“Thus, then, you should have a fixed plan of concessions, of reforms, which, instead of upsetting everything, will consolidate the basis of legitimate authority. This plan should become, by your influence, the text of all the bailiwick memorials. God forbid that I should propose to you to bribe, to seduce, to obtain influence by iniquitous means over the elections! You need, on the contrary, the most honest, the most enlightened, the most energetic men. Such are those who must be brought to the front, and on whom the choice should be made to fall.”
Admirable counsels on the part of the most honest and most far-sighted of minds; difficult, however, if not impossible, to be put into practice by feeble ministers, themselves still undecided on the very brink of the abyss, having to face the repugnance and the passions of the two privileged orders on which it was a question of imposing painful sacrifices, however legitimate and indispensable they might be.
M. Malouet and those who thought with him, more in number than anybody could tell, demanded instructions as to the elections in the bailiwicks. “Can you have allowed this great crisis to come on without any preparations for defence, without any combination?” they said to the ministers. “You have, through the police, the superintendents, the king’s proctors in the tribunals, means of knowing men and choosing them, or, at any rate, of directing choice; these means, have you employed them?”
M. Necker could not give his instructions; he had not yet made up his mind on the question which was engaging everybody’s thoughts; he hesitated to advise the king to consent to the doubling of the third. “He had a timid pride which was based on his means, on his celebrity, and which made him incessantly afraid of compromising himself with public opinion, which he could no longer manage to control when he found himself opposed by it,” said Malouet. Marmontel, who knew the minister well, added, “That solitary mind, abstracted, self-concentrated, naturally enthusiastic, had little communication with men in general, and few men were tempted to have communication with him; he knew them only by glimpses too isolated or too vague, and hence his illusions as to the character of the people at whose mercy he was placing the state and the king.”
M. Necker’s illusions as to himself never disappeared; he had a vague presentiment of the weakening of his influence over public opinion, and he was pained thereat. He resolved at last to follow it. “It is a great mistake,” he wrote at a later period in his Memoires, “to pretend to struggle, with only antiquated notions on your side, against all the vigor of the principles of natural justice, when that justice renews its impulse and finds itself seconded by the natural desire of a nation. The great test of ability in affairs is to obtain the merit of the sacrifice before the moment when that same sacrifice will appear a matter of necessity.”
The favorable moment, which M. Necker still thought of seizing, had already slipped by him. The royal resolution proclaimed under this strange title, Result of the King’s Council held on the 27th of December, 1788, caused neither great astonishment nor lively satisfaction amongst the public. M. Necker was believed to be more favorable to the doubling of the third (estate) than he really was; the king was known to be weak and resigned to following the counsels of the minister who had been thrust upon him. “The cause of the third estate,” said the Report to the king, “will always have public opinion for it; the wishes of the third estate, when unanimous, when in conformity with the principles of equity, will always be only another name for the wishes of the nation; the judgment of Europe will encourage it. I will say, then, upon my soul and conscience, and as a faithful servant of his Majesty, I do decidedly think that he may and ought to call to the States-general a number of deputies of the third estate equal to that of the deputies of the two other orders together, not in order to force on decisions by poll (deliberation par tete), as appears to be feared, but in order to satisfy the general wishes of the commons of his kingdom.” “The king,” said the edict, “having heard the report made in his council by the minister of finance relative to the approaching convocation of the States-general, his Majesty has adopted its principles and views, and has ordained what follows: 1. That the deputies shall be at least one thousand in number; 2. That the number shall be formed, as nearly as possible, in the, compound ratio of the population and taxes of each bailiwick; 3. That the number of deputies of the third estate shall be equal to that of the two other orders together, and that this proportion shall be established by the letters of convocation.” The die was cast, the victory remained with the third (estate), legitimate in principle, and still possible perhaps to be directed and regulated, but dangerous and already menacing. “It is not resistance from the two upper orders that I fear,” said M. Malouet to the ministers, “it is the excess of the commons; you have done too much, or let too much be done to prevent now the propositions I submitted to you from being realized; the point is not to go any further, for beyond lies anarchy. But if, in the very decided and very impetuous course taken by public opinion, the king should hesitate and the clergy and noblesse resist, woe to us, for all is lost! Do you expect the least appearance of order and reason in a gathering of twelve hundred legislators, drawn from all classes, without any practice in discussion and meditation over the important subjects they are about to handle, carried away by party spirit, by the impetuous force of so many diverging interests and opinions? If you do not begin by giving them fixed ideas, by hedging them, through their constituents, with instructions and impediments which they cannot break through, look out for all sorts of vagaries, for irremediable disorders.”
In his sad forecast of the confusion which threatened the new Assembly, M. Malouet counted too much upon the authority of mandates and upon the influence of the constituents; he was destined to look on, impotent and despairing, at that great outburst of popular passions which split asunder all ties and broke through all engagements as so many useless impediments. “When the Assembly, in the first paroxysms of its delirium, dared to annul its oaths and declared itself freed from the yoke of the instructions which we received from our constituents, the king had a right—what do I say? he was bound to send us back to our bailiwicks,” says M. Malouet. The States-general were convoked for the 27th of April, 1789, and not a soul had yet received instructions from the government. “Those that we did at last receive were as honest as they were insufficient. They told us in substance to get adopted, if we could, the proposal to present candidates for the departments, and to admit into the list of candidates none but men whose morality, means, and fair reputation were established, to prevent wrangles, schism between the orders, and to carry, as far as in us lay, the most moderate notions as regarded reforms and innovations. It was no longer the king speaking, it was the consulting counsel for the crown, asking advice of everybody, and appearing to say to everybody: ‘What’s to be done? What can I do? How much do they want to lop from my authority? How much of it will they leave me?” [Memoires de M. Malouet, t. i. p. 249.] It was a tacit abdication of the kingship at the juncture when its traditional authority, if not its very existence, was brought to book.
The party of honest men, still very numerous and recruited amongst all classes of society, went confidently to the general elections and preparatory assemblies which had to precede them. “Hardly conscious were they of the dark clouds which had gathered around us; the clouds shrouded a tempest which was not slow to burst.” [Ibidem, p. 260.]
The whole of France was fever-stricken. The agitation was contradictory and confused, a medley of confidence and fear, joy and rage, everywhere violent and contagious. This time again Dauphiny showed an example of politic and wise behavior. The special states of the province had met on the 1st of December, 1788, authorized by the government, according to a new system proposed by the delegates of the three orders. Certain members of the noblesse and of the clergy had alone protested against the mode of election. Mounier constantly directed the decisions of the third (estate); he restrained and enlightened young Barnave, advocate in the court, who, for lack of his counsels, was destined to frequently go astray hereafter. The deliberations were invariably grave, courteous; a majority, as decided as it was tolerant, carried the day on all the votes. “When I reflect upon all we gained in Dauphiny by the sole force of justice and reason,” wrote Mounier afterwards, in his exile, “I see how I came to believe that Frenchmen deserve to be free.” M. Mounier published a work on the convocation of the States-general demanding the formation of two chambers. That was likewise the proposition of M. de La Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, an enlightened, a zealous, and a far-sighted prelate. “This plan had probably no approbation but mine,” says M. Malouet. The opposition and the objections were diverse and contradictory, but they were general. Constitutional notions were as yet novel and full of confusion in all minds. The most sagacious and most prudent were groping their way towards a future enveloped in mist.
The useful example of Dauphiny had no imitators. Bourbonness and Hainault had accepted the system proposed by M. Necker for the formation of preparatory assemblies. Normandy, faithful to its spirit of conservative independence, claimed its ancient privileges and refused the granted liberties. In Burgundy the noblesse declared that they would give up their pecuniary privileges, but that, on all other points, they would defend to the last gasp the ancient usages of the province. The clergy and noblesse of Languedoc held pretty much the same language. In Franche-Comte, where the states-provincial had not sat since Louis XIV.‘s conquest, the strife was so hot on the subject of the administrative regimen, that the ministry declared the assembly dissolved, and referred the decision to the States-general. The Parliament of Besancon protested, declaring that the constitution of the province could not be modified save by the nationality of Franche-Comte, and that deputies to the States-general could not be elected save by the estates of the country assembled according to the olden rule. This pretension of the magistrates excluded the people from the elections; they rose and drove the court from the sessions-hall.