The consideration of this book is not so easy as it at first appears. It is less known than it certainly deserves to be, and we are dependent for our knowledge of it upon a couple of old editions, published in 1764[415] and 1784. The work consists of a number of dissertations on the past history and present condition of the French Government, which serve as the setting for its central feature, a Plan or project of reform. In the preface to the edition of 1784, which was issued by the d'Argenson family, the previous publication is noticed, and we are told that it is grossly imperfect, and that unwarrantable liberties have been taken with the author's text. Upon consulting the earlier edition, the discrepancies are at once apparent, and nowhere so noticeably as in the very Plan which is the most important section of the work. To begin with, the Plan which, in 1784, is given in the form of a royal proclamation in thirty-four articles, appears in the issue of 1764 as an informal draft consisting of fifty-two. And the difference is not of form alone; for on comparing the two Plans we find that they are as far apart as are the poles asunder, and that the second might represent, at the ordinary rate at which history proceeds, a century's advance in breadth of thought. In some bewilderment we turn to the four manuscripts preserved in the Library of the Arsenal;[416] and confusion is further confounded by the discovery that it is with the very Plan of this maligned edition of 1764 that that of the manuscripts coincides. The manuscripts themselves are clearly authentic: for they bear annotations in d'Argenson's handwriting. A question at once arises as to the authenticity of the scheme of 1784. A comparison of the texts establishes the fact that in spite of the impeachment of one editor and the apologies of another, both editions are equally genuine, and represent different stages of the work. Moreover it is evident that that of 1784 is mainly a revised and enlarged version of the original, and was probably executed about the year 1750; and further, that in it the editor, without a word of explanation, has incorporated a Plan, a Chapter and a Conclusion, of much later date and with a very different purpose.
The "Considérations," as written in 1737, is founded upon two principles. D'Argenson felt that for the rapid and decisive action which a great nation should be able to employ, a strong and united government was necessary: and that in the Monarchy France possessed such a government. He saw at the same time that that government had charged itself with a multitude of minute concerns which it could not possibly understand or supervise, and that consequently the rural districts were neglected, and local administration throughout the country was in a shameful state of nullity or disorder. He proposed therefore to disband the great army of subaltern officials who worked or shirked in the pay of the Sub-delegates, and with an emancipation of thought which is truly astonishing, to hand over their duties to popular control. With that object he devised the following scheme.
Henceforth the business of each city, borough or village (ville, bourg et village), should be managed by a committee of the inhabitants, to the number of five or more. Persons eligible for service in that capacity should be nominated in an annual meeting of the inhabitants; and the officers should be appointed from among the nominees by, and at the discretion of, the Sub-delegate. The latter, while ceasing to interfere directly in parochial concerns, should maintain a general control and supervision, and should have a discretionary power to displace the local officers for dereliction of duty or other misconduct. In matters affecting more than one district the local authorities might confer together, after specifying the subjects of the conference, and obtaining from the Sub-delegate a formal warrant. The national taxes should henceforth be raised in the form of a communal grant, equal in amount to the sum hitherto obtained from the taille; it was to be assessed upon the inhabitants of the district by the local authority, and paid in by them to the Financial Receivers, who should be, in addition to the Intendants and Sub-delegates, the only royal officers. The reform should be introduced gradually, and might be submitted to experiment in certain districts in the neighbourhood of Paris, and in the wards of Paris itself. In any attempt to introduce it, the authority of the Crown must be scrupulously maintained.[417]
Such are the principal, and from a constitutional point of view, the only essential features of the project of 1737. It is with this scheme that M. Martin deals in his notice of d'Argenson. He concludes a summary of it with a critical remark which is characteristic of the tone not infrequently held with regard to d'Argenson and his proposals. He says:—
"Monarchy without nobility, without a judicial aristocracy, and without a bureaucracy, royalty suspended without supports at an enormous height above a democratic society—there is d'Argenson's dream: illusion of a noble heart!" etc.
"Un ministre stipule pour le Roi, mais il travaille et craint pour lui-même."—"Considérations" (1764).
In this judgment M. Martin displays somewhat less than his usual acumen. Certain abusive privileges might have been touched: but not a rank in the social hierarchy connecting the Crown with the tiny democratic communities, would have been menaced by d'Argenson's scheme.[418] Moreover to speak of "Royalty" and "democratic society" in connection with it, is to employ large words to describe what is after all a very little thing; by using these wide and general terms the idea is dilated and swollen till it becomes grotesque. What d'Argenson proposed was simply to dismiss the score or so of clerks, tax-collectors and hangers-on who managed parochial affairs under the direction of the Sub-delegate without sympathy or regard for the wishes of the people: and to transfer these affairs to a little parish council, consisting, for example, of the neighbouring squire, the village curé, a couple of farmers, and an erudite cobbler or so, who would look after the roads, assist the poor, assess and collect the parochial taxes, and attend to all matters which were not beyond the capacity of half-a-dozen intelligent countrymen, guided and supervised by the Sub-delegate. The two poles upon which the system revolved were not "royalty" and "a democratic society,"[419] but in plain prose, the bureau of the Controller-General at Versailles, and the parish room or the inn parlour of the village of Argenson in the "généralité" of Touraine. In fact we have an almost exact parallel in the by no means fantastic relations which exist in nearly every parish in England between the local School Board and the Education Department at Whitehall.
It cannot be supposed, as M. Martin would appear to imply, that the Crown and the Vestry could neither co-operate nor co-exist. D'Argenson, in drafting his proposal, presumed upon both sides at least the average amount of sense which is ordinarily devoted to matters of government. So far as he could see, there was no reason why the parish councils should ever dream of giving trouble; and he could not conceive any Government perverse enough to provoke them to a national combination for resistance. He imagined, on the other hand, that local affairs would be managed better, and could not be managed worse, than they were; and that in any case life would be awakened in the provincial districts, and that they would be rescued from the torpor of death into which they were rapidly subsiding. Surely this was something more than the illusion of a noble heart.
It is entirely in accordance with the fitness of things that the best criticism of d'Argenson's plan is that of one of his own contemporaries, who was better able than any one now can be to understand the difficulty which pressed for solution. Voltaire, as we have seen, received the manuscript about eighteen months after its completion; and his quick intelligence was in no danger of mistaking