The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• The Old Regime and the Revolution.
• Book First.
• Chapter I.: Contradictory Opinions Formed Upon the Revolution When It Broke Out.
• Chapter II.: That the Fundamental and Final Object of the Revolution Was Not, As Some Have Supposed, to Destroy Religious and to Weaken Political Authority.
• Chapter III.: That the French Revolution, Though Political, Pursued the Same Course As a Religious Revolution, and Why.
• Chapter IV.: How the Same Institutions Had Been Established Over Nearly All Europe, and Were Every Where Falling to Pieces.
• Chapter V.: What Did the French Revolution Really Achieve?
• Book Second.
• Chapter I.: Why the Feudal Rights Were More Odious to the People In France Than Any Where Else.
• Chapter II.: That We Owe “administrative Centralization,” Not to the Revolution Or the Empire, As Some Say, But to the Old Regime
• Chapter III.: That What Is Now Called “the Guardianship of the State” (tutelle Administrative) Was an Institution of the Old Regime.
• Chapter IV.: That Administrative Tribunals (la Justice Administrative) and Official Irresponsibility (garantis Des Fonctionnaires) Were Institutions of the Old Regime.
• Chapter V.: How Centralization Crept In Among the Old Authorities, and Supplanted Without Destroying Them.
• Chapter VI.: Of Official Manners and Customs Under the Old Regime.
• Chapter VII.: How the Capital of France Had Acquired More Preponderance Over the Provinces, and Usurped More Control Over the Nation, Than Any Other Capital In Europe.
• Chapter VIII.: That Frenchmen Had Grown More Like Each Other Than Any Other People.
• Chapter IX.: That These Men, Who Were So Alike, Were More Divided Than They Had Ever Been Into Petty Groups, Each Independent of and Indifferent to the Others.
• Chapter X.: How the Destruction of Political Liberty and Class Divisions Were the Causes of All the Diseases of Which the Old Regime Died.
• Chapter XI.: Of the Kind of Liberty Enjoyed Under the Old Regime, and of Its Influence Upon the Revolution.
• Chapter XII.: How the Condition of the French Peasantry Was Worse In Some Respects In the Eighteenth Century Than It Had Been In the Thirteenth, Notwithstanding the Progress of Civilization.
• Chapter XIII.: How, Toward the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, Literary Men Became the Leading Politicians of the Country, and of the Effects Thereof.
• Chapter XIV.: How Irreligion Became a General Ruling Passion Among Frenchmen In the Eighteenth Century, and of the Influence It Exercised Over the Character of the Revolution.
• Chapter XV.: How the French Sought Reforms Before Liberties.
• Chapter XVI.: That the Reign of Louis XVI. Was the Most Prosperous Era of the Old Monarchy, and How That Prosperity Really Hastened the Revolution.
• Chapter XVII.: How Attempts to Relieve the People Provoked Rebellion.
• Chapter XVIII.: Of Certain Practices By Means of Which the Government Completed the Revolutionary Education of the People.
• Chapter XIX.: How Great Administrative Changes Had Preceded the Political Revolution, and of the Consequences Thereof.
• Chapter XX.: How the Revolution Sprang Spontaneously Out of the Preceding Facts.
• Appendix.
• Of the Pays D’etats, and Languedoc In Particular.
• Note Referring to Various Passages In This Volume.
• Feudal Rights Existing At the Time of the Revolution, According to the Feudal Lawyers of the Day.
• Estimate of the Various Tenures In Use In France Before the Revolution.

CHAPTER V.

HOW CENTRALIZATION CREPT IN AMONG THE OLD AUTHORITIES, AND SUPPLANTED WITHOUT DESTROYING THEM.

LET us briefly recapitulate the points established in the three preceding chapters.

A single body, placed in the centre of the kingdom, administering government throughout the country; a single minister managing nearly all the business of the interior; a single agent directing the details in each province; no secondary administrative bodies, or authorities competent to act without permission: special tribunals to hear cases in which government is concerned, and shield its agents. What is this but the same centralization with which we are acquainted? As compared with ours, its forms are less sharply marked, its mode of action less regular, its existence less tranquil; but the system is the same. Nothing has been added, nothing taken away from the old plan; when the surrounding edifices were pulled down, it stood precisely as we see it.

Frequent imitations of the institutions I have just described have since made their appearance in various places,y but they were then peculiar to France. We shall see presently how great an influence they exercised over the French Revolution and its sequel.

But how did these modern institutions find place among the ruins of the old feudal society?

By patient, adroit, persevering labor, rather than by violent arbitrary effort. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the old administrative system of France was still standing, but a new system had been built up inside it.

There is no reason for believing that this difficult exploit was the fruit of a deep scheme laid by the old government. On the contrary, it appears to have been accomplished almost unconsciously, instinct teaching the government and its various agents to acquire as much control as possible. The old officials were left in possession of their titles and their honors, but stripped of their power. They were led, not driven out of their domain. The idleness of one, the selfishness of another, the vices of all, were skillfully turned to account. No attempt was made to convert them, but one and all were quietly replaced by the intendant, whose name had never even been heard at the time they were born.

The only obstacle in the way of the change was in the judiciary department; but there, as elsewhere, the government had contrived to seize the substance, leaving its rivals the outward show of power. It did not exclude the Parliaments from administrative business, but it gradually absorbed their duties till there was nothing for them to do.z On some few rare occasions, as, for example, in times of scarcity, when popular excitements tempted the ambition of magistrates, it allowed the Parliaments to exercise administrative authority for a brief interval, and let them make a noise which has often found an echo in history; but it soon silently resumed its functions, and discreetly assumed sole control of men and things.

A close study of the struggles of the Parliaments against the power of the king will lead to the discovery that they were invariably on political issues, and never on points of administration. Quarrels usually began on the creation of new taxes—that is to say, the belligerents contended for legislative authority, to which neither had any claim, and not for administrative power.

This becomes more apparent as we approach the revolutionary era. As the people’s feelings become inflamed, the Parliament mixes more in politics; and simultaneously, the central government and its agents, with skill enhanced by experience, usurp more administrative power. The Parliament grows daily less like an administration, and more like a tribune.

Day after day, the central government conquers new fields of action into which these bodies can not follow it. Novelties arise, pregnant with cases for which no precedents can be found in parliamentary routine: society, in a fever of activity, creates new demands, which the government alone can satisfy, and each of which swells its authority; for the sphere of all other administrative bodies is defined and fixed; that of the government alone is movable, and spreads with the extension of civilization.

Impending revolution unsettles the mind of the French, and suggests a host of new ideas which the central government alone can realize: it is developed before it perishes. Like every thing else, it is brought to perfection, as is singularly proved by its archives. There is no resemblance between the comptroller-general and the intendant of 1780 and the like officials in 1740: the system has been transformed. The agents are the same, but their spirit is different. Time, while it extends and exercises the power of the government, imparts to it new skill and regularity. Its latest usurpations are marked by unusual forbearance; it rules more imperatively, but it is far less oppressive.

This great institution of the monarchy was thrown down by the first blow of the Revolution: it was raised anew in 1800. It is not true that the principles of government which were then adopted were those of 1789, as so many persons have asserted; they were those of the old monarchy, which were restored, and have remained in force ever since.

If it be asked how this portion of the old regime could be bodily transplanted into and incorporated with the new social system, I reply that centralization was not abolished by the Revolution, because it was, in fact, its preliminary and precursor; and I may add, that when a nation abolishes aristocracy, centralization follows as a matter of course. It is much harder to prevent its establishment than to hasten it. Every thing tends toward unity of power, and it requires no small contrivance to maintain divisions of authority.

It was natural, then, that the democratic Revolution, while it destroyed so many of the institutions of the old regime, should retain this one. Nor was centralization so out of place in the social order created by the Revolution that it could not easily be mistaken for one of its fruits.

[Note y, page 79.]how the administrative centralization of the old regime can be best judged in canada.

The physiognomy of governments can be best detected in their colonies, for there their features are magnified, and rendered more conspicuous. When I want to discover the spirit and vices of the government of Louis XIV., I must go to Canada. Its deformities are seen there as through a microscope.

A number of obstacles, created by previous occurrences or old social forms, which hindered the development of the true tendencies of government at home, did not exist in Canada. There was no nobility, or, at least, none had taken deep root. The Church was not dominant. Feudal traditions were lost or obscured. The power of the judiciary was not interwoven with old institutions or popular customs. There was, therefore, no hindrance to the free play of the central power. It could shape all laws according to its views. And in Canada, therefore, there was not a shadow of municipal or provincial institutions; and no collective or individual action was tolerated. An intendant far more powerful than his colleagues in France; a government managing far more matters than it did at home, and desiring to manage every thing from Paris, notwithstanding the intervening 1800 leagues; never adopting the great principles which can render a colony populous and prosperous, but, instead, employing all sorts of petty, artificial methods, and small devices of tyranny to increase and spread population; forced cultivation of lands; all lawsuits growing out of the concession of land removed from the jurisdiction of the courts and referred to the local administration; compulsory regulations respecting farming and the selection of land—such was the system devised for Canada under Louis XIV.: it was Colbert who signed the edicts. One might fancy one’s self in the midst of modern centralization and in Algeria. Canada is, in fact, the true model of what has always been seen there. In both places the government numbers as many heads as the people; it preponderates, acts, regulates, controls, undertakes every thing, provides for every thing, knows far more about the subject’s business than he does himself—is, in short, incessantly active and sterile.

In the United States, on the contrary, the English anti-centralization system was carried to an extreme. Parishes became independent municipalities, almost democratic republics. The republican element, which forms, so to say, the foundation of the English constitution and English habits, shows itself and develops without hindrance. Government proper does little in England, and individuals do a great deal; in America, government never interferes, so to speak, and individuals do every thing. The absence of an upper class, which renders the Canadian more defenseless against the government than his equals were in France, renders the citizen of the English colonies still more independent of the home power.

In both colonies society ultimately resolved itself into a democratic form. But in Canada, so long as it was a French possession at least, equality was an accessory of absolutism; in the British colonies it was the companion of liberty. And, so far as the material consequences of the two colonial systems are concerned, it is well known that in 1763, at the conquest, the population of Canada was 60,000 souls, that of the English provinces 3,000,000.

[Note z, page 80.]an example, chosen at haphazard, of the general regulations which the council of state was in the habit of making for the whole of france, and by which it created special misdemeanors of which the government courts had sole cognizance.

I take the first which I happen to find. Order in Council of 29th April, 1779, which enacts that thereafter throughout the kingdom all sheep-growers and sheep-dealers shall mark their sheep in a peculiar manner, under penalty of 300 livres fine. “His majesty orders the intendant to see this order obeyed,” it says, whence it follows that it devolved upon the intendant to pronounce penalties incurred. Another instance: An Order in Council of 21st December, 1778, forbids express companies and wagoners to warehouse the goods they have in charge, under pain of 300 livres fine. “His majesty enjoins upon his lieutenant general of police and his intendants to see to it.”