Читать книгу The History of French Revolution - Taine Hippolyte - Страница 57

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Such is the work of the Constituent Assembly. In several of its laws, especially those which relate to private interests, in the institution of civil regulations, in the penal and rural codes,2341 in the first attempts at, and the promise of, a uniform civil code, in the enunciation of a few simple regulations regarding taxation, procedure, and administration, it planted good seed. But in all that relates to political institutions and social organization its proceedings are those of an academy of Utopians, and not those of practical legislators.—On the sick body entrusted to it, it performed amputations which were as useless as they were excessive, and applied bandages as inadequate as they were injurious. With the exception of two or three restrictions admitted inadvertently, and the maintenance of the show of royalty, also the obligation of a small electoral qualification, it carried out its principle to the end, the principle of Rousseau. It deliberately refused to consider man as he really was under its own eyes, and persisted in seeing nothing in him but the abstract being created in books. Consequently, with the blindness and obstinacy characteristic of a speculative surgeon, it destroyed, in the society submitted to its scalpel and its theories, not only the tumors, the enlargements, and the inflamed parts of the organs, but also the organs themselves, and even the vital governing centers around which cells arrange themselves to recompose an injured organ. That is, the Assembly destroyed on the one hand the time-honored, spontaneous, and lasting societies formed by geographical position, history, common occupations and interests, and on the other, those natural chiefs whose name, repute, education, independence, and earnestness designated them as the best qualified to occupy high positions. In one direction it despoils and permits the ruin and proscription of the superior class, the nobles, the members of Parliament, and the upper middle class. In another it dispossesses and breaks up all historic or natural corporations, religious congregations, clerical bodies, provinces, parliaments, societies of art and of all other professions and pursuits. This done, every tie or bond which holds men together is found to be severed; all subordination and every graduated scale of rank have disappeared. There is no longer rank and file, or commander-in-chief. Nothing remains but individual particles, 26 millions of equal and disconnected atoms. Never was so much disintegrated matter, less capable of resistance, offered to hands undertaking to mold it. Harshness and violence will be sufficient to ensure success. These brutal hands are ready for the work, and the Assembly which has reduced the material to powder has likewise provided the mortar and pestle. As awkward in destruction as it is in construction, it invents for the restoration of order in a society which is turned upside down a machine which would, of itself, create disorder in a tranquil society. The most absolute and most concentrated government would not be strong enough to effect without disturbance a similar equalization of ranks, the same dismemberment of associations, and the same displacement of property. No social transformation can be peacefully accomplished without a well-commanded army, obedient and everywhere present, as was the case in the emancipation of the Russian serfs by Emperor Alexander. The new Constitution,2342 on the contrary, reduces the King to the position of an honorary president, suspected and called in question by a disorganized State. Between him and the legislative body it interposes nothing but sources of conflict, and suppresses all means of concord. The monarch has no hold whatever on the administrative departments which he must direct; the mutual independence of the powers, from the center to the extremities of the State, everywhere produces indifference, negligence, and disobedience between the injunctions issued and their execution. France is a federation of forty thousand municipal sovereignties, in which the authority of legal magistrates varies according to the caprice of active citizens. These active citizens, too heavily loaded, shy away from the performance of public duty; in which a minority of fanatics and ambitious men monopolize the right to speak, to vote, all influence, the power and all action. They justify their multiple ursurpations, their unbridled despotism, and their increasing encroachments by the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The masterpiece2343 of ideal abstractions and of practical absurdities is accomplished. In accordance with the Constitution spontaneous anarchy becomes legalized anarchy. The latter is perfect; nothing finer of the kind has been seen since the ninth century.

2301 (return) [ The name for the dreaded secret Royal warrant of arrest. (SR.)]

2302 (return) [ The initiative rests with the King on one point: war cannot be decreed by the Assembly except on his formal and preliminary proposition. This exception was secured only after a violent struggle and a supreme effort by Mirabeau.]

2303 (return) [ Speech by Lanjuinais, November 7, 1789. "We determined on the separation of the powers. Why, then, should the proposal he made to us to unite the legislative power with the executive power in the persons of the ministers?"]

2304 (return) [ See the attendance of the Ministers before the Legislative Assembly.]

2305 (return) [ "Any society in which the separation of the powers is not clearly defined has no constitution." (Declaration of Rights, article XVI.)—This principle is borrowed from a text by Montesquieu, also from the American Constitution. In the rest the theory of Rousseau is followed.]

2306 (return) [ Mercure de France, an expression by Mallet du Pan.]

2307 (return) [ Constitution of 1791, ch. II. articles 5, 6, 7.—Decree of September 25—October 6, 1791, section III. articles, 8 to 25.]

2308 (return) [ Speeches by Barnave and Roederer in the constituent Assembly.—Speeches by Barnave and Duport in the Jacobin Club.]

2309 (return) [ Principal texts. (Duvergier, "Collection des Lois et Decrets.")—Laws on municipal and administrative organization, December 14 and 22, 1789; August 12–20, 1790; March 12, 1791. On the municipal organization of Paris, May 21st, June 27, 1790.—Laws on the organization of the Judiciary, August 16–24, 1790; September 16–29, 1791; September 29, October 21, 1791.—Laws on military organization, September 23, October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791; July 27, 28, 1791—Laws on the financial organization, November 14–24,.1790; November 23, 1790; March 17, 1791; September 26, October 2, 1791.]

2310 (return) [ The removal of such managerial authority has since the second World war taken place inside the United Nations and other Western public administrations and seems to be the aim of much communist trade union effort. The result has everywhere been added cost and decreased efficiency. (SR.)]

2311 (return) [ This principle has been introduced in Western educational systems when clever self-appointed psychologists told parents and teacher alike that they could and should not punish their children but only talk and explain to them. (SR.)]

2312 (return) [ This description fits the staff regulations of the United Nations secretariat in which I served for 32 years. (SR.)]

2313 (return) [ Decrees of December 14 and December 22, 1789: "In municipalities reduced to three members (communes below five hundred inhabitants), all executive functions shall belong to the mayor alone."]

2314 (return) [ Could it be that Lenin took note of this and had it this translated in Russian and made use of it in his and later in Stalin's schools for international revolutionaries. It would in any case have weakened the Bourgeois Capitalist countries. In any case such measures have been introduced both in the international organizations and in most Western Democratic Governments after World War II. (SR.)]

2315 (return) [ This was in the United Nations called 'Rotation' and made the administration of missions and forces difficult, expensive and inefficient. This rotation was also used in the Indian and other armies in order to prevent the officers to reach an understanding or achieve any power over the troops under their command. (SR.)]

2316 (return) [ Laws of September 23—October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791. (Titles II. And VII.)—Cf. the legal prescriptions in relation to the military tribunals. In every prosecuting or judicial jury one-seventh of the sworn members are taken from the non-commissioned officers, and one-seventh from the soldiers, and again, according to the rank of the accused, the number of those of the same rank is doubled.]

2317 (return) [ Law of July 28th, August 12, 1791.]

2318 (return) [ Laws of November 24, 1789 (article 52), August 10–14, 1789.—Instruction of August 10–20, 1790; § 8—Law of October 21, November 21, 1789.]

2319 (return) [ Laws of November 14 and 23, 1790; January 13th, September 26th, October 9, 1792.]

2320 (return) [ Albert Babeau, I. 327 (Féte of the Federation, July 14, 1790).—"Archives Nationales," F7, 3215 (May 17,1791, Deliberation of the council-general of the commune of Brest. May 17 and 19, Letters of the directory of the district).—Mercure, March 5, 1791. "Mesdames are stopped until the return of the two deputies, whom the Republic of Arnay-le-Duc has sent to the representatives of the nation to demonstrate to them the necessity of keeping the king's aunts in the kingdom."]

2321 (return) [ Moniteur, X. 132. Speech by M. Labergerie, November 8, 1791.]

2322 (return) [ At Montauban, in the intendant's salon, the ladies of the place spoke patois only, the grandmother of the gentleman who has informed me of this fact did not understand any other language.]

2323 (return) [ Moniteur, V.163, sitting of July 18, 1791. Speech by M. Lecoulteux, reporter.]

2324 (return) [ Moniteur, XI. 283, sitting of February 2, 1792. Speech by Cambon: "They go away thinking that they understand what is explained to them, but return the following day to obtain fresh explanations. The attorneys refuse to give the municipalities any assistance, stating that they know nothing about these matters."]

2325 (return) [ The same may happen when a subordinate is promoted to be placed in charge of his or her former equals and colleagues. This is why it is often preferably to transfer someone who is recognized as being of superior talent whenever a promotions is to take place. (SR.)]

2326 (return) [ Law of May 11–15, 1791.]

2327 (return) [ Minutes of the meeting of the Electoral Assembly of the Department of Indre-et-Loire (1791, printed).]

2328 (return) [ De Ferrières, I. 367.]

2329 (return) [ Suzay, I, 191 (21,711 are eligible out of 32,288 inscribed citizens).]

2330 (return) [ Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Department of Indre-et-Loire, Aug. 27, 1791. "A member of the Assembly made a motion that all the members composing it should be indemnified for the expenses which would be incurred by their absence from home and the long sojourn they had to make in the town where the Assembly was held. He remarked that the inhabitants of the country were those who suffered the most, their labor being their sole riches; that if no attention was paid to this demand, they would be obliged, in spite of their patriotism, to withdraw and abandon their important mission; that the electoral assemblies would then be deserted, or would be composed of those whose resources permitted them to make this sacrifice."]

2331 (return) [ Sauzay, I. 147, 192.]

2332 (return) [ For the detail of these figures, see vol. II. Book IV.]

2333 (return) [ De Ferrières, I. 367. Cf. The various laws above mentioned.]

2334 (return) [ Constant, "Histoire d'un Club Jacobin en Province" (Fontainebleau) p.15. (Procés-verbaux of the founding of the clubs of Moret, Thomery, Nemours, and Montereau.)]

2335 (return) [ Later to change and become socialist and communist parties everywhere. (SR.)]

2336 (return) [ Cf. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 (except the first phrase, which is a catchword thrown out for the European philosophers).—Jefferson proposed a Declaration of Rights for the Constitution of March 4, 1789, but it was refused. They were content to add to it the eleven amendments which set forth the fundamental rights of the citizen.]

2337 (return) [ Article I. "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights common to all. Social distinctions are founded solely on public utility." The first phrase condemns the hereditary royalty which is sanctioned by the Constitution. The second phrase can be used to legitimate hereditary monarchy and an aristocracy.—Articles 10 and 11 bear upon the manifestations of religious convictions and on freedom of speech and of the press. By virtue of these two articles worship, speech, and the press may be made subject to the most repressive restrictions, etc.]

2338 (return) [ The International Bill of Human Rights of 1948 is quite different from the one approved in 1789. In 1948 there is no more any mention of any "right to resistance to oppression", there is a softening of the position on the right of property and new rights, to free education, to a country, to rest and leisure, to a high standard of health and to an adequate standard of living have been introduced. (SR.)]

2339 (return) [ Stalin and his successors organized such a system of "clubs" world-wide which even today remain active as "protectors" of the environment, refugees, prisoners, animals and the environment. (SR.)]

2340 (return) [ Buchez and Roux, XI. 237. (Speech by Malouet in relation to the revision, August 5, 1791.) "You constantly tempt the people with sovereignty without giving them the immediate use of it."]

2341 (return) [ Decrees of September 25—October 6, 1791; September 28—October 6, 1791.]

2342 (return) [ Impartial contemporaries, those well qualified to judge, agree as to the absurdity of the Constitution. "The Constitution was a veritable monster. There was too much of monarchy in it for a republic, and too much of a republic for a monarchy. The King was a side-dish, un hors d'oeuvre, everywhere present in appearance but without any actual power." (Dumont, 339.) "It is a general and almost universal conviction that this Constitution is inexecutable. The makers of it to a man condemn it." (G. Morris, September 30, 1791.) "Every day proves more clearly that their new Constitution is good for nothing." (ibid. December 27, 1791.) Cf. The sensible and prophetic speech made by Malouet (August 5, 1791, Buchez and Roux, XI. 237).]

2343 (return) [ Taine's vivid description is likely to have encouraged any radical revolutionary having the luck to read his explicit description of how to proceed with the destruction of a naïve corrupt capitalist, bourgeois society. (SR.)]