CHAPTER XV.
THAT THE FRENCH AIMED AT REFORM BEFORE LIBERTY.
It is worthy of observation that amongst all the ideas and all the feelings which led to the French Revolution, the idea and the taste for political liberty, properly so called, were the last to manifest themselves and the first to disappear.
For some time past the ancient fabric of the Government had begun to be shaken; it tottered already, but liberty was not yet thought of. Even Voltaire had scarcely thought about it; three years’ residence in England had shown him what that liberty is, but without attaching him to it. The sceptical philosophy which was then in vogue in England enchanted him; the political laws of England hardly attracted his attention; he was more struck by their defects than by their merits. In his letters on England, which are one of his best pieces, Parliament is hardly mentioned; the fact was that he envied the English their literary freedom without caring for their political freedom, as if the former could ever long exist without the latter.
Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, a certain number of writers began to appear who devoted themselves especially to questions of public administration, and who were designated, in consequence of several principles which they held in common, by the general name of political economists or physiocrates. These economists have left less conspicuous traces in history than the French philosophers; perhaps they contributed less to the approach of the Revolution; yet I think that the true character of the Revolution may best be studied in their works. The French philosophers confined themselves for the most part to very general and very abstract opinions on government; the economists, without abandoning theory, clung more closely to facts. The former said what might be thought; the latter sometimes pointed out what might be done. All the institutions which the Revolution was about to annihilate for ever were the peculiar objects of their attacks; none found favour in their sight. All the institutions, on the contrary, which may be regarded as the product of the Revolution, were announced beforehand by these economical writers, and ardently recommended; there is hardly one of these institutions of which the germ may not be discovered in some of their writings; and those writings may be said to contain all that is most substantial in the Revolution itself.
Nay, more, their books already bore the stamp of that revolutionary and democratic temper which we know so well: they breathe not only the hatred of certain privileges, but even diversity was odious to them; they would adore equality, even in servitude. All that thwarts their designs is to be crushed. They care little for plighted faith, nothing for private rights—or rather, to speak accurately, private rights have already ceased in their eyes to exist—public utility is everything. Yet these were men, for the most part, of gentle and peaceful lives, worthy persons, upright magistrates, able administrators; but the peculiar spirit of their task bore them onwards.
The past was to these economists a subject of endless contempt. ‘This nation has been governed for centuries on false principles,’ said Letronne, ‘everything seems to have been done by haphazard.’ Starting from this notion, they set to work; no institution was so ancient or so well-established in the history of France that they hesitated to demand its suppression from the moment that it incommoded them or deranged the symmetry of their plans. One of these writers proposed to obliterate at once all the ancient territorial divisions of the kingdom, and to change all the names of the provinces, forty years before the Constituent Assembly executed this scheme.
They had already conceived the idea of all the social and administrative reforms which the Revolution has accomplished before the idea of free institutions had begun to cross their minds. They were, indeed, extremely favourable to the free exchange of produce, and to the doctrine of laissez faire et laissez passer, the basis of free trade and free labour; but as for political liberties, properly so called, these did not occur to their minds, or, if perchance they did occur to their imaginations, such ideas were at once rejected. Most of them began to display considerable hostility to deliberative assemblies, to local or secondary powers, and, in general, to all the checks which have been established, at different times, in all free nations, to balance the central power of the Government. ‘The system of checks,’ said Quesnay, ‘is a fatal idea in government.’ ‘The speculations on which a system of checks has been devised are chimerical,’ said a friend of the same writer.