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

by Alexis de Tocqueville

In presence of such an Assembly the officer stood at first at gaze. He was asked who sent him there. He answered in rough but embarrassed accents, and demanded that the two members whom he was ordered to arrest should be pointed out to him. The Parliament sat motionless and silent. The officer withdrew—re-entered—then withdrew again; the Parliament, still motionless and silent, neither resisting nor yielding. The time of year was that when the days are shortest. Night came on. The troops lit fires round the approaches to the Palace, as round a besieged fort. The populace, astonished by so unwonted a sight, surrounded them in crowds, but stood aloof: the populace was touched but not yet excited, and therefore stood aloof to contemplate, by the light of those bivouac fires, a scene so new and unwonted under the monarchy. For there it might see how the oldest Government in Europe applied itself to teach the people to outrage the majesty of the oldest institutions, and to violate in their sanctuary the most august of ancient powers.

This lasted till midnight, when D’Eprémenil at last rose. He thanked the Parliament for the effort it had made to save him. He declined to trespass longer on the generous sympathy of his colleagues. He commended the commonwealth and his children to their care, and, descending the steps of the court, surrendered himself to the officer. It seemed as if he was leaving that assembly to mount the scaffold. The scaffold, indeed, he was one day to mount, but that was in other times and under other powers. The only living witness of this strange scene, Duke Pasquier, has told me that at these words of D’Eprémenil the whole Assembly burst into tears, as if it had been Regulus marching out of Rome to return to the horrid death which awaited him in Carthage. The Marshal de Noailles sobbed aloud. Alas! how many tears were ere long to be shed on loftier woes than these. Such grief was no doubt exaggerated, but not unreal. At the commencement of a revolution the vivacity of emotions greatly exceeds the importance of events, as at the close of revolutions it falls short of them.

Having thus struck a blow at the whole body of the Parliaments, represented by their chief, it only remained to annihilate their power. Six edicts were simultaneously published.[113] These edicts, which roused all France, were designed to effect several of the most important and useful reforms which the Revolution has since accomplished: the separation of the legislative and judicial powers, the abolition of exceptional courts of justice, and the establishment of all the principles which, to this day, govern the judicial organisation of France, both civil and criminal. All these reforms were conceived in the true spirit of the age, and met the real and lasting wants of society. But, as they were aimed at the privileged jurisdiction of the Parliaments, they struck down the idol of the hour, and they emanated from a power which was detested. That was enough. In the eyes of the nation these new edicts were a triumph of absolute government. The time had not yet come when everything may be pardoned by democracy to despotism in exchange for order and equality. In a moment the nation rose. Each Parliament became at once a focus of resistance round which the Orders of the province grouped themselves, so as to present a firm front to the action of the central power of government.

France was at that time divided, as is well known, into thirteen judicial provinces, each of which was attached to a Parliament. All these Parliaments were absolutely independent of one another, all of them had equal prerogatives, all of them were invested with the same right of discussing the mandates of the legislator before submitting to them. This organisation will be seen to have been natural, on looking back to the time when most of these courts of justice were founded. The different parts of France were so dissimilar in their interests, their disposition, their customs, and their manners, that the same legislation could not be applied to all of them at once. As a distinct law was usually enacted for each province, it was natural that in each province there should be a Parliament whose duty it was to test this law. In more recent times, the French having become more similar, one law sufficed for all: but the right of testing the law remained divided.

An edict of the King applying equally to the whole of France, after it had been accepted and executed in a certain manner in one part of the territory, might still be modified or contested in the twelve other parts. That was the right, but that was not the custom. For a long period of time the separate Parliaments had ceased to contest anything, save the administrative rules, which might be peculiar to their own province. They did not debate the general laws of the kingdom, unless the peculiar interests of their own province seemed to be affected by some one of their provisions. As for the principle of such laws, their opportunity or efficiency, these were considerations they did not commonly entertain. On these points they were wont to rely on the Parliament of Paris, which, by a sort of tacit agreement, was looked up to by all the other Parliaments as their political guide.

On this occasion each Parliament chose to examine these edicts, as if they concerned its own province alone, and as if it had been the sole representative of France; each province chose, too, to distinguish itself by a separate resistance in the midst of the general resistance they encountered. All of these discussed the principle of each edict, as well as its special application. A clause which had been accepted without difficulty by one of these bodies was obstinately opposed elsewhere: one of them barely notices what called forth the indignation of another. Assailed by thirteen adversaries at once, each of which attacked with different weapons and struck in different places, the Government, amidst all these bodies, could not lay its hand upon a single head.

But, what was even more remarkable than the diversity of these attacks, was the uniform intention which animated them. Each of the thirteen courts struggled after its own fashion and upon its own soil, but the sentiment which excited them was identically the same. The remonstrances made at that time by the different Parliaments, and published by them, would fill many volumes; but open the book where you will, you seem to be reading the same page: always the same thoughts expressed for the most part in the same words. All of them demanded the States-General in the name of the imprescriptible rights of the nation: all of them approved the conduct of the Parliament of Paris, protested against the acts of violence directed against it, encouraged it to resist, and imitated, as well as it could, not only its measures, but the philosophical language of its opposition. ‘Subjects,’ said the Parliament of Grenoble, ‘have rights as well as the sovereign—rights which are essential to all who are not slaves.’ ‘The just man,’ said the Parliament of Normandy, ‘does not change his principles when he changes his abode.’ ‘The King,’ said the Parliament of Besançon, ‘cannot wish to have for his subjects humiliated slaves.’[114] The tumult raised at the same time by all these magistrates scattered over the surface of the country sounds like the confused noise of a multitude: listen attentively to what they are saying: it is as the voice of one man.

What is it then that the country was saying thus simultaneously? Everywhere you find the same ideas and the same expressions, so that beneath the unity of the judicature you discover the unity of the nation: and through this multiplicity of old institutions, of local customs, of provincial privileges, of different usages, which seemed to sever France into so many different peoples, each living a separate life, you discern one of the nations of the earth in which the greatest degree of similarity subsists between man and man. This movement of the Parliaments, at once multiple and uniform, attacking like a crowd, striking like a single arm,—this judicial insurrection was more dangerous to the Government than all other insurrections, even military revolt; because it turned against the Government that regular, civil, and moral power which is the habitual instrument of authority. The strength of an army may coerce for a day, but the constant defence of Governments lies in courts of justice. Another striking point in this resistance of the judicial bodies, was not so much the mischief they themselves did to the Government, as that which they allowed to be done to it by others. They established, for instance, the worst form of liberty of the press: that, namely, which springs not from a right, but from the non-execution of the laws. They introduced, too, the right of holding promiscuous meetings, so that the different members of each Order and the Orders themselves could remove for a time the barrier which divided them, and concert a common course of action.

Thus it was that all the Orders in each province engaged gradually in the struggle, but not all at the same time or in the same manner. The nobility were the first and boldest champions in that contest against the absolute powers of the King.[115] It was in the place of the aristocracy that absolute government had taken root: they were the first to be humbled and annoyed by some obscure agent of the central power, who, under the name of an Intendant, was sent perpetually to regulate and transact behind their backs the smallest local affairs: they had produced not a few of the writers who had protested with the greatest energy against despotism; free institutions and the new opinions had almost everywhere found in the nobles their chief supporters. Independently of their own grievances, they were carried away by the common passion which had become universal, as is demonstrated by the nature of their attacks. Their complaint was not that their peculiar privileges had been violated, but that the common law of the realm had been trampled under foot, the provincial Estates abolished, the States-General interrupted, the nation treated like a minor, and the country deprived of the management of its own affairs.