* the noblesse at the expense of plebeians,
* the prelates and beneficiaries at the expense of poorly-paid curés and vicars,
* the two highest orders of the clergy at the expense of the third,
* the bourgeoisie at the expense of the people,
* the towns at the expense of the rural districts,
* this or that town or province at the expense of the rest,
* the artisan member of a corporation at the expense of the free workman,
and, in general, the strong, more or less well-to-do, in league and protected, at the expense of the weak, more or less needy, isolated and unprotected (indéfendus).[3201]
One hundred years before the Revolution a few clairvoyant, open-hearted and generous spirits had already been aroused by this scandalous disproportion.[3202] Finally, everybody is shocked by it, for, in each local or social group, nearly everybody is a sufferer, not alone the rural, the peasant, the artisan, and the plebeian, not alone the citizen, the curé and the bourgeois notable," but again the gentleman, the grand seignior, the prelate and the King himself.[3203] Each is denouncing the privileges of all others that affect his interests, each striving to diminish another's share in the public cake and to keep his own, all concurring in citing natural right and in claiming or accepting as a principle liberty and equality, but all concurring in misconception and solely unanimous in destroying and in allowing destruction,[3204] to such an extent that, at last, the attack being universal and no defense anywhere, social order itself perishes, entirely owing to the abuses of it.
On the reappearance of the same abuses, the lack of distributive justice in revolutionary France became still more apparent than in monarchical France. Through a sudden transposition, the preferred of the former Régime had become the disgraced, while the disgraced of the former Régime had become the preferred; unjust favor and unjust disfavor still subsisted, but with a change of object. Before 1789, the nation was subject to an oligarchy of nobles and notables; after 1789, it became subject to an oligarchy of Jacobins big or little. Before the Revolution, there were in France three or four hundred thousand privileged individuals, recognizable by their red heels or silver shoe-buckles. After the Revolution, there were three or four hundred thousand of the privileged, recognizable by their red caps or their carmagnoles.[3205] The most privileged of all, the three or four thousand verified nobles, presented at court and of racial antiquity, who, by virtue of their parchments, rode in the royal carriages, were succeeded by three or four thousand Jacobins of a fresh sprout, no less verified and accepted, who, by virtue of their civic patent, sat in the club of the rue Saint-Honoré and the latter coterie was still more dominant, more exclusive, more partial than the former one. Consequently, before the Revolution, the burden of taxation was light for the rich or the well-to-do, crushing for the peasants or the common people; after the Revolution, on the contrary, the peasants, the common people, paid no more taxes,[3206] while from the rich and the well-to-do the government took all, not alone their income but their capital.—On the other hand, after having fed the court of Versailles, the public treasury had to feed the rabble of Paris, still more voracious; and, from 1793 to 1796, the maintenance of this rabble cost it twenty-five times as much as, from 1783 to 1786, the maintenance of the court.[3207] Finally, at Paris as at Versailles, the subordinates who lived on the favored spot, close to the central manger, seized on all they could get and ate much more than their allowance. Under the ancient Régime, "the ladies of honor, every time they travel from one royal country-house to another, gain 80 %. on the cost of the journey," while the queen's first chambermaid gains, over and above her wages, 38,000 francs a year out of the sales of half-burnt candles.[3208] Under the new Régime, in the distribution of food, "the matadors of the quarter," the patriots of the revolutionary committees, deduct their portions in advance, and a very ample portion, to the prejudice of the hungry who await their turn, one taking seven rations and another twenty.[3209] Thus did the injustice remain; in knocking it over, they had simply made matters worse; and had they wished to build permanently, now was the time to put an end to it; for, in every social edifice it introduced an imbalance. Whether the plumb-line deflects right or left is of little consequence; sooner or later the building falls in, and thus had the French edifice already fallen twice, the first time in 1789, through imminent bankruptcy and hatred of the ancient Régime, and the second time in 1799, through an actual bankruptcy and hatred of the Revolution.