The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 / And the Causes Which Led to That Event

by Alexis de Tocqueville

If, leaving the nobility out of the question, we turn our attention to the middle classes, we shall find the same state of things: the man of the middle classes living almost as far apart from the common people as the noble was from the middle class.

Almost the whole of the middle class before the Revolution dwelt in the towns. Two causes had principally led to this result—the privileges of the nobles and the taille. The Seigneur who lived on his estates usually treated his peasants with a certain good-natured familiarity, but his arrogance towards his neighbours of the middle class was unbounded. It had never ceased to augment as his political power had diminished, and for that very reason; for on the one hand, as he had ceased to govern, he no longer had any interest in conciliating those who could assist him in that task; whilst, on the other, as has frequently been observed, he tried to console himself for the loss of real power by an immoderate display of his apparent rights. Even his absence from his estates, instead of relieving his neighbours, only served to increase their annoyance. Absenteeism had not even that good effect, for privileges enforced by proxy were all the more insupportable.

I am not sure, however, that the taille, and all the taxes which had been assimilated to it, were not still more powerful causes.

I could show, I think, in very few words, why the taille and its accessories pressed much more heavily on the country than on the towns; but the reader would probably think it superfluous. It will be sufficient to point out that the middle classes, gathered together in the towns, could find a thousand means of alleviating the weight of the taille, and often indeed of avoiding it altogether, which not one of them could have employed singly had he remained on the estate to which he belonged. Above all, he thereby escaped the obligation of collecting the taille, which he dreaded far more than that of paying it, and not without reason; for there never was under the old French Government, or, I believe, under any Government, a worse condition than that of the parochial collector of the taille. I shall have occasion to show this hereafter. Yet no one in a village except the nobles could escape this office; and rather than subject himself to it, the rich man of the middle class let his estates and withdrew to the neighbouring town. Turgot coincides with all the secret documents which I have had an opportunity of consulting, when he says, that ‘the collecting of the taille converts all the non-noble landowners of the country into burgesses of the towns.’ Indeed this, to make a passing remark, was one of the chief causes why France was fuller of towns, and especially of small towns, than almost any other country in Europe.

Once ensconced within the walls of a town, a wealthy though low-born member of the middle class soon lost the tastes and ideas of rural life; he became totally estranged from the labours and the affairs of those of his own class whom he had left behind. His whole life was now devoted to one single object: he aspired to become a public officer in his adopted town.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the passion for place, which fills almost all Frenchmen of our time, more especially those belonging to the middle ranks, has arisen since the Revolution; its birth dates from several centuries back, and it has constantly increased in strength, thanks to the variety of fresh food with which it has been continually supplied.

Places under the old Government did not always resemble those of our day, but I believe they were even more numerous; the number of petty places was almost infinite. It has been reckoned that between the years 1693 and 1790 alone, forty thousand such places were created, almost all within the reach of the lower middle class. I have counted that, in 1750, in a provincial town of moderate size, no less than one hundred and nine persons were engaged in the administration of justice, and one hundred and twenty-six in the execution of the judgments delivered by them—all inhabitants of the town. The eagerness with which the townspeople of the middle class sought to obtain these places was really unparalleled. No sooner had one of them become possessed of a small capital than, instead of investing it in business, he immediately laid it out in the purchase of a place. This wretched ambition has done more harm to the agriculture and the trade of France than the guilds or even the taille. When the supply of places failed, the imagination of place-hunters instantly fell to work to invent new ones. A certain Sieur Lemberville published a memorial to prove that it was quite in accordance with the interest of the public to create inspectors for a particular branch of manufactures, and he concluded by offering himself for the employment. Which of us has not known a Lemberville? A man endowed with some education and small means, thought it not decorous to die without having been a government officer. ‘Every man according to his condition,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘wants to be something by command of the King.’

The principal difference in this respect between the time of which I have been speaking and the present is, that formerly the Government sold the places; whereas now it gives them away. A man no longer pays his money in order to purchase a place: he does more, he sells himself.

Separated from the peasantry by the difference of residence, and still more by the manner of life, the middle classes were also for the most part divided from them by interest. The privileges of the nobles with respect to taxation were justly complained of, but what then can be said of those enjoyed by the middle class? The offices which exempted them wholly or in part from public burdens were counted by thousands: one exempted them from the militia, another from the corvée, a third from the taille. ‘Is there a parish,’ says a writer of the time, ‘that does not contain, independently of the nobles and ecclesiastics, a number of inhabitants who have purchased for themselves, by dint of places or commissions, some sort of exemption from taxation?’ One of the reasons why a certain number of offices destined for the middle classes were, from time to time, abolished is the diminution of the receipts caused by the exemption of so large a number of persons from the taille. I have no doubt that the number of those exempted among the middle class was as great as, and often greater than, among the nobility.