"La guerre se faisait alors en nature, et actuellement elle se fait, pour ainsi dire, en argent."—"Considérations" (1784).
We cannot mistake the possible significance of these proposals, however implicitly it be conveyed. The provision that the King alone should make laws and impose taxes might be really little more than a constitutional fiction, which, so long as the laws were prudently made and the taxes equitably imposed, might pass as undisputed fact. The proposition that the royal ordinances must always be accepted might prove to be a fiction of the same kind. Indeed, in certain eventualities the whole scheme might be one continued fiction in so far as it relates to the Crown. The Provincial Estates shall not legislate, but they shall have power to present bills for the royal ratification. What will happen if their petitions are rejected is a question for time and circumstance, and not for legislation, to decide. In the same way the Estates must accept the contribution assessed upon them: but they may present representations in regard to it. If those representations are neglected the Estates will proceed as their power and wisdom may dictate. In a word, the absolute power of the Crown in legislation was conditioned only by the proper use of it.
D'Argenson had arrived at the conviction that the causes of the evil from which the country was suffering were the practical nullity of the Crown and the political nullity of the people; and he felt that the remedy was to be found in the admission of the people to a share of power. He knew not less than any of his critics, that where power is divided differences will arise; but he saw no reason to doubt that if King and people were guided by a common patriotism and mutual respect, such differences need never issue in violent collision. At the same time he knew that when the interests of the King were obstinately opposed to those of the people, such collisions would occur; they were calamitous, but they were the lesser of two calamities. He declares that in the case of "a King who is worthy of the name," such divergence of interest need never be feared. Should there be a King who was not worthy of the name, he might be left to the discretion of an indignant people, and of the most daring and determined man who happened at the moment to possess their confidence. It was none of d'Argenson's concern.
It is true that we do not find him stating, in this uncompromising way, the revolutionary aspect of his programme; he would have shrunk from formulating it clearly even to himself. At the same time we know that it was by no means distant from his mind. Notwithstanding, he cannot have regarded it as of any immediate or direct importance; for he could not but think that only by an access of inconceivable folly on the part of the people or of inconceivable madness on the part of the Crown, could such a revolutionary ferment be occasioned.
We cannot better appreciate the spirit and scope of d'Argenson's proposal than by comparing it with the universally admired design broached, about twenty years later, by the great minister Turgot. The principle of the two policies was practically the same. Turgot proposed, like d'Argenson, to entrust to the people and popular organisations the whole administration of the interior, while retaining the entire legislative authority in the hands of the Crown.[432] The people, as in d'Argenson's scheme, had merely the power of suggesting legislation, though the actual law must proceed from the King. Between the two plans, however, there was one great difference of detail. D'Argenson had surrounded the authority of the Crown with a sacred barrier; behind that barrier the people might exercise all the effective powers of popular control: beyond it they were forbidden to pass. In the proposal of Turgot that barrier was destroyed. Above the circle of Provincial Estates he desired to constitute a Municipality of the Whole Realm; by doing so he would have brought the sphere of popular action into direct juxtaposition with that of the Crown, and have surrounded the very palace gates with the acclamations or with the clamour of the people.
Perhaps both policies, at their several periods, had equally little prospect of realisation; but if it were necessary to choose between them with regard to the state of feeling existing and likely to exist in France, the preference might be given to the earlier plan. For a time of disturbance and strain, it can claim one signal excellence, in attempting to provide for the maximum of exasperation with the minimum of indecency and danger. It is the great vice of central, but not sovereign assemblies that they can never come into collision with the Crown without inflicting a grievous blow upon the prestige and authority of the Crown. The veil which shroud it from the vulgar gaze, which surrounds it with an air of sacramental mystery, is torn into a thousand disreputable pieces, and the solemn difference between King and citizen is seen to fade guiltily away. D'Argenson feared, and had always feared, that blighting closeness of contact; and he endeavoured to preserve the influence of the Crown while placing the people in a position from which, in cases of the last emergency, they would be able to control the Crown. It is easy to see how the King at Versailles and a number of Estates in the provincial cities might have quarrelled to the verge of revolution, and yet how the King, by timely concession, might have retained his authority unimpaired.
Nor is it hard to answer the question which some have found it necessary to ask, and to sketch the progress of a revolution proceeding from the basis of d'Argenson's scheme. Had the Government become utterly despicable and bad, and had the King shown himself unable or unwilling to undertake reform, the Provincial Estates might have waited in patience until popular feeling was at fever height, and then they might have offered the King his choice between a national insurrection
"Les jalousies réciproques des Princes Chrétiens sont peut-être aujourd'hui son appui le plus solide."—"Considérations" (1784). [Of the Turkish Empire.]
and the acceptance of a certain demand. That demand would have been that the hundred and twenty-eight deputies who represented the several Estates at the Court,[433] should be combined in a single assembly in order to concert measures for the future of the Kingdom. If the King had yielded, the deputies would have met, and have offered him the choice between a national insurrection and the acceptance of their advice. If he chose the latter alternative and endeavoured loyally to fulfil it, the assembly would disperse, matters would revert to their normal condition, and a politic effort would be made by all parties to forget the past. If, on the other hand, he remained contumacious, the people would resort to that last of political resources employed by England with such signal success a century and a half before. Such a state of things was never for a moment likely to arise. In 1755 the tradition of the French Monarchy remained unshaken.[434] A popular constitution would have been accepted as an act of grace; and the people would have been engaged too busily in remedying abuses to spend their strength in factious opposition. Only by suicidal folly on the part of the Crown could any danger have arisen. A moderate endowment of public spirit and common sense would have sufficed to protect the Government; and a monarch with one-half of the ability even of Louis XVI., or one tithe of the devotion maintained for generations in the House of Hohenzollern, would have been able to maintain his position with ease.