The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Author:Alexis de Tocqueville [Tocqueville, Alexis de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthologies, Classics, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 1230004897019
Publisher: Bilingual Edition
Published: 2021-07-07T04:00:00+00:00

At a much earlier period Louis XIV. had publicly broached in his edicts the theory that all the land throughout the kingdom had originally been granted conditionally by the State, which was thus declared to be the only true landowner, and that all others were possessors whose titles might be contested, and whose rights were imperfect. This doctrine had arisen out of the feudal system of legislation; but it was not proclaimed in France until feudalism was dying out, and was never adopted by the Courts of justice. It is, in fact, the germ of modern socialism, and it is curious enough to see it first springing up under royal despotism.

During the reigns which followed that of Louis XIV., the administration day by day instilled into the people in a manner still more practical and comprehensible the contempt in which private property was to be held. When during the latter half of the eighteenth century the taste for public works, especially for roads, began to prevail, the Government did not scruple to seize all the land needed for its undertakings, and to pull down the houses which stood in the way. The French Board of Works was already just as enamoured of the geometrical beauty of straight lines as it has been ever since; it carefully avoided following the existing roads if they were at all crooked, and rather than make the slightest deviation it cut through innumerable estates. The ground thus damaged or destroyed was never paid for but at an arbitrary rate and after long delay, or frequently not at all.[79]

When the Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy took the administration out of the hands of the Intendant, it was discovered that the price of all the land seized by authority in the preceding twenty years for making roads was still unpaid. The debt thus contracted by the State, and not discharged, in this small corner of France, amounted to 250,000 livres. The number of large proprietors thus injured was limited; but the small ones who suffered were very numerous, for even then the land was much subdivided.[80] Every one of these persons had learnt by his own experience how little respect the rights of an individual can claim when the interest of the public requires that they should be invaded—a doctrine which he was not likely to forget when the time came for applying it to others for his own advantage.

In a great number of parishes charitable endowments had formerly existed, destined by their founders to relieve the inhabitants in certain cases, and in conformity to testamentary bequest. Most of these endowments were destroyed during the later days of the monarchy, or diverted from their original objects by mere Orders in Council, that is to say, by the arbitrary act of Government. In most instances the funds thus left to particular villages were taken from them for the benefit of neighbouring hospitals. At the same time the property of these hospitals was in its turn diverted to purposes which the founder had never had in view, and would undoubtedly not have approved.

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