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French Revolution

{89} <h3> CHAPTER VII </h3> <h3> THE ASSEMBLY DEMOLISHES PRIVILEGE </h3> In the preceding chapter, stress has been laid on the economic causes that had led to the rooting up of the Bourbons from Versailles; in this one the political significance of the event must be accentuated. In the history of the Revolution it is always so; the political and the economic factors are constantly fusing the one in the other. In a sense, what had happened was that the poor people, the democracy, let us say, of Paris, had now got the King in the city and under their influence; not only the King, but also the assembly,—for it had followed Louis and was installed in a building adjacent to the Tuileries. And the assembly became quickly conscious of the fact that Paris was now unduly weighing on the representation of France, and under the lead of Mirabeau attempted to assert itself. This was the first feeble step towards the assumption of power that culminated three years later in the appointment of {90} the Committee of Public Safety. The assembly assumed a middle position between the King on the one hand and the mob on the other. It voted the change of Louis' title from King of France, by the grace of God, to King of the French, by virtue of the Constitution; it repressed disorder by proclaiming martial law; but in the continuation of its constitutional debates it asserted unequivocally its middle-class composition. A handful of democrats, Robespierre, Grégoire, and less than a dozen others, pleaded the rights of the many, but the assembly declined to listen to them and confirmed, by a nearly unanimous vote, the recommendations of its committees for drawing up the declaration of rights and constitution. The greater part of French citizens were thereby declared to have only passive, not active rights, and were excluded from the franchise. The qualification for voting was placed at the paying of taxes equal to 3 days' labour, and for being a deputy paying in taxes one marc of silver, about 54 francs. The outcry against this legislation was so loud, and so widespread, as to show what genuine political aspirations were to be found in the mass of the Parisian population. The greater part of that population was excluded {91} from voting. For to say nothing of the fact that about 120,000 inhabitants were classed as paupers, it so happened that the capitation tax had been remitted for a term of years, leaving only the well-to-do shopkeeper, some part of the professional, and the capitalist class on the voters' list. Workmen of the faubourg St. Antoine signed a petition to be allowed to pay taxes so as to obtain a vote. Robespierre, a narrow, prudish, jealous, puritanical but able lawyer from Arras, with journalists like Desmoulins and Loustallot, inveighed against what they described as iniquitous class legislation that would have excluded from the councils of the French nation Jean Jacques Rousseau and even that pauvre sans culotte Jesus Christ. But the assembly was obdurate, and, in fact, remained middle class in its point of view all through the Revolution except when irresistible pressure was brought to bear against it. The journalists, however, tended far more rapidly towards democracy than the deputies. Journalism had sprung from the events of July. The pamphlets of Camille Desmoulins had, by a natural metamorphosis, become journals after that date. Their popularity did not, however, attain that of Loustallot's {92} Révolutions de Paris, of which one number is said to have reached a circulation of 200,000. Marat's Ami du peuple, first published in September, soon became the most formidable organ of opinion, and remained so until the rise of Hébert and his atrocious Père Duchesne, at a later period. These papers and their editors played a great part, and will often be noticed, but for the present all that need be said is that their rise at this period is one of the symptoms of the tremendous change that had come over the city of Paris. Paris before 1789 was, in a sense, mediaeval, provincial. Although the largest city of France, its capital, the centre of thought and art, the resort of many French and foreign visitors, the city was still in a way a local centre, and isolated, unrelated with the rest of France. The Court did not reside there, the administration, especially of justice, was in large measure decentralized, and Paris was the abode of the Parisian almost in the same narrow sense that the province was the abode of the provincial. But now all this was rapidly changing. The arrival of the Court and of the National Assembly suddenly made of Paris the heart of France. The fever of revolution made that heart beat faster, and a rapid {93} current of the best life blood of the nation began circulating from the provinces to Paris and from Paris back again to the provinces, bringing energy and a broadening of sympathy with it. And if a glance is taken at Europe during the same period, during the twenty-five years that follow the outbreak of the French Revolution, the same process may be seen at work, but on a larger scale. The old stagnation, the feudal congestion of Germany and Italy, the immobility of the population, is broken through, the old barriers are shaken down; great centralized states send official, economic, and national action sweeping back and forth; great armies tramp through the whole breadth of Europe; roads are built in all directions to facilitate their movements, people begin to know one another, to mix, to form larger conceptions of humanity. The most potent of the agencies that effected this change in Paris was the direct work of the deputies themselves. The move to the capital had been attended by the formation of several well-marked currents of opinion among the deputies. One of these had been a movement of protest,—of protest and in part of timidity. The violence and compulsion applied to the King, and all that the removal to Paris implied {94} under such circumstances, had led to the withdrawal of about 200 members of the assembly. Of these Mounier was the chief; he returned to his province of Dauphiné and attempted to provoke constitutional action to free the King from the domination of Paris. His efforts were unsuccessful and he eventually had to leave the country. This group, however, of which Mounier was the boldest member, represented merely a negative force, dispersion; another, equally large, stood for something more concrete. The Club Breton began to develop very rapidly after the removal to Paris. Its members, styling themselves Amis de la Constitution, eventually settled themselves in quarters conveniently near the palace at the Jacobin monastery. Here the club quickly became a debating association, and the headquarters of a party. Early in 1790 it began to develop a system of affiliating clubs all through France, and by August of that year had planted 150 Jacobin colonies in direct correspondence with the mother society. By 1794 this number had grown to a thousand, and Jacobinism had become a creed. But in 1789 and 1790 the Jacobins were as yet moderate in their views; they were the men who wanted to create a {95} constitution under the monarchy; they were presided during that period by such men as the Duc de Noailles, the Duc d'Aiguillon, and Mirabeau. Mirabeau stood out in the assembly as the one constructive statesman, the one man who might bridge the gulf that still separated the deputies from the responsibility of power and the practice of government. If a constitutional or parliamentary ministry were possible, if both King and assembly would recognise in that the practical step towards re-establishing order and making reform effective, Mirabeau was the necessary leader of such a ministry. In the period that followed the arrival of the King in Paris he amply demonstrated both his qualifications and his defects for such a position. Urgent questions pressed the assembly from all sides, and in debating them Mirabeau took a lion's share. Finance was most urgent of all. Necker could do no more. A fundamental remedy for the needs of the exchequer must be found. On the 7th of October the assembly had voted that the Crown lands should become the property of the nation, in return for which a civil list would be assigned to the King. Three days later Talleyrand-Périgord, the sceptical {96} but able Bishop of Autun, proposed that the property of the Church should be similarly dealt with. This was, in one sense, as the previous step had been, the assertion of the national interest over the special privilege; in another sense it was merely one step more in those numerous secularizations of Church property which the utilitarian and unreligious 18th century had carried out. It was proposed to take over for the use of the State all the property of the Church and in return to pay salaries to its priests. This represented the acquisition of real property valued at the capital sum of 2,100,000,000 of francs; but as it only brought in capital value, not cash in hand, it did not afford any immediate relief for the needs of the Government. Then another expedient was tried, the appeal for patriotic gifts, and that, though it resulted in a good deal of patriotic emotionalism, did little to fill the yawning gulf of bankruptcy. Finally in December, drastic measures were taken. Some of the State's payments were provisionally suspended; the sale of Church and other lands to the value of 400 millions was ordered; a loan of 80 millions was sanctioned; and 400 millions of assignats were issued. The assignat in this first form was an {97} inchoate mortgage bond. It bore interest; it was guaranteed by the State; it purported to be secured in a general way on the national property; and it was to circulate as money and to be accepted in payment for the national lands. If it had been strictly secured, on a close valuation, and by a registered claim against specified property, it would doubtless have given a permanent support to the finances of the Government. As it was it proved, at first, a successful step, and it was only by gradual stages and from unwise measures that it eventually failed. In April 1790, assignats were made legal tender; a few months later they ceased to bear interest,—in other words, though still bonds on their face they really became paper money. In September 1790, another 800 millions were issued, and in June another 600, and in small denominations, and from that moment they began to sink in value rapidly. Until the month of January 1791 they stood at over 90; in July 1791 they were at 87; during 1792-93, years of the greatest crisis, they fell fast; in 1795 they had almost lost value and during the Directoire period the assignat becomes almost worthless, one recorded transaction giving 3,080 francs in paper for 20 in gold. {98} Behind the financial policy of the assembly was Mirabeau. He had long been connected with the bankers and promoters of Paris, had produced pamphlets to serve their financial projects. The bond issues of the assembly, and the probable sales of large blocks of real property, were of great interest to these groups, and Mirabeau was their natural connecting link with the assembly. He was the strongest advocate of the assignat measures, and whatever interest his friends took in them, it need not be doubted that he believed them salutary and wise. The Court in its new perplexity, helplessly entangled in Paris, having learnt just a little from experience, now turned to Mirabeau for assistance. He secretly advised that the King should take the initiative, and should put forward the policy of a moderate constitution on the English model with a responsible ministry. If this brought on a conflict, or if his situation otherwise made it advisable to leave Paris, he should seek refuge in the well-disposed province of Normandy, and not with the army on the German frontier. The advice of Mirabeau was not unsound, and it implied as a step the formation of a Mirabeau, Necker, La Fayette ministry. {99} But Mirabeau was too much handicapped by his past. The Assembly viewed him with rooted suspicion and dislike, and for this reason the Court could not have chosen a worse agent. At the end of November the assembly voted decrees excluding its members from the King's ministry, thus barring Mirabeau's path, and thus accentuating once more its own destructive attitude towards the Government. If it would not participate, even indirectly, in the executive, it was partly because it was at heart anxious to pull that executive down to earth. Notwithstanding this check, Mirabeau continued to impose on the assembly by his tremendous personality and by his statesmanship. He struggled hard in the early part of 1790 to bring the deputies into line on a question of foreign affairs that then arose,—the Nootka Sound question. This involved all the traditions of France's foreign policy and her system of alliances, the pacte de famille; but the assembly saw in it merely a text on which to formulate the limitations it intended to impose on the royal power in the matter of foreign relations. At this moment the Court had renewed its clandestine communications with Mirabeau, there was even one secret {100} interview between him and the Queen, and large sums were given him as payment for his advice. These sums he squandered profusely, thus advertising a fact that was already more than suspected by the public, and rapidly destroying his hold on opinion. The winter was a much milder one than the preceding, food was less scarce, money more plentiful owing to the issue of assignats, public confidence greatly increased. But the tension between the King and the assembly did not relax; there was no serious attempt on either side to take advantage of the improved situation for effecting a reconciliation. The assembly legislated against the members of the aristocracy who, following the example of the Comte d'Artois, had emigrated. Instead of helping the Government to enforce police measures that would have made their residence in France secure, it decreed the confiscation of their rents unless they returned within three months. This was the first of a long series of laws aimed against the émigrés. Turning from one privileged order to the other, the assembly continued the attacks on the fabric of the Church which had been begun by the churchmen themselves in August and October 1789. The surrender of the tithes, (101) 70,000,000 francs annually, had told most heavily against the poor country priest and in favour of the landowner, who bore the burden of his salary. The taking over of the Church lands by the State had been most felt by the higher ecclesiastics and the monastic orders. In February 1790 the latter were suppressed, and their members were relieved of their vows by the assembly, which had now frankly embarked on an anti-clerical policy. It would not recognise of itself that it was less representative of France in the matter of religion than in any other; for it was the intellectual and professional class only, to which nearly all the deputies belonged, that was Voltairian or anti-Catholic, the mass of the people of France were still attached to their ancient faith. During the protracted debates that took place on the Church question in the spring of 1790, the assembly attempted several times to evade the question of the Catholic members as to whether or not it would recognise the existence of the Church. At last, with great reluctance, in June, the assembly voted that the Catholic religion was that of France; but it followed this up by passing what was known as the Constitution civile du clergé. This decree provided that all priests should receive their {102} salaries from the State; that the old dioceses of France should be broken up and made to fit the new departmental division that had supplanted the old provincial one; that the bishop should be created by the vote of the electors of his department; and that the Pope should exercise no authority over bishops or priests. It needs but little acquaintance with history to realize how wilfully subversive this plan was. The maintenance of the clergy by the tithes, placed it outside the sphere of Government control, and helped to maintain the ancient Roman internationalism; whereas the breaking off of the Pope's direct connection with the bishops was Gallicanism of the most pronounced character. Pope Pius VI unequivocally declared that the carrying through of any such law in France would amount to a schism, and transmitted that opinion to Louis XVI. The falseness of the King's position was made intolerable by the dilemma in which he was now placed. There was as yet no formal Constitution, only a revolutionary situation in which the assembly had usurped a large part of the King's prerogative. It was, however, virtually accepted by both sides that under the {103} constitution when passed, the King should have the power of veto, and by tacit accord that arrangement had been from the first put into force. The assembly voted decrees and sent them to the King for his signature. But in reality the veto, even before its strict constitutional existence, was little more than a sham. The situation was revolutionary. Both parties were hostile, and almost without exception every signature of the King was an act of moral compulsion. Hitherto, however, his acceptance of the situation had not involved more than bowing before a political storm; now the matter was graver, the question was of schism, and therefore of heresy. Louis was a faithful believer in the Roman theology, as well as in the divine right of kings, and he struggled hard to withhold his signature from the civil constitution of the clergy. And when, after some weeks, he finally gave in, it was under protest. From that moment he adopted the attitude of the man acting under restraint who ascribes no binding force to acts and deeds resulting from compulsion. The acceptance of the civil constitution of the clergy by the King did not conclude the matter. Furious protests arose. In the south {104} of France, bishops, priests and national guards for some weeks threatened an outbreak of religious war. The assembly met this disorder more firmly than that proceeding from economic and political reasons. Towards the close of the year it imposed on the clergy an oath of adhesion to the civil constitution, and this only four bishops were found to accept. In January 1791 elections were ordered for filling the places of those members of the Church who had refused the oath, and presently France found herself with two bodies of clergy, official and non-official, constitutional and anti-constitutional. To close a chapter dealing so largely with the destructive efforts of the middle-class assembly against the prerogatives of the King and of the two privileged orders, it may be noted that on the 19th of June, 1790, on the proposal of members of the nobility, all titles were abolished. Hereafter Mirabeau is Honoré Riquetti, the ci-devant Comte de Mirabeau; and Camille Desmoulins, prompt, picturesque and impertinent, logically applies the process to the King himself and rechristens Louis, Mr. Capet l'aîné. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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