Interest, to a still greater extent than locality or habits of life, drew a line between the middle classes and the peasantry. “In countries where a damp climate and a want of elasticity in the air gives a gloomy cast to the character of the people, serious subjects are sure to be popular.
Still he buys, and puts his heart into his land with his seed. Part one deals with the origins of the Revolution and the centralization of the French bureaucracy. In the old feudal times people looked upon the nobility as they now look Edition: current; Page: [48] on government: they bore its impositions for the sake of the protection it afforded. Let me tell you that this kingdom of France is governed by thirty intendants. Even men who mixed in French society, and did not reject the doctrines of our philosophers, considered them dangerous. I shall then examine that new society. By an order of 26th April, 1723, the offices created by the edict of 24th May, 1722, were also united to the corporation, or, in other words, the city was permitted to redeem them. Politicians were out of practice, and were so ignorant of the part which religion plays in the government of empires, that infidelity found proselytes among those who were the most vitally interested in the maintenance of order and the subordination of the people. Even the false and detestable religions of antiquity met with no violent or general opposition until Christianity arose to supplant them.
“It must be admitted that, except in some cantons in which benevolent and just seigniors use their influence over their vassals to prevent those appeals to violence to which the country people are prone, in consequence of the rudeness of their manners and the roughness of their character, there exists hardly any where any means of controlling these ignorant, rough, and hot-headed men.”. When I examine that nation in itself, I can not help thinking it is more extraordinary than any of the events of its history. Banality of Wine-presses.—Very few customs speak of it. That branch of legal business which is now called the Department of Private Claims (contentieux administratif) was even more extensive there than elsewhere. Its power was, in fact, greater than the law allowed. The Council registers are full of such decrees of evocation. But the oppressive character of the system was more conspicuous in the improvement it prevented than in the injury it caused. I have read a memorial in which the assembly replied to these criticisms.
The Parliament grows daily less like an administration, and more like a tribune. Its leaders attacked the Church with absolute fury. Boldness and novelty in point of theory, and timidity in practice characterize every portion of this work of Frederick the Great.
0000056924 00000 n This was the most rigorous of all the dues of the feudal tenure, and its exercise had gradually been restricted to the rural districts; for, as the author says, “peasants are mules ready to carry any load.”. The case cited in the text is not the only one in which the privileged classes perceived that they were affected by the feudal dues which weighed upon the peasantry. Even in the times in which we live, men have fancied they were redeeming their servility to the most slender officials of the state by their insolence to God, and have renounced all that was free, noble, and exalted in the doctrines of the Revolution, in the belief that they were still faithful to its spirit so long as they were infidels. The inhabitants object and resist. Many merely glanced at them in passing, often playfully, but none omitted them altogether. Many cahiers ask that the right of pigeon-houses be rendered less prejudicial to agriculture. I met with a host of feelings and ideas which I have always credited to the Revolution, and many habits which it is supposed to have engendered; I found on every side the roots of our modern society deeply imbedded in the old soil. In the examples we have given, appraisers will find rules to guide them in estimating the rights which we have not specially valued.”. enlarged still further the prerogatives of the Saint Antoine suburb, in the design of collecting an immense number of operatives there, or, as that unfortunate monarch phrased it, “being desirous of showing a new mark of our favor to the workmen of the Saint Antoine suburb, and relieving them from burdens which are alike injurious to their interests and to the freedom of trade.”.
As the militia was a comparatively modern institution, none of the feudal authorities interfered with it; it was wholly under the control of the central government. But outside the ranks of the people, any one in France who had the courage might, if he chose, yield a conditioned obedience, and resist even while he yielded. Yet the ideas of the time, strangely altered and disguised, were making their way into the peasant’s mind by devious and crooked channels, though nothing of them appeared on the surface. But it did nothing of the kind. Mutation fines—a tax paid to the seignior on every purchase or sale of lands within the seigniory—were universally in force. Generally, the law restricts to the high justiciary the right of granting permission to build mills within his jurisdiction. Most of the farmlands pay every year a seventh of a bushel of wheat per acre, others wine; one pays the seignior a fourth of all fruits, another a fifth, another a twelfth, another a thirteenth—the tithes being always paid on the gross. Three kinds of courts exercising jurisdiction over certain cases throughout the country.
German historians ascribe this triumph of foreign over domestic law to two causes: 1st. Other assemblies, wholly composed of persons who were, and intended to remain, exempt from the taille, painted, in equally sombre colors, the evils which that tax inflicted on the poor. Neither Christianity nor even Catholicism involves any contradiction to the democratic principle; both are, in some respects, decidedly favorable to it. But few interests can be created or passions aroused that are not at some time laid bare before it. By compelling the poor to keep the roads in repair, to give their time and their labor for nothing, we have deprived them of their only safeguard against poverty and hunger, in order to make them toil for the benefit of the rich.”.
At the close of the seventeenth century, criminal jurisdiction was still frequently exercised by intendants. It is not a little remarkable that this maladministration appeared to flow from some secret disease that was common to all of them, whatever their constitution happened to be. “I know my countrymen,” proudly wrote a contemporary; “skilled in melting and scattering the metals, they are not calculated to worship them, and are quite prepared to return to their old idols, valor, glory, and, I will add, magnanimity.”. A collection of scholarly works about individual liberty and free markets. For three thousand years it had been floating backward and forward through the minds of men without finding a resting-place. The search for order had given way to a quest for progress a new movement known as the enlightenment was transforming the old order and revolution was about to become a western tradition europe 1648 1815 is a concise narrative of this fascinating epoch in european history. Like the Council, he held administrative and judicial authority: he corresponded with ministers; he was, Edition: current; Page: [54] in his province, the sole instrument of the will of government. In consequence, all monopolies should be taken from trade-companies, as well as other privileges of the kind.
It was a civil code, a criminal code, and a charter all in one. The effect has outlived the cause.
And as the judicial idiom had preserved the plain simplicity of the old French tongue, which called things by their right names, it was not uncommon for judges to qualify the measures of the government with such epithets as arbitrary and despotic.y The irregular interference of the courts in the administration of government, which often proved a hindrance to the transaction of business, occasionally served as a safeguard of liberty; the greater evil was limited by the lesser. Many public works were carried on in Languedoc Edition: current; Page: [261] at the cost of the king and directed by his agents; others were partly defrayed and substantially directed by the crown; but a still larger number were executed at the cost of the province. They are less conspicuous in history than the philosophers; they exercised a less direct influence in causing the Revolution, but still I think its true nature can best be studied in their writings. In every village an elective municipal body took the place of the old parochial assemblies, and, generally speaking, of the syndic also. I have often asked myself what was the source of that passion for political liberty which has inspired the greatest deeds of which mankind can boast. And in Canada, therefore, there was not a shadow of municipal or provincial institutions; and no collective or individual action was tolerated. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist... Toward the latter they evinced the pride of rivals— the former they treated with the pride of parvenus. A letter dated 1761, and addressed to the intendant by the commissioner of the chain-service, states that the peasants were forced to transport the convicts in carts; that they did so very reluctantly; that they were often maltreated by the keepers of the convicts, “who,” says the letter, “are coarse, brutal men, while the peasants, who dislike this duty, are often insolent.”. They are divided according to the ordinary rules (roturièrement). feudal rights exercised by priests.—one example out of a thousand. Every part of the nation being thus thrown off the level, one final blow was enough to set the whole in motion, and produce the greatest convulsion and the most terrible disorders that were ever witnessed. a village government in the eighteenth century (taken from the papers of the intendant’s office in the ile de france). They could not rise in their calling, or change it, or marry without leave from their master.
In 1789 the state owed nearly 600 millions to creditors who were themselves in debt, and whose grievances were aggravated by the personal injury inflicted on them by the remissness of the state.
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