Note (LXIII.)—Page [115], line 22.
EXAMPLE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PEASANTS WERE OFTEN TREATED.
In 1768 the King allowed a remittance of 2000 francs to be made upon the taille in the parish of Chapelle-Blanche, near Saumur. The curé wanted to appropriate a part of this sum to the construction of a belfry, in order to get rid of the sound of the bells that annoyed him, as he said, in his parsonage-house. The inhabitants complained and resisted. The Subdélégué took part with the curé, and had three of the principal inhabitants arrested during the night and put into prison.
Further examples may be found in a Royal order to imprison for a fortnight a woman who had insulted two of the mounted rural police; and another order for the imprisonment for a fortnight of a stocking-weaver who had spoken ill of the same police. In this latter case the Intendant replied to the Minister, that he had already put the man in prison—a proceeding that met with the approval of the Minister. This abuse of the maréchaussée had arisen from the fact of the violent arrest of several beggars, that seems to have greatly shocked the population. The Subdélégué, it appears, in arresting the weaver, made publicly known that all who should continue to insult the maréchaussée should be even still more severely punished.
It appears by the correspondence between the Subdélégué and their Intendant (1760-1770) that orders were given by him to them to have all ill-doing persons arrested—not to be tried, but to be punished forthwith by imprisonment. In one instance the Subdélégué asks leave of the Intendant to condemn to perpetual imprisonment two dangerous beggars whom he had arrested; in another we find the protest of a father against the arrest of his son as a vagabond, because he was travelling without his passport. Again, a householder of X. demands the arrest of a man, one of his neighbours, who had come to establish himself in the parish, to whom he had been of service, but who had behaved ill, and was disagreeable to him; and the Intendant of Paris writes to request the Intendant of Rouen to be kind enough to render this service to the householder, who is one of his friends.
In another case an Intendant replies to a person who wants to have some beggars set at liberty, saying that the Dépôt des Mendicants was not to be considered as a prison, but only as a house intended for the detention of beggars and vagabonds, as an ‘administrative correction.’ This idea has come down to the French Penal Code, so much have the traditions of the old monarchy, in these matters, maintained themselves.
Note (LXIV.)—Page [121], line 7.
It has been said that the character of the philosophy of the eighteenth century was a sort of adoration of human reason—a boundless confidence in its almighty power to transform at its will laws, institutions, and morals. But, upon examination, we shall see that, in truth, it was more their own reason that some of these philosophers adored than human reason. None ever showed less confidence in the wisdom of mankind than these men. I could name many who had almost as much contempt for the masses as for the Divinity. The latter they treated with the arrogance of rivals, the former with the arrogance of upstarts. A real and respectful submission to the will of the majority was as far from their minds as submission to the Divine will. Almost all the revolutionists of after days have displayed this double character. There is a wide distance between their disposition and the respect shown by the English and Americans to the opinion of the majority of their fellow-citizens. Individual reason in those countries has its own pride and confidence in itself, but is never insolent; it has thus led the way to freedom, whilst in France it has done nothing but invent new forms of servitude.