Arthur Young declared that, in 1788, Bordeaux carried on a larger trade than Liverpool. He adds: ‘Latterly the progress of maritime commerce has been more rapid in France than in England; trade has doubled there in the last twenty years.’
With due regard to the difference of the times we are speaking of, it may be established that in no one of the periods which have followed the Revolution of 1789 has the national prosperity of France augmented more rapidly than it did in the twenty years preceding that event.[73] The period of thirty-seven years of the constitutional monarchy of France, which were times of peace and progress, can alone be compared in this respect to the reign of Louis XVI.
The aspect of this prosperity, already so great and so rapidly increasing, may well be matter of surprise, if we think of all the defects which the Government of France still included, and all the restrictions against which the industry of the nation had still to contend. Perhaps there may be politicians who, unable to explain the fact, deny it, being of the opinion of Molière’s physician that a patient cannot recover against the rules of art. How are we to believe that France prospered and grew rich with unequal taxation, with a diversity of customary law, with internal custom-houses, with feudal rights, with guilds, with purchased offices, &c.? In spite of all this, France was beginning to grow rich and expand on every side, because within all this clumsy and ill-regulated machinery, which seemed calculated to check rather than to impel the social engine, two simple and powerful springs were concealed, which, already, sufficed to keep the fabric together, and to drive it along in the direction of public prosperity—a Government which was still powerful enough to maintain order throughout the kingdom, though it had ceased to be despotic; a nation which, in its upper classes, was already the most enlightened and the most free on the continent of Europe, and in which every man could enrich himself after his own fashion and preserve the fortune he had once acquired.
The King still spoke the language of an arbitrary ruler, but in reality he himself obeyed that public opinion which inspired or influenced him day by day, and which he constantly consulted, flattered, feared; absolute by the letter of the laws, limited by their application. As early as 1784, Necker said in a public document as a thing not disputed: ‘Most foreigners are unable to form an idea of the authority now exercised in France by public opinion; they can hardly understand what is that invisible power which makes itself obeyed even in the King’s palace; yet such is the fact.’
Nothing is more superficial than to attribute the greatness and the power of a people exclusively to the mechanism of its laws; for, in this respect, the result is obtained not so much by the perfection of the engine as by the amount of the propelling power. Look at England, whose administrative laws still at the present day appear so much more complicated, more anomalous, more irregular, than those of France![74] Yet is there a country in Europe where the national wealth is greater, where private property is more extended, varied, and secure, or where society is more stable and more rich? This is not caused by the excellence of any laws in particular, but by the spirit which pervades the whole legislation of England. The imperfection of certain organs matters nothing, because the whole is instinct with life.
As the prosperity, which I have just described, began to extend in France, the community nevertheless became more unsettled and uneasy; public discontent grew fierce; hatred against all established institutions increased. The nation was visibly advancing towards a revolution.
Nay, more, those parts of France which were about to become the chief centres of this revolution were precisely the parts of the territory where the work of improvement was most perceptible. An examination of what remains of the archives of the ancient circumscription of the Ile de France readily shows that the abuses of the monarchy had been soonest and most effectually reformed in the immediate vicinity of Paris.[75] There, the liberty and property of the peasants were already better secured than in any other of what were termed the pays d’élection. Personal forced service had disappeared long before 1789. The taille was levied with greater regularity, moderation, and fairness than in any other part of France. The ordinance made in 1772 for the amelioration of this tax in this district is a striking proof of what an Intendant could do for the advantage or for the misery of a whole province. As seen through this document, the aspect of the tax was already changed. Government commissioners were to proceed every year to each parish; the community was to assemble before them; the value of the taxable property was to be publicly established, and the resources of every tax-payer to be ascertained in his presence; in short, the taille was assessed with the assent of all those who had to pay it. The arbitrary powers of the village syndic, the unprofitable violence of the fiscal officers, were at an end. The taille no doubt retained its inherent defects under any system of collection: it lighted upon but one class of taxpayers, and lay as heavy on industry as upon property; but in all other respects it widely differed from that which still bore the same name in the neighbouring divisions of the territory.
Nowhere, on the contrary, were the institutions of the whole monarchy less changed than on the banks of the Loire, near the mouths of that river, in the marshes of Poitou and the heaths of Brittany. Yet there it was that the fire of civil war was kindled and kept alive, and that the fiercest and longest resistance was opposed to the Revolution; so that it might be said that the French found their position the more intolerable the better it became. Surprising as this fact is, history is full of such contradictions.
It is not always by going from bad to worse that a country falls into a revolution. It happens most frequently that a people, which had supported the most crushing laws without complaint, and apparently as if they were unfelt, throws them off with violence as soon as the burden begins to be diminished. The state of things destroyed by a revolution is almost always somewhat better than that which immediately preceded it; and experience has shown that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually that when it enters upon the work of reform. Nothing short of great political genius can save a sovereign who undertakes to relieve his subjects after a long period of oppression. The evils which were endured with patience so long as they were inevitable seem intolerable as soon as a hope can be entertained of escaping from them. The abuses which are removed seem to lay bare those which remain, and to render the sense of them more acute; the evil has decreased, it is true, but the perception of the evil is more keen. Feudalism in all its strength had not inspired as much aversion to the French as it did on the eve of its disappearance. The slightest arbitrary proceedings of Louis XVI. seemed more hard to bear than all the despotism of Louis XIV.[76] The brief detention of Beaumarchais produced more excitement in Paris than the Dragonnades.
No one any longer contended in 1780 that France was in a state of decline; there seemed, on the contrary, to be just then no bounds to her progress. Then it was that the theory of the continual and indefinite perfectibility of man took its origin. Twenty years before nothing was to be hoped of the future: then nothing was to be feared. The imagination, grasping at this near and unheard-of felicity, caused men to overlook the advantages they already possessed, and hurried them forward to something new.