Chapter 25

THE CAHIERS.

It is seldom, indeed, that a great nation can express fully, frankly, and yet officially, all its complaints, wishes, and hopes in respect to its own government. Our knowledge of national ideas must generally be derived from the words of particular classes of men: statesmen, politicians, authors, or writers in the newspapers. The ideas of these classes are more or less in accord with those of the great mass of the people which they undertake to represent; yet their expressions are necessarily tinged by their own professional way of looking at things. But in the spring of 1789 all Frenchmen, with few exceptions, were called on to unite, not merely in choosing representatives, but in giving them minute instructions. The occasion was most solemn. The Estates General, the great central legislature of France, which had not met for nearly two centuries, was summoned to assemble at Versailles. It should be the old body and something more. It was to partake of the nature of a constitutional convention. It was not only to legislate, but to settle the principles of government. It was called by the king to advise and consent to all that might concern the needs of the state, the reform of abuses, the establishment of a fixed and lasting order in all parts of the administration, the general prosperity of his kingdom, and the welfare of all and each of his subjects.[Footnote: _Royal Letter of Convocation_, January 24, 1789, _A. P._ i. 611. The principal printed collection of cahiers, together with much preliminary matter, may be found in the first six volumes of the Archives Parlementaires, edited by MM. Mavidal et Laurent, Paris. The seventh volume consists of an index, which, although very imperfect, is necessary to an intelligent study of the cahiers. The cahiers printed in these volumes occupy about 4,000 large octavo pages in double column. These volumes will be referred to in this chapter and the next as A. P. Many cahiers and extracts from cahiers are also found printed in other places. I have not undertaken to give references to all the cahiers on which my conclusions are founded, but only to a few typical examples. The letters C., N., and T indicate the three orders. Where no such letter occurs the cahier is generally that of a town or village.]

The three orders of men, the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons, or Third Estate, were to hold their elections separately in every district, [Footnote: Saillage, sénéchaussée.] unless they should, by separate votes, agree to unite.[Footnote: The three orders did not often unite, but there is often evidence of communication between them. They all united at Bayonne, A. P. iii. 98. Montfort l'Amaury, A. P. iv. 37. Rozières, A. P. iv. 91. Fenestrange, A. P. v. 710. Mohon, A. P. v. 729. The Clergy and the Nobility united at Lixheim, A. P. v. 713; the Nobility and the Third Estate at Péronne, A. P. v. 355.] In accordance with ancient custom they were to draw up petitions, complaints, and remonstrances, which were intended to form a basis for legislation. These complaints were to be brought to the Estates, and were to serve as instructions, more or less positive, to the deputies who brought them. They were known in French political language as Cahiers.

The cahiers of the Clergy and of the Nobility were drawn up in the electoral meetings which took place in every district. To these local assemblies of the Clergy, all bishops, abbots, and parish priests, holding benefices, were summoned. Chapters and monasteries sent only representatives. The result of this arrangement was that the parish priests far outnumbered the regular ecclesiastics and dignitaries, and that the clerical cahiers oftenest express the wishes of the lower portion of the secular clergy. This preponderance of the lower clergy appears to have been foreseen and desired by the royal advisers. The king had expressed his wish to call to the assemblies of the Clergy "all those good and faithful pastors who are occupied closely and every day with the poverty and the assistance of the people and who are more intimately acquainted with its ills and its apprehensions."[Footnote: Règlement du 24 Jan. 1789, A. P. i. 544. Parish priests were not allowed to leave their parishes to go to the assemblies if more than two leagues distant, unless they left curates to do their work. But this provision did not keep enough of them away to alter the character of the assemblies.]

To the local assemblies of the nobles, all Frenchmen of the order, not less than twenty-five years of age, were summoned. Men, women, or children possessing fiefs might appear by proxy. The latter provision did not suffice to take the meetings out of the control of the more numerous part of the order,--the poorer nobility. To pride of race and intense loyalty to the king, these country gentlemen united distrust and dislike of the court, and the desire that all nobles at least should have equal rights and chances. Their cahiers differ somewhat from place to place, but are wonderfully alike in general current.[Footnote: N., Périgord, A. P., v. 341.]

For the Third Estate a more complicated system was adopted. The franchise extended to every French subject, neither clerical nor noble, twenty-five years of age, and entered on the tax rolls.[Footnote: In Paris only, a small property qualification was exacted.] Every town, parish, or village, drew up its cahier and sent it, by deputies, either to the assembly of the district or to an intermediate assembly. Here a committee was appointed to consider all the local cahiers and consolidate them; those of the intermediate assemblies being again worked over for the general cahier of the Third Estate of each electoral district. Thus the cahiers of the Commons finally carried to the Estates General at Versailles were less directly the expression of the opinions of the order from which they came than were the cahiers of the Clergy and of the Nobility. Fortunately, however, large numbers of the primary or village cahiers have been preserved and printed.

The cahiers of the Third Estate differ far more among themselves than do those of the upper orders. Some of them, drawn up in the villages, are very simple, dealing merely with local grievances and the woes of peasant life. The long absence of the lord of the place causes more loss to one village than even the price of salt, or than the taille, with which the people are overburdened. Then follows the enumeration of broken bridges, of pastures overflowed because the bed of the stream is obstructed, of robbery and violence and refusal of justice, with no one to protect the poor, nor to direct repairs and improvements.[Footnote: Paroisse de Longpont, A. P., v. 334.]

In another place we have the touching humility of the peasant. "The inhabitants of this parish have no other complaints to make than those which are common to folk of their rank and condition, namely, that they pay too many taxes of different kinds already; that they would wish that the disorder of the finances might not be the cause of new burdens upon them, because they were not able to bear any more, having a great deal of trouble to pay those which are now levied, but that it much rather belonged to those who are rich to contribute toward setting up the affairs of the kingdom.

"As for remonstrances, they have no other wishes nor other desires than peace and public tranquillity: that they wish the assembly of the Estates General may restore the order of the finances, and bring about in France the order and prosperity of the state; that they are not skillful enough about the matters which are to be treated in the said assembly to give their opinion, and they trust to the intelligence and the good intentions of those who will be sent there as deputies.

"Finally, that they know no means of providing for the necessities of the state, but a great economy in expenses and reciprocal love between the king and his subjects."[Footnote: Paroisse de Pas-Saint-Lomer, A. P., v. 334.]

Not many of the cahiers are so modest as this one. Some of them are many pages long, arranged under heads, divided into numbered paragraphs. These contain a general scheme of legislation, and often also particular and local petitions. They ask that such a lawsuit be reviewed, that such a dispute be favorably settled. Many localities complain, not only that the country in general is overtaxed, but that their particular neighborhood pays more than its share. Their soil is poor, they say, water is scarce or too plenty. The cahiers of the country villages contain more complaints of feudal exactions, while those of the towns and of the electoral districts give more space to political and social reforms.

Many models of cahiers were prepared in Paris and sent to the country towns. Thus the famous Abbé Sieyes, whose violent doctrines were considered in the last chapter, composed and distributed a form. It was brought to Chaumont in Champagne by the Viscount of Laval, who undertook to manage the election in that town in the interest of democracy and the Duke of Orleans. Dinners and balls were given to the voters; promises were made. The badges of an order of canonesses, which the duke proposed to found, were distributed among the ladies. The abbé's cahier was accepted, but the peasants of Champagne appended to its demands for constitutional reforms the petition that their dogs might not be obliged to carry a log fastened to their collars to prevent their running after game, and that they themselves might be allowed to have guns to kill the wolves.[Footnote: Beugnot, Mémoires, i. 110.]

Some of the cahiers were entirely of home manufacture, drawn up by the lawyer or the priest of the village. The people of Essy-les-Nancy, in Lorraine, describe the process. "Each one of us proposed what he thought proper, and then we chose our deputies, Imbert Perrin and Joseph Jacques, whom we thought best able well to represent us. The only thing left was to express our wishes well, and to draw up the official report of the meeting. But our priest, in whom we trust, who feels our woes so well, and who expresses our feelings so rightly, had been obliged to go away. We said: `We must wait for him; we will first beg his assistant to begin, and then, when the priest comes back, we will give him the whole thing to correct, and have our affairs ready to be taken to the assembly of the district.' He came back in fact; we asked him to draw it all up. We told him all we wanted. He kept writing, and scratching out, and writing over, until we saw that he had got our ideas. Everything seemed ready for the fifteenth. But we heard that the district assembly would be put off until the thirtieth. We said to him: `Sir, wait again, let us profit by the delay, we shall think of something more, you will add it;' he consented."[Footnote: Mathieu, 423.]

There was evidently some concert among the different districts, but also much freedom and originality. There are many protests on the part of minorities. Bishops or chapters complain of clauses which attack their rights; monasteries remonstrate against the proposed diversion of their funds to pay parish priests. Individuals take this opportunity to give their views on public matters. An old officer would have nobility of the sword confined to families in which the men bear arms in every generation. A commoner, having bought noble lands, complains of the additional taxes laid on him on this account. The peasants of Ménil-la-Horgne say that the lawyers have captured the electoral assembly of their district, and cut out their remonstrances from the general cahier; that although there are thirty-two rural communities in the bailiwick, and all agreed, the six deputies of the towns have managed things in their own way; and that thus the poor inhabitants of the country can never bring their wishes to the notice of their sovereign, who desires their good, and takes all means to accomplish it.[Footnote: No strict line appears to have been drawn as to who might and who might not properly issue a cahier. Jean Baptiste Lardier, seigneur de Saint-Gervais de Pierrefitte, A. P. v. 17. Messire Carré, A. P., v. 21; A. P. ii. 224.]

The meetings in which the cahiers were composed were sometimes stormy. At Nemours the economist Dupont was one of the committee especially engaged in the task. The question of abolishing the old courts of law was a cause of strong feeling. The excitement rose so high that the crowd threatened to throw Dupont out of the window. Matters looked serious, for the room was a flight above ground, the window was already open, and angry men were laying hands on the economist. The latter, however, picked out one inoffensive person, a very fat man, who happened to be standing by. Dupont managed to get near him and suddenly grasped him round the body. "What do you want?" cried the startled fat man. "Sir," answered Dupont, "every one for himself. They are going to throw me out of the window, and you must serve as a mattress." The crowd laughed, and not only let Dupont alone, but came round to his opinion, and chose him deputy.[Footnote: Another politician under similar circumstances was frightened out of the room, and lost all political influence. Beugnot, i. 118.]

The agreement of general ideas in the cahiers is all the more striking on account of the diversity in their details, and of the freedom of discussion and protest enjoyed by those concerned in composing them. They have been constantly referred to by writers on history, politics, and economics for information as to the state of France at the time when they were written. They are, indeed, capable of teaching a very great deal, but they will prove misleading if the purpose for which they were composed be forgotten. This purpose was to express the complaints and desires of the nation. It appears in their very name, "Cahiers of Lamentations, Complaints, and Remonstrances."[Footnote: The titles vary, but generally bear this meaning.] We must not, therefore, look to the cahiers for mention of anything good in the condition of old France; and we must remember that people who are advocating a change are likely to bring forward the worst side of the things they wish to see altered. Two political ideas coexisted in the minds of Frenchmen in 1789 as to what they and their Estates General were to do and to be. They were to resume their ancient constitution. They were to make a new one, in accordance with reason and justice. Both of these desires may well be present in the minds of practical legislators, even if their reconciliation be at the expense of strict logic and historical accuracy. But unfortunately the historical and the ideal constitutions in France were too far separated to be easily united. The chasm between the feudal monarchy gradually transformed into a despotism, which had existed, and the well governed limited monarchy, which the most judicious Frenchmen desired, was too wide to be bridged. "The throne of France is inherited only in the male line;" to that all men agreed. They agreed also that all existing taxes were illegal, because they had not been allowed by the nation, and that such taxes should remain in force only for convenience, and for a limited time, unless voted by the legislature. The legislative power resides, or is to reside in the king and the nation, the latter being represented by its lawful assembly or Estates General;[Footnote: Some say in the Estates General, without mentioning the king.] here also they were in accord. But how are those Estates General to be composed? "Of three orders, deliberating and voting separately, the concurrence of all three being necessary to the passage of a law," said the nobles. "Of one chamber," answered the Third Estate, "in which our numbers are to be equal to those of the other orders united, and in which the vote is to be counted by heads." Here was the first and most dangerous divergence of opinion, on a question which should have been answered before it was even fairly asked, by the king who called the assembly. But neither Louis nor Necker, his adviser, had the strength and foresight to settle the matter on a firm basis while it was yet time. Were the old form of voting by three chambers intended, it was folly to make the popular one as numerous as the other two together. Were a new form of National Assembly, with only one chamber, to be brought into being, it was culpable to allow the old orders to misunderstand their fall from power. "We are an essential part of the monarchy," said the nobles. "We are twenty-three twenty-fourths of the nation, and the more useful part at that," retorted the Commons. "Our claim rests on law and history," cried the one. "And ours on reason and justice," shouted the other. And many of the deputies on either side held the positive instructions of their constituents not to yield in this matter. But while the Commons were practically a unit on this question, the nobles were more divided. About half of them insisted on their ancient rights, declaring, in many instances, that should the vote by heads be adopted their deputies were immediately to retire from the Estates. Others wavered, or allowed discussion by a single, united chamber under certain circumstances, or on questions which did not concern the privileges of the superior Orders. In a few provinces the nobles frankly took the popular side. The Clergy joined in some cases with one party, in some with the other, but oftenest gave no opinion. [Footnote: I have found one cahier of the Third Estate asking for the vote by orders. _T._, Mantes et Meulan, _A. P._, iii. 666, art. 4, Section 3. A suggestion of two coordinate chambers, in one cahier of the Clergy and Nobility, and in one of the Third Estate. _T._, Bigorre, _A. P._, ii. 359, Section 3.]

The cahiers on both sides took this question as settled, and proceeded, with a tolerable agreement, to the other parts of the constitution. The king, in addition to his concurrence in legislation, was to have nominally the whole executive power. Many are the expressions of love and gratitude for Louis XVI. He is requested to adopt the title of "Father of the People," of "Emulator of Charlemagne." In the latter connection we are treated to a bit of history. It appears that Egbert, King of Kent, came to France in the year 799, to learn the art of reigning from Charlemagne himself. He bore back to England the plan of the French constitution. The next year he acquired the kingdom of Wessex, in 808 that of the Mercians, and in time his reputation brought under his rule the four remaining kingdoms of Great Britain. Thus it is the basis of our French constitution which for nearly a thousand years has made the happiness and strength of all England, and which is the true origin of the rightful privileges of the province of Brittany. [Footnote: _T._, Ballainvilliers, _A. P._, iv. 336, art. 35. Triel, _A. P._ v. 147, art. 104. For the title of _Père du Peuple_, St. Cloud, _A. P._ v. 68. Montaigut, _A. P._ v. 577. _T._, Rouen, _A. P._ v. 602. _T._, Vannes, _A. P._, vi. 107. For blessings on the king and on Necker, see Mathieu, 425. The sole expression of disrespect for Louis XVI. which I have found is given in Beugnot, i. 116. "Let us give power to our deputies to solicit from our lord the king his consent to the above requests; in case he accords them, to thank him; in case he refuses, to _unking_ him" (_deroiter_). This, according to Beugnot, was in a rural cahier and he seems to quote from memory. The pamphlets, as has been said, were much more violent than the cahiers.]

The royal power was to be exercised through responsible ministers, but we must not be misled by words. The ministerial responsibility contemplated by Frenchmen in the cahiers was something quite different from what is known by that name in modern times. Under the system of government which was forming in England in the last century, and which has since been extensively copied on the Continent, the ministers, although nominally the advisers of the king, form in fact a governing committee, selected by the legislature among its own members. The ministers are at once the creatures and the leaders of the Parliament from which they spring. To it they are responsible not only for malfeasance in office, but for matters of opinion or policy. As soon as they are shown to be in disagreement with the majority of their fellow-members, they fall from power; but their fall is attended with no disgrace, and no one is shocked or astonished to see them continue to take part in public life, and regain, by a turn of popular favor, those places which they may have lost almost by accident.

The idea of such a system as this had not entered the minds of the Frenchmen of 1789. They knew ministers only as servants of a monarch, chosen by him alone, to carry out his orders, or to advise him in affairs of which the final decision lay with him. They knew but too well that kings and their servants are sometimes law-breakers. They knew, moreover, that their own actual king was weak and well-meaning. The pious fiction by which the king was always spoken of as good, and his aberrations were ascribed to defective knowledge or to bad advice, had taken some real hold on the popular imagination. The nation felt that the person of a king should be inviolable. But the breaches of law committed by the king's unaided strength could not be far-reaching. Frenchmen, therefore, desired to make all those persons responsible who might abet the king in illegal acts, or who might commit any such acts under his orders or in his name. They feared the levy of illegal taxes, and it was against malfeasance of that sort that they especially wished to provide. They therefore asked in their cahiers that the ministers should be made responsible to the civil tribunals or to the Estates General. The voters did not conceive of royal ministers as members of their legislature. In fact, some cahiers carefully provided that deputies should accept no office nor favor of the court either during the continuance of their service in the Estates, or for some years thereafter. The demand for ministerial responsibility was a demand that ministers, and their master through them, should be amenable to law; and was in the same line with the demand, also made in some cahiers, that soldiers should not be used in suppressing riots, except at the request of the civil power.[Footnote: _T._, St-Gervais (Paris), _A. P._, v. 308, Section 3. _N._ Agenois, _A. P._, i 680, Section 15. Chérest, ii. 475.]

It was universally demanded that the Estates General should meet at regular intervals of two, three, or five years, and should vote taxes for a limited time only. Thus it was hoped to keep power in the hands of the nation. And all debates were to be public; the proceedings were to be reported from day to day.[Footnote: Chérest, ii. 461.] Such provisions were not unnatural, for jealousy and distrust are common in political matters, and the less the experience of the people, the greater their dread of plots and cabals. But only two years before the cahiers were drawn up, another nation, which it had recently been the fashion much to admire in France, had appointed its deputies to draw up its constitution. This nation was at least as superior to the French in political experience as it was inferior in the arts and sciences that adorn life. Its attempts at constitution making might, therefore, well have served as a guide. The American convention of 1787 had many difficulties to encounter and many jealousies to excite; but these were less threatening than those which confronted the French Estates. Yet in Philadelphia precautions had been taken which were scorned at Versailles. The American deputies did not number twelve hundred, but less than sixty. The Americans sat with closed doors, and exacted of each other a pledge, most religiously kept, that their proceedings should be secret. The French admitted all manner of persons, not only to listen to their debates, but to applaud and hiss them. Their chamber came in a short time to be influenced, if not controlled, by its galleries; so that France was no longer governed by her chosen representatives, but by the mob of her capital. The American deputies, for the most part, came unpledged to their work. The French in many instances were commanded by their constituents to retire unless such and such of their demands were complied with. The American constitution was accepted with difficulty, and could probably never have been accepted at all if the public mind had been inflamed by discussion of each part before the whole was known. That constitution, with but few important amendments, is to-day regarded with a veneration incomprehensible to foreigners, by a nation twenty times as large as that which originally adopted it.[Footnote: An eminent foreign historian would almost seem to have written his book on the Constitutional History of the United States for the purpose of showing that a man may know all about a subject without understanding it.] The French constitution made by the body which met in 1789, with the name of Estates General, Constituent, or National Assembly, was hailed with clamorous joy by a part of the nation, and met with angry incredulity by another part. Many of its provisions have remained; but the constitution itself did not last two years. Could the sober deliberation of a small body of authorized men, sitting with closed doors, have produced in France in 1789 a constitution under which the nation could have prospered, and which could have been gradually improved and adapted to modern civilization? Was the enthusiasm and rush of a large popular assembly necessary to overcome the interested opposition of the court and the weak nervelessness of the monarch? It will never be known. Louis XVI. was too feeble to try the experiment, and no one else had the legal authority.

While the Estates General were to have the exclusive right of legislation, and France was thus to remain a centralized monarchy, Provincial Estates were to be established all over the country, unless where local bodies of the same character already existed. These Provincial Estates were to exercise large administrative powers, in the assessment and levy of taxes, in laying out roads, granting licenses, encouraging commerce and manufactures. It was the prayer of many of the cahiers that offices of one sort and another, civil or military, or that nobility itself, should be granted only on the nomination of the Provincial Estates. Many cahiers ask for elective municipal or village authorities. Many would sweep away the old officers of the crown, the intendants and military governors, the farmers general, and the very clerks. These men were hated as tax-gatherers, and distrusted as members of the old ring which had misgoverned the country. There are, says one cahier, more than forty thousand of them in the kingdom, whose sole business it is to vex and molest the king's subjects, by false declarations and other means, and all for the hope of a share in the fines and confiscations that may be exacted.[Footnote: _T._, Perche, _A. P._, v. 325, Section 13. Several cahiers ask that the rights and privileges of the old Estates of the _Pays d'États_ be retained. _N._, Amont, _A. P._, i. 764. Officers of government called "vampires." Domfront. _A. P._, i 724, Section 21. See also _T._, Amiens, _A. P._, i. 751, Section 40. Desjardins, xxxix.]

It is a mistake to assume that the Frenchmen of 1789 cared chiefly for civil and social reforms, and only incidentally for reforms of a political character. In most of the cahiers the political reforms are first mentioned and are as elaborately insisted on as any others. If there be any difference in this respect among the Orders, it is that the Nobility are more urgent for the political part of the programme than either the Clergy or the Third Estate. The priests were much occupied with their own affairs. The peasantry were thinking of the hardships they suffered. But all intelligent men felt that social and economic reforms would be unstable unless an adequate political reform were made also. The deputies of the three orders were in many cases instructed not to consider questions of state debt or taxation until the proposed constitution had been adopted.[Footnote: _T._, Briey, _A.P._, ii. 204. _N._, Ponthieu, _A.P._, v. 431. _N._, Agenois, _A. P._, i. 680.]

Having thus fixed the legislative power in the Estates General, and divided the executive and administrative branches of the government between the king with his responsible ministers and the Provincial Estates, the cahiers turned to the judicial function. On the reforms to be here accomplished there was substantial agreement; although the Third Order was most emphatic in its demands, as the expensive and complicated machinery of law weighs more heavily on the poor than on the rich, on the commercial class than on the land-owner. The great influence of lawyers among the Commons at this time was also a cause of the attention given to legal matters in the cahiers of the Third Estate. The common demand was for the simplification of courts and jurisdictions, the abolition of the purchase of judicial place, more uniform laws and customs. The codification of the laws, both civil and criminal, was sometimes called for. It was an usual request that there should be only two degrees in the administration of justice: a simple court in every district of sufficient size to warrant it, and parliaments in reasonable numbers, with final appellate jurisdiction. Commercial courts (_consulats_) were, however, to be retained. The nation was unanimous that the writ of _committimus_, by which cases could be removed by privileged persons from the regular courts to be tried by exceptional tribunals, or by distant parliaments, should be totally abolished. Justices of the peace, or informal courts with summary processes, were to have the settlement of small cases. The jurisdiction of the lords' bailiffs was to be much abridged or entirely done away. [Footnote: _T._, Alençon, _A. P._, i. 717, Section 4. _T._, Amiens, _A. P._, i. 747, Section 1. This cahier gives a very full statement of existing judicial abuses. Desjardins, xxxv. Poncins, 286. Desjardins (xl.) says that the Nobility tried to save the jurisdiction of the bailiffs, and in some cases persuaded the Third Estate. I do not find the instances.]

In the criminal law, changes were recommended in the direction of giving a better chance to accused persons. Trials were to be prompt and public, and counsel were to be allowed. The prisons were to be improved. The Third Estate desired that punishment should be the same for all classes, and that the death penalty should be decapitation, a form of execution which had previously been reserved for the nobility. The thoroughness with which this reform was carried out some years later is very noticeable. The guillotine treated all sorts of men and women alike. It was a common request of the cahiers that the family of a man convicted and punished for crime should not be held to be disgraced, nor the relations of the culprit shut out from preferment. The former request shows a curious ignorance of what can and what cannot be done by legislation. Persons acquitted were to receive damages, either from the accuser, or from the state. Judges were to give reasons for their decisions. Arbitrary imprisonment by _lettre de cachet_ was, according to some cahiers, to be suppressed altogether; according to others it was to be regulated, but the practice retained where public policy or family discipline might require it.[Footnote: Domfront, _A. P._, i. 723, Section 6. Amiens, _A. P._, i. 747, Section 7. The cahiers show that everybody was opposed to the use of _lettres de cachet_ as they then existed; but most of the cahiers that had anything to say about them expressed a desire to keep something of the kind. They are considered necessary for reasons of state, or in the interest of families. Desjardins, 407. The author of the _Histoire du gouvernment de France depuis l'Assemblée des Notables_, a good, sensible, middle-class man, approves of them (260). Mercier (viii. 242) considers them useful and even necessary.]