Mirabeau, on August 22nd, had spoken eloquently against this tolerance: " I am not going to preach toleration; the most illimitable religious liberty is, in my eyes, a right so sacred that the word tolerance, which is intended to express it, seems to me in a
1 Counter de Provence, No. xxxiv.
a For instance, on April 13,1790, when it refused a motion by Dom Gerle similar to that of the Abbe d'Eymar. 3 Point du Jour, vol. ii. p. 199.
certain sense to be itself tyrannical, since the existence of the authority which has the power to tolerate is oppressive to the liberty of thought, by the very fact that it tolerates, and therefore would be capable of not tolerating." * When the clause had been voted, the Counter de Provence exclaimed: " We cannot conceal our sorrow that the National Assembly, instead of stifling the germ of intolerance, has placed it in reserve, as it were, in a Declaration of the Rights of Man. 0 And the journalist (is it perhaps Mirabeau himself?) shows that this clause would permit the refusal of public worship to non-Catholics. 2
However, except for the fact that it does not proclaim liberty of conscience, the Declaration of Rights is definitely republican and democratic.
V.
The Declaration may be considered from two points of view : as destroying the past, or as constructing the future.
To-day, in retrospection, we consider it especially from the second point of view—that is to say, as the political and social programme of France from the year 1789. The men of the Revolution considered it especially from the first point of view, as the notification of the decease of the old style of government ; and, as the preamble infers, as a safeguard
1 Mirabeau feint par lui-meme, vol. i. p. 237.
9 (Courner de Provence, No. xxxi. p. 48.) This article ends in a eulogy of " the Protestant sect, asect essentially peaceable, favourable to human reason and to the wealth of nations, a friend to civil liberty, the clergy of which have no ruler, and form a body of citizens, of moral officers, subsidised by the State; occupied with the education of the young, and interested by the family spirit itself to maintain morals and the prosperity of the State." See also, with regard to Clause 10, the Revolutions de Paris, No. viii. pp. 2,3.
156 IDEAS AT OUTSET OF THE REVOLUTION
against the possible resurrection of the old style, just as the Americans had drawn up their Declaration of Rights as an engine of war against the King of England and the despotic system.
As to the other point of view, from which the Declaration is regarded as the programme of a reorganisation of society, the members of the Assembly left it purposely in semi-obscurity, because it was to some extent inconsistent ^ith the middle-class government they were about to establish.
The principle of the equality of rights is democracy ; it is universal suffrage, to speak of the political effects of the principle alone, and the Assembly was about to establish a property-owners' suffrage.
The principle of the sovereignty of the nation is republicanism, and the Assembly intended to maintain the monarchy.
These consequences were foreseen, not by the masses, but by the members of the Assembly and by educated folk. And it was precisely on this account that the middle class hesitated to issue a Declaration of Rights. Once made, it was masked by a " veil " according to the word then popular, and there existed a " politics of the veil." " I am going to tear the veil 1 " was often cried by an excited orator, such as from time to time made himself a tribune of the people. But this was the exception. There was at first no organised party which demanded the immediate application of the essential principle of the Declaration, which comes back to the statement that there was at the outset neither a Republican nor a Democratic party.
When the faults of the King had torn the " veil," when the pact between the nation and the King was definitely broken, experience led the French to apply the consequences of the Declaration, by means of the regime of 1792-3—that is to say, by means of Democracy and the Republic.
The men of 1792 and 1793 have been called renegades with respect to the principles of 1789.1 They certainly violated, for the time being, the liberty pf the press and of the individual, and the guarantees of legal and normal justice. They did so because the Revolution was in a state of war against Europe ; they did it for the sake of the new order, arid as against the old ; they did so to save the essential principles of the Declaration. But what has been forgotten is that they were the first of all to apply these essential principles — equality of rights and the sovereignty of the nation—by establishing universal suffrage and the Republic, and by organising and putting in working order a democracy which, outside the limits of the country, realised the royal dream by the acquisition of the left bank of the Rhine, and which in the country itself proclaimed the liberty of conscience, separated Church and State, and sought to govern according to the lights of reason and justice.
The backsliders from the principles of 1789 were not the men of 1793, who, on the contrary, applied these principles. (And was it not just because they applied them that the fine flower of the reactionaries branded them with the epithet " renegades "?) Logically, there would seem to be no reason why we should not rather apply the term to the men of 1789, who, after having proclaimed the equality of rights, divided the nation into " citizens active and citizens passive," and replaced the ancient ranks of the privileged by a new privileged class, the middle class or bourgeoisie.
But it is nearer the truth to say that there were no renegades ; only worthy Frenchmen who acted for the best, in different circumstances, and at different moments in our political revolution.
1 The expression is used by M. Saint-Rene Taillandier in his Les Renigats de 1789, 1877, 8vo.
158 IDEAS AT OUTSET OP THE REVOLUTION
So far I have spoken only of the political consequences of the Declaration of Rights. There were also economic and social consequences, which must be examined and depicted, not with the eloquence and feeling of a party man, but with the impersonality of a historian.
These consequences, which later will be known by the name of Socialism, remained obscure far longer than the political consequences ; and even to-day only a minority of Frenchmen have torn this " veil," which the majority seek, on the other hand, to bind more firmly and thickly with sentiments of religious respect and fear.
What is it precisely, this principle or dogma of equality, the object of the first clause of the Declaration?
Did the drafters of the clause wish to say that all men are born equally endowed as to mind and body? Xo : this absurdity was only attributed to them, later on, by absurd adversaries.
Did they wish to say that it is desirable that institutions should correct, as far as possible, the inequalities of nature—that is, tend to restore all men to an average type of physical and intellectual force? This would be to lower the level, to check evolution. This interpretation was claimed, but later on, by others.
The evident sense of this clause is this : that to natural inequalities it is not fair and equitable that institutions should add artificial inequalities. One man is born more vigorous, more intelligent, than another. Is it just that he should also find, in his cradle as it were, a: sum of money or a landed property, which doubles or trebles through life his force of attack and defence in the struggle for life? Is it just that a man born imbecile or evilly disposed should inherit means which will render his imbecility or his wickedness still more maleficent? Is it just that there should
be, by act of law, men rich by birth and men poor by birth? (Article 2, while establishing the rights of property, did not say that property should be unequally divided.)
Take the bourgeois, the man who received, at his birth, an economic privilege and a political privilege ; in 1792 the people will strip him of his political privilege. Would it not be logical to relieve him of his economic privilege as well?
Such an idea scarcely occurred, at first, to any one. A first revolution, social and economic, had taken place, or was about to do so, through the destruction of the feudal system, the abolition of the right of primogeniture, the sale of the national properties, and a less unjust constitution and partition of property. The generality of Frenchmen were satisfied with this revolution, and saw no farther ; the most crying injustice, their more serious complaints, having just been righted.
It was when other sufferings, born of the new order of things, began to make themselves felt, that men began to think of demanding the completest consequences of the Declaration of Rights. And as it was a minority which actually suffered—workmen of the towns, reduced to poverty by the economic conditions produced by the continuation of the war—it was a minority which demanded such consequences and attempted to rebel; the more so because the bourgeoisie, in the year III, had resumed their political powers. Babeuf preached communism, and, representing only a minority, was easily defeated.
How, later on, the development of machinery, the changed relations of capital and labour, were to bring about the movement known as Socialism, a movement which has not yet come to a head, because it has not had the assent of the mass of the nation—this is a subject we- cannot at this moment discuss.
What I do wish to demonstrate is that one is wrong
160 IDEAS AT OUTSET OF THE REVOLUTION
in opposing socialism with the principles of 1789. It is the same sort of mistake which confounds the Declaration of Rights with the monarchical and middle-class Constitution of 1789. Socialism, to be sure, is in violent contradiction to the social system established in 1789 ; but it was the consequence, the logical, extreme, (and, if you will, dangerous) consequence of the principles of 1789, which was demanded by Babeuf, the theorician of equality.
In any case the democratic and social republic is to be found in the Declaration; all the principles of which have not even yet been applied, and of which the future programme passes far beyond the limits of our generation, and it may be of many generations yet to follow.
CHAPTER III
THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE (BOURGEOISIE AND DEMOCRACY)
I. Neither all the logical social consequences, nor all the logical political consequences, ensue from the Declaration of Rights. At this period there are neither Socialists nor Republicans.—II. The organisation of the monarchy.—III. The organisation of the bourgeoisie as the privileged middle class. The rule of the property-holders.—IV. The Democratic movement.—-V. The application of the rule of the property-holders.—VI. The claims of the Democrats are emphasised.
I.
WE have seen that in the Declaration of Rights, debated and voted on from August 20-26, 1789, an entire republic, democratic and social, is implicitly immanent.
But the men of the time were careful not to apply all its principles, were wary of consummating all its consequences.
In reality they limited themselves to legalising what the nation had already done ; to ratifying the destruction and the acquisition already accomplished.
From an economic point of view they were content with the social revolution proclaimed on the night of August 4th : with the abolition of feudality. Certain methods or means of possession and of tenure were modified. The soil was freed (at least in principle) and
162 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
man was liberated. Soon we shall see the right of primogeniture abolished ; rules respecting inheritance and the further subdivision of land will be established ; and the sale of the national possessions by lots and parcels will hasten this subdivision.
But so far there is no attack upon the principle of inheritance itself, although it might be shown to be logically in contradiction to the first article of the Declaration, which enacts that men are born with equal rights.
The idea of an equal partition of the soil among all men, or of the general or partial socialisation of landed property, capital, and instruments of labour, is an idea which then, in 1789, was upheld by no one ; or if it were formulated, it was without influence, and none of the parties or groups accepted it. 1 What we to-day call socialism, and was then called " the agrarian law," was a doctrine so far from popular, so little widespread, that the most conservative writers of the time did not even take the trouble of criticising it or of withering it with their anathemas. 2
To understand to what extent even the boldest spirits, in the early times of the Revolution, hated socialism as understood by us, one has only to read, in the France libre of Camille Desmoulins, an imaginary dialogue between the Nobles and the Commons. The Nobles criticise the idea of deciding everything by majorities. " What ! " they say, " if the majority of the nation wished an agrarian law, at that rate we should have to
r Perhaps one might from this period find socialistic demands in the writings of the Abbe Fauchet. But what of the writers whose work actually appeared in 1789? Nothing could be more confused than the bibliography of the various pamphlets, periodic or otherwise, of Fauchet, Bonneville, and their group.
0 It happened in 1789 that the danger of the agrarian law was mentioned at the tribune of the Assembly, but only hypothetically. Thus the Abbe Maury stated that the spoliation of the clergy might legitimise " all the insurrections of the agrarian law " (October 13,1789).
submit to it! f> The Commons, something embarrassed by this objection, reply that property exists in the primitive social compact, which is above the general will; adding that, as a matter of fact, as non-proprietors cannot be electors, it is impossible that the " agrarian law " should be passed. 1
Both then, and for some time to come, we shall find a unanimous agreement to avoid any further supplement of the social revolution.
From the political point of view there is no demand for a republic ; all are agreed to preserve the monarchy. But how shall the monarchy be organised? This is the rock on which the parties split. No one asks for the re-establishment of absolutism. Public opinion ranges from the desire for an extremely powerful king, participating in the making of laws, having the last word in all things, to the idea of an annihilated monarch, a figure-head, a kind of president of a republic.
That the Fraiice of 1789 did not want a republic is proved and evident. But was there not a republican party in Paris, among the demagogues who met in the garden of the Palais Royal? Were there not at least individual manifestations of republicanism?
I see no trace of such a party, such manifestations. I have searched thoroughly, and I have found only one Frenchman who at this time called himself a republican : it was Camille Desmoulins. In his France libre, written at the end of June, 1789, and placed on sale on the July I7th following, he declares his preference for a republic before a monarchy, and, making his political confession, he owns to having praised Louis XVI in an Ode to the Estates-General. Up till June 23rd, the personal virtues of the monarch had rallied Camille to the monarchy. But the " Royal Session " disillusioned him. Most decidedly all kings
1 Camille Desmoulins, (Euvres, ed. by Claretie, vol. i. pp. 84, 85.
164 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
are the enemies of the people, and we must have no more royalty. All the same, feeling alone in his opinions, he does not insist on the immediate upheaval of the throne, and we shall soon see him assisting with his pen the patriots who, like Robespierre, are seeking to better the monarchy. The Procurator-General of the Lantern is still, in 1789, in spite of his sallies against royalty, resigned to the monarchy.
And the other agitators of the Palais Royal—Danton, and the worthy Saint-Huruge? They are royalists, as are the people whose passions they excite. And Marat? His influence at present is small, but it will be so great to-morrow that we must note his opinions of to-day. He draws up a plan of a Constitution ; it is a monarchical Constitution. 1 He expressly accepts hereditary monarchy. He wishes to place the King *' in a happy disability to do harm." But he desires an inviolable king : " The prince," he says, " must not be sought except in his ministers ; his person will be sacred." And he boasts that he has " traced the outline of the only form of monarchical government which can be suited to a great nation, educated in its rights and jealous of its liberty." If, at this period, he loves Rousseau he adores Montesquieu, whom he finds " most heroic," and whom he salutes with a long apostrophe of love and gratitude.
Would it be possible, among the innumerable pamphlets of this period, for a seeker more patient or more experienced than myself one day to find a manifestation of republican politics other than that of Camille Desmoulins? Perhaps ; but I can affirm that I myself have found no other; and if any other occurred, whether in the press or the clubs, it passed unregarded of public opinion.
No gazette, no journal, however advanced, not even the Patriots of Brissot, calls for a republic,. nor for 1 Marat, Le Constitution, Paris, 1789.
another king. Later on the Revolutions de Paris will be democratic, later still republican. But in September, 1789, it is a royalist journal, devoted to Louis XVI. Thus we read in it, in respect of a royal letter which asks the archbishops and bishops to come to the assistance of the State with their prayers and exhortations : "A wise man said that the nations would be happy when the philosophers were kings or the kings philosophers. We are, then, on the eve of being happy, for never has prince spoken to his people, or of his people, with so much philosophy as Louis XVI." * And the same journal 2 states, with satisfaction, that at the Theatre Frangaise, on September gth, the public demanded the repetition of these lines from the tragedy of Marie de Brabant, by Imbert:
"Oh for a King!—the idol of all France were he— The feudal hydra's might to vanquish; oh, might he Under one single law his happy people bring, To serve, instead of twenty tyrants, one good King!" 3
And in the National Assembly? Was there a republican party? were there isolated republicans? So it has been believed ; so it has been said. We have already quoted, from Mallet du Pan, the remark made by the United States Ambassador, Gouverneur Morris, who, conversing with Barnave during the first days of the Revolution, said to him 1 : " You are far more of a republican than I." But he was alluding to the republican state of mind which I have already characterised, not to any
1 RhoMions de Paris, No. ix. p. 10.
* Ibid. p. 30.
s "Puisse un roi, quelque jour 1'idole de la France, De I'hydre feodale abattre la puissance, Et voir Theureux Fran^ais, sous une seule loi, Au lieu de vingt tyrans ne servir qu'un bon roi!"
166 THE MIDDLE CLASS A2s T D THE PEOPLE
project of establishing a republic in France. And Barnave, a firm royalist, theorist and apologist of the monarchy under all circumstances, never showed the slightest sign of being anything but monarchical.
Members of the Assembly, such as Mounier ' and Ferrieres, 2 did retrospectively believe, through a kind of logical deformation of the memory, that there was, in 1789, a republican party in the Assembly, with a secret committee ; but we have not a single fact in confirmation of such assertions.
Another member, Barere, stated in print, in the year III, that he had not "awaited the tocsin of July the i ith and beheld the Revolution of August the loth before becoming a patriot and loving the Republic." Now he did not say this with regard to the needs of his cause, for at that time, under the reaction of Thermidor, he rather had cause to defend himself against the charge of having ever been a demagogue : he made the statement out of a sincere mental illusion ; he had forgotten the chronology of the evolution of his own opinions .3
To these fantastic allegations let us oppose the important and little known testimony of a contemporary, which proves that no member of the Assembly ever said, at this time, that he was a republican, nor ever allowed himself to be taken for such ; I speak of Rabaut Saint-fetienne, a speech of whose was printed by order of the Assembly.
On August 28, 1789, they had begun, in the Assembly, to debate on the first article of the draft of
1 R&chtrchts sur les causes, &c., vol. i. p, 260.
a Memoires, ist ed. vol. i. p. 203.
s I believe the Jacobins of Dole were the prey of a like illusion when they wrote to the National Convention, September 29, 1792: "We were already Republicans before the taking of the Bastille; we had an abhorrence of kings ..."
ATTACHMENT TO THE MONARCHY 167
the Committee of Constitution, ratifying the monarchy."; afterwards they passed on to other matters. On September ist, speaking of the royal sanction, Saint-£tienne spoke as follows c*
" It is impossible to think that any one in this Assembly can have conceived the ridiculous project of converting the kingdom into a republic. Every one knows that the republican form of government is hardly convenient and suitable for a small State, and experience has taught us that every republic ends by becoming subject to the aristocracy or to a despotism. Also the French have from all time been attached to the sacred and venerable antiquity of the institution of monarchy; they are attached to the august blood of their kings, for whom they have plentifully shed their own ; and they revere the benevolent prince whom they have proclaimed the restorer of French liberty. It is towards the throne as a consoler that the eyes of the afflicted peoples always turn; and whatever may be the ills under which they groan, a word, a single word, the magical charm of which can only be explained by their love—the paternal name of king — suffices to lead them back to hope. 8 The French Government, then, is monarchical; and when this maxim has been pronounced in this hall, all that I ask is that the word ' monarchy' should be defined*"
1 Opinion de Rabaut Saint-Etienne sur la motion suivante de AT. le vicomte de Noailles (relative to this sanction). This opinion is contained in the Proces-verbal de la Constituante, vol. iv.
9 Nothing could be truer. The name of the King, joined with that of the National Assembly, sufficed, in the early days of the Revolution, to calm the most troubled spirits. Two of the King's commissaries tell as follows how, in January, 1791, there appeared a seditious rising of peasants in the department of Lot: " Sire, we experience a very pleasant satisfaction in telling you that your name and that of the National Assembly produced a sudden impression on their minds which, without surprising us, filled us with emotion. Hardly had we pronounced those names, which must never more be separated, than feelings of joy, happiness, and gratitude were painted on the faces of all; these names, in short, which recalled so many acts of benevolence and justice, were, for the worthy countryfolk, the best of all arguments, and more than once served us in touching their hearts and convincing their reason " (Rapport de MM. y. Godard et L. Robin, p. 29).
168 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
Against these words, both heard and read, no one protested, either in the Assembly or out of it. Thus, from the height of the tribune, an orator incited the republicans to show themselves, and they did not show themselves, not a single one.' Thus all the Frenchmen who acclaimed the republican Declaration of Rights were monarchists, so that there was never even a passing discussion as to the nature of the government.
II.
The debate on the Constitution took place, then, entirely between monarchists, and bore entirely on the question of the organisation of the monarchy. It commenced on August 28th and ended on October 2nd.
It began with the reading and examination of the first article of the draft submitted by Mounier on July 28th : " The French Government is monarchical ; it is essentially directed by the law; there is no authority whatever superior to the law; the King reigns only by law, and, when he does not command in the name of the law, he cannot require obedience."
The motives for preserving the monarchy had been briefly exposed in a brief report drawn up by Mounier on July 9th. Therein he stated that there had been a king for fourteen centuries ; that " the sceptre was not created by force, but by the will of the nation " ; that the French " had always felt the need of a king 1 " ;
1 Could it be said that they were keeping their tactics dark ? We read in the M&noires of Ferrieres (ist ed. vol. i. p. 203): "The first article excited long debates, but not on the essential principles; whatever desire the revolutionaries may have had to annihilate the monarchical government and replace it by a republic, they were not then sufficiently powerful to dare to allow their intentions to see daylight'* But Ferriferes wrote this during the Directory (his Menwires appeared in the year VII), so that his reminiscences were of a certain age.
and in Article 2, on "the order of work," which followed this report of July gth, are the words : " The monarchical form of government is especially suited to a large population."
The debate which immediately followed bore in no way on the monarchical principle, but on the applications of this principle. The Abb6 d'Eymar, as we have seen, demanded (without success) that the first article should have for object the declaration of the Catholic religion as the dominant religion. D&neunier was in favour of the words : " France is a monarchy qualified by the laws." Malouet, bolder than the rest, proposed as the opening phrase, " The general will of the French people is that its government should be a monarchy." According to him the royal power, emanating from the nation, should be subordinated to the nation. Adrien du Port would have preferred to hear the rights of the nation mentioned first, and Wimpffen was in favour of the words, " The government of France is a royal democracy." Robespierre intervened only to propose " rules for a free and peaceable discussion, and one as extended as may be required by the different points of the constitution." I
It was seen that there was no agreeing on the definition of the monarchy; it was thought that before defining it it would be better to organise it; so, adjourning the first article, the essential characteristics of this organisation were decided on; the respective rights of the nation and the King (Mounier's third report, August 3ist). Rules were passed successively on the questions of the veto, the permanence of the Assembly, the unity of the legislative power (a single Chamber), the inviolability of the royal person, the mode of inheriting the crown, and finally, on Septem-
1 Courriei de Provence, No. xxxiv.; Patriot* franfais, No. xxx.; Point du Jour, voL ii. p. 236.
1TO THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
her 22nd, returning to the first article, it was voted that "the French Government is monarchical."•
Lovers of coincidence might remark that the monarchy was thus approved three years to a day before the establishment of the republic. What is more important is that the vote was recorded, without comment, without astonishment or any kind of protest, by all the newspapers that mentioned it, including those of Brissot, Gorsas, Barere, and Marat.'
\Ve cannot repeat it too often: here is the monarchy consecrated, as it were, by the Assembly, and the republic rejected, without even the honour of a debate.
The inviolability of the royal person was voted unanimously by acclamation, and Marat, even after reflection, found no fault with anything except the fact of having defined the prerogatives of the prince before settling the rights of the nation. 2
But the republic of which none showed the least desire to speak was so largely " infused " 3 into the monarchy that the " inviolable " King had now hardly any of the powers of a king .4
Here is the entire article, voted on September 22, 1789:
" The French Government is monarchical; there is in France no authority whatever superior to the law; the King reigns only by the law, and it is only by virtue of the laws that he can exact obedience."
1 See the Patriot* franfais, No. lii.; Gorsas, p. 417; Barere, vol. iii. p. 76; Marat, No. xiii. p. 117.
9 Ami du Peuple, No. vi. p. 59, and No. xii. p. no.
s According to the phrase and the advice of d'Argenson.
* The fragile character of an institution at the same time republican and monarchist, was, according to the retrospective testimony of Du Pont (of Nemours), foreseen by certain deputies, who declared: « You have woven the fabric of a republic; you wish to embroider a monarchy upon it; the needle will break, and you risk wearing out the stuff 11 (see fHistorien, ist of Frimaire, year IV, p. 12, Bibl. Nat).
THE MONARCHY SUBORDINATE 171
Clear enough; yet there was a feeling that it was not yet sufficiently clear, that the Divine right of the King might appear to be insufficiently abolished. So the very next day, on the motion of Fr&eau, this article was voted:
"All powers emanate eventually from the nation, and can only so emanate."
This had already been said in the Declaration;* it is here repeated, to make it perfectly clear that the monarchy is subordinate to the nation ; and, the better still to affirm this subordination, this Article 2 becomes Article i, preceding that which ratifies the monarchy. This, according to Gorsas, 2 was voted unanimously and with applause.
But if we wish to understand the true spirit in which the Constituent Assembly organised the monarchy, we must remember that by the nation it meant a new privileged class, the class we call the bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie wanted a king who should be well in hand, but who should preserve sufficient power to defend them against democracy.
So they give the King the right of veto ; but they allow him only a " suspensive veto " ; that is, the veto would cease to operate "when the two Legislatures following that which has presented the decree shall have successively presented the same decree in the same terms."3
The effect of this would be that if the King, relying on a current of democratic opinion, attempted to shake off the guardianship of the bourgeoisie, he would
1 Article 3 of the Declaration: "The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; no body of men, no individual, can exercise any authority that does not emanate expressly from the nation."
9 Courrier de Versailles a Paris et de Paris a Versailles, vol. iii. p. 434*
3 Each Legislature was to last two years.
172 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
find himself thwarted. Consequently the absolute veto was rejected : not solely from a revolutionary point of view, but also for anti-democratic reasons.
This was a matter that Paris did not fully understand, when she rose against the absolute veto. But it was plain to Mirabeau, when in his speech of September ist he spoke of the absolute veto as a means of preventing the formation of an aristocracy equally hostile to the monarch and the people. " The King," he said, " is the perpetual representative of the people, just as the deputies are its representatives elected at certain periods/' Of this " royal democracy " ' the people of Paris understood nothing, neither those who applauded it nor those who hissed it. To-day we can well appreciate the political idea of Mirabeau : the idea of the King relying on the people as against the new privileged class, the bourgeoisie, as formerly he had relied on the people as against the ancient privileged class, the nobles.
The King understands nothing of this. He continues to make common cause with the nobles, whose power is dying, and the cause of the people appears to be confounded with that of the bourgeoisie, to such an extent that in disputes between the bourgeoisie and the King, the people always takes the part of the bourgeoisie.
Thus, the popular feeling against the system of two Chambers—proposed by Mounier and the Committee of Constitution—was really profitable only to the bourgeoisie, who, understanding what was really to their
1 Wimpffen's phrase was famous long afterwards. Even under Louis-Philippe, it incommoded and frightened the partisans of the middle-class regime. Thus Roger-Collard, in 1831, in the debate on ^the hereditary peerage, said from the tribune: " Let us speak plainly: royal democracy, whether or not it chooses to retain its shadow of royal, is, or very soon will be, democracy pure and simple" gee this speech in the Vie politique de Royer-Collard by M. de Barante, vol. ii. p. 469).
THE BOURGEOISIE AND THE KING 173
advantage better than Mounier, rejected the idea of an upper Chamber in order to rid the political field of the nobles ; but later, in the year HI, they resumed, to their advantage, the idea of an Upper Chamber, when the nobles, who were abroad or in prison, were no longer to be feared.
At the same time, such apparently democratic measures as the permanence of the legislative body, and the refusal of the right of dissolution to the King, were undertaken only to render the King powerless against the bourgeoisie.
To prevent the democratisation of the King, to ensure that he existed only by and for the middle-class nation—here was a part of the intentions of the authors of these Articles of Constitution.
If in the Declaration of Rights there existed in embryo the democratic and social republic, so in the Constitution we may say there was the germ of a property-holders' republic.
If, on the other hand, we set aside for the moment this question of democracy and the middle classes, we may remark that these involuntary republican tendencies are to be found, not only in the text of the monarchical Constitution of 1789, but also and especially in the manner in which the Assembly demands the assent of the King to the Constitution. The Assembly wished him to accept it without giving him the right to repulse it, and without permitting him to exercise in this matter his right of sanction. We must examine the theory which Mounier expounds in his report of August 3ist:
"I should also," he says, "anticipate a false interpretation of the royal sanction proposed by the Committee. It means to speak of the sanction established by the Constitution, and not for the Constitution—that is to say, of the sanction necessary for simple legislative functions.
"The King would not have the right to oppose the establishment of
174 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
the Constitution—that is to say, of the liberty of his people. Nevertheless he must sign and ratify the Constitution for himself and his successors. Being interested in the propositions which it contains, he might require alterations to be made ; but, if they were contrary to the liberty of the public, the National Assembly would have as resource, not only the refusal of taxation, but also recourse to its constituents, for the nation has certainly the right to make use of any means necessary to obtain its freedom. The Committee has been of opinion that one should not even consider the question of whether the King will ratify the Constitution, and that the sanction should be inserted in the Constitution itself, on account of the laws which would then be established."
On September i ith Guillotin inquired : " Can the King refuse his consent to the Constitution? " Mounier and Freteau replied that it was, at that moment, dangerous and inopportune to concern oneself with this question, " which all minds were agreed on," « and, the previous question having been put, the Assembly, says the proces-verbal, voted " that the present was not the time for considering it."
The meaning of this vote was expressed more clearly by Mirabeau, who stated, at the tribune, " that if the Assembly had thrown a religious veil over the great truth that a Constitution does not require to be sanctioned, it was because there was reason to believe that, under the circumstances, this truth was dangerous to enunciate ; but that the principle remained always the same, and that it must never be abandoned." 2
The articles once voted, it was decreed (October ist) that the Declaration and the Constitution should :be
1 Point du ^our t vol. ii. p. 335. According to Le Hodey (vol iii. p. 398), Mounier meant: ct The King has no consent to give to the Constitution ; it is anterior to the monarchy." And Freteau, according to the same writer, meant that, were the King's consent demanded, he might reply that he would give it only when it had been ratified by his people—"that then the constituents would become judges of the constitution, from which great evils might result"
• Point du Jour, voL ii. p. 375.
THE KING FAILS THE REVOLUTION 175
14 presented for the acceptance of the King " ; and the debates which preceded the voting of this decree made it plain that the word acceptance was understood in this way : that the King could not oppose his veto. 1
Thus the Assembly does not admit that the King can, either in law or in fact, reject the Constitution ; it intends to force it on him.
What could be more republican than this?
The King has paid dearly indeed for his fault of deserting his political duty as leader of opinion, as pilot of the coming Revolution. We see him now reduced to play a passive and humiliating part, one which the cahiers neither foresaw nor demanded .*
1 See the report of this discussion, Point du your, vol. Hi. p. 185, and the reflections of Barere, p. 186. The Journal of Le Hodey (vol. iv. p. 331) said that this vote did not settle the important question of the veto hi the matter of the Constitution. But he did not doubt the intentions of the Assembly; it merely avoided settling the question by a formal decree.
3 We may note here that it was now the reactionaries who quoted the cahiers, and quoted them, moreover, against the revolutionaries. Members hardly had the courage now, at the tribune, to speak as though authorised by the cahiers. Thus, during the session of December 7,1789, during a debate on the question of increasing the value of the mark of silver, the Marquis de Foucauld-Lardimalie said, with a smile: " I am obliged, here, to quote my unhappy cakier." The journalist Le Hodey (vol. vi. p. 319), who mentions this incident (Point du Jour, vol. v. p. 39), adds this remark: "The Assembly regards the cahiers as a fairy-tale, and can rarely refrain from laughter when a deputy tries to argue from his. The reason is, that these gentlemen have gone beyond these matters; circumstances have so ordered it." In the fragmentary memoirs entitled, Extraits de mon Journal (published September, 1791) the Member of Assembly Felix Faulcon writes as follows : c< I will not say that the greater part of these cahiers were contradictory, that the one forbade what the other commanded, and that if each deputy had literally confined himself to his cahier, and tied himself down to it, it would have been impossible to do anything whatever, or to attempt anything but the most monstrous and incoherent of tasks; I shall not seek to maintain (though I could easily prove) that there is not one of all our operations that has not
176 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
In this pass he behaved as he had always behaved, whether towards the Parliaments or the Assembly itself. He had a sudden fit of anger, then gave in.
On October ist, when the articles and the Declaration were presented for his (forced !) acceptation, he stated that he would reply to them later. Then the Court prepared a coup d'ttat. On October 5th it announced that it accepted the Constitutional Articles only with reserve, and that it refused to pronounce itself concerning the Declaration of Rights. Then Paris intervened; an armed multitude came to Versailles, and the King, intimidated, gave his unconditional acceptance. The people led him to Paris, where he was obliged to remain in residence, half a prisoner, and the Assembly followed him. 1
been demanded by one cahier at least, often by many, and that they have all, in addition, been sanctioned by the will of the nation, manifested repeatedly in the countless addresses of confidence. . . . But truly, to-day, when in two years our horizon has been so prodigiously enlarged, how can any one still have the impudence to say that we ought to lay the foundations of a free Constitution on principles which were dictated under the shadow and in the fear of despotism ? How should men bent under the yoke of an all-pervading oppression dare to express themselves with perfect candour ? How should they have dared an open attack on the abuses of the feudal system at a time when one of the electors of a Norman bailiwick was proceeded against by order of the Parliament of Rouen, because, in a primary assembly, he had been blasphemously inspired to speak certain truths concerning des ci-devant our nobles ?" (Chapter XXXII, March 28,1791, p. 83.)
1 The people of Paris had then no more idea of dethroning the King than they had on July 14. They wished solely to take him to Paris, in order to have him under their eyes, and in the hope that with better counsellors he might be a better King. It was a question of putting the King at the head of the Revolution, of imposing on him a part which he evaded, and not of overturning the throne. The insurgents of October 5 and 6 were still royalists. There would be no need, after all I have said, to remind the reader that at this period of this popular insurrection there were no republicans in the National Assembly, but for the existence of a well-known anecdote of the session of October 5 in which the monarchist Mounier, then President, is once more exhibited in a republican light Mirabeau having in private conversation urged
Here, then, is the Assembly once more victorious over the King, and victorious once more thanks to the people of Paris. Here it is, in Paris, at the mercy of the people. Henceforth it will have as much fear of democracy as of absolutism; and hence its see-saw politics, now against the King, now against the people.
Against the King is issued the decree of October 8th, which changes his title from " King of France and of Navarre" to " King of the French."
Then it creates him a King with two faces, or rather, a King of two essences : Louis, by the grace of God and the constitutional law of the State, King of the French; * thus combining, in the same empirical formula, the old mystical principle and the new rational principle ; the old absolutist and feudal system and the Revolution. It is against democracy, this appeal to the " grace of God." It is against the King, and in favour of the middle class, this invocation of the " constitutional law." This contradiction is an example of what was called " mystery " in the political jargon of the day, and it was not considered the act of a good patriot to throw too much light on the matter. It is what Mirabeau once, in a speech of September 18, 1789, called "making up for the quickness of the crossing." 2
Against the King, too, is the departmental organisation (December 22, 1789), in which there is no place
him to conclude the session, he replied : " Paris is marching on us; well, so much the better; we shall be a republic all the sooner" (Histoire de la Revolution, by two Friends of Liberty, vol. ii. p. 319, published in 1790). But cannot one see that Mounier speaks ironically ? Does his "so much the better" mean more than this : "all the better for the fire-eaters; their wishes will be granted to overflowing " ?
1 October loth.
8 Mirabeau peintpar lui-mime, vol. i. p. 360.
VOL. i. 12
178 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
for any agent of the central power, but a kind of administrative anarchy. 1
Against fhe people is the law of municipal organisation (December I4th).
This law is spoken of as if it had created, or at least re-established, the municipal life of France, and as if it were a law of popular tendencies. Quite the reverse is true. The Revolution in municipal forms, from July to August, 1789, was democratic-; the people had installed themselves as masters in the public place, or in the church, deliberating there under arms. The law of December I4th restrained this liberty, suppressing municipal democracy ; it allowed the citizens of the communes to meet once only, and for one object only : the nomination of the municipal officers, and of the electors ; and this it allowed only to " active citizens." There were to be no more even of those general assemblies of the population which the old state of things convened here and there in certain cases. The entire municipal life was legally concentrated in the municipality, chosen among the richer citizens, by a suffrage of citizens holding property. However, this law conceded to "active citizens 1 ' (Article 62) the right " to meet peaceably and without arms in private assemblies in order to draw up petitions and addresses." Such assemblies took the place, up to a certain point, of the old assemblies of the inhabitants ; they became, indeed, one of the important factors of municipal life. There were the Jacobin clubs, which maintained the Revolution, unified France, and indirectly, and at first without intending it, contributed to the advent of Democracy and the Republic.
1 Thus, the councillors and directors of departments were invited, by the law of March 15,1791 (Article 24) to denounce to the Legislature such orders of the King as seemed to them contrary to the laws.
PEIVILEGES OF TffE MIDDLE CLASS 179
III.
We have seen how the National Assembly organised the Monarchy. Let us see how it organised the middle class as a class with special political privileges.
The reader will not have forgotten that the philosophers and political writers of the eighteenth century were unanimously—not excepting Rousseau—against the idea of establishing in France a democracy, as we understand it—the rule of universal suffrage ; and the French had been still further encouraged to repudiate the idea of such a democracy by the example of the American English, who had established in their republican States a property-owners' suffrage.
At the beginning of the Revolution the same state of mind still existed.
Thus, in June, 1789, Camille Desmoulins writes : T
"The first men to unite themselves in a society saw from the first that the state of primitive equality could not subsist for long; that, in succeeding assemblies, some of the associates would no longer have the same interest in keeping the social pact, the guarantee of the safe possession of property; and they would take care to put it out of the power of the latter class to break this pact In this spirit legislators have deleted from the body politic the class of people whom we call proletariats, as good only to breed children and to recruit society; = they have relegated them to a division without influence over the assemblies of the people. Exiled from the great affairs of life by a thousand tasks or needs, and in a continual dependence, this division can never be dominant in the State. The very sentiment of their own condition keeps them away from all assemblies. Will the servant think as the master does, and the beggar with him on whose alms he lives ?"
A few weeks later Camille Desmoulins had changed his opinion. He was not alone in so doing. There
1 La France libre. (Euvres of C. Dcsmoulins, vol. i. p. 85.
3 It is curious to find Desmoulins writing as though society could or should be chiefly recruited from the poor, inefficient, sick, or criminal! —[TRANS.]
180 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
were soon voices in favour of universal suffrage, and in favour of democracy, even among the disciples of Rousseau ; even among those who, like Robespierre, adored Rousseau.
Why?
Because a new factor came into being—the filling of the stage, the assumption of the toga, by the people, who, united to the middle classes, had triumphed over the Bastille, and effected the municipal revolution throughout all France.
Was it just or possible to relegate to the category of proletariats the workers who had beaten back the King's troops in the open streets ; the peasants who had triumphed over feudalism ; this body of Frenchmen in arms?
This, however, is what the Assembly did. But it was no longer one of those reforms concerning which all patriots are united, and which seem the result of the force of events.
The establishment of the rule of property-holders was effected only after complicated and uproarious debates, and led to a schism between the men of the Revolution. Henceforward there is a democratic party and a bourgeois party, nameless as yet and half unconscious of themselves, and it is in the first that we must look for the elements of the future Republican party.
Let us try to elucidate this fact, which is ill under-' stood, of the establishment of a regime of property-holders, the political organisation of the middle class, of the bourgeois franchise.
In the report made by Mounier, in the name of the Committee of Constitution, on July 9, 1789, there was nothing whatever, or little enough, concerning the property-holders* franchise: only a vague protest against " placing arbitrary authority in the hands of the multitude." Perhaps the bourgeoisie still had
PASSIVE AND ACTITE CITIZENS 181
need of the '* multitude" to overcome the royal despotism.
After the taking of the Bastille, when the bourgeoisie had vanquished this despotism by means of the multitudes of Paris, the idea of eliminating from political life the poorer part of the nation saw the light; and on July 20th and 2ist Sieyes read to the Committee of Constitution a work entitled, Preliminaries of the Constitution: a reasoned Examination and Exposition of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 1 in which he distinguished natural and civil rights, which he called passive rights, from political rights, which he called active rights. "All the inhabitants of a country/' he said, " should enjoy therein the rights of a passive citizen; all have a right to the protection of their persons, their property, their liberty, &c., but all have not the right to take part in the formation of public authority ; all are not active citizens. Women—at least in the present state of things—children, foreigners, and, again, those who in no way contribute to the public establishment, should not have any active influence in public matters. All may enjoy the advantages of society ; but only those who contribute to the public establishment are, as it were, true shareholders in the great social undertaking. These alone are truly active citizens, true members of the association." How will he distinguish these " true shareholders "? He does not say; he does not formally mention the conditions of the property suffrage. But one sees clearly what he is driving at. And it is in vain that he cries : " The equality of political rights is a fundamental principle ; it is sacred " ; and so forth. By this, evidently, he means only that all active citizens ought to enjoy the same political rights. In any case, it was he who first made use, in this connection, of the words active and passive, and he who first pro-1 Paris, Baudoin, 1789 (also the Proces-verbal, voL ii.).
182 THE MIDDLE CLASS AXD THE PEOPLE
posed these formulas, from which the entire bourgeoisie organisation was presently to spring.
Only when the defeat of the ancien regime became definitive were the proposals for a property suffrage officially * announced ; in a report which Lally-Tollendal drew up in the name of the Committee of Constitution, on August 31, 1789, in proposing a system of two Chambers, he demanded that the members of the " Chamber of Representatives " should be proprietors ; because, said he, such are more independent. In order not to exclude merit, he demanded merely the possession of some real estate : " This," he added, " will be to prove less exacting than the English, and even than the Americans, who, in requiring the possession of freehold, have determined a fixed minimum value." But as for the Upper Chamber, " each Senator will have to prove his title to territorial property of determined value (determined by the National Assembly)."
Lally spoke only of conditions of eligibility. Mounier, in a report and a proposal which he submitted on the same day (August 3ist), says that " to possess the right to elect, a man must have been domiciled for a year in the district of election, and must pay a direct tax equal in value to three days' labour." As for eligibility, his advice is slightly different from that of Lally ; he suggests that, in order to b'e eligible to ' k the Legislative Body," one should have had " for a period of at least a year possession of real estate within the kingdom." 2
The Assembly hesitated visibly in the face of violating in this way the first article of the Declaration of Rights. It would not have been possible to
1 There is nothing concerning the matter in Mourner's report of July 28th.
8 His motives are explained in another report (September 4th) but in an obscure and uninteresting manner.
insert the electoral system in the Constitutional Articles decreed in September ; it was relegated to the scheme for the administrative division of the kingdom.
This scheme was the object of a report submitted by Thouret on September 29th. He calculated that, the population of France being approximately twenty -six millions, there should not be more than about 4,400,000 electors. To be an active citizen, according to Thouret's scheme, a man must pay the State the equivalent of three days' labour ; to be eligible for the Assembly of the Commune, and that of the Department, the condition was to be the value of ten days' labour^ to be eligible to the National Assembly, the condition would be the payment of a direct tax equal in value to a mark of silver. The whole system was proposed by Thouret, briefly and dryly, and unsupported by arguments.
On October 2Oth the debate opened on the conditions required of a man before he could be reckoned an '* active " citizen.
Montlosier demanded the suppression of the words " active " and " passive." But he wished the right of suffrage to be confined to the heads of families.
Le Grand wished the condition to be limited to the value of a single day's work. 1
The discussion dragged on, as though the Assembly were ashamed of eliminating the populace, the victors of the Bastille, from the State. A Parisian riot (on the murder of the baker Frangois) very conveniently furnished the bourgeoisie with arguments against the people; on October 2ist martial law was voted for the benefit of the middle class which proclaimed it. The discussion was resumed on the 22nd, more lively and impassioned now, and one sees the bourgeois and the democrats at grips at last.
1 Point du your, vol. iii. p. 489.
184 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
" M. the Abbe Gregoire," says a contemporary journalist, " rose, with his usual patriotic vehemence, to protest against this condition.
* Money/ he said, 'is a mainspring in the matter of administration; but the virtues must hold their place in society. The condition of a certain tax proposed by the Committee of Constitution is an excellent means of placing us once more under the aristocracy of riches. It is time to honour the poor; the poor man has a citizen's duties to fulfil, however small his fortune; it is enough that his heart is French.' "*
Adrien du Port, who was one of the leaders of the bourgeoisie, also spoke, in the name of the Declaration of Rights, against any restriction of the suffrage ; and Defennon spoke to the same effect. 3 Reubell thought differently ; but it seemed to him that the words " days of labour" presented " a humiliating idea," and "just as the Committee proposed a tax of the value of a silver mark as the condition of eligibility to the National Assembly, it was only consistent to require the payment of an ounce of silver for eligibility to the primary assemblies." 3 Gaultier de Biauzat, going further, demanded a qualification of two ounces.4 M. Noussitou said that in B£arn they had never considered the amount of a man's taxes as a qualification, but his standing as a man of enlightened mind. M. Robespierre drew from the Declaration of Rights the proof that a citizen had no need to pay a tax in order to exercise political rights, without which rights individual liberty would not exist.' 1 s
Du Pont (de Nemours), " imbued with the idea
s Le Hodey, vol. v. pp. 147-8. According to Gorsas (Courrier, voL v. p. 77), Gregoire said that to be an elector or eligible "it was needful only to be a good citizen, to have a sound judgment, and a French heart."
B Point du your, vol. ii. p. 416.
s Ibid., vol. iii. p. 415.
4 Le Hodey, vol. v. p. 149.
* Point du your, vol. iii. p. 415. A more extended analysis of this speech of Robespierre will be found in Le Hodey, voL v. p. 140, and in Gorsas, vol. v. p. 78.
UNIVEESAL OR QUALIFIED SUFFRAGE? 185
that property is the fundamental basis of society/' * gives advice of a mixed nature : every man should be eligible, but in order to be an elector he must be a proprietor. 3
D&neunier defends the proposal of the Committee. 11 In the payment of three days' labour there resides a motive for emulation and encouragement; and incapacity would be only temporary ; the non-proprietor would sooner or later become a proprietor." 3 Already we hear the " Get rich I" of Guizot.
To sum up : five deputies—Gr^goire, Adrien du Port, Defermon, Noussitou, and Robespierre—demanded universal suffrage. What was the numerical importance of the minority in whose name they spoke? We do not know, and there was no numerical vote. But the minority must have been a small one, for we find the most advanced " patriots " resigning themselves to the property suffrage. Thus we shall find Petion, on the following October 29th, saying at the tribune : " From one point of view, I used to say that every citizen should partake of political rights ; from another, especially where the nation in question is ancient and corrupt, I can see the necessity of the exception proposed by your Committee of Constitution."
The article was voted forthwith, and became the third of the first section of the decree of December 22, 1789. It reads as follows :
"The qualities which are essential in an active citizen are: (i) he must be French; (2) he must be at least twenty-five years of age; (3) he must have been actually domiciled in the canton for at least a year j (4) he must pay direct taxation to the value (local) of three days 1 labour; (5) he must not be in a state of domesticity—that is, a hired servant. 11 *
1 Point du Jour, vol. iii. p. 415.
8 Le Hodey, voL v. p. 149. 8 Ibid., p. 151.
4 On this question of the political incapacity of servants, see the
Point du Jour, vol. iii, pp. 45&-6o. The decree of March 20 and
186 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
How, and at what rate, was the day's work to be valued? In the first place, the municipal authorities had to make this valuation. 1 Some arrived at too high a figure. For instance, the Committee of Soissons fixed it at 20 sols, 2 although the average figure for a day's work in that city was actually only 12 sols. It seems that elsewhere the price was fixed at more than 20 sols. Thus, on January 15, 1790, the following decree was enacted :
1 " The National Assembly, considering the fact that, forced as it is to impose certain conditions as to the quality of active citizen, it ought to make these conditions as easy for the people to fulfil as possible, and that the value of three days' labour, required from the active citizen, should not be fixed according to the industrial day, which is susceptible to many variations, but according to the agricultural day, has decreed . . . that in the valuation of the day's work from this point of view the sum of 20 sols must not be exceeded."
It was only by exception that the municipalities tended to increase the "price of a day's work," to " aristocratise " the suffrage. We shall see presently that in general the tendency was to fix the price lower than the real value—to " democratise " the suffrage ; and this tendency provoked certain observations and
23 and April 19,1790, enacts, in Article 7, that " stewards, managers, former feodists, secretaries, carters, or foremen employed by landowners, freeholders, or tenant farmers \mltayers : in the strict meaning of the word the land is held on condition of giving the proprietor half the produce— TRANS.], shall not be reputed domestics or hired servants if otherwise they meet the other required conditions."
1 Before the application of municipal law, the price of the day's labour was fixed by the revolutionary municipalities which were spontaneously established in July and August, 1789, or by the "Committees" which were formed in the towns. The decree of February n, 1790, confides the task of valuation to the new municipalities. Later, by the decree of January 13, 1791, Article n, this function is passed on to the administrations of districts and departments.
instructions from the Committee of Constitution (March 30, 1790). It was stated "that, if the municipalities have the power to value the day's work at a sum less than 20 sols, they must not reduce this sum to any ridiculous extent, in order to increase their influence." For instance, for a valuation lower than 10 sols they ought to refer to the National Assembly.
The question of the three days' work came once more before the Assembly during the session of October 23, 1790, when it discussed the proposal relating to taxes on movable property and a kind of poll-tax, which became the law on January 13, 1791. The Committee of Constitution then attempted to democratise the suffrage to some extent, and proposed, through Defermon, to make all who had any resources whatever, except " labourers of the lowest class," pay a tax equivalent to the value of three days' work. The labourers could pay the tax voluntarily, when they would become active citizens. It was practically universal suffrage that the Committee was thus attempting to establish by indirect means. But the Assembly protested against the clause permitting the voluntary payment of the three days' tax ; it affected to fear corruption; and the preliminary question was put to the vote amidst an uproar. Roederer insisted that the remainder of the article should be redrafted so as to exclude as great a proportion of labourers as was possible. Robespierre delivered a democratic speech. 1 This is what the Assembly voted :
"The tax of three days' labour will be paid by all those who possess any fixed or movable wealth, or who, reduced to their daily work,
1 Point du Jour, vol. xv. pp. 333-5 ; Moniteur, reprint, vol. vi. p. 191. We find that Robespierre and Roederer, both members of the extreme Left of the Constituent Assembly, were not then in agreement on this important question of the right of suffrage.
188 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
exercise a trade or calling which affords them a salary larger than that fixed by the Department as the value of a day's work in the territory of their municipality." 1
This enlarged a little the basis originally decided on. For example, in a commune where the tax of the day's work was fixed at 15 sols, a labourer who earned 16 sols a day would become an elector.
Other measures were or had already been taken to make the suffrage yet a little wider. Thus, in Paris, the Committee of Constitution authorised " the admission to the primary assemblies of all members of the National Guard having served at their own expense, without any tax being required of them 1 ." 2 The law of February 28, 1790, enacted that soldiers and sailors of the navy who had served at least sixteen years should be electors and eligible 'without any other requirements .3 Finally, it seems that ecclesiastics were admitted as active citizens to the primary assemblies without being subject to the three days' tax.4
We have official statistics of the " active " population of France. Out of twenty-six millions of inhabitants (which was believed to be the population)
1 This became Article 13, heading 2, of the law of January 13, 1791.
* I have not been able to find this decree of the Committee of Constitution. But allusion is made to it in the above terms by Desmousseaux, substitute adjutant of the procurator of the Commune, in a letter of June 10,1791, in which he demands of the Committee if it is necessary to follow the same rules for the formation of primary assemblies, in view of the elections for the next National Assembly (Arch. Nat. D. iv. dossier 1425, pjtce 25). We have not the Committee's reply.
3 In the order of August 12,1790, § vi. Article 20.
* This is implied by a speech by Robespierre, but I have found neither law nor decree dealing with the subject. These were Robespierre's words: "You have granted them [the rights of active citizens] to ministers of worship, when they cannot fulfil the pecuniary conditions exacted by your decrees" ((Euvres, Laponneraye. vol. i. P-
there were 4,298,360 active citizens, if we may believe the figures given in the decree of May 28, 1791.
Such were the' conditions required of the primary voter, the man allowed to take part in the primary assemblies, the *' active citizen," x
It remained to fix the conditions of eligibility. The Committee of Constitution proposed to exact the payment of a tax equal to the local value of ten days of work : (i) from those who wished to be nominated as electors by the primary assemblies ; (2) from those who wished to be eligible as members of a Departmental Assembly ; (3) from those who wished to be eligible as members of a District Assembly ; (4) from those who wished to be eligible to the Municipal Assemblies. The debate opened on October 28, 1789, and was closed the same day, by the adoption of the proposal of the Committee .a There was a certain inconsiderable amount of opposition. Du Pont thought there should be no property restrictions whatever concerning the right to be elected, and Montlosier agreed with him : " Jean-Jacques Rousseau," 3 he said, " would never have managed to get elected."4 Vivian, on the contrary, demanded that the law should require, as well as the other condition, the possession of "a sufficient real estate." s The democratic deputies do not seem to have come into action on this occasion; 6 they were
1 Let me note here that the primary assemblies were the judges of the capacity and title of citizens as active or passive. See the decrees of December 22,1789, and February 3, 1790.
9 Point du ^our 9 vol. iii. pp. 478-80.
s Gorsas, Courrier, vol. v. p. 169.
* As an example of the regulations by which a State refuses the services of men admirably adapted to serve it, certain regulations of the English War Office will recur to the reader which would, had they been in force earlier, have kept some of our greatest generals out of the army; and entrance to the navy is even more restricted.—[TRANS.]
s Gorsas, Courrier, vol. v. p. 170.
6 Mirabeau, who was hostile to the idea of creating a privileged middle class, nevertheless stated, or at least allowed it to be stated, in
190 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
reserving themselves for the debate on the value of the silver mark.
This debate on the mark of silver—that is, on the conditions of eligibility to the National Assembly— began on October 29, 1789.1
The Committee of Constitution, giving way in the matter of insisting upon real estate, demanded " that the question be considered of requiring the payment of a land tax equal to the value of a mark of silver, as a condition of eligibility to the quality of a representative in the National Assemblies."
Petion protested against all property restrictions as affecting eligibility. " We must," he said, " have confidence that the electors will make a choice of virtue." 2
Another deputy, harking back to the original idea of the Committee, demanded that the .requirement should be the possession of an estate, as well as the payment of the mark .3
Ramel de Nogaret claimed an exception in favour of the sons of a family who, in the districts where certain laws obtained, could not, so long as their father was living, possess the required amount of property.
The Abb£ Thibault observed that the condition pf possessing landed estate would perhaps, in the future, render all the clergy ineligible ; and he also said that, to his mind, a mark of silver was too much.
D&neunier defended the proposal of the Committee, but his arguments are not of particular interest.
his journal, the Counter de Provence, No. lix. p. 13, that the law concerning the ten days' work was " one very apt to encourage and to honour a laborious industry."
1 For this debate I follow the Frock-verbal, which at this point is lucid and well kept, adding the names of the orators and extracts from their speeches from the gazettes of Barere and Le Hodey.
fl Point du Jour, voL iii. p. 488.
^According to Le Hodey, the author of this motion was "M. le President" Camus was then presiding.
CONDITIONS OF THE SUFFRAGE 191
Cazal£s said : " The man of commerce can easily transport his fortune ; the capitalist, the banker, the man of means is cosmopolitan ; the landowner alone is the true citizen'; he is chained to the soil ; his interest is its fertility ; it is for him to deliberate on the question of imposts." And he gave England as an example, where, to be a Member of the House of Commons, a man had to enjoy an income of £300. He claimed that the landed property which those eligible must possess should bring in an income of at least £50.1
Reubell and Defermon replied to Cazalfes, upholding the proposal of the Committee.
Bar&re spoke against the requirements of landed property, and, supported by a few others, proposed to substitute for the condition of a tax of a silver mark the payment of a tax of the local value of thirty days' labour. Other spe;akers demanded that this tax should be paid in kind.
Finally, Prieur (of Marne), referring to Petion's proposal, suggested the suppression of any condition whatever save that of the confidence of the electors ; and, supported by Mirabeau, he demanded priority for his motion. The Assembly voted against the priority.
The first amendment proposed was one in favour of requiring landed property, of whatever value, as well as the tax of a silver niark : this was adopted. The minority, including Gr^goire and-part of the clergy, demanded a fresh vote, which was refused.
Second amendment: What value shall be fixed as regards the real estate? Decreed that the matter need not be considered.
Third amendment: To assess the tax in days of work, or in corn. Decreed that it shall be valued in silver, by weight.
Fourth amendment: That the tax should be assessed x Point du Jour, vol. iii. p. -187.
192 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
at half a mark, or at two ounces of silver only. Decreed that it shall be assessed at a mark.
The President then read the decreed article:
"In order to be eligible to the National Assembly, the candidate must pay a direct tax equivalent to the value of a mark of silver, and must in addition be possessed of real estate."
The vote was protested; it was claimed that the Assembly had not voted on the essential principle and on the completed whole, and so forth. 1 The Assembly took the vote, and found " that all was decided." The opposition insisted. The question, of sons of a family was revived, and inspired a speech by Barfere, 2 and the Assembly, once more going to the vote, decreed "that the decree had been legally passed." Immediately the discussion recommenced, confused and violent, as though the Assembly had pangs of remorse. In the end it reversed its judgment, and, appealing to the vote for the third time, decided to " refer the debate back to the first day, leaving matters as they were."
The debate was resumed on November 3rd. There were fresh speeches in favour of sons of families, new attempts to pass the decree. Finally, the Assembly definitely confirmed it.
The Committee of Constitution soon attempted tc mitigate the anti-dembcratic effects of the decree concerning the silver mark, and the property suffrage ii general. On December 3, 1789, between two qthe; additional Articles dealing with election matters, it pro posed an Article 6, framed as follows :
1 See Gorsas as to the uproar in the Assembly at this time (vol.'
P- 175)-
a Robespierre (Point du your, vol. Hi. p. 494) expressed himself ; against the exception in favour of sons of a family. Why ? Did 1 feel that this exception would strengthen the middle classes? S< Le Hodey, voL v. p. 256.
" The conditions of eligibility, relative to the direct tax declared essential as due from the active citizen, whether elector or eligible, will be counted as fulfilled by every citizen who, during two consecutive years, shall have paid voluntarily a civic tribute equal to the value of the tax."
This proposition raised a tempest of protestations. The Committee was hooted. "A thousand voices," says Gorsas, 1 " shouted as one, accusing the Committee of deliberate cunning." Others cried that corruption would debauch the suffrage. The Committee recoils"; it amends the article, so that now it applies only to those eligible. Mirabeau upholds this new reading. 2 The article, put to the vote, is rejected. The minority protest the vote, and a vote is taken by roll-call; the article is definitively rejected by a majority of a few votes .3
The Committee is not discouraged; on December 7th it proposes an Article 8, which dispenses with the property qualification in the matter of eligibility, whether to the administrative assemblies or to the National Assembly, in the case of citizens who obtain a suffrage of three-quarters. There is another uproarious debate .4 Vivian, speaking of the citizens excluded from the ranks of the eligible, cries : " Let them become proprietors, and then nothing need prevent them from enjoying their rights. 1 ' Roederer and Castellane speak in favour of the proposal of the Committee. After a not very conclusive vote, a nominal appeal is made, and the article is rejected by 453 votes against 443.5
* Courrier, vol. vi. p. 332. • Point du Jour, vol. v. p. 6.
3 The Prods-verbal does not give the figures. The Point du Jour says the majority was 14. Le Hodey, vol. vi. p. 26, gives 442 against 436 ; Gorsas, vol. vi. p. 339, 449 against 428.
* The best account of it is to be found in the Courrier de Provence, .vol iv. No. Ixxvi.
s These figures are not from the Proces-verbal, which gives none, but from the Point du Jour, vol. v. p. 40, the Courrier de Provence, VOL. I. 13
.94 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
The question of the mark of silver was very ably reintroduced and reopened by Robespierre, during the session of January 25, 1790.' "In Artois," he said, " the direct personal tax is unknown, because the poll-tax or capitation has there been converted by the administration of the estates into vingtitmes and land-taxes." In Artois, consequently, one could pay the tax of the mark of silver only if a landed proprietor ; and the greater part of the inhabitants would thus find themselves disfranchised, politically disinherited. Robespierre did not, however, demand a special measure for Artois ; the proposed decree which he read had for its object the adjournment of the application of the condition of the mark of silver until such time as the Assembly should have revised the then existing system of taxation.
Like all democratic proposals, that of Robespierre angered the majority. There were protests, hootings, uproar, "volcanic and hurricanic," as said Le Hodey. The previous question was protested. Charles de Lameth demanded that it should be discussed, but also that it should be adjourned to another day. A deputy » obtained leave to refer it back to the Committee of Constitution, which was instructed to prepare a decree. Robespierre gained his cause. In effect, the decree of February 2, 1790, enacted (Article 6) that in districts where no direct or personal taxes were paid, there would be no property qualifications required to render the inhabitants active and eligible citizens, until the reorganisation of the system of taxation ; the sole ex-No. Ixxvi. p. 13, the Journal of Le Hodey, vol. vi. p. 331, the Patriote franfais, No. bnrii. p. 2, and the Courrier of Gorsas, voL vi. p. 392. Gorsas adds that certain deputies said that "the majority was actually 460 against 433."
• Point du Jour f vol. vL pp. 184,185; Le Hodey, vol. viii. pp. 61-64.
* The Point du Jour says Dumetz. There was no member of the name: perhaps Beaumez.
THE BOURGEOISIE TRIUMPHANT 195
ceptions were : " in the towns, citizens who, having neither property nor other known means, have no trade or profession either ; and in the country, those who have no real estate, or who are not tenants or farmers (metayers) of a farm with a rent of thirty livres."
The new organisation of the taxes was not settled by law until January 13, 1791.
It follows from the facts and dates above mentioned that in part of France the administrative, judicial, and ecclesiastic elections took place under an almost universal suffrage; but in the case of the elections to the Legislative Assembly the property-owners' suffrage was applied in all its rigour: the values were exacted of three and ten days' labour, and the silver mark.
Such was the legal organisation of the property-owners' suffrage; and in this manner the bourgeoisie formed themselves into a politically privileged class. 1
IV.
How did public opinion welcome the property suffrage and die privilege of the middle class?
Let us confess at the outset that there was not at first any very lively protest against the actual principle of the property qualification. People accepted, as a general thing, the distinction between active and passive citizens ; or, at least, they resigned themselves to it.
1 It is incredible how these facts, public as they are, were forgotten and distorted. Thus, a man who was present at the Revolution, and who never passed for a fool, Royer-Collard, imagined later on that the Constitution of 1791 was democratic. He said, in the tribune, in 1831: "Twice has democracy been sovereign in our government; political equality was ingeniously effected by the Constitution of 1791 and in that of the year III" (Discours sur tktriditt de la pairie, in the Viepolitique de Rqyer-Collard, by M. de Barante, vol. ii. p. 469). The Constitution of the year III, as we shall see, admits no more of "political equality" than that of 1791.
196 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
It was the qualification imposed upon eligibility to the National Assembly, the tax of the mark of silver, that led to the revolt of a certain proportion of the public.
On the other hand, even among the most democratic of the publicists I find hardly any who demand universal suffrage as we understand it. The journalists agree with the Assembly as to the exclusion of domestic servants. There are religious prejudices against the Jews ;* there are social prejudices against actors, and also against executioners. The Revolutions de Paris, that boldest, most revolutionary of journals, admits that an actor may be an elector, but not eligible : 2
"Can one conceive of Frontin as a mayor? Can we see him descending to the pit to re-establish order in case of tumult—above all, if the tumult arose from the delivery of his exaggerations or his puns ? could he study, repeat, and play his parts, and devote himself to the details of a public administration, which, in the event of an emergency, might force him, in the middle of a play, to transform the caduceus into the rod of command?"
The National Assembly took no account of social prejudices ; it allowed the actor and the executioner to exercise their political rights. But it did, for a certain period, take account of religious prejudice. The decree of December 23 and 24, 1789, which admits non-Catholics to be electors and eligible, provisionally excludes all Jews .3 The decree of January 28, 1790, admits a portion only of the Jews residing in France : namely, Portuguese and Spanish Jews, and those of Avignon. It was only on the eve of dissolution, on September 27, 1791, that the Assembly decided to assimilate all Jews with the rest of the citizens of France.
1 See, in the Revolution franfaise of August 15, 1898, the article of M. Sigismund Lacroix, entitled: Ce qu'on pensait des Juifs a Paris en 1790.
8 No. xxiv. (December 19-26,1789) pp. 6, 7.
s See Courrier de Provence, vol. v. No. Ixxxiii.
CRITICISMS OF THE NEW SYSTEM 197
It is interesting to observe the opinion of Marat, because, in his proposal for a Constitution, he expressed himself as a democrat, although a Monarchist. " Every citizen/' he said, " ought to have the right of suffrage ; the mere fact of birth ought to confer the right." » He excluded only women, minors, and the insane, &c. However, in his paper he protested against the property suffrage only in the matter of the silver mark, when Thouret proposed it in his report of September 29, 1789. He foresaw an aristocracy of nobles and financiers. He declared that he preferred knowledge to fortune. But he would have liked to " scatter the vermin "—that is to say, to render ineligible " prelates, financiers, members of the Parliaments, and pensioners of the King, his officers and their creatures," without counting "a multitude of scoundrels," members of the then Assembly. 3
We have seen that Mirabeau was hostile to the privileges of the middle classj; none the less his paper, the Courrier de Provertce> approved the condition of the tax of three days' labour, saying that it would recall to all men " the obligation to labour." 3
The Chroiuqae de Paris approved first of all of the condition of the mark of silver .4 It seemed to rally to the idea of the provisional exclusion of the plebs from the State politic, and published a letter from Orry de Mauperthuy, Advocate in Parliament, in which, having criticised the condition of requiring the possession of real estate, he said : s
1 Marat, La Constitution, p. 21.
" Ami du Peuple, No. xti. pp. 179,180,181. It is just to add that, if Marat expressed no opinion on the occasions when the other "property" measures were voted, it was at this time that he was being prosecuted and had interrupted the publication of his paper.
s No. Id. p. 23. This paper equally approved of the tax of ten days' labour.
* No. Ixviii. p. 271, voL i.
s No.lxxL
198 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
" There is, however, a class of men, our brothers, who, thanks to the infamous organisation of our society, cannot be called upon to represent the nation; they are the proletariats of our days. It is not because they are poor and naked : it is because they do not even understand the language of our laws. This exclusion, however, is not permanent; it is only for a very short time. Perhaps it will whet their sense of emulation: perhaps it will provoke our help. In a few years 1 time they will be able to sit with you, and, as is seen in some of the Swiss cantons, a shepherd, a peasant of the Danube or the Rhine, will be the worthy representative of his nation. It would be still better (if it were not that this might be the resource of a dying but not yet dead aristocracy) to leave it entirely to the confidence of those represented. This is the sole inviolable principle."
He would have a property qualification for the elector, but none for the eligible. When the Committee of Constitution proposed to render eligible those who should voluntarily pay the necessary tax, the Chronique indignantly rejected the idea. 1
The Patriote frangais says little on the franchise question. However, I find that in respect of the session of December 3, 1789, and the decree concerning the mark of silver, the Patriote says : " It was upheld out of sheer obstinacy, out of the desire to humiliate the poorer citizens, out of the mania of trying to create classes in society." *
The two journalists who on this occasion manifested their democratic sympathies with the greatest clearness were Camille Desmoulins and Loustallot.
The first expressed himself as follows :
"There is only one voice in the capital: very soon there will be only one voice in the provinces, and that voice is against the decree of the mark of silver. It has just created in Fiance an aristocratic government, and this is the greatest victory which bad citizens have ever enjoyed in the National Assembly. To bring home the whole absurdity of the decree, it is enough to say that Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
1 Chronique de Paris, December 4,1789, pp. 41;, 412. * No. box.
LOUSTALLOT ON THE SUPFEAGE 199
Corneille, and Mably would not have been eligible. A journalist has stated that, among the clergy, the Cardinal de Rohan alone has voted against the decree; but it is impossible that Gregoire, Massieu, Dillon, Jallet, Joubert, Gouttes, and a certain monk who is one of the best of citizens, 1 can have dishonoured themselves at the end of the campaign, after having distinguished themselves by so many exploits. The journalist deceives himself. As for you, O miserable priests, imbecile bonzes, do you not see that your God would not have been eligible ? Jesus Christ, of whom you make a God in the pulpit, in the tribune you have just relegated to the rabble ! And you wish me to respect you, you, the priests of a proletariat God, who was not even an active citizen ! Respect, you yourselves, the poverty He ennobled! What do you mean to convey by this eternal repetition of the words, active citizen f The active citizens are those who took the Bastille, they are those who cleared the land, while the sluggards of the clergy and the Court, despite the immensity of their possessions, are only vegetable creatures, like that tree of your Gospels, which bears no fruit and is cast into the fire." 8
Loustallot was no less vehement against the decree of the mark* of silver.3 He prepared a huge petition in order to obtain the revocation of this decree and of that portion of the municipal organisation Already voted.
" Already," he said, " the aristocracy of wealth pure and simple has been shamelessly established. Who knows but it is not already a crime to dare to say that the nation is the sovereign ?"
And he concluded with this appeal to the King:
" Louis the Sixteenth ! Restorer of French liberty I Behold three-quarters of tbe nation excluded from the Legislative Assembly by the
1 Doubtless Dom Gerle.
9 Revolutions de France et de Brabant, No. 3 (vol. i. pp. 108, 109).
3 Revolutions de Paris, No. xxi. (November 28 to December 5,1789). The articles in this journal are anonymous. Tradition attributes to Loustallot all those dealing with general political questions. But there were other writers, and there is no means of being absolutely sure that any article is his; so that when we quote an opinion from this paper as being his, it is with all reserve.
200 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
decree of the mark of silver : behold the communes discredited under the guardianship of a municipal council. Save the French people from slavery or a civil war! Purify the veto of suspension by the glorious use you can make of it at this moment! Preserver of the rights of the people, protect them against the carelessness, error, or crime of their representatives; tell them, when they demand your sanction for these unjust decrees : ' The nation is sovereign ; I am its head; you are but its servants, neither the nation's masters nor mine.'"
Did these articles influence public opinion? Or were they the result of a current of opinion? We do not know; the journals tell one but little of what was said in the street, in the caf£s, or at the Palais Royal about the establishment of the property suffrage. I fancy that at the first news of its establishment the people of Paris were unmoved, not understanding its import. It seems that the more enlightened of the active citizens must have first explained to the passive citizens in what manner they were wronged.
In any case, it was after the publication of the articles by Desmoulins and Loustallot that there took place the first demonstration against the property suffrage, or rather the first demonstration we know of took place after their appearance.
At first the mark of silver was the trouble ; it seems, as I have said, that the people resigned themselves readily enough to the rest of the decree.
On December 17, 1789, the district of Henri IV passed a resolution with a view to arranging with the other districts to send to the King a deputation for the purpose of requesting him to refuse his sanction to the decree of the mark of silver.' This idea, partaking as it did of the politics of Mirabeau, of using the royal veto and the royal power in the interest of the people's cause, seems to have had neither echo nor consequences.
THE TAX OF THE SILVER MARK 201
But a certain number of districts did then protest against the mark of silver.'
This campaign was encouraged by the most eminent thinker of the time : by Condorcet, member of the Commune of Paris since September. He, formerly a supporter of the property suffrage, had changed his opinion since the proletariat had acted as citizens in helping the middle class to take the Bastille ; since the populace of -Paris, by this heroic and rational feat, had raised itself to the dignity of a people.
President of a Committee of the Commune which was charged with the preparation of a scheme for a municipality, Condorcet read before this Committee on December 12, 1789, a paper in which he demanded the revocation pure and simple of the decree of the mark of silver. He persuaded his colleagues to authorise him to present this paper to the Committee of Constitution of the' National Assembly, which, desiring, as we have seen, to enlarge the electoral basis, replied that if Paris were to join her protest to those of the other cities, the manifestation might produce some effect, and that the General Assembly and the districts should be consulted on this point.*
Condorcet then officially presented a memoir to the Commune 3 which moved (January 28, 1790), that this memoir should be presented to the National Assembly, "after the majority of the districts shall have manifested their desire. 0 But it does not appear that the Commune, then rather bourgeois in sympathy than otherwise, ever convoked the districts to this effect. The latter preferred rather to act by themselves. As
1 Sigismond Lacroix, Actes de la Commune de Paris, vol. iii. pp. 583,584. •JMA f p.#i.
s This memoir was then printed in the collection entitled Cerde social, Letter VIII. p. 57. It also appeared separately; and there is, in the British Museum, an example of this impression, the text of which M. Lacroix has reproduced.
202 TTTTC MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
early as January gth the district of Saint-Jean-en-Grfeve had arranged a meeting of district commissaries, which was to take place on January 3ist. An address was drawn up, dated February 8, 1790, an "address of the Commune of Paris in its sections," which was signed only by twenty-seven districts out of sixty, but which certainly expressed the view of the majority of the districts, as the editor of the Actes de la Commune de Paris has clearly shown. 1 In this they prayed the Assembly to reconsider, not only the decree of the mark of silver, but the whole question of the property qualification. It declared that to have four classes in the nation was contrary to the Declaration of Rights ; the four classes being: the class of those eligible to the Legislative Assembly; the class eligible to the Administrative Assemblies ; the class of active citizens, electors in the primary assemblies ; and " finally a fourth class despoiled of all prerogative ; suppressed by the Law it has neither made nor consented to ; deprived of the rights of the nation of which it is a part; a class which will repeat the history of feudal servitude and the slavery of mortmain." 3
Presented before the National Assembly 031 February Qth, this address was referred to the Committee of Constitution. On the next day the president of the districts' deputation, Arsandaux by name, insisted vainly in a letter to the President of the Assembly on his right to be heard at the bar. " I am 1 not," he said, " an individual; I am all Paris in its component parts ; it is the whole of France which protests against the decree of the mark of silver." 3 No report was made on the address of the districts.
Paris was all the more interested in the question in that she found herself, as a result of the ancles
1 Vol. iii. pp. 618,6ig.
9 SigismOnd Lacroix, vol. iii. p. 620.
THE SUFFRAGE IN OPERATION 203
rtgime, in an exceptional situation—inhabited by a crowd of citizens who paid no direct taxes beyond the capitation tax. Now Louis XVI had remitted the capitation tax for several years in the case of all Parisians who had been taxed by less than six livres. This royal favour, it was found, had in advance diminished the numbers of the " active " citizens, above all in the Faubourgs Saint-Marceau and Saint-Antoine. 1 I find among the papers of the Committee of Constitution a long and respectful petition from the " workers of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine," which was received by the National Assembly on February 13, 1790, wherein they protest against the distinction of " active " and " passive." If they are not active citizens, it is because they pay no taxes. They beg to be allowed, as a favour, to pay a tax, so that they shall no longer be " helots." They demand that, throughout the kingdom, the taxes, direct and indirect, should be replaced by a single direct tax of 2 sols per head, or 36 livres per annum, which would give .an annual yield of from six to nine hundred millions. The twenty-seven signatories affirm that all the workers of the faubourg are of one mind with them.* The journals do not even report the matter, and the National Assembly took no notice of it.
V.
It was in the departments that the first trial was made of the property suffrage, at the municipal elections of January and February, 1790.
Among the papers of the Committee of Constitution
1 Arch, Nat. D. iv. dossier 1425, piece 8: "Questions posies awe Comitis par Desvieux, ex-vice-pr6sident du ci-devant district de Saint-Eustache"
204 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
are some accounts of the manner in which the experiment was carried out and received.
There is, for example, a letter from Mouret, Syndic of Lescar, to "Monseigneur the President of the National Assembly," dated March 7, 1790. He writes that the municipal elections took place on February 26th. The inhabitants of the commune counted 2,200. A mayor was elected, five municipal officers, and twelve "notables."
"This is all the ballot has enabled us to do at the moment, on account of the article of the decree which requires 10 days' labour from those eligible; it would be otherwise if this condition were moderated; if it were fixed at 40 sols for electors and at 4 francs for candidates. Two-thirds of the inhabitants of this town would not then be excluded, as they now are, from participating in honourable duties, and condemned to stagnate in a degrading inaction."
And he notes the notorious contradiction between the decree and the Declaration of Rights. 1
The municipality of Rebenac in B£arn writes in March that in that parish, which contains about 1,100 souls, and of which the inhabitants are in part labourers and in part " workers in the woollen and other industries, 1 ' the day's work has been fixed at 6 sols, ias otherwise there would have been only twelve men eligible, while nineteen were necessary to form the municipality. There are about 130 active citizens.
Some municipalities take it upon themselves to modify the electoral law. Thus, that of Saint-F61ix, in the diocese of Lod&ve, is denounced (February 6, 1790) for having admitted as active citizen a certain Vidal, junior, who, being under the parental control, paid no taxes.* M. de Rozimbois, Doctor in Law, captain commandant in the National Guard, writes from Beaumont in Lorraine (February 19, 1796), saying that
1 Arch. Nat. D. iv. 10, dossier 153, piece ^. fl Ibid., dossier 157, piice 7.
DIRECT AOT) INDIRECT TAXATION 205
in the assemblies at which he has been present as active citizen he has been surprised to see the people set themselves up as " sovereign legislators," and decide that " one might be an elector under the age of twenty-five, after five or six months of domicile.'* * What precisely was to be understood by a direct tax? As a general thing, no one was sure. Two citizens of Nimes (January 27, 1790) complained that they could not get their names inscribed as active and eligible, although they paid 19 livres 5 sols each as decimal tax, the pretext being* that this was not a direct tax. 2 On December 31, 1789, the citizens of Marseilles had an address on this subject presented to the Committee of Constitution, in order to have the matter explained to them, and they received the following note :
"The Committee of Constitution of the National Assembly, consulted by the deputies of the City of Marseilles, on the question of the municipal council of that city, declare that the decree of the Assembly must be executed in the following manner:
"The direct contributions of three and of ten days' labour, which serve as the conditions of exercising the functions of an active citizen, elector, and eligible, are those .which every citizen pays directly, whether assessed on his goods or property or as a personal or poll-tax.
" Thus, the vingtieme, the poll-tax, land-taxes, taxes assessed upon the rent, or yearly income, the capitation tax, all personal taxes, actual or compounded for, and in general all other taxes except such as are paid on provisions, are direct taxes, of which the amount serves to condition the title of active citizen, elector or eligible.
" The day's work is that of the simple day-labourer, and must be valued according to the amount habitually paid in each district, whether hi town or country; consequently this valuation will differ between town and country when the price of the day's work is different.
" Resolved by the Committee of Constitution, January 4,1790." s
This reply doubtless reached the men of Marseilles too late, and, when they received it, it is probable that
1 Arch. Nat. D. iv. n, dossier 156.
206 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
they had already drawn up, according to their liking, their list of active citizens. In reality there was no uniform rule for the establishment of these lists and the appreciation of the direct or indirect character of the taxes.
Here is another difficulty, noted by the mayor and the members of the municipal bureau of Vannes (March, 1790), which, although it does not refer to the municipal elections, is a good example of the imperfections of the electoral system in general. Each municipality having had the power to fix as it thought best the tax of the day's work, " it follows that a man will be an active citizen in one place on payment of 30 sous, while in another he cannot be an active citizen under a crown." How, on this incoherent basis, was one to settle the question; of eligibility as elector of the second degree or as member of a district or a; departmental assembly? " Would an inhabitant of a canton in which the value of a day's work had been fixed at i o sols be eligible as regards the department and districts, if he paid i oo sols in direct taxes, when an inhabitant of another canton, in which the value had been fixed at 20 sols, would not be elected without paying double the tax the other paid? " This would give too much advantage to the country districts, in which the electors would not be in the same proportion as in the towns. A decree was required definitely and uniformly settling the price of the day's labour. 1
Here and there other absurd results of the property suffrage were pointed out by those affected. Thus Lhomme, a master in chirurgery (so writes de Sancoins, in December, 1789), had a young son, for whom he had intended a careful education ; he gave up his intention because it would entail expenses which would diminish his fortune to the point, later on, of 1 Arch. Nat D. iv. u, dossier 157, pQce 4.
ANOMALIES OP THE SUFFRAGE 207
depriving the son of his eligibility; it was necessary, then, that he should be ignorant in order to be eligible. 1
Another difficulty : The law said that citizens must write their voting papers, but what was to be done in the case of illiterates? At Die, where a thhd. of the population was illiterate, the elections were suspended (February 5, 1790), until the decision of the National Assembly upon the matter had been received. 2 The people of Die had no means of knowing, at this date, that the National Assembly had decreed, three days earlier, that the voting papers of the illiterate were to be written by the three oldest literate electors.s This law was made known too late i'a some parts of France, and there was no uniform rule for the admission of the illiterate, any more than for the valuation of the direct tax.
But these protests, whether collective or individual^ were not very numerous. In general, the decrees establishing the new suffrage were accepted quietly enough ; they were willingly applied, more often than not with-
1 Arch. Nat. D. iv. n, dossier 156, piece 7.
B Ibid., dossier 157, pieces 22, 24.
s The law of May 28,1790, enacted that the voting paper should be written at the place of poll, and must not be carried there already made out.
4 See, for example, the petition of D. Chauchot, cure of Is-sur-Tille, who demands, in the name of Article 6 of the Declaration, suppression of all property qualifications whatsoever (Arch. Nat. D.. iv. u, dossier 136, piece 7) and (piece 8) a very lively anonymous protest against the conditions of eligibility, which " would plunge us anew " into feudalism. See also, D. iv. 49, dossier 1425, pieces 17, 21, 27. It has been thought that " an individual petition of citizens forming the Society of the Friends of Liberty, meeting in the rue du Bac, in Paris," in which the withdrawal of the "property " decrees is demanded in the name of the Declaration of Rights, refers to this period. This petition is not dated. On the margin we read " Received the I2th of June." But this cannot be June 12, 1790; for there is at the head a vignette printed with this inscription : " Sori6t6 des amis de la liberte, Paris, November, 1790." The petition must have been sent up in 1791.
208 THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE
out any complaint, and there was no great current of public opinion against the suffrage.
VI.
But Paris intervened anew, and with greater insistence. When the property suffrage had once been seen at work, the Parisians understood its bearing and its inconveniences. The working men of Paris had to have a concrete lesson before they could fully appreciate the sense of the word passive; and before opinion could bo seriously roused the bourgeoisie had to feel itself despoiled by the decree of the mark of silver. !
Feeling ran high respecting the law of April 18, 1790, by which the direct taxes in Paris were calculated solely from the amount of rent paid. The result of the law was that in the capital it was necessary to pay 750 livres rent in order to pay 50 livres in direct taxes—that is, in order to be eligible for the National Assembly. On a rent of 699 livres, for instance, the tax was only 35 livres. By this law a host of well-to-do and notable men found themselves ineligible ; one has only to look through the advertisements, the Petites Ajfiches, to be convinced that for a lower rent than 750 livres one could obtain a very commodious, very " bourgeois " apartment.
It was while discussing the drawbacks of this law of April 18th that Condorcet, on the igth, obtained the assent of the Commune to present the address drawn up by himself to the National Assembly.
This is a very remarkable address. Condorcet eloquently points out the contradiction between the Declaration of Rights and the property suffrage. One of the objections which he raises concerning the mark of silver is that "a decree which should suppress a
OPPOSITION TO THE SUFFRAGE 209
direct tax would deprive millions of citizens of their eligibility."
He admitted that a " light tax " might be required of the active citizen, but he would not make it a condition of eligibility.' Placed on the table of the Assembly on April 20, 1790, this address of the Commune obtained only a simple acknowledgment of its reception.
The opposition to the property suffrage grew keener every day. It manifested itself in a very lively manner, in Marat's paper, on June soth, which contained a pretended appeal from the "passive" citizens. 2 "It is certain," says Marat, " that the Revolution is due to the insurrection of the poorer people, and it is no less certain that the taking of the Bastille was principally due to the ten thousand poor working men of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine." Ten thousand poor working men I Marat exaggerates, just as he exaggerated in professing to plead in the name of " eighteen millions of unfortunate men deprived of their rights as active citizens," when there were probably not more than three millions of passive citizens .3 But he does not exaggerate when he shows that there is a new
1 See Sigismond Lacroix, vol. v. pp. 55-63.
» (Euvres de Marat, Vermorel, p. 114.
s We know by the decree of May 27, 28,1791, that the active citizens numbered 4,298,360. We have not the number of the citizens admitted to the suffrage after August 10,1792, when universal suffrage was established : if we had, we should only have to subtract from this number the number of active citizens to obtain the number of passive citizens. But we have the figures of the registered electors at a period when the territory of France was of practically the same extent as in 1791-2. Thus, in 1863, out of a population of 37,446,313 inhabitants (according to the census of 1861 there were 10,004,028 electors on the roll. If universal suffrage had existed in 1791, then, supposing the population of France to be 26,000,000, there would have been 7,300,000 electors. Subtract the 4,298,360 active citizens, and there remain about 3,000,000 passive citizens.
210 THE MIDDLE CLASS AJTO THE PEOPLE
privileged class, and his threats against the bourgeoisie have a historical interest:
"What shall we have gained by the destruction of the aristocracy of the nobles, if it be replaced by the aristocracy of wealth ? If we are to groan under the yoke of these new parvenu masters, it would have been better to preserve the privileged orders. . . . Fathers of the country, you are the favourites of fortune: we do not ask to-day to share in your possessions, those benefits which Heaven has given in common to all men : realise, then, the full extent of our moderation, and, in your own interest, forget for a few moments your care for your dignity; withdraw for a few moments from your pleasant dreams of your own importance, and muse for a minute on the terrible consequences which may follow your lack of reflection. You would do well to tremble lest, in refusing us the rights of citizens on the pretext of our poverty, you force us to recover them by stripping you of your superfluity. Beware of rending our hearts with the sense of your injustice. Have a care lest you reduce us to despair, lest you leave us nothing but revenge, lest you force us to give ourselves over to all manner of excess, or simply to leave you to yourselves. For, to put ourselves in your place, we have only to wait' with folded arms. Then, reduced to using your own hands and labouring in your own fields, you will become once more our equals; but, being less numerous than we, can you be certain of reaping the fruits of your labours ? You still have the power to avert a revolution, the revolution that our despair will infallibly bring about. Be just once more, and do not' punish us any longer with the evil you yourselves have caused."
Marat was thus clearly the first—and we see with what vehemence—to state the social and political problem. What influence had this article of his? We do not know, nor do the other papers inform us. However, his words were not without an echo, as is proved by the success of the Ami da Peaple and the fact that Marat himself was encouraged to pursue his democratic campaign with greater boldness day by day. Heaven dared to attack the Jacobin Club in the following terms : " What are we to expect from these gatherings of imbeciles, who dream of nothing but equality, who boast of the brotherhood of man, and shut their hearts to the unhappy people who have set
them free? " However, he does not exhibit much faith in the wisdom of the people, nor does he always flatter them. Early in October, 1789, he writes : " My fellow-citizens, careless and frivolous mortals I innocent of all logical sequence, whether in your ideas or your actions ; voting only by caprice ; who will one day pursue the enemies of your country, and on the morrow abandon it blindly to their mercy; I am resolved to keep you on the alert, and you shall be happy in spite of your frivolity, or I myself shall know happiness no more." On occasion he overwhelms the people with such epithets as " imbecile/' " slaves/' &c. He wishes to see the people led by a man of wisdom and experience. Perhaps he dreams of a persuasive dictatorship, himself as dictator. Later, he demands a dictator, without qualifying his demand. His ideal is a Caesarian democracy ; yet he is, in his own way, and since he has seen the property suffrage at work, a partisan of universal suffrage.
To sum up : a democratic party is already becoming visible, especially in the journals. With Marat this democracy is of the Caesarian type ; elsewhere it is mostly of a liberal type. Its programme is to obtain the suppression of the property requirements in general, this being the aim of the more advanced ; or at least (and this is the aim of the practical politicians) the suppression of the qualification as regards eligibility, and an amelioration of the more anti-popular results of the bourgeois system which has just been established. 1
1 While correcting the proofs of the second edition of this book, I have hit upon a text which to some extent contradicts what I have said of the republicanism of Barere. Barere, in the Discours pr&~ liminaire, which he published in 1790, in a supplementary and retrospective volume of his Point du Jour, expressed himself, referring to the Americans! as against all royalty; so that if in the year III it was wrong to say that he had been a republican before July 14,1789, it was not wrong to say that he was a republican before August 10, 1792. But apparently his republicanism passed unsuspected, and did not betray itself by action.
CHAPTER IV
FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND BIRTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
(1790, 1791)
I. The Democratic Party.—II. Federation.—Ill, The first Republican Party: Mme. Robert, her paper and her salon.— IV. First manifestations of Socialism.—V, Feminism.—VI. The campaign against the rule of the bourgeoisie.— VII. Signs of the times; Republicanism from December, 1790, to June, 1791.—VIII. Humanitarian politics.—IX. Summary.
I.
WE have already seen what elements went to the making of the democratic party at the outset. Let me insist at once on this fact: the democratic party had its origin neither among the peasantry nor among the workers. The rural masses, all joy at the destruction of the feudal system, wasted no thought on demanding the right to vote—a right which they seemed to regard rather as a burden, a service, or a danger, than as a desirable privilege. The workers, less numerous then than now, were more sensible of their exclusion from the body politic ; but, as the respectful tone of the Saint-Antoine petition shows, they would, if left to their own instincts, have resigned themselves to the fact. It took the solicitations of certain middle-class
reformers, and the fiery appeals of Marat, to make universal suffrage a popular subject; but for a long time it was not possible, even in Paris, to provoke any threatening movement of the " passives " against the " actives." Anti-aristocrats and patriots : such were the Parisian workers. They had no idea of democracy until the middle classes forced them to think of it; and as for the word " republic," it would seem to have been so far unknown in the poorer districts.
It was, then, among the middle classes that a democratic party first grew up ; badly organised, it is true, as were all the parties of those days, but with its tendencies sufficiently clear, and even clamorous. The leaders of the party in the Assembly were Robespierre, Buzot, Petion, Gr^goire ; outside the Assembly, the vehement Marat, the eloquent Loustallot, the cautious Condorcet.
The claims of the democrats increased unceasingly during the whole of the year 1790.
This extraordinary year has been upheld as a year of national concord, as the best year of the Revolution, the year of fraternity. This may be : but it was also the period in which the whole state politic was taken possession of by the middle class at the expense pf the people, and the period when the very unfraternal idea came into being that the middle class was itself the nation.
With the applause which saluted the fall of the ancien r6gime> the old despotism, the old aristocracy, there mingled (to be heard plainly enough by the alert listener) a subdued hissing from the democrats hostile tp the property suffrage and to the bourgeoisie.
Thus February 4, 1790, was truly a wonderful day in history; when Louis XVI entered in person the hall of the National Assembly in order to accept the Constitution and to read a gracious speech, and the Assembly, mad with joy, established this civic oath: "I swear to be faithful to the nation, to the
214 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
law, to the King, and to maintain with all my power the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the King."
The King accepting the Revolution, the King subordinated to the nation and the law—this was the great, the essential meaning of the day, and there is no doubt whatever that there was a general feeling of joy throughout France.
Some democrats, however, could only see here a stroke of authority on the part of the Assembly in order to impose the Constitution on the nation without consulting it, and at the same time to impose the property suffrage and the odious mark of silver. Loustallot was of opinion that the constitutional laws should be ratified by the people united in primary assemblies. He conceived and demanded a democracy with universal suffrage, and published a complete referendum system, as we have said, for the popular sanction of the laws.* And, in bitter criticism of the National Assembly, which had dared, in an address to the people, to speak as the sovereign, he recalled to it that the Revolution had been effected " by a handful of patriots who had not the honour of sitting in the National Assembly/'
But Loustallot and the other writers or orators of the Democratic party—a staff without an army—knew themselves to be thus far in advance of the opinion of the masses ; and their whole ambition, their one hope, was to make the proletariat understand that they had been unfairly treated : that there was once more a privileged class in the State.
II.
That this democratic party, composed of the cream of the middle class, ever succeeded in becoming a
popular party, was due to the fact that the very trend of events was tending to make France become unconsciously a democratic country ; and it was this year of 1790 that saw the spread of the great movement of municipal emancipation and of national agglomeration. ' The new France was becoming unified by a gigantic labour of organisation and construction, in which we seem to distinguish two very different movements ; the one reasoned, and, as it were, artificial, the other spontaneous, popular, and instinctive.
From the brains of the members of the great Assembly there issued reasoned institutions, meditated in the silence of the study ; in which, it is true, the history of the people and their desires were always kept in mind ; yet institutions which the people themselves did not help to elaborate ; such as the division of France by departments, 1 the organisation of the judiciary, and the civil constitution of the clergy. All this was no spontaneous growth of the soil, but was planted there by industrious hands, there to prosper more or less. It was all a thought factitious, a trifle fragile.
Of the people itself was born the municipal reform of July, 1789; and from Paris leaped the electric spark (to use a phrase of the time) which awoke and thrilled all France, resuscitating the communes, and providing first the towns, then the country, with a new municipal system. The communes were animated with a kind of centripetal force, a force of national unification, with Paris at the head. From Paris the movement came: to Paris it strove to return, there to be fully organised. Excited gatherings from
1 It is quite plain that the new division of France was effected without any republican after-thoughts. Yet after the Republic was established, in January, 1793, Fabre d'Eglantine wrote as follows: "When the Constituent Assembly decreed the division of the territory into departments, districts, cantons, and communes, I cried, from the midst of my friends, 'There is the Republic I 1 " (Robespierre, Lettres h mes commettants).
216 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
groups of communes ; confederations on the banks of the Rhine and the Rhone ; Breton-Angevin alliances—to say nothing of the ancient provinces nor of the new departments—meetings full of enthusiasm, where strangers took oaths of brotherhood : all these were like so many farandolesj tending to confound themselves in one gigantic general farandole with Paris for objective; it was in the midst of this that on July 14, 1790, on the Champ de Mars, 2 the unification of France was effected, in the hour that saw the foundation of the Patrie, the mother-country of every Frenchman.
So universal, so spontaneous, so essentially democratic was this movement, that the Constituent Assembly, founder of the bourgeois system, was troubled and alarmed ; it boded ill for the rule of property-holders when citizens drew together, not as active citizens, but as men and brothers. When it decreed, as it did on June gth, that a federation should meet in Paris, the Assembly did so because it could not do otherwise ; and the object of the decree was, above all, to deprive the Federation, of its democratic character. The Assembly did not wish the delegates of the Federation to be elected by the people, nor even by the municipalities, which, despite their source of origin (an
* A Provencal dance.— [TRANS.]
* Altar of the Country.
The Champ de Mars was a large open space, some three hundred yards wide and a thousand yards long, between the £cole Militaire and the river gate; on each side were avenues of trees. All round this space were formed thirty rows of seats, the space being partly excavated, and huge turf-covered banks with timber benches erected, thus making a great amphitheatre. In the centre was a great pyramidal platform—the Altar.
The men employed on the work, whether lazy, or bribed, or anxious, after the modern fashion, to enforce the employment of more, were obviously unable to finish their task in time; finally, the impatient patriots volunteered—fifteen thousand, we are told; next day the number was increased, men of all classes and trades toiling side by side; even women joined in the work,— [TRANS.]
electorate of tax-payers), often exhibited anti-bourgeois tendencies. They decided that the delegates were to be elected by the National Guard—an armed force of strong middle-class sympathies, composed almost entirely of active citizens.
These elections were also presented as a kind of plebiscite in favour of the Constitution, and Loustallot, the democrat, lamented.
The ceremony of the Champ de Mars was, on the whole, thoroughly national. There one really saw France, the sovereign nation. And, considering it as a whole, the spontaneous and popular movement which brought about the federations of 1790 was, in spite of the half-bourgeois nature of its climax, among the events which resulted indirectly in democracy and the Republic. The political leaders of the day strove to make it, at the same time, a demonstration of an anti-democratic character. It is a remarkable fact that at this early date, things being as they were, the heroes of the Bastille were put aside. The ceremony partook, now and then, of a " Fayettian " character* Certain episodes were even plainly royalist. The cries of " Long live the King 1 " were as loud as those of " Long live the Nation 1 " And on July i8th the Federals proceeded to the Tuileries, there to cry, " Long live the Queen I " under the windows. 1 The Federation had all the appearance of condemning'the claims of democracy, which had been already heard, and the idle dreams of a republic, which were not audible as yet.
III.
But these dreams of a Republic were soon to become more vivid.
A few weeks after the Federation, Paris learned that
1 Revolutions de Paris, iv. 12,14.
218 FOEMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTS
monarchical Europe was forming a coalition against France. Louis XVI, tormented with remorse at having sanctioned the civil constitution of the clergy, allied himself with the foreigners against the French. Perspicacious men divined the fact, and as no other king than Louis was possible, a few bold spirits then, for the first time, began to dream of suppressing the monarchy.
Certain contemporaries seem to have believed that they saw the beginnings of the republican party much earlier than this. La Fayette, for instance, writes to Bouill6 on May 20, 1790: "The question of peace or war, which has been for some time in dispute, has divided us, in the most pronounced manner, into two parties, the one monarchical, the other republican." ' But does not La Fayette say this with an advocate's cunning, to persuade Bouilte, by evoking the republican spectre, to make common cause with the Constitutionals? Plainly enough, the discussion concerning the family pact (May 16-22, 1790), by presenting the image of kings dragging their people into royal wars, was enough to provoke reflections of a republican shade. On the other hand, the decree voted on May 22nd, by which the King had to propose war, and the Assembly to declare it, gave the nation the last word and diminished the power of the King. But the debates on the subject had not shown the least republican tendencies. Thus, Robespierre (May i8th) having said that the King was not the representative, but the commissioned delegate of the nation, murmurs were heard. Whereupon the orator declared that he had only meant to express the sublime duty of executing the general will; and, according to his explanations, he had meant to speak honourably of the royal power.
The truth is that, since the King had taken the oath of the Constitution, one party of the " patriots " had 1 M&moiresde Bouillt, ist ed. i. 130.
become ministerial. Here is the .secession, in no wise republican, to which La Fayette alludes, and it was to injure them that he applied to the anti-ministerial deputies the unmerited epithet, " republican."
At the same time, intending to praise them, Camille Desmoulins was speaking of the "patriots " as republicans.' He loved to speak of the " Republic of France," * and he called the Assembly " the Congress of the Republic of France." 3 And this republican had, at the time, so little hope of seeing his theories in practice, that he says of Louis XVI in his paper :
" I swear by the tamp-post that of all kings, past, present, or to come, you are, to the mind of a republican, the most supportable. It rests with you alone to retain our love, to retain the praises of our legislative body."
He had, however, preached republican theories, only he had not been successful. For the moment he renounces them, and he states, at the very time when La Fayette is writing to Bouill6 on the formation of the republican party, that no such party exists :
11 1 have lost my time in preaching the republic. The republic and democracy are just now in low water; and it is tedious for an author to cry in the wilderness, and to write pages as futile, as little heeded, as the motions of J. F. Maury. Since, after being for six months chained to the rowers' bench, I despair of overcoming the insurmountable currents, I should perhaps do well to regain the shore, and to throw away a useless oar." 4
x Thus in May, 1790, in the Revolutions de France et de Brabant (No. xxv.), he wrote: "All the republicans are in consternation at the suppression of our sixty districts. They regard this decree with as much disfavour as the decree of the mark of silver; and it is truly the greatest check democracy has received."
• Ibid., iii. 180. s ibid., ii. 524.
4 Revolutions de France et de Brabant, No. xxvii. Desmoulins adds that he is not discouraged, that he wishes to prove to Robespierre
220 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
That there was no republican party at this time is confirmed also by Loustallot, in an article written some days later, in which he says that now some of the chiefs of the patriotic party have passed over to the ministerialists, hardly sixty deputies remain " who still fight courageously in questions which do not concern the King.' 1 "But/* he adds, "as soon as it becomes a matter of his interests they condemn themselves to silence, for fear of exposing their flank to the imputation, so often repeated, that they have gone over to the party opposed to the King, and th^at they wish to make France a republic." '
It was not in the month of May, 1790, that the republican party began to spring up, since then every one had still some hope of consolidating the Revolution by means of the monarchy. It was three months later, when the idea became more widely spread that there was a King's cause and' a people's cause ; when the suspicion grew that Louis XVI had betrayed France, and had a secret understanding with the expatriated nobles and with Austria ; it was then only that some 'began to believe that the only means of maintaining the Revolution was to suppress the monarchy.
But hitherto, as we have seen, the republicanism of Camille Desmoulins had found no echo. In September, 1790, a man of letters, one Lavicomterie, afterwards, at the time of the Convention, a deputy for Paris, published a pamphlet, entitled Du Peuple et des Rois, in which he said: " I am a republican, and I write against kings;; I am a republican, and was one before my birth." According to him, a king is
that he is as proud a republican as he. Now Robespierre was not a republican at all at this period. But here Desmoulins uses the word republican in the sense of patriot, thus giving the same word, in the same passage, two very different acceptations. This explains the confusion of ideas as to the date of formation of the republican party. 1 Revolutions de Paris, xlix.
the born enemy of liberty, and he makes no exception of Louis. He would suffer a non-hereditary, elected monarch ; but it is a republic that he really demands, in terms as plain-spoken as emphatic. There are others now of his opinion; in its issue of October i, 1790, the Mercure national 1 subscribes to the conclusions of this pamphlet.
This paper, very little known, was of great importance ; not only because it was well informed on matters of foreign politics, but because it was the organ of the Republican party at the very outset, and the organ also of the salon of a woman of letters in which the nucleus of this party was formed. I mean Mme. Robert, daughter of the Chevalier Guynement de Keralio, professor at the Military College, member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and editor of the Journal des Savants. Following the example of her mother, who was an authoress, she published novels, historical works, and translations. She married Fran-gois Robert at the age of thirty-three. He was an advocate, born at Lifege, who had become French, and very French—a fine young man, with a vivid colour and an enthusiastic mind ; his talents, perhaps, but mediocre ; but a loyal man, and a frank ; an ardent revolutionary, a member of the Jacobin Club and the
1 Mercure national et revolutions de TEurope> Journal d&mocratique, edited by Mm. Robert-Keralio, of the Academy of Arras; Louis-Felix Guynement, of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres; Ant. Tournon, L. J. Hugon, and Frangois Robert, professor of public law—all members of the Society of Friends of the Constitution, 1790-1; 5 volumes, Bib. Nat. In April, 1791, it became the Mercure national let tiranger, edited by Louis and Francois Robert, and Le Brun (the future Minister of Foreign Affairs). Under this title it appeared from April 16 to July 5, 1791. Then it became the Journal gtn&rale de 'Europe ott Mercure national el itranger, edited by Le Brun, then by J. J. Smits, from July 5,1791, to August 8,1792. These papers appear to follow from the Journal general de T Europe, published at Havre by Le Brun.
222 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Cordeliers' Club, who later on represented the Department of Paris in the Convention. Mme. Roland, who had no love for Mme. Robert, 1 and made fun of her toilet, says, in her memoirs, that she was " a little, spiritual woman, intelligent, and ingenious." A patriot in 1790, but a democratic patriot when so many others were content with the bourgeois system established in 1789, and a republican patriot when Mme. Roland was still supporting the monarchy, Mme. Robert seems to have been the foundress of the republican party.
The Mercure national did not stop at sounding the praises of Lavicomterie's pamphlet. Robert, in the issue of November 2, 1790, announced that he was about to publish a work showing " the imminent dangers of royalty " and " the innumerable advantages of the republican institution." On November i6th he writes : " Let us efface from our memory and our Constitution the name of King. If we keep it, I do not believe we shall be free two years."
The influence of this journal was far-reaching. The Jacobins of Lons-le-Saunier read it and knew themselves for republicans. We read, in the issue of December I4th :
"Extract from a letter of the Friends of the Constitution of Lons-le-Saunier to Mme. Robert: ' The Republicans of the Jura are the true friends of the enemies of kings, of the Franco-Roman woman who, &c. (sic). We send you, virtuous citizeness, a proclamation of our
1 Here, however, I ought to distinguish dates. When Mme. Roland wrote her Mlmoires in prison—in August, 1793—she had quarrelled with the Roberts for more than a year. This quarrel dated from the end of March, 1792, and from the refusal of the minister .Roland-Dumouriez to give Robert a place. In 1791 the Rolands and the Roberts were friendly. Occasionally Roland wrote for the Mercure national On the morrow of the massacre of the Champ de Mars the Roberts went to the Rolands and asked for shelter (Lettres a Bancal, letter of July 18,1791).
Society. . . . Receive the heartfelt assurances of the esteem of eight hundred patriots of the Jura, of whom these signatures are the symbols. —Dumas Cadet, president; Imbert, Olivier, secretaries.'"
This proclamation, dated December 5, 1790, expresses a desire for the reunion of Avignon with France. It affirms the right of populations to ally themselves together : "If the tyrants resist us, their thrones are all overthrown, and the holy alliance of the peoples is at last crowned throughout the world." *
The volume announced by Robert appeared at the end of November or the beginning of December, 1790, its title being, Le Rfpublicanisme adapts d la France. The author recognises that the mass of public opinion is not republican, but has hopes none the less of establishing the republic, because it is the only Government compatible with liberty—because, in short, it is democracy. The National Assembly would only have had to wish for a republic, and public opinion would have followed it. Robert admits that he had not always been a republicar ; under the old rule he was a royalist ; it was the Revolution which opened his eyes.
This little work met with widespread attention. The moderate patriots were troubled; the Journal des Clubs immediately printed a categorical refutation : " We can only establish a republican Government in France in two ways : either the whole nation must form one single, great republic, or it must be dismembered, when one or many of its departments could constitute themselves as small and federative republics." In the first case, " France would hardly enjoy her pretended liberty for twenty years—years full of tumult and the horrors of civil war—to fall finally under the yoke of a modern Tiberius, Nero, or Domitian, having first seen the rise of her Scillas, her Catilines, her Mariuses."
1 In the issue of February 4, 1791, we read another address from these " republicans," which seems to have been overlooked.
224 FORMATION OF THE DEMOOEATIC PAETY
In the second case, France would be too weak to withstand the aristocracy and the rest of Europe.
The advanced, the democratic patriots, were either silent or full of objections—objections made not on principle, but on opportunity. The Patriots franfais of December I9th, in an article, unsigned, but probably by Brissot, declares that there is no doubt that a republic would be preferable to the monarchy, ;an idea which this paper had taken good care not to express hitherto. But would it be opportune to establish it in France? :
"There is in France so much ignorance and corruption; there are so many cities, so many manufactures, too many men, too little land ; and I find it hard to conceive that republicanism could last beside those causes of degradation. , , . I wish my country to become a republic, but I am neither a butcher nor an incendiary, and I hope as strongly as I hope for a republic that neither compulsion nor violence will be employed to remove from the throne him who may, at that happy epoch, occupy it. I would have this effected by a constitutional Law; that, even as Louis XVI was bidden 'Sit there 1 so Louis XVII or XVIII may be bidden, 'Come down, because we no longer desire a king; become a citizen, a member of the sovereign people!'"
The republic, which no one ever spoke of but ,a few months ago, is now the question of the day, and the Journal des Clubs expresses itself in these notable terms: "As the question of constituting France a republic has been mooted in several quarters, as it is spreading among the people, bearing unquiet and ferment in its train, it merits the very closest attention, the most unremitting deliberation." And the Conate de Montmorin writes to the Cardinal de Bernis (December 3, 1790) that not only is religion threatened with downfall, but also the throne.
Thus by December, 1790, a republican party has come into being. It has not issued from the suburbs or the workshops"; its origins are in no sense popular.
The republic men are beginning to preach is of middle class, almost of aristocratic origin ; and the first republicans are a handful of refined and educated people : a woman of letters, a noble Academician, an advocate, some adventurous pamphleteers;; an elect group, but a group so small that they could almost sit on one single sofa—that of Mme. Robert. But this little party really exists;; it writes for the public, it raises its banner, and its programme is discussed throughout all Paris.
IV.
Let me say at once that up till the time of the flight to Varennes this republican party did not succeed in popularising itself- It was only an advance-guard, a wing, of the democratic party ; and we must, first of all, consider the progress and vicissitudes of this democratic party up to the time when Louis XVI, by casting away his mask, changed the whole situation.
If the democratic party showed republican tendencies in 1790 and 1791, it also showed socialistic and feministic tendencies.
As we have seen, it was the political privilege of the middle class, and, above all, the decree of the mark of silver, that the democrats were attacking. Economic privileges they considered less intolerable; firstly, because the first social- revolution had been effected, with which the peasants were content; secondly, because industrial conditions were such that an aggravated labour question was impossible.
However, when the middle class had been established a few months as the privileged class, the hatred of political privilege led the bolder journalists to attack, as isolated sharpshooters, and prematurely, the camp of economic privilege.
We have seen that Marat, in his Ami du Petiple
VOL. i. 15
226 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
of June 30, 1790, threatened the rich with a social revolution if they insisted on maintaining the property suffrage.
Such attacks as these were not entirely unsupported. People began to speak here and there of the " agrarian law " ; and, whether by imprudence or malevolence, the phrase was repeated in the country districts, and the result was violence.
But of this we have only vague reports. Certain it is that when the anti-revolutionists accused the patriots as a whole of supporting the " agrarian law/' they were lying to discredit their adversaries. At the same time, it is very certain that there were other socialists in the democratic party besides Marat; and a few socialistic manifestations occurred in the early part of 1791.
Thus, a journal which then had one of the largest circulations, the 'Revolutions de Paris, published an article entitled, Des Pauvres et des Riches, concerning a gift of 12,000 livres which the Monarchical Club had offered to the poor of certain districts. This club was trying, by means of skilfully distributed alms, to gain the people of Paris for the royal cause. The Revolutions ironically advises the people to accept these gifts ; to do so will drain the purses of these gentry. But the people want not .bread alone ; they do not forget the rights of property. Do they demand the agrarian law? No ; that would be too violent. They must suffer yet a little longer from the inequalities of fortune ; but they must make up their minds from now onwards to render them less glaring. To do this let the rich and the poor resort to the mediation of " those who possess neither too much nor too little " ; peaceable men, whose homes are illumined by " all the lights of cultivated reason, and who prepared the way for the Revolution." These modest persons will form themselves in a phalanx of philanthropists,
and, " the torch of instruction in their hand/' they will separate into two "bands." The one will inform the rich that it will be to their interest to " foresee, to anticipate, by themselves executing, that agrarian law of which men are already speaking " :
" That the poor have but now acquired a half-wisdom which may well become fatal to the rich, if they themselves do not set to work to complete their instruction: a thing impossible if the chain of need retains them continually, bound to the wheels of labour, from the early dawn to the set of sun; that his mouth cannot be closed by throwing him inferior bread; that the poor man no longer wishes to receive, under the name of charity, what he can demand in virtue of his rights and his might; that he is no longer the dupe of the benevolence, whether royal or otherwise, which is always being dinned into his ears; and that he no longer considers himself bound to feel grateful towards those who offer him, in the name of generosity, what is only a mere beginning of a forced and tardy restitution."
Let each rich man elevate a paterfamilias of the indigent class to the rank of landed proprietor, by ceding to him a part of his possessions.
" Wealthy man! spare from your national acquisitions a few acres for those who have won liberty for you. Insensibly the number of the poor will diminish, and that of the rich in proportion. And these two classes, which used to be the two extremes, will give place to that golden 1 mean, that fractional equality, without which there is no true liberty nor any lasting peace."
The other " bajid " will say to the poor :
" Say to the rich that you do not envy them their mansions and their gardens, but that you have the right to claim, for every father of a family of the indigent class, a little field and a cottage; that instead of penning the poor like wretched cattle in the public workshops, you demand that they shall proclaim the agrarian law over these vast expanses, these immense fallow lands which occupy a third of the surface of the empire; persuaded that the sum of the advances indispensable to give a value to these great expanses divided into small properties will not amount to the sums, which are a pure loss, now
228 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
swallowed up in works of charity: so humiliating to those condemned by necessity to benefit by them, and so completely useless as regards the public weal."
The socialistic journalist does not invite the proletariat to revolt. Let the indigent (says he) be content with having inspired the wealthy with a moment's terror. Let them persevere in their labour. Yes, they will all become proprietors one day. " But, to do so, you must acquire a wisdom you lack. It is the touch of instruction that must guide you down that narrow path which holds the middle way between your duties and your rights."
This article did not pass unnoticed. La Harpe refuted it in vehement, but ineloquent terms, in the Mercure de France of April 23rd. To show how the writer shocked the general mind, he stated that Rutledge, the orator of the Cordeliers (Greyfriars), was unanimously hooted by the Jacobins for having in their midst spoken of the agrarian law, 1 and thus we learn that from this time onwards there were socialists in the Cordeliers' Clubs.
The Revolutions de Paris replied, and this time spoke boldly in praise of the agrarian law, citing Jean-Jacques Rousseau and " the ancient lawmakers " :
"And besides, you do not see that the French Revolution, for which you fight, you say, as citizens, is a true agrarian law put in execution by the people. They have entered into their rights. One step more, and they will enter into possession of their wealth. . . ."
There were, at this time, other socialists, as well as those of the Rivolutions and the Greyfriars. I find
x On April ii, 1791, Rutledge, at the head of a deputation from the Club des Cordeliers, protested, before the Jacobins, against the monopoly of the mills of Corbeil. The only accounts extant of his speech make no mention of the agrarian law. (Concerning the monopoly of mills, see p. 29 of this volume.)
one in the group of citizens (Lanthenas, Viaud, Abb£ Danjou, &c.) who, in 1790, formed a "society of the friends of unity and equality in the family/ 1 in view of obtaining the abolition of the rights of primogeniture. One of those associated with this campaign, the Abbe de Cournand, professor at the College of France, published in April, 1791, a definitely socialistic pamphlet entitled, Of Property; or, the Cause of the Poor pleaded before the Tribunal of Reason, Justice, and Truth. We read in the Advertisement:
"While this book was being printed the National Assembly was busying itself concerning the property of the rich. It decreed equality of inheritance in the case of all the children concerned in intestate successions. ... It is time now to deal with the property of the poor, and the equality of wealth among all citizens, who also are brothers, members of the same family, and having all the same rights to the common heritage/'
And the author explains his system of agrarian law. He supposes that there are, in France, 25,000 square leagues of cultivable soil, and from 21 to 22 millions of inhabitants—that is to say, 7 arpents per head of population. Before sharing it out there would be put aside, out of each square league, a third part, which would form the fund of the State, the common land, "from which one would take, at the birth of each individual, the portion necessary to his subsistence, and into which it would be re-absorbed at the time of his death." These lands would be leased for the benefit of the Government, to which they would bring in about 500,000,000 francs (£20,000,000), which sum would form the Budget of the State. In this way each individual would have 4$ arpents free of taxes. At twenty-five years of age each Frenchman would draw lots for his portion. The husband would draw for his wife, the father for his children under age. The land might be let or fanned, but not alienated or transmitted
230 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
by heritage. Movable property would remain, as now, alienable and transmissible by inheritance. Education would be common and continuous till the age of eighteen. The National Assembly, if it feared to act in haste, need only apply the system little by little as lands fell in at death.
This explanation is followed by long and interesting replies to possible objectors.
It is difficult to know what success this Utopia had, remarkably conceived and written as it is, but lacking the kind of eloquence which pleases the people.
Yet another abb£, Claude Fauchet, tried to popularise socialistic ideas. As early as November, 1790, he had written, in his journal La Bottche de Per:
" Every man has rights in the soil, and should enjoy possession of it during life; he enters into possession by his labour, and his position should be limited by the rights of his equals. All rights are in common in a well-ordered society. The divine power of sovereignty should so draw its limits that all have something and none have too much."
At the celebrated tribune of the Social Club which he founded at the Palais Royal, and which must have been the climax of a federation of clubs under the aegis of freemasonry, with universal love as means and end, Fauchet preached his socialism most brilliantly. It was a Christian socialism. His whole system was based on the Catholic religion nationalised. He anathematised all philosophers, and in so doing alienated both himself and his doctrine, but not before he had spread abroad the idea of social revolution as supplementary to the political revolution.
Socialism, whether rational or mystical, was by no means accepted by the authorised leaders of the democratic party. One and all they protested against the "agrarian law." In an article published in April, 1791, Robespierre recognised that the inequality of wealth "-was a inecessary or incurable evil." I 1 (Euvres, i. 167.
THE SOCIALISTS NOT A PARTY 231
There was no organised socialist party, and the very word had no existence, because there was in those days no excessive social suffering among either peasants or workmen. The socialists were regarded as fantastic people, isolated eccentrics.
But a novel social question presented itself, other than that which had been answered in 1789, and this happened a year after the establishment of the bourgeois system ; because men had seen this system at work, had suffered from the political privileges of the ruling class, and because logical minds were beginning to dispute the economic privileges on which political privilege was based.
V.
If there were, at this time, democratic 1 socialists, there were also democratic feminists, who wished to admit women to the body politic. Condorcet, as far back as 1788, in sketching a plan of political and social reform, had publicly demanded that women should take part in the election of representatives.' And this idea was not at all a chimerical novelty. Condorcet was speaking of an actual fact, a fact nowadays quite forgotten. If, indeed, the ancien regime held woman in slavery as regards her civil rights, it did not absolutely refuse her all political rights. Thus women who owned fiefs were allowed to play a part in the electoral system of provincial and municipal assemblies. The same was true of elections to the Estates-General, 2 and it happened that some of the deputies of the nobles and the clergy owed ^their election to feminine votes. The idea of admitting all women to the exercise of the right of political