back its notes. Thus, financial crisis imposed two of the Assembly’s most important measures: sale of Church property and issue of assignats.
The arguments for confiscation of Church lands were that because the clergy no longer formed a corporate body its properties had no master and therefore reverted to the state; that if the state took over the responsibilities of Church services, of education and poor relief, the wishes of the donors would be respected; and that—this was least subject to debate—general interest demanded that property in mortmain be put into circulation. On November 2 the estates of the Church were put ‘at the nation’s disposal’. This left unsettled the question of ownership, which lent itself to doctrinal objections from the clergy, and since a just salary was promised the parish clergy, a majority of its representatives voted for the decree. Necker proposed to make the Bank of Discount a national bank, but the Assembly did not intend to place the issue of paper currency at the king’s disposition and on December 19 it created an ‘extraordinary treasury’ (caisse de l’extraordinaire) charged with selling Church and royal lands to the amount of 400 million livres in the form of assignats, or certificates recognizing indebtedness, bearing interest at 5 per cent. The notes were not accepted readily owing to the uncertainties which remained: the clergy still administered its properties; ecclesiastic reform had not yet begun; and it was not clear which lands would be offered to creditors. To remedy this situation the Constituent was led to suppress the regular clergy except for teaching or charity orders (February 13, 1790), to relieve the clergy of authority to administer its property (March 17), to set up a budget of public worship (April 17), and to decree the specific terms of sale (May 14). Thereafter it could order creditors to accept payment in assignats.
But it was obvious that ready money was needed, that certificates recognizing indebtedness would not meet the treasury’s current needs. Debate began again in August, this time producing decisive results: the assignat was made a bank-note and its issue was raised to 1,200 million livres. Dupont de Nemours, Talleyrand, Lavoisier, and Condorcet predicted inflation and its ills. But political concern had joined financial necessity: whereas the first assignats would have transferred properties only to state creditors—financiers, contractors, former office-owners who had to be reimbursed—the new notes might be acquired by anyone. They were bought up rapidly, sometimes just to get rid of the paper, whose depreciation benefited the poor as well as the speculators. One could say that the more the operation was to succeed in this respect the more it was to fail from the financial point of view.
A decline in the value of the assignat was inevitable, especially at a time when the memory of John Law’s bubble was still fresh and aristocrats repeatedly announced that upon return to power they would not honour revolutionary currency. The Constituent made matters worse by authorizing business transactions in the paper money on May 17. The state itself bought notes to pay troops. Metallic currency was hidden away. The Assembly, in order to discourage payment of wages in paper money, had refused to issue small denominations, and to make change private companies issued more and more notes on their own initiative (billets de confiance). Ultimately the Assembly had to permit, in a decree of 1791, assignats of five livres. As commodity costs began to rise, two separate prices, one in coin and one in paper, were generally recognized. Before long the higher cost of living would produce effects not unlike those of hunger, stirring up a populace grown for the moment relatively apathetic.
The Assembly’s financial policy was dangerous because the issue of assignats served to make up the budget deficit and not merely to liquidate the debt, yet the idea behind it was not bad. Within several years, after tax collections had been re-established, the sale of national property together with government borrowing could reabsorb the inflation. Besides gaining time for the Revolution, the policy, as is customary at first, stimulated the economy, ended stagnation, and made new jobs available. French money depreciated in foreign exchange: at the beginning of 1790 100 livres on the London exchange were transacted at 90, and in May of 1791 had fallen to 73. Exporters who collected gold or silver abroad, and at home paid wages which rose slowly and by small amounts, found themselves in a favourable position. It was the torrent of notes used to finance the war that killed the assignat. Since that time wars have undermined many other currencies, which, moreover, have not had the substantial backing of this one.
The Declaration of Rights failed to mention the economy. The neglect arose because the populace remained deeply attached to controls, while the bourgeoisie of lawyers distrusted financiers and had reservations about large-scale agriculture and big industry. Economic freedom advanced by degrees, to be sanctioned, finally, in the constitution of 1791 and the rural code of September 27.
Loans at interest had been legalized since October 12, 1789, but gilds and controls on manufactured goods were not suppressed until February 16, 1791. These measures gave free rein to the use of capital, of machinery, and of new processes, protected by authorization of patents on inventions. Full liberty of the grain trade, which Brienne had granted, was restored in August, 1789, with the exception of exports. Some of the monopolies were abolished, including that held by the state on tobacco, but the state kept its control of saltpetre, gunpowder, and coinage. The India Company lost its monopoly, and trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope was released from controls. Marseille was deprived of its privileges over trade with the Levant. Free ports retained their status until the Legislative Assembly placed them under ordinary law. A law of 1791 upheld the state’s authority (adopted by the monarchy in 1744) to grant mining rights, except for the many surface mines.
On the other hand, unification of the national market was completed. With the ‘rolling back of barriers’—i.e., transfer of customs points to political frontiers—provinces such as Alsace and Lorraine, known as ‘foreign lands in effect’ because they traded freely abroad, were absorbed into France’s economy. Domestic traffic was relieved of tolls and of the checkpoints required for the salt tax and excises, which varied among regions, and the customs barriers dividing the Five Great Farms from ‘provinces termed foreign’ and the latter from ‘foreign lands in effect’ were abolished.
Protective measures against competition from abroad were continued. Manufacturers gladly would have welcomed repudiation of the 1786 treaty with England, but in its tariff of 1791 the Assembly adhered to moderate rates and prohibited only a few imports, such as thread, and the export of some raw materials.
Unbinding its fetters was not enough to transform production, and for that reason many have stated that the Revolution did not mark a decisive date in French economic history. In fact, it neither launched nor accelerated production, and later the war actually retarded it. The Constituent Assembly nevertheless paved the way for future events. We have no better testimony to the advent of the bourgeoisie than the first proclamation of economic freedom in Europe.
Although contemporaries could not foresee the scope of future economic development—triumph of machines, increasing concentration of capital—economic liberty met strong resistance. In some trades the law abolishing gilds led to more democratic practices—for instance, former wage earners opened their own workshops or stores with a minimal outlay—but many masters were seriously alarmed at being deprived of their monopoly. There was general hostility against free trade in grains, not only within the proletariat but among artisans as well, not only among townsmen but also among agrarian day-labourers and farmers who could not subsist on their crops. The assemblies did not succeed in enforcing the grain decree.
For their part, most of the peasants were alarmed: freedom of cultivation was returning to consecrate definitively the private ownership of land, abruptly completing the eighteenth-century legal evolution which had been removing qualifications to ownership—such as the obligation to rotate crops, let fields lie fallow, and refrain from enclosures. Thus, open pastures seemed doomed, and the rural code made no exception even for pastures that had been planted with grazing crops. Actually the Constituent took no steps to enforce abolition of open pastures: its members must have realized that in England consolidation of plots had been the necessary pre-requisite, yet they made no allusion to it. And although the Assembly permitted enclosures, to placate the rural population it stipulated that whoever did not allow anyone else’s animals in his fields must refrain from sending his own stock into the pastures of others—a practice which until then had been provoking angry protests. The measure was to no avail. The peasantry was adamant in defending its collective rights, which were to remain long afterwards, for no one, not even Napoleon, dared to deprive the peasants of their authority over collective usages. But any hopes they may have had of seeing great farms broken up, sharecropping reformed, tenant farming regulated, vanished. The Constituent was insensitive to all such demands.
Furthermore, as in the case of tax reform, most peasants were deeply disappointed by the Assembly’s method of suppressing manorial rights and selling national land. The Constituents had no qualms over abolishing the tithe outright, since they regarded it as either a tax or a property held by a corporate body, nor did they see any obstacles to suppressing the classification of land as ‘noble’ or ‘non-noble’ or to abolishing the hierarchy of fiefs and laws pertaining to it—notably the law of primogeniture—and the franc-fief paid by commoners holding ‘noble’ land. Nevertheless, they ordered transfer fees to be redeemed and thereby recognized eminent ownership on the part of the suzerain. Sacrifice of eminent ownership would in the deputies’ view have set a damaging precedent with respect to private property in general. Similarly, when they definitely regulated (in the decree of March 15, 1790) the application of the decrees of August 5–11, 1789, concerning manorial rights, they followed the report of Merlin de Douai in classifying certain rights as usurped from the state or established by violent means; among them were honorific rights and manorial courts, hunting and fishing rights, the lord’s exclusive right to maintain warrens and dovecotes, mills and wine-presses, to collect tolls and market fees, to demand personal taxes and labour obligations (the corvées), and particularly to hold serfs. All disappeared without indemnity. The partitioning of common lands, practised for the last thirty years despite the ordinance of 1667, was also abolished. Quite different was the Assembly’s attitude towards the so-called ‘real’ fees associated with the holding of land, by far the heaviest. These included payments called the cens, quitrents, the champarts levied on part of the harvest, and transfer fees and other ‘perquisites’. Considering these obligations to be part of an original contract between the lord as owner and the person to whom he ceded a holding, the Assembly decreed their redemption at a rate (fixed on May 3) amounting to twenty times the money fee, twenty-five times the fee in kind, and proportional to the ‘perquisites’ which were being abolished. This distinction of rights was dubious on legal as much as on historical grounds. In any case, the peasants maintained that if this principle were enunciated the lord must be required to produce his original title to the land, a title which usually had never existed or could not be found. Meanwhile the peasants paid neither redemption fees nor dues.
Moreover, the Constituent made abolition of the tithe a benefit to the owner rather than to the sharecropper or tenant, and when, later, the Legislative Assembly and Convention ended redemption of ‘real’ fees they followed the same principle. Suppression of the gentry’s ‘personal’ rights was by comparison a poor consolation, and the peasant without land did not obtain his plot. Thus, distribution of nationalized lands, to the extent that it swelled the number of rural proprietors, would give the destruction of feudalism part of its social significance. And since the great majority of peasants had no land at all or not enough to earn a living, transfer of state land was of even greater importance: it could lessen the agrarian crisis. If the Assembly ceded land to rural communities for distribution or authorized the officials of the local town hall to divide the land into small plots and either rent them for a fixed annual sum or sell them without auction at a price based on the estimated value, then the poor day-labourer could acquire a plot and build his own cottage. Or might they not even give it to him for nothing?
This dream was incompatible with the state’s financial needs and its creditors’ interests, and the law of May 14, 1790 (made more stringent by another on November 2), dispelled such hopes. Leases were kept to avoid angering tenants; holdings were sold in a block, rather than being split up, at auctions held in main towns of districts. The Constituent nevertheless wanted a certain number of peasants to become landowners and thus tie them to the Revolution and to the bourgeois order. It therefore authorized payments to be spread out in twelve yearly instalments and allowed different sections of a field to be auctioned off separately if the proceeds exceeded a bid offered for the whole field—but this worked only if the peasants combined. Fortunately for them, many fields, especially those of the parish priest, were rented out in strips, and speculators often performed the service of dividing up lands for resale; and in some areas peasants combined to buy village land. The agrarian revolt thus ultimately attained its goal. From 1791 to 1793 the peasants of Cambrésis acquired ten times more land than did the bourgeois. The results were similar in the Laonnois and in the plains of Picardy. Peasants also gained a good deal in the Sénonais, in a part of Flanders and of Hainaut, and in the district of Saint-Gaudens.
Few detailed studies have yet been made, but there is little doubt that these regions were exceptional cases. On the whole the number of property holders rose a little; so did that of tenants, thanks to division of large estates. But sale by auction meant that farmers who were already well off acquired more land, whereas in most districts the majority of peasants and especially of day-labourers were pushed aside. The agrarian problem was not solved. No worse blow was dealt to revolutionary enthusiasm in the countryside.
The proletariat was given little attention except for the Le Chapelier law (June 14, 1791), which confirmed proscription of journeymen’s associations and strikes. The Constituent thereby denied workers the means to protect their wages at the same time that it refused to control commodity prices. It continued to support labour centres, thus offering some form of temporary employment, but had no intention of recognizing a right of this nature. In May of 1791 the centres were closed. The only form of public aid offered was assistance to the disabled, which in practice amounted to very little. The field of public relief was not widened; instead, the disappearance of alms distributed by the clergy made conditions much worse. Wage earners and indigents drew no benefit from the Revolution. The Constituent at least promised to organize a national system of education, but for the moment Talleyrand’s report was a dead letter. The democrats were skilled in exploiting the disillusionment of the masses. But so were the aristocrats, and with them the refractory priests.
The clergy could hardly welcome the fact that its pre-eminence was undermined, since Catholic worship ceased to be the state religion and toleration was written into law, or that its independence was com- promised, since its corporate status ended and secularization of Church lands reduced clerics to salaried civil servants. And yet the religious struggle, so favourable towards counter-revolution, was unforeseen by deputies in the Constituent Assembly. Nor did they want it: the idea of a lay state was unknown to men raised by priests and nurtured on an antiquity that knew no such concept. Far from planning to separate Church and state, they dreamed of bringing the two more closely together. The philosophes agreed, for the state could not function without religion, and in France religion could only be Roman Catholicism. True, they might have preferred a civic religion; true also that revolutionary idealism inclined to establish its own cult with an Altar of the Fatherland, celebrations, and symbols. But the people spontaneously associated these ceremonies with Catholic worship and Patriot priests justified the Rights of Man and the Citizen by quoting from Gospel. The Constituent realized that it needed an agent in each commune to explain its decrees to the uneducated masses and instruct them in obedience to the law. No one was better suited to this task than the parish priest. Moreover, many representatives sitting in the Constituent Assembly were not only believers but practised their faith regularly. The deputies therefore decreed that the Church should retain the privilege of conducting public worship and that its clergy alone should be supported by the nation. A civil register of births, deaths, and marriages was not substituted for Church records, and temporarily at least the Church continued to have sole rights to education and poor relief.
However, according to the famous statement of Camus, ‘the Church is within the state, not the state within the Church’. And, he added, ‘We certainly have the power to alter religion,’ hastening to state, however, ‘but we will not do so; to abandon the Church would be a criminal act.’ The king’s jurists had always taught that except for matters involving dogma the state had full authority to reform Church organization and discipline. Joseph II had exercised such authority, and in France the monarch had dealt severe blows to religious orders in the eighteenth century, at best recognizing that there were some matters of ‘mixed’ jurisdiction, with the extent never fully defined. That the Gallican Church had to be reformed, the clergy agreed. The greater its role in the new society, the less reason was there for letting the king choose bishops; and when the state undertook to support clerics after selling their properties it had to reduce their numbers for budgetary reasons. As early as August 12, 1789, the Constituent had appointed an Ecclesiastical Committee.
It was predicted that the Concordat would not survive. Already the decrees of August 5–11, 1789, had forbidden annates, dispensations from Rome, and plural holding of benefices. But no one was worried about a struggle with the papacy. Pius VI commanded little authority: he had not broken with Joseph or even with the schismatic Catherine when she disrupted the organization of Polish dioceses without consulting him. The French clergy was in part hostile towards the Concordat, and Gallicanism, which was not yet contrary to dogma, had not lost its strength.
The Constituent turned first upon the regular clergy, long disapproved by statesmen and economists. Its decadence—at least that displayed by the monks—was well known. On February 13, 1790, religious orders were suppressed. Members who so desired returned to secular life with a pension; others were sent to the few monasteries temporarily kept open. Charity and teaching orders were spared for the time being, but the prohibition upon taking of vows denied them new members.
In an atmosphere of calm, debate on reform of the secular clergy began on May 29, 1790. On July 12 the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed. Ecclesiastic organization was adapted to the administrative framework: each department had a bishop, each commune one or more local priests. They would be elected like other civil servants, and the priest would choose his curates. Deliberation among Church members was revived: provincial synods were authorized, and in place of the abolished cathedral chapters the bishop would be advised by a council whose decisions were binding. The pope would no longer be able to draw on France for money—his ‘primacy’ was recognized but not his ‘jurisdiction’. The elected bishop would enter into communion with the pope, but could not ask for papal confirmation. He would be consecrated by the metropolitan bishop and would confirm his own priests.
The Gallicanism of jurists, however, differed profoundly from that of the French clergy. The national Church could defend its autonomy against the Roman curia, but did not propose to sacrifice it to the state. And Rome was one recourse against state encroachment. In addition, the bishops did not like curtailment of their prerogatives. Those who sat in the Assembly entered no formal objection, but abstained when the vote was taken; many others were inclined to conciliation. However, Boisgelin, the archbishop of Aix, flatly declared that the reforms required canonical consecration—in other words, that the Church did not reject agreement with the state but challenged state supremacy over it. It remained to be seen whether the national council or the pope represented the Church. The bishops would gladly have met in synod, but the Constituent prevented them for fear that the bishops, all noblemen, would let the council turn into a war machine at the disposal of counter-revolution. In that case, stated Boisgelin, only the pope could ‘baptize’ the Civil Constitution. The Assembly did not want to ask this of him either, but it tacitly allowed the king and bishops to make the request. The Constituent and the French clergy thus placed themselves in the pope’s hands, and conflict between them now depended on him. The decree being constitutional, it was understood that the king could not exercise his veto. He was asked to accept and not to approve it. Acting on the advice of Boisgelin and of Champion de Cicé, archbishop of Bordeaux and minister of justice, Louis gave his acceptance on July 22. On August 1 Cardinal Bernis, ambassador to Rome, received the order to obtain the pope’s consent.
Pius VI had already indicated his antagonism. At the king’s request during the previous year he had not protested suppression of annates, but now his authority was at stake. Further, Avignon had repudiated his sovereignty and asked, on June 11, to be joined with France. A gentleman, Pius was as jealous of his temporal power as of his spiritual prerogatives; the Declaration of the Rights of Man offended him, and he secretly condemned it on March 29. On July 10 he issued two other papal briefs declaring the Civil Constitution unacceptable, but the briefs arrived in Paris after the king had given his acceptance. The bishops who had advised Louis to consent did not abandon hope: they kept the briefs secret, and the pope did not divulge their existence. The Assembly and Montmorin, minister of foreign affairs, calculated that since Pius was counting on France to restore his authority over Avignon, he would eventually yield. But he was waiting for proposals to be made, and how could they advance any? The Assembly had postponed the debate on Avignon, but in any case there could be no question of supporting counter-revolution there. Meanwhile Bernis, in touch with the comte d’Artois, encouraged the pope to stiffen his resistance. Probably because of his fear that he would annoy the Gallicans, Pius did not hasten to make a public pronouncement and waited to learn the clergy’s attitude.
Matters dragged on; the Constituent demanded that the constitution be promulgated. When a few bishops and local priests died, their replacements were elected. Protests arose. The pope’s silence disturbed those favouring conciliation. When on October 30 the bishops in the Assembly published a declaration of principles, however, they did not condemn the Civil Constitution, limiting themselves to a request that the pope give his approval before the document be put into force. But since the clergy still kept the register of births, deaths, and marriages, curacies could not be left vacant. Under pressure from its administrative bodies, the Constituent finally took the bit in its teeth.
On November 27 it required all priests holding public office to take an oath adhering to the constitution of the kingdom and, consequently, to the Civil Constitution which was part of it. Those who refused the oath would be replaced in office and forbidden to administer the sacraments, although they would continue to receive a stipend. Approval of the decree was finally extracted from the king on December 26. The results astounded the deputies. The fact that some priests led scandalous lives and others quarrelled over benefices had led the Assembly to look down upon clerics, who, the Constituents thought, would acquiesce to protect their own interests. In fact, a total of seven bishops took the oath. Parish priests were generally divided half and half, but the proportion varied from region to region. For example, the ‘juring’, or ‘constitutional’, priests far outnumbered others in the south-west; yet only a few took the oath in Flanders, Artois, Alsace, and especially in western France. The number seems also to have depended upon an individual bishop’s popularity and the attitude within his seminary, upon the remaining strength of quarrels among Gallicans, Jansenists, and Ultramontanes, and upon the lingering tradition of richérisme. Some departments earned the co-operation of former monks but could not form a new parish clergy. The danger of discontinuing services was frightening enough to leave non-jurors in office when others could not be found.
Nevertheless, Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, and Gobel, bishop of Lydda and future bishop of Paris, agreed to consecrate the elected bishops, and organization of the constitutional Church got under way. Then Pius broke silence. He officially damned both the principles of the Revolution and the Civil Constitution (March 11 and April 13, 1791), thereby completing the rupture between Rome and Paris, and in an act of incalculable importance the Church of Rome opposed its doctrine to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
Counter-revolutionary agitation was greatly stimulated. The non-jurors did their best to hold their congregations and administered the sacraments secretly. A few, such as the bishop of Langres, even asked that the registers be secularized in order to take them away from the constitutional clergy. Often the constitutional priests had to be installed by force, and they found themselves exposed to severe abuse. Peasants and workers, hitherto united, parted company: many did not wish to risk damnation by renouncing the ‘good priests’. Yet they had no thought of reinstituting the tithe or manorial rights, even though they were induced to side with the aristocrats who led them in insurrection. The worst was that Louis ended by compromising himself. In February of 1791 his aunts emigrated, with some difficulty. When on April 18 he wanted to leave for Saint-Cloud after attending a Mass said by a non-juring priest on the preceding day, an angry crowd prevented him.
The revolutionaries treated the non-jurors as public enemies. From then on, some administrative bodies proposed to evict non-jurors from their parishes. The mob stepped in: at Paris in April some of the devout were whipped. The Assembly followed the department of Paris in trying to intervene by legalizing worship conducted by non-jurors: a decree on May 7 closed chapels and oratories where the constitution had been attacked, but also declared that non-juring priests could officiate in the same churches as their rivals. As might have been expected, this simultaneum aroused strong protest, while the non-jurors were still unsatisfied at being denied the right to administer sacraments or keep Church records. Jealous of their position, the constitutionalists grew militant, and many began to lean towards the Jacobins, who lent them support. Yet some Jacobins who wanted to see services conducted in French and priests allowed to marry thought the Civil Constitution too weak. The constitutional Church was no sooner born than its existence was endangered. Further, an anti-clerical group opposed to Christianity itself arose: after all, both juring and non-juring priests preached the same religion, which itself became suspect once part of the clergy had broken with the Revolution.
The bourgeoisie never considered that its revolution could threaten colonial prosperity, one of the main sources of its power. Rivalry among the orders, privileges, and manorial rights had little importance in the overseas possessions; the colonies could therefore be expected to work with the mother country against administrative despotism. At first there were indications that they would draw closer to France. When the influential planters of Saint-Domingue were unable to obtain representation in the Estates-General they nominated their own deputies with consent of the plantation owners residing in Paris. The Constituent seated six of them, then accepted representatives from other colonies, and thereby made them a members of a unified France.
Serious difficulties soon arose. France could extend decentralization to the colonies, but they in turn had only a handful of representatives in the Assembly which would keep legislative power, and would, doubtless, retain exclusive colonial rights. The universalist character of the Declaration of Rights indicated that men of colour—mulattoes and free Negroes—would lay claim to its benefits. And slavery? The ‘Friend of the Negroes’ did not ask for immediate emancipation, but they wanted to take steps in that direction, the first measure being suppression of the slave trade. In any case, it was unthinkable that this could be written into the constitution. The issue threw shipowners and traders from ports and large towns to the side of planters, whereas exclusive colonial rights divided them radically. On the other hand, racial prejudice was foreign to France, and its citizens were not disposed to deny equality of rights to people of colour. Amid these contradictions the Assembly hid behind inaction. No solution could have been worse, for the colonists took the initiative in an effort to force the issue and win autonomy.
At Paris the planters by-passed their powerless representatives and met as a club at the residence of the comte de Massiac, whose name the group adopted. On March 8, 1790, Barnave, reporter of the colonial committee and related to one of the most enterprising planters, was instrumental in obtaining passage of a decree authorizing colonial assemblies. Implemented by further instructions on March 23, the decree promised that the assemblies would be consulted on projected laws affecting their interests. They were to be elected by taxpaying ‘personages’. The Assembly having declined to state whether men of colour were included among the personages, colonials and mulattoes cried victory. Overseas, however, the equivocal decree was already superseded.
In Saint-Domingue planters took advantage of France’s lethargy by setting up an assembly at Saint-Marc. They named as president Bacon de La Chevalerie—Barnave’s relative—and on March 28 produced a constitution which, ignoring the National Assembly, they submitted only for the king’s approval. In Martinique a similar assembly took power into its hands and used military force to seize Saint-Pierre, where the traders were hostile. In Île-de-France the assembly passed laws with equal unconcern for the mother country. French unity was reduced to common loyalty towards the person of the king. Exclusive rights were to disappear at the expense of the bourgeoisie in France; the whites would rule alone, disqualifying men of colour and keeping their slaves.
They had gone too far or too fast. The royal governor of Saint-Domingue dispersed the Saint-Marc assembly with help from the military on August 8 and shipped some members back to France. On October 11 the Constituent declared the assembly dissolved; on November 29 it suspended that of Martinique, dispatching civil commissioners to the Windward Islands. On May 15, 1791, Barnave wrung a pledge from the Assembly not to pass legislation concerning individual civil status unless the colonists requested it. By that time the opposition had found its voice, and the Constituent conceded that men of colour born of free parents would enjoy civic rights. But an order of September 24 left determination of personal condition entirely to the colonial assemblies. On this point, at the very least, the Assembly had ended by capitulating.
Meanwhile anarchy raged. The ‘red pompoms’ of the Saint-Marc assembly clashed with the ‘white pompoms’, who refused to break with France. Mulattoes joined the battle: in October of 1790 Ogé returned from Paris after a sojourn in England and the United States and attempted a premature revolt. Defeated, he was broken on the wheel. In Guadeloupe and Martinique the governors Clugny and Behague joined counter-revolutionary forces and gained the upper hand through connivance with the planters. Agitation finally reached the slaves, who revolted in the area around Cap-Haïtien in Saint-Domingue at the end of August, 1791. Mulattoes often fought against them, but also turned upon the whites. The whole colony was gradually devastated, cutting off one of France’s primary sources of wealth.
In the spring of 1791 Frenchmen realized that the structure raised by the Constituent Assembly was cracking before it was finished. Lafayette’s policy was foundering upon resistance from the aristocrats, encouraged by religious division. Civil war was not severe enough to threaten the nation, but the ranks of the discontented were steadily growing. Disappearance of feudal rights and venality injured many bourgeois as well as nobles, and suppression of traditional institutions deprived even more of employment. They were not always able to find other means of earning a living. Abolition of the salt monopoly, for example, reduced smugglers to desperation: one of them was to lend his name to the chouannerie. More serious was the crumbling of the Third Estate, evident in the rising strength of the democrats.
Since 1789 the counter-revolutionaries had never failed to warn the bourgeoisie that arguments contesting advantages of birth, put forth in order to abolish noble privileges, would soon boomerang, for others would also argue that inheritance of wealth ensured a privilege in practice. In the early stages, however, it was not to censure the social order that the principle of equality proclaimed in the Declaration was invoked. That order was indirectly criticized, from the political angle, by attacks on an electoral system that was based on property qualifica- tions. A very few deputies, among them Robespierre, defended universal suffrage, and some journalists raised the same cry, but the ‘silver mark decree’ that granted eligibility to merit only if it had financial backing was a greater issue with them. Clubs open to the people encouraged the development of a democratic party, and such clubs were the work of obscure leaders rather than of Assembly deputies or the Jacobin Club. The passage of time brought forth certain impatient or bold men who until then had not succeeded in gaining attention. Actors, writers, artists, or teachers, they were unable to find regular employment and often, being newcomers in a commune, were not held within the conformity that business, family, and local connections enforced. In Paris a poor schoolmaster named Dansard founded the first ‘fraternal society of the two sexes’ on January 2, 1790. In the next months similar groups appeared. The Cordeliers Club opened in April of 1790, the Indigents Club in March of the following year. They admitted ‘passive’ citizens and their entrance fees were minimal. When elections to the new Legislative Assembly were announced, agitation swelled. The popular societies set up a central committee in May, 1791. On June 15 they presented the Constituent with a petition objecting to property qualifications. A group called the Social Circle began holding public meetings at the Palais Royal, where abbé Fauchet lectured on the Social Contract. Bonneville defended democracy in the Bouche de fer. Marat gave support to the movement in the Ami du peuple. Some of the democrats—chiefly Robert, in the Mercure national—announced their support of republicanism in the autumn of 1790.
A few writers by implication touched upon the true social issue, that equality of rights was an illusion to those lacking the means to use it. In a way the aristocrats encouraged this conclusion by telling the people that without alms from the clergy or paternal protection from the lords they would regret the good old days. Soon came denunciation of the ‘new feudalism’ that economic freedom would bring, profiting rich employers and returning workers to servitude. The masses were not so far-sighted, but they applauded attacks on ‘financial operators’ and the ‘hoarders’, towards whom those bourgeois who had accumulated fortunes, as well as former officials and lawyers, showed as much hostility and were equally bitter as the democrats.
Yet, as usual, it was a confluence of circumstances that set the wage earners in motion. Food was not, for the time being, a source of wide concern, but economic activity, favoured by the early effects of inflation, persuaded the proletariat that the moment to improve earnings had come. The Paris printers organized to demand a minimum wage. When winter ended the building trade went on strike and the blacksmiths followed their lead. Journeymen’s associations began to stir up the provinces. Fraternal societies and democratic broadsides lent their support, although no one defended the right to strike—wage earners were accustomed to having conflicts settled by the authorities and tended to request mediation. Another reason the democrats made themselves heard was that if the lower classes gained electoral equality, state power might pass into their service. This was exactly what frightened the bourgeoisie.
Mirabeau pressed his plans on the royal family with even greater energy. The court followed his advice only in using bribery: Talon enlisted agents and hired accomplices with funds from the king’s civil list. Fortunately for his reputation with posterity, the ‘tribune’ died on April 2, 1791. This premature removal has saved his reputation as a statesman, for like Lafayette, he mistook the king’s designs, and defeat lay in wait for him. Duport, Lameth, and Barnave immediately stepped into his place. Alarmed by democratic advances and labour agitation, the triumvirs in turn wanted to arrest the Revolution. They received money from the court to start a newspaper, the Logographe, and in May were on the verge of reconciliation with Lafayette. Under their direction the majority gave in to the right in passing the decree of May 7, which officially recognized services conducted by non-juring priests. At the same time passive citizens were barred from joining the National Guard in the future. Group petitions were forbidden. Bailly evicted the Cordeliers from their monastery. On June 14 the Le Chapelier law prohibited combinations and strikes. Constitutionalist newspapers now sided with counter-revolutionaries in denouncing the popular movement, which, they declared, foreshadowed ‘agrarian law’—i.e., distribution of property by means of pillage. Frightened, the bourgeoisie wanted to quell the populace. Disintegration of the Third Estate was speeded. Lafayette and the triumvirate concluded that the work of the Constituent had to be revised, property qualifications made more stringent, clubs suppressed, the press bridled. But to check the Revolution by smothering popular demands with help from the Blacks meant reversing its course: they planned to give the king larger powers and institute an upper house. Above all, they had to keep themselves in power—by authorizing re-election of Constituent members—and take over the ministry—by obtaining passage of the decree of November 7, which allowed deputies to become ministers. Robespierre, now the leader of the democratic party, succeeded in obtaining defeat of the motion for re-election and thereby defeated them. They pursued their plans. Like Mirabeau, they considered the principles of 1789 intangible, and their design, like Mirabeau’s, presupposed that Louis would remain loyal to them. Suddenly the ground gave way beneath them. The king fled.
1 The distinction continued long afterwards: the characters in one of Balzac’s novels, titled Les employés, consist solely of bureaucratic personnel within a ministry, including the ministerial chiefs.
1 These courts adjudicated disputes among family members. (Translator’s note.)