At first nothing was talked of but the constitution of the States-General; big books were hastily filled with crude erudition, in which an attempt was made to reconcile the traditions of the Middle Ages with the demands of the present time: then the question of the old States-General was dropped. This heap of mouldy precedents was flung aside, and it was asked what, on general and abstract principles, the legislative power ought to be. At each step the horizon extended: beyond the constitution of the legislature the discussion embraced the whole framework of government: beyond the frame of government the whole fabric of society was to be shaken to its foundations. At first men spoke of a better ponderation of powers, a better adjustment of the rights of classes, but soon they advanced, they hurried, they rushed to pure democracy. At first Montesquieu was cited and discussed, at last Rousseau was the only authority; he, and he alone, became and was to remain the Teacher of the first age of the Revolution. The old régime was still in complete existence, and already the institutions of England were deemed superannuated and inadequate. The root of every incident that followed was implanted in men’s minds. Scarcely an opinion was professed in the whole course of the Revolution which might not already be traced in its germ: there was not an idea realised by the Revolution, that some theory had not at once reached and even surpassed.
‘In all things the majority of numbers is to give the law’: such was the keynote of the whole controversy. Nobody dreamed that the concession of political rights could be determined by any other element than that of number. ‘What can be more absurd,’ exclaims a writer who was one of the most moderate of the time, ‘than that a body which has twenty millions of heads should be represented in the same manner as one which has an hundred thousand?’[126] After having shown that there were in France eighty thousand ecclesiastics and about a hundred and twenty thousand nobles, Siéyès merely adds, ‘Compare this number of these two hundred thousand privileged persons to that of twenty-six million souls, and judge the question.’[127]
The most timid among the innovators of the Revolution, those who wished that the reasonable prerogatives of the different Orders should be respected, talked, nevertheless, as if there were neither class nor Order, and still took the numerical majority[128] as the sole basis of their calculations. Everybody framed his own statistics, but all was statistical. ‘The relation of privileged persons to those not privileged,’ said Lafon-Ladebat, ‘is as one to twenty-two.’[129] According to the city of Bourg,[130] the commons formed nineteen-twentieths of the population; according to the city of Nîmes,[131] twenty-nine thirtieths. It was, as you see, a mere question of figures. From this political arithmetic, Volney deduced, as a natural consequence, universal suffrage;[132] Roederer, universal eligibility;[133] Péthion, the unity of the assembly.[134]
Many of these writers, in drawing out their figures, knew nothing of the quotient: and the calculation frequently led them beyond their hopes, and even beyond their wishes.
The most striking thing, at this passionate epoch, was not so much the passions which broke forth, as the power of the opinions that prevailed; and the opinion that prevailed above all others was, that not only there were no privileges, but even that there were no private rights. Even those who professed the largest consideration for privileges and private rights considered such privileges and rights as wholly indefensible—not only those exercised in their own time, but those existing at any time and in any country. The conception of a temperate and ponderated Government, that is to say, of a Government in which the different classes of society, and the different interests which divide them, balance each other—in which men are weighed not only as individuals, but by reason of their property, their patronage, and their influence in the scale of the common weal,—these conceptions were wanting in the mind of the multitude; they were replaced by the notion of a crowd, consisting of similar elements, and they were superseded by votes, not as the representatives of interests or of persons, but of numerical force.[135]
Another thing well worthy of remark in this singular movement of the mind, was its pace, at first so easy and regulated, at last so headlong and impetuous. A few months’ interval marked this difference. Read what was written in the first weeks of 1788 by the keenest opponents of the old régime, you will be struck by the forbearance of their language: then take the publications of the most moderate reformers in the last five months of the same year, you will find them revolutionary.
The Government had challenged discussion on itself: no bounds therefore would be set to the theme. The same impulse which had been given to opinions soon drove the passions of the nation with furious rapidity in the same direction. At first the commons complained that the nobility carried their rights too far. Later on, the existence of any such rights was denied. At first it was proposed to share power with the upper classes: soon all power was refused to them. The aristocracy was to become a sort of extraneous substance in the uniform texture of the nation. Some said the privileged classes were a hundred thousand, some that they were five hundred thousand. All agreed in thinking that they formed a mere handful, foreign to the rest of the nation, only to be tolerated in the interest of public tranquillity. ‘Take away in your imagination,’ said Rabaut Saint-Etienne, ‘the whole of the clergy—take away even the whole nobility, there still remains the nation.’ The commons were a complete social body: all the rest was vain superfluity: not only the nobles had no right to be masters of the rest, they had scarcely the right to be their fellow-citizens.
For the first time perhaps in the history of the world, the upper classes had separated and isolated themselves to such a degree from all other classes, that their members could be counted one by one and set apart like sheep draughted from a flock: whilst the middle classes were bent on not mixing with the class above them, but, on the contrary, stood carefully aloof from all contact. These two symptoms, had they been understood, would have revealed the immensity of the Revolution which was about to take place, or rather which was already made.
Now follow the movement of passion in the track of opinion. At first hatred was expressed against privileges, none against persons. But by degrees the tone becomes more bitter, emulation becomes jealousy, enmity becomes detestation, a thousand conflicting associations are piled together to form the mighty mass which a thousand arms are at once to lift, and drop upon the head of the aristocracy so as to crush it.