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

by Alexis de Tocqueville

Upon the whole, and notwithstanding the notorious vices of some of its members, I question if there ever existed in the world a clergy more remarkable than the Catholic clergy of France at the moment when it was overtaken by the Revolution—a clergy more enlightened, more national, less circumscribed within the bounds of private duty and more alive to public obligations, and at the same time more zealous for the faith:—persecution proved it. I entered on the study of these forgotten institutions full of prejudices against the clergy of that day: I conclude that study full of respect for them. They had in truth no defects but those inherent in all corporate bodies, whether political or religious, when they are strongly constituted and knit together; such as a tendency to aggression, a certain intolerance of disposition, and an instinctive—sometimes a blind—attachment to the particular rights of their Order.

The Middle Classes of the time preceding the Revolution were also much better prepared than those of the present day to show a spirit of independence. Many even of the defects of their social constitution contributed to this result. We have already seen that the public employments occupied by these classes were even more numerous than at present, and that the passion for obtaining these situations was equally intense. But mark the difference of the age. Most of those places being neither given nor taken away by the Government, increased the importance of those who filled them without placing them at the mercy of the ruler; hence, the very cause which now completes the subjection of so many persons was precisely that which most powerfully enabled them at that time to maintain their independence.

The immunities of all kinds which so unhappily separated the middle from the lower classes, converted the former into a spurious aristocracy, which often displayed the pride and the spirit of resistance of the real aristocracy. In each of those small particular associations which divided the middle classes into so many sections, the general advantage was readily overlooked, but the interests and the rights of each body were always kept in view. The common dignity, the common privileges were to be defended.[55] No man could ever lose himself in the crowd, or find a hiding-place for base subserviency. Every man stood, as it were, on a stage, extremely contracted it is true, but in a glare of light, and there he found himself in presence of the same audience, ever ready to applaud or to condemn him.

The art of stifling every murmur of resistance was at that time far less perfected than it is at present. France had not yet become that dumb region in which we dwell: every sound on the contrary had an echo, though political liberty was still unknown, and every voice that was raised might be heard afar.

That which more especially in those times ensured to the oppressed the means of being heard was the constitution of the Courts of Justice. France had become a land of absolute government by her political and administrative institutions, but her people were still free by her institutions of justice. The judicial administration of the old monarchy was complicated, troublesome, tedious, and expensive: these were no doubt great faults, but servility towards the Government was not to be met with there—that servility which is but another form of venality, and the worst form. That capital vice, which not only corrupts the judge, but soon infects the whole body of the people, was altogether unknown to the elder magistracy. The judges could not be removed, and they sought no promotion—two things alike necessary to their independence; for what matters it that a judge cannot be coerced if there are a thousand means of seduction?

It is true that the power of the Crown had succeeded in depriving the Courts of ordinary jurisdiction of the cognisance of almost all the suits in which the public authorities were interested; but though they had been stripped, they still were feared. Though they might be prevented from recording their judgments, the Government did not always dare to prevent them from receiving complaints or from recording their opinions; and as the language of the Courts still preserved the tone of that old language of France which loved to call things by their right names, the magistrates not unfrequently stigmatised the acts of the Government as arbitrary and despotic.[56] The irregular intervention of the Courts in the affairs of government, which often disturbed the conduct of them, thus served occasionally to protect the liberties of the subject. The evil was great, but it served to curb a greater evil.

In these judicial bodies and all around them the vigour of the ancient manners of the nation was preserved in the midst of modern opinions. The Parliaments of France doubtless thought more of themselves than of the commonwealth; but it must be acknowledged that, in defence of their own independence and honour, they always bore themselves with intrepidity, and that they imparted their spirit to all that came near them.

When in 1770 the Parliament of Paris was broken, the magistrates who belonged to it submitted to the loss of their profession and their power without a single instance of any individual yielding to the will of the sovereign. Nay, more, some Courts of a different kind, such as the Court of Aids, which were neither affected nor menaced, voluntarily exposed themselves to the same harsh treatment, when that treatment had become certain. Nor is this all: the leading advocates who practised before the Parliament resolved of their own accord to share its fortune; they renounced all that made their glory and their wealth, and condemned themselves to silence rather than appear before dishonoured judges. I know of nothing in the history of free nations grander than what occurred on this occasion, and yet this happened in the eighteenth century, hard by the court of Louis XV.

The habits of the French Courts of justice had become in many respects the habits of the nation. The Courts of justice had given birth to the notion that every question was open to discussion and every decision subject to appeal, and likewise to the use of publicity, and to a taste for forms of proceeding—things adverse to servitude: this was the only part of the education of a free people which the institutions of the old monarchy had given to France. The administration itself had borrowed largely from the language and the practice of the Courts. The King considered himself obliged to assign motives for his edicts, and to state his reasons before he drew the conclusion; the Council of State caused its orders to be preceded by long preambles; the Intendants promulgated their ordinances in the forms of judicial procedure. In all the administrative bodies of any antiquity, such, for example, as the body of the Treasurers of France or that of the élus (who assessed the taille), the cases were publicly debated and decided after argument at the bar. All these usages, all these formalities, were so many barriers to the arbitrary power of the sovereign.

The people alone, applying that term to the lower orders of society, and especially the people of the rural districts, were almost always unable to offer any resistance to oppression except by violence.