BOOKS.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE FEUDAL1TY.* PRODIGIOUS as is the literature accumulated on the French Revolution, there is no sign of abatement in the activity pro- ductive of more. In France, at least, every year brings with it an unfailing crop of publications which treat of some topic in connec- tion with that capital passage in national history. Between French works dealing with this subject of recent composition and those of a more remote date—say, twenty years ago—there is, however, one notable distinction in character. The tone of fatalist panegyric, so vividly struck by Thiers and Mignet, which marked a whole cycle of more or less brilliant writings on the French Revolution—a tone betraying itself in an undisguised chant of palliation for every act and catastrophe, as if the outcome of some mysterious dispensation—has been succeeded by the less thrilling accent of a spirit of industrious research into the nature of the society which was broken down by the hurricane, and into the elements which begot its terrific force. Tocqueville's Ancien Regime, with its painstaking investigation and its array of previ- ously overlooked facts, opened minds to the sense that to know the • workings which culminated in the volcanic revolution, it needed something more than to unroll a panorama of its surface phenomena. The example set by Tocqueville had the effect of inspiring a series of less pretentious, but most meritorious inquiries into points con- nected with the Revolutionary period, which have done far more for a knowledge of those times than all the showy pages due to the facile pens of Thiers and his associates. Amongst these deserving publications the volume before us is fully entitled to take an honourable place. The author, M. Doniol, is not unknown, especially for studies bearing on the subject-matter of this volume. His history of the Rural Classes, which appeared some years ago, attracted considerable notice. The task he has set himself in the present work does not fall short of the former in importance, for it aims at elucidating the peculiar circumstances in the territorial conditions of France which made the Revolution con- centrate its full force for a mortal blow against them. It may be doubted whether M. Doniol would not have done more justice to the many topics of his subject, if he had given himself space for ampler detail, and thus avoided a crowding of matter which inter- feres at times with the clearness of his exposition. The defect is, however, a slight one, and does not obscure the merit of a book the principal fault of which is that it is too concise.
The sitting of the 4th of August, in which the Constituent Assembly decreed, as it were in a burst of spontaneous senti- ment, the abolition of all Seigneurial duties, is not more memor- able for its scenic display than for the thoroughness of its work. Many were the radical decrees and declarations and enactments voted by the Revolutionary Legislature with passionate vehe- mence, which after the subsidence of excitement were either buried in oblivion or revoked ; but amidst the many turns in the wheel of political fortune which have since happened in France, at no moment—not even in the reactionary hour of the incoming Restoration—has an attempt been seriously made to undo the work done at that sitting, and to build up again the fragments into which the old system had been pulverised on that memorable night. Indeed, so sweeping was the demolition wrought by the blow, that the actual features of the old system have been so far obliterated that fancy has run wild when engaged in picturing them. The feudal system was a term which filled the imagination with a vision of extortionate and predatory customs, that acquired fixity from some graphic examples stereotyped on the authority of writers who cared more for flashy effect than laborious accuracy.
• La Revolution et la Feodalite. Par Henry Doniol, Correspondent de 'Institut. Paris. 1874. The serf bound to beat all night the pond that the Seigneur's sleep might be undisturbed by croaking frogs served long as the typical figure of what the French peasant was reduced to,—a helot destitute alike of rights and property, and at the beck of a reck- less and pampered lord. So completely had this one vision of pre- Revolutionary conditions filled up the canvas of French concep- tion, that when Michelet, in his Peuple, drew attention to Arthur Young's statements, and pointed out how extensively landed property was already divided in France, the impression was that " of a veritable discovery." It is the purpose of our author to bring out with distinctness in what really did consist the social condition which inspired such irresistible animosity, and to explain how the initial step in the remedy adopted by the Legislature brought with it so violent and wholesale a demolition, as involved in ruin alike what stood necessarily condemned and what had a claim to milder treatment. To assume that land in France was held mainly in large blocks by great owners is an absolute mis- take. What constituted the typical grievance of the peasantry was, not legal disability to hold land, but that the tenure was subject to such excessive and countless payments of dues and fines on the score of manorial rights, as at every point pinched the faculties of industry and painfully forbade profitable en- joyment of its fruits. An intensely aggravated form of copy- hold system was the tenure which prevailed in France. " The Seigneurie consisted in a set of fines due by the inhabitants of rural and urban localities, on the score of possession, or of the fruits obtained, or of mere residence." So absolutely had the notion of these dues as matters of sacred right become ingrained in the body politic, that when, at Turgot's instance, Boncerf wrote a treatise on their inexpediency, the Parliament condemned it to be burnt as seditious,—conclusive evidence that from this quarter there was no hope of reform. " To consider these payers of dues in the light of cultivating agents on large estates would be a great error. Nothing could be more unlike each other than French seigneurie and the system of large properties at all times, nor had they ever been more so than at this period. The payers of dues are simply dwellers in a locality. Not a few might find themselves bound to the lordship through agricultural ties, for more than one lord is both seigneur and owner of the lands in his manor, but as a whole, the feudal obligations weigh on them irrespective of agricultural relations." The record of what was the nature of these complicated dues and fines, as of the peculiar animosity which they had inspired, is de- posited in the original cahiers of grievances and wishes drawn up in the separate rural districts, and subsequently sent to the larger electoral circumscription—the bailliages—where, as a rule, their rough language and revolutionary demands were considerably toned down by the Notables, who constituted an electoral body of the second degree. Their characteristic expression of instinc- tive sentiments still survives in bundles of ill-written, often mis-spelt, but withal vigorously worded memorials, that lie at the Archives, where M. Doniol has taken the pains to decipher them. As a rule—leaving out of account dues special to a locality, which were infinite,—a peasant had " to pay the tithe, reckoned generally between the twelfths and fourteenths of gross produce ; then a sixth in manorial dues, irrespective of nearly the same in straw, wherever the dues were paid by the sheaf ; finally, a sixth in taxes." But in addition to these charges there were often an endless number of tolls, dues of milling, dues on vintage, fines on deeds of sale, and so on, an endless catalogue of galling pay- ments made to troublesome middlemen, who gathered these vexatious exactions in the names of absentees from whom they had been farmed. Again, frequently a locality was victimised, not by one, but by a whole bevy of these grievously felt but unseen Seigneurs. We find in the Albigeois, one commune of 300 hectares dependent on nineteen different manors, and having to defray annually in the aggregate " seventy hectolitres of wheat, two of oats, besides the tithe, the fifth of all fruit crops, various fines, and a mass of small dues." When one reads through the specifications from the various districts of what they were called upon to pay at almost every step and move in industrial life, it does indeed become clear why, when the ground-down population at last found an occasion to assert themselves, they should have rushed in a frenzy to the destruction of those manorial châteaux which had so long figured before their vision as the stately strong- holds of the spirit of luxury that revelled in the practice of worry- ing the poor man who lived by the sweat of his brow. The lurid glow of the burning châteaux was the flame of an anger so long pent up that its explosion, when it did come, was necessarily destructive. And in reference to this irresistible outburst, it is essential to remember—as explanatory of what has been strikingly characteristic in subsequent French history—that the detested Seigneurie connected itself in the minds of the infuriated peasantry with the clergy and ecclesiastical corporations even more closely than with titled grandees.
M. Doniol seeks to show how the absolutely levelling character of the measures adopted in France for the remedy of conditions which, however replete with grievances, were of a composite nature, re- sulted inevitably, in the first place, from the aggravated popular im- patience due to the obstinate indisposition of the constituted autho- rities before 1789 to institute reforms; and in the second place, from the ill-considered form in which, on the spur of the moment, the Assembly, on August 4, startled the country with a declara- tion which, instead of appeasing passions, stimulated litigation. For while proclaiming "the entire destruction of the Feudal regime," the Assembly also affirmed that there were two categories of dues and fines, the one relating to servitudes, that should be abolished forthwith absolutely ; and the other to rights that should be bought up, on terms to be subsequently fixed by the Assembly. The inevitable consequence was that throughout the country every kind and form of due was construed as coming within the first category by the peasantry, while their ex- cited impatience was inflamed by the necessarily protracted inquiries and investigations consequent on the Assembly's having resolved to determine on the nature of these disputed dues. Whether in the state of public feeling amongst the rural population it could have ever been possible to ensure an equitable solution of these conflicting titles, it is useless to speculate ; but M. Doniol certainly brings out the fact with great cogency that the action of the Assembly was directly calculated to add fuel to the already hissing flames. From the moment when that sweeping decree, with its nebulous definitions, went forth, all practical demarcation between what was declared to be ipso facto forfeited, and what was to be subject to commutations, became wholly impracticable. Step by step the Legislative Assemblies, under the irresistible pressure of revolu- tionary passions, consummated the work in the sense of wholesale abolition. But even in the vortex of that tremendous social up- heaving, these successive measures were not adopted without a far more elaborate debate than preceded the original decree of August 4. In these revolutionary Assemblies there still sat men who had been trained in the old French law, and it is curious how, even in the height of the Reign of Terror, individual members still ventured to bring forward propositions which would have secured compensation for various manorial dues. A deputy from the Haute Garonne—whose proposal the reader will find given in full in this volume—even submitted a well-considered plan for their commutation by the State ; and what is still more remarkable, memorials were presented from communes in that region advocating the measure. But such suggestions were at that time already wholly unpractical. The doom of all manorial rights was determined beyond any preservation, however partial, by two circumstances;. the abolition of tithes without any shred of commutation, and the decree whereby no prescription, however long, was to be taken, and only written titles (which were hardly ever forth- coming) were to authorise the levying of dues.
We cannot here follow M. Doniol through his detailed state- ment of the various supplementary resolutions by the Convention and subsequent Legislature which consummated the final removal of every trace of manorial rights, and still less into his interesting account of legislation on the same matter in other countries. The accuracy with which he has studied English Acts of Parlia- ment on copyhold tenures supplies a good measure of his industry, and in parting company, we can recommend his volume as a valuable contribution to the history of a most memorable and far-reaching event.
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