The true cause is this, and it is of importance to remark it, because it proves my assertion—that the Revolution has struck down in a special manner the upper classes. I use this word the rather because it was the class, not the individual, it was the object of the Revolution to strike. Destined to change society, it was not against men, but against interests and positions, that it directed its blows. The horrible spectacle of judicial death has made so deep an impression, that great hesitation is felt in reviving its use in these more elevated regions. Desires have been expressed, intentions half revealed, even attempts begun; but as soon as any point has been reached from which, if entered, there would be no return, the courage, the will, and the capacity to do have been at an end. At this point the counsels of power are divided; its agents are timid, and its partisans refuse their support. They feel instinctively—and not less wisely—that they are entering on a frightful path, without reason to guide or profit to reward them. To treat the classes that have made the Revolution in the same manner as the Revolution has treated those it has vanquished—to act against it as it has acted against its enemies—is impossible; the very thought is madness. Why, then, direct such fury against individuals whose death would be attended with more noise than benefit? Why recommence in the bosom of the higher class that bloody struggle which will serve to excite hatred against power without really weakening its enemies? Is it necessary again to let the people see that neither consideration, fortune, nor elevated station, is any protection against the violence of political passions? They have begun to forget this, and become accustomed to believe that there are social conditions which, from their nature, are strangers to tumult and its consequences, and where the punishment of death almost never penetrates. Should this salutary belief be broken down? Should the multitude be taught that there are conspiracies in those ranks which are the most interested in maintaining order, and the exhibition presented to them of a man well-known, influential, and highly esteemed, dragged to the scaffold like the vilest malefactor? Might not more danger accrue from this spectacle than from the most powerful adversary of government? Is it not by such spectacles that the Revolution overturned not only society, but habits and ideas? Besides, when such a war takes place among men of the same position, education, and rank, it wears a much more serious aspect than elsewhere: the combatants have known, seen, and spoken to each other; those who are defeated know by whom they are so, by whom their destruction has been sought; and their friends will remember it to-morrow: thus enmities become personal, and dangers direct. Is it prudent or is it unavoidable to allow the strife to assume this character? Will men compromise themselves in person, when even success cannot avert danger, for the simple reason that danger lies in many more things than the life or hostility of individuals? Thus in proportion as the chiefs of a party become less important, the more hesitation is felt in destroying them; and the fear of incurring such responsibility is not surmounted by any feeling of its imperious necessity. That spontaneous good sense which directs men almost unconsciously, informs the friends and even depositaries of power that they would have to hunt after the life of their principal adversaries with less profit to their cause than peril to themselves. Three centuries ago, the destruction of a known enemy was our grand object; now such a consummation is dreaded and shunned: and notwithstanding the fierce declarations and blind fury of certain agents, notwithstanding even its own passions, when government is able and ready to strike the enemies it professes to fear, it surrounds itself with a coil of circumstances to prevent the blow, which compromises without serving.
It is said that men are cowardly, each seeking his own safety, and unwilling to put himself forward on behalf of the government. All that may be true; but if there was any necessity in the case, if the strength or safety of power centered in the destruction of certain men, there would not be wanting friends or agents to hire out their courage to their ambition or their servility. But even the vices of human nature change their mode of action with the time: egotism, covetousness, and fear, do not always follow the same course. No one is a stranger to the new stage of society in which we live, no one is ignorant of the real chiefs of party; the men dangerous in themselves have disappeared, and no one believes that the suppression of such and such an adversary could dissipate, or even sensibly diminish, the dangers of power. The physical inefficacy of capital punishment in the higher ranks is deep in the minds of all. In vain would government refuse its belief, for it is no longer in a condition to act as if it did not believe, and neither fear nor passion has the power of recalling a necessity which no longer exists.
Is the punishment of death more efficacious, and therefore more necessary, against the dangers which spring up lower in society? While the high aristocracy is extinct, and conspiracies are no longer the offspring of a few eminent men, the mass of the free and active population has increased in volume, and exercises an influence it did not formerly possess. Perhaps capital punishment, useless against the fallen great, may be more necessary against the intrigues which ferment in the bosom of the multitude.
I request that it be not forgotten that the necessity of punishment depends upon its efficacy, and likewise that I am now treating of capital punishment only in its physical effects.
And first, I object to the very word multitude; that is to say, in the extensive meaning which some persons would give it. To see the insolence with which such persons treat a great population, one would think that we are still in the thirteenth century; that the feudal aristocracy is now in its pride of place; and that it looks down haughtily from the height of its towers on bands of serfs scattered over its domains, or trembling bourgeois coming humbly to solicit permission to rebuild the walls of their poor town, as a defence against robbers. These persons are mistaken: society is not thus formed; there is no longer an abyss separating the higher classes from the mass of the people. The descent from the summit of the social order to its base is by means of close steps, covered with men only slightly different from those above and beneath them. This is true as regards property, industry, education, knowledge, and influence; and although some momentary confusion may be occasioned by the ruins of the old regime, the new form of society is fixed for ever in France. It is necessary to keep this in view, in order to comprehend the effects of legislation and the acts of power, since it is not for the age of Philip-Augustus, but for our own, that we have a government and laws. But let us see how things were managed formerly in the event of political crimes occurring out of the upper region of society, and in what way the governing power proceeded.
On the part of the people plots were rare—the aristocracy had that privilege. This is easily conceivable; for the latter alone could gain by or succeed in them. How could the citizens or peasants conceive the idea of changing the government and seizing the authority? When plots were on foot, they marched in the train of the great, either compelled or seduced. Neither the initiative, nor the direction, nor the fortunate chances of such enterprises, belonged to them.
However, they sometimes troubled the established order. This was by seditions, and general or local revolts, according to the causes which created them—whether oppression, famine, or occasionally new religious creeds. Then the insurrections were frightful: a frenzied multitude quitted their wretched homes, and wandered about in bands, killing, pillaging, and devastating—brutalised in their passions, blind and implacable in their vengeance, ferocious and licentious in their freedom. Such was the war of the peasants of Suabia in Germany, the insurrection of Wat Tyler in England, the Jacquerie in France, and everywhere, from age to age, a crowd of similar risings, less important, but not less hideous.
When such disorders could be repressed before they were converted into wars, it was done without much art. Almost all those who had exerted or seconded them were condemned and executed. All that was to be done was simply to hunt a population from its soil, setting fire to a score of villages, and covering the roads with bodies or limbs hanging from gibbets. When the war had broken out, it became a ferocious chase, which terminated only with the death of the insurgents; or if it was thought prudent to treat with and disperse them by promises, the promises disappeared with the bands which had received them. Thus the peril over, even the British parliament supplicated Richard II. not to pay any attention to such pretended concessions, but to give to all his sheriffs and judges full powers to proceed against the rebels on their return to their provinces. It was not alone during the feudal servitude, in the midst of the darkness and barbarism of the middle ages, that popular movements were thus repressed. When order commenced, when the police, military force, and all the rights of sovereignty, were concentrated in the hands of government, the same means were used, but with more regularity. The number of executions which took place in the reign of Henry VIII. was above 70,000, and under Elizabeth still upwards of 19,000, and insurrections and riots did not furnish the smallest part of them. Madame Sévigné informs us in her letters how Louis XIV. punished the trifling seditions of Brittany. 'The whole of the inhabitants of a large street,' she says, 'have been hunted out and banished, and everybody forbidden on pain of death to harbour them; so that all these wretches, women newly delivered, old men and infants, are wandering away weeping from the town, without knowing whither to go, without food, and without a place to lay their heads. … Sixty citizens have been taken, and are to be hung to-morrow. … We are no longer so extravagant: one in eight days is now sufficient to keep justice going; and the gallows appears quite a refreshment.' Society did not see all this blood flow, and the king was not aware of all the executions which took place; but that the punishment of death was efficacious in a time in which such things could pass without the knowledge of society or of the king—in a time in which wholesale banishment, the gallows, and the wheel, were not merely punishments, but the ordinary arms of police—surely one must be hard of belief to doubt it. Whether in the thirteenth century, or even later, these means might have been necessary, I will not inquire. What I know is, that they were possible, and, moreover, that they were physically efficacious, since they really banished in a great measure the danger against which they were directed, positively reducing the number and strength of their enemies; falling upon the popular masses like hail upon a field of corn, cutting off all the petty chiefs, decimating the fighting-men, and, in fact, not only operating by fear, but by real enervation.