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

by Alexis de Tocqueville

CHAPTER X.

THE DESTRUCTION OF POLITICAL LIBERTY AND THE ESTRANGEMENT OF CLASSES WERE THE CAUSES OF ALMOST ALL THE DISORDERS WHICH LED TO THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD SOCIETY OF FRANCE.

Of all the disorders which attacked the constitution of society in France, as it existed before the Revolution, and led to the dissolution of that society, that which I have just described was the most fatal. But I must pursue the inquiry to the source of so dangerous and strange an evil, and show how many other evils took their origin from the same cause.

If the English had, from the period of the Middle Ages, altogether lost, like the French, political freedom and all those local franchises which cannot long exist without it, it is highly probable that each of the different classes of which the English aristocracy is composed would have seceded from the rest, as was the case in France and more or less all over the continent, and that all those classes together would have separated themselves from the people. But freedom compelled them always to remain within reach of each other, so as to combine their strength in time of need.

It is curious to observe how the British aristocracy, urged even by its own ambition, has contrived, whenever it seemed necessary, to mix familiarly with its inferiors, and to feign to consider them as its equals. Arthur Young, whom I have already quoted, and whose book is one of the most instructive works which exist on the former state of society in France, relates that, happening to be one day at the country-house of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, at La Roche Guyon, he expressed a wish to converse with some of the best and most wealthy farmers of the neighbourhood. ‘The Duke had the kindness to order his steward to give me all the information I wanted relative to the agriculture of the country, and to speak to such persons as were necessary on points that he was in doubt about. At an English nobleman’s house there would have been three or four farmers asked to meet me, who would have dined with the family among ladies of the first rank. I do not exaggerate when I say that I have had this at least an hundred times in the first houses of our islands. It is, however, a thing that in the present state of manners in France would not be met with from Calais to Bayonne, except by chance in the house of some great Lord, who had been much in England, and then not unless it were asked for. I once knew it at the Duke de Liancourt’s.’[43]

Unquestionably the English aristocracy is of a haughtier nature than that of France, and less disposed to mingle familiarly with those who live in a humbler condition; but the obligations of its own rank have imposed that duty upon it. It submitted that it might command. For centuries no inequality of taxation has existed in England, except such exemptions as have been successively introduced for the relief of the indigent classes. Observe to what results different political principles may lead nations so nearly contiguous! In the eighteenth century, the poor man in England enjoyed the privilege of exemption from taxation; the rich in France. In one country the aristocracy has taken upon itself the heaviest public burdens, in order to retain the government of the State; in the other the aristocracy retained to the last exemption from taxation as a compensation for the loss of political power.

In the fourteenth century the maxim ‘No tax without the consent of the taxed’—n’impose qui ne veut—appeared to be as firmly established in France as in England. It was frequently quoted; to contravene it always seemed an act of tyranny; to conform to it was to revert to the law. At that period, as I have already remarked, a multitude of analogies may be traced between the political institutions of France and those of England; but then the destinies of the two nations separated and constantly became more unlike, as time advanced. They resemble two lines starting from contiguous points at a slight angle, which diverge indefinitely as they are prolonged.

I venture to affirm that when the French nation, exhausted by the protracted disturbances which had accompanied the captivity of King John and the madness of Charles VI., suffered the Crown to levy a general tax without the consent of the people, and when the nobility had the baseness to allow the middle and lower classes to be so taxed on condition that its own exemption should be maintained, at that very time was sown the seed of almost all the vices and almost all the abuses which afflicted the ancient society of France during the remainder of its existence, and ended by causing its violent dissolution; and I admire the rare sagacity of Philippe de Comines when he says, ‘Charles VII., who gained the point of laying on the taille at his pleasure, without the consent of the States of the Realm, laid a heavy burden on his soul and on that of his successors, and gave a wound to his kingdom which will not soon be closed.’

Observe how that wound widened with the course of years; follow step by step that fact to its consequences.

Forbonnais says with truth in his learned ‘Researches on the Finances of France,’ that in the Middle Ages the sovereigns generally lived on the revenues of their domains; and ‘as the extraordinary wants of the State,’ he adds, ‘were provided for by extraordinary subsidies, they were levied equally on the clergy, the nobility, and the people.’