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

by Alexis de Tocqueville

As nothing was as yet to be found about them which came up to this ideal, they sought it in the depths of Asia. I affirm, without exaggeration, that there is not one of these writers who has not, in some of his productions, passed an emphatic eulogy on China. That, at least, is always to be found in their books; and, as China was still very imperfectly known, there is no trash they have not written about that empire. That stupid and barbarous government, which a handful of Europeans can overpower when they please, appeared to them the most perfect model to be copied by all the nations of the earth. China was to them what England, and subsequently the United States, became for all Frenchmen. They expressed their emotion and enchantment at the aspect of a country, whose sovereign, absolute but unprejudiced, drives a furrow once a year with his own hands in honour of the useful arts; where all public employments are obtained by competitive examination, and which has a system of philosophy for its religion, and men of letters for its aristocracy.

It is supposed that the destructive theories which are designated in our times by the name of socialism are of recent origin: this, again, is a mistake; these theories are contemporary with the first French school of economists. Whilst they were intent on employing the all-powerful government they had conceived in order to change the form of society, other writers grasped in imagination the same power to subvert its foundations.

In the Code de la Nature, by Morelly, will be found, side by side with the doctrines of the economists on the omnipotence and unlimited rights of the State, several of the political theories which have most alarmed the French nation in these later times, and which are supposed to have been born before our eyes—community of goods, the right to labour, absolute equality of conditions, uniformity in all things, a mechanical regularity in all the movements of individuals, a tyranny to regulate every action of daily life, and the complete absorption of the personality of each member of the community into the whole social body.

‘Nothing in society shall belong in singular property to any one,’ says the first article of this code. ‘Property is detestable, and whosoever shall attempt to re-establish it, shall be shut up for life, as a maniac or an enemy of mankind. Every citizen is to be supported, maintained, and employed at the public expense,’ says Article II. ‘All productions are to be stored in public magazines, to be distributed to the citizens and to supply their daily wants. Towns will be erected on the same plan; all private dwellings or buildings will be alike; at five years of age all children will be taken from their parents and brought up in common at the cost of the State and in a uniform manner.’

Such a book might have been written yesterday: it is a hundred years old. It appeared in 1755, at the very time when Quesnay founded his school. So true it is that centralisation and socialism are products of the same soil; they are to each other what the grafted tree is to the wild stock.

Of all the men of their time, these economists are those who would appear most at home in our own; their passion for equality is so strong, and their taste for freedom is so questionable, that one might fancy they are our contemporaries. In reading the speeches and the books of the men who figured in the Revolution of 1789, we are suddenly transported into a place and a state of society quite unknown to us; but in perusing the books of this school of economists one may fancy we have been living with these people, and have just been talking with them.

About the year 1750 the whole French nation would not have been disposed to exact a larger amount of political freedom than the economists themselves. The taste and even the notion of freedom had perished with the use of it. The nation desired reform rather than rights; and if there had been at that time on the throne of France a sovereign of the energy and the character of Frederick the Great, I doubt not that he would have accomplished in society and in government many of the great changes which have been brought about by the Revolution, and this not only without the loss of his crown, but with a considerable augmentation of his power. It is said that one of the ablest ministers of Louis XV., M. de Machault, had a glimpse of this idea, and imparted it to his master; but such undertakings are not the result of advice: to be able to perform them a man must have been able to conceive them.

Twenty years later the state of things was changed. A vision of political freedom had visited the mind of France, and was every day becoming more attractive, as may be inferred from a variety of symptoms. The provinces began to conceive the desire to manage once more their own affairs. The notion that the whole people has a right to take part in the government diffused itself and took possession of the public. Recollections of the old States-General were revived. The nation, which detested its own history, recalled no other part of it with pleasure but this. This fresh current of opinion bore away the economists themselves, and compelled them to encumber their Unitarian system with some free institutions.

When, in 1771, the Parliaments were destroyed, the same public, which had so often suffered from their prejudices, was deeply affected by their fall. It seemed as if with them fell the last barrier which could still restrain the arbitrary power of the Crown.