The Nobles despised the Administration, properly so called, though they sometimes had occasion to apply to it. Even after they had abandoned their former power, they retained something of that pride of their forefathers which was alike adverse to servitude and to law. They cared little for the general liberty of the community, and readily allowed the hand of authority to lie heavy on all about them; but they did not admit that it should lie heavy on themselves, and they were ready in case of need to run all risks to prevent it. At the commencement of the Revolution that nobility of France which was about to fall with the throne, still held towards the King, and still more towards the King’s agents, an attitude far higher, and language far more free, than the middle class, which was so soon to overthrow the monarchy. Almost all the guarantees against the abuse of power which France possessed during the thirty-seven years of her representative government, were already loudly demanded by the nobles. In reading the instructions of that Order to the States-General, amidst its prejudices and its crotchets, the spirit and some of the great qualities of an aristocracy may still be felt.[51] It must ever be deplored that, instead of bending that nobility to the discipline of law, it was uprooted and struck to the earth. By that act the nation was deprived of a necessary portion of its substance, and a wound was given to freedom which will never be healed. A class which has marched for ages in the first rank has acquired, in this long and uncontested exercise of greatness, a certain loftiness of heart, a natural confidence in its strength, and a habit of being looked up to, which makes it the most resisting element in the frame of society. Not only is its own disposition manly, but its example serves to augment the manliness of every other class. By extirpating such an Order its very enemies are enervated. Nothing can ever completely replace it; it can be born no more; it may recover the titles and the estates, but not the soul of its progenitors.
The Clergy, who have since frequently shown themselves so servilely submissive to the temporal sovereign in civil matters, whosoever that temporal sovereign might be, and who become his most barefaced flatterers on the slightest indication of favour to the Church, formed at that time one of the most independent bodies in the nation, and the only body whose peculiar liberties would have enforced respect.[52]
The provinces had lost their franchises; the rights of the towns were reduced to a shadow. No ten noblemen could meet to deliberate together on any matter without the express permission of the King. But the Church of France retained to the last her periodical assemblies. Within her bosom even ecclesiastical power was circumscribed by limits which were respected.[53] The lower clergy enjoyed the protection of solid guarantees against the tyranny of their superiors, and was not prepared for passive obedience to the Sovereign by the uncontrolled despotism of the bishop. I do not attempt to pass any judgment on this ancient constitution of the Church; I merely assert that by this constitution the spirit of the priesthood was not fashioned to political servility.
Many of the ecclesiastics were moreover gentlemen of birth, and they brought with them into the Church the pride and indocility of their condition. All of them had, moreover, an exalted rank in the State, and certain privileges there. The exercise of those feudal rights, which had proved so fatal to the moral power of the Church, gave to its members, in their individual capacity, a spirit of independence towards the civil authority.
But that which especially contributed to give the clergy the opinions, the wants, the feelings, and often the passions of citizens, was the ownership of land. I have had the patience to read most of the reports and debates still remaining to us from the old Provincial Estates of France, and particularly those of Languedoc, a province in which the clergy participated even more than elsewhere in the details of the public administration; I have also examined the journals of the Provincial Assemblies which sat in 1779 and 1787. Bringing with me in this inquiry the impressions of our own times, I have been surprised to find bishops and priests, many of whom were equally eminent for their piety and for their learning, drawing up reports on the construction of a road or a canal, discussing with great science and skill the best methods to augment the produce of agriculture, to ensure the well-being of the inhabitants, and to encourage industry, these churchmen being always equal, and often superior, to all the laymen engaged with them in the transaction of the same affairs.
I maintain, in opposition to an opinion which is very generally and very firmly established, that the nations which deprive the Roman Catholic clergy of all participation in landed property, and convert their incomes into salaries, do in fact only promote the interests of the Papacy, and those of the temporal Ruler, whilst they renounce an important element of freedom amongst themselves.
A man who, as far as the best portion of his nature is concerned, is the subject of a foreign authority, and who in the country where he dwells can have no family, will only be linked to the soil by one durable tie—namely, landed property. Break that bond, and he belongs to no place in particular. In the place where the accident of birth may have cast him, he lives like an alien in the midst of a civil community, scarcely any of whose civil interests can directly affect him. His conscience binds him to the Pope; his maintenance to the Sovereign. His only country is the Church. In every political event he perceives little more than the advantage or the loss of his own profession. Let but the Church be free and prosperous, what matters all the rest? His most natural political state is that of indifference—an excellent member of the Christian commonwealth, but elsewhere a worthless citizen. Such sentiments and such opinions as these in a body of men who are the directors of childhood, and the guardians of morality, cannot fail to enervate the soul of the entire nation in relation to public life.
A correct impression of the revolution which may be effected in the human mind by a change wrought in social conditions, may be obtained from a perusal of the Instructions given to the Delegates of the Clergy at the States-General of 1789.[54]
The clergy in those documents frequently showed their intolerance, and sometimes a tenacious attachment to several of their former privileges; but, in other respects, not less hostile to despotism, not less favourable to civil liberty, not less enamoured of political liberty, than the middle classes or the nobility, this Order proclaimed that personal liberty must be secured, not by promises alone, but by a form of procedure analogous to the Habeas Corpus Act. They demanded the destruction of the State prisons, the abolition of extraordinary jurisdictions and of the practice of calling up causes to the Council of State, publicity of procedure, the permanence of judicial officers, the admissibility of all ranks to public employments, which should be open to merit alone; a system of military recruiting less oppressive and humiliating to the people, and from which none should be exempted; the extinction by purchase of seignorial rights, which sprung from the feudal system were, they said, contrary to freedom; unrestricted freedom of labour; the suppression of internal custom-houses; the multiplication of private schools, insomuch that one gratuitous school should exist in every parish; lay charitable institutions in all the rural districts, such as workhouses and workshops of charity; and every kind of encouragement to agriculture.
In the sphere of politics, properly so called, the clergy proclaimed, louder than any other class, that the nation had an indefeasible and inalienable right to assemble to enact laws and to vote taxes. No Frenchman, said the priests of that day, can be forced to pay a tax which he has not voted in person or by his representative. The clergy further demanded that States-General freely elected should annually assemble; that they should in presence of the nation discuss all its chief affairs; that they should make general laws paramount to all usages or particular privileges; that the deputies should be inviolable and the ministers of the Crown constantly responsible. The clergy also desired that assemblies of States should be created in all the provinces, and municipal corporations in all the towns. Of divine right not a word.