Other causes of still greater power had contributed to infuse a new spirit into these ancient institutions, and to give to the States of Languedoc an incontestable superiority over those of all the other provinces.
In this province, as in a great portion of the south of France, the taille was real and not personal—that is to say, it was regulated by the value of property, and not by the personal condition of the proprietor. Some lands had, no doubt, the privilege of not paying this tax: these lands had, in former times, belonged to the nobility, but, by the progress of time and of capital, it had happened that a portion of this property had fallen into the hands of non-noble holders. On the other hand, the nobles had become the holders of many lands which were liable to the taille. The privilege of exemption, being thus removed from persons to things, was doubtless more abused; but it was less felt, because, though still irksome, it was no longer humiliating. Not being indissolubly connected with the idea of a class, not investing any class with interests altogether alien and opposed to those of the other classes, such a privilege no longer opposed a barrier to the co-operation of all in public affairs. In Languedoc especially, more than in any other part of France, all classes did so co-operate, and this on a footing of complete equality.
In Brittany the landed gentry of the province had the right of all appearing in their own persons at the States, which made these Assemblies in some sort resemble the Polish Diets. In Languedoc the nobles only figured at the States of the province by their representatives: twenty-three of them sat for the whole body. The clergy also sat in the person of the twenty-three bishops of the province, and it deserves especial observation that the towns had as many votes as the two upper orders.
As the Assembly sat in one house and the orders did not vote separately, but conjointly, the commons naturally acquired much importance, and their spirit gradually infused itself into the whole body. Nay, more, the three magistrates, who, under the name of Syndics-General, were charged, in the name of the States, with the ordinary management of the business, were almost always lawyers,—that is to say, commoners. The nobility was strong enough to maintain its rank, but no longer strong enough to reign alone. The clergy, though consisting to a great extent of men of gentle birth, lived on excellent terms with the commons; they eagerly adopted most of the plans of that Order, and laboured in conjunction with it to increase the material prosperity of the whole community, by encouraging trade and manufactures, thus placing their own great knowledge of mankind and their singular dexterity in the conduct of affairs at the service of the people. A priest was almost always chosen to proceed to Versailles to discuss with the Ministers of the Crown the questions which sometimes set at variance the royal authority and that of the States. It might be said that throughout the last century Languedoc was administered by the Commons, who were controlled by the Nobles and assisted by the Bishops.
Thanks to this peculiar constitution of Languedoc, the spirit of the age was enabled peacefully to pervade this ancient institution, and to modify it altogether without at all destroying it.
It might have been so everywhere else in France. A small portion of the perseverance and the exertions which the sovereigns of France employed for the abolition or the dislocation of the Provincial Estates would have sufficed to perfect them in this manner, and to adapt them to all the wants of modern civilisation, if those sovereigns had ever had any other aim than to become and to remain the masters of France.
[The chapters which follow were not included in the work first published by M. de Tocqueville in 1855. They are the continuation of it, left unfinished at the time of his death in 1859, and published in 1865 by M. de Beaumont amongst the posthumous works of his friend. They are now translated for the first time. Although they must be regarded as incomplete, since they never received the final revision of the author, and the latter portions of them are fragmentary, yet they are not, I think, unworthy to form part of the work to which they were intended to belong, and a melancholy interest attaches to them as the last meditations of a great and original thinker. In the French text an attempt has been made to distinguish, by a different type, the passages which are more carefully finished from those which consisted merely of notes for further elaboration. But as this arrangement breaks the uniformity of the text more than is necessary, I have not adopted it.—H. R.]