Conjugal society is made by a voluntary compact between man and woman, and though it consist chiefly in such a communion and right in one another's bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation, yet it draws with it mutual support and assistance, and a communion of interests too, as necessary not only to unite their care and affection, but also necessary to their common offspring, who have a right to be nourished and maintained by them till they are able to provide for themselves.
For the end of conjunction between male and female being not barely procreation, but the continuation of the species, this conjunction betwixt male and female ought to last, even after procreation, so long as is necessary to the nourishment and support of the young ones, who are to be sustained by those that got them till they are able to shift and provide for themselves. This rule, which the infinite wise Maker hath set to the works of His hands, we find the inferior creatures steadily obey.
And herein, I think, lies the chief, if not the only reason, why the male and female in mankind are tied to a longer conjunction than other creatures—viz., because the female is capable of conceiving, and de facto, is commonly with child again, and brings forth too a new birth, long before the former is out of a dependency for support on his parents' help and able to shift for himself, and has all the assistance is due to him from his parents, whereby the father, who is bound to take care for those he hath begot, is under an obligation to continue in conjugal society with the same woman longer than other creatures.
But the husband and wife, though they have but one common concern, yet having different understandings, will unavoidably sometimes have different wills too. It therefore being necessary that the last determination (i.e., the rule) should be placed somewhere, it naturally falls to the man's share as the abler and the stronger. But this, reaching but to the things of their common interest and property, leaves the wife in the full and true possession of what by contract is her peculiar right, and at least gives the husband no more power over her than she has over his life; the power of the husband being so far from that of an absolute monarch that the wife has, in many cases, a liberty to separate from him where natural right or their contract allows it, whether that contract be made by themselves in the state of Nature or by the customs or laws of the country they live in, and the children, upon such separation, fall to the father or mother's lot as such contract does determine.
For all the ends of marriage being to be obtained under politic government, as well as in the state of Nature, the civil magistrate doth not abridge the right or power of either, naturally necessary to those ends—viz., procreation and mutual support and assistance whilst they are together, but only decides any controversy that may arise between man and wife about them.
Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to those of far different condition; for a free man makes himself a servant to another by selling him for a certain time the service he undertakes to do in exchange for wages he is to receive; and though this commonly puts him into the family of his master, and under the ordinary discipline thereof, yet it gives the master but a temporary power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the contract between them. But there is another sort of servants which, by a peculiar name we call slaves who being captives taken in a just war are, by the right of Nature, subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives and, with it, their liberties, and lost their estates, and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society, the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.
Let us therefore consider a master of a family with all these subordinate relations of wife, children, servants and slaves, united under the domestic rule of a family, which what resemblance soever it may have in its order, offices, and number too, with a little commonwealth, yet is very far from it both in its constitution, power, and end; or if it must be thought a monarchy, and the paterfamilias the absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy will have but a very shattered and short power.
Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of an punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be, nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and in order thereunto punish the offences of all those of that society, there, and there only, is political society where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, and by understanding indifferent rules and men authorized by the community for their execution, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right, and punishes those offences which any member hath committed against the society with such penalties as the law has established; whereby it is easy to discern who are, and are not, in political society together. Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another; but those who have no such common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the state of Nature, each being where there is no other, judge for himself and executioner; which is, as I have before showed it, the perfect state of Nature.
And thus the commonwealth comes by a power to set down what punishment shall belong to the several transgressions they think worthy of it, committed amongst the members of that society (which is the power of making laws) as well as it has the power to punish any injury done unto any of its members by any one that is not of it (which is the power of war and peace); and all this for the preservation of the property of all the members of that society, as far as is possible. But though every man entered into society has quitted his power to punish offences against the law of Nature in prosecution of his own private judgment, yet with the judgment of offences against the law of Nature in prosecution of his own private judgment, yet with the judgment of offences which he has given up to the legislative, in all cases where he can appeal to the magistrate, he has given up a right to the commonwealth to employ his force for the execution of the judgments of the commonwealth whenever he shall be called to it, which, indeed, are his own judgments, they being made by himself or his representative. And herein we have the original of the legislative and executive power of civil society, which is to judge by standing laws how far offences are to be punished when committed within the commonwealth; and also by occasional judgments founded on the present circumstances of the fact, how far injuries from without are to be vindicated, and in both these to employ all the force of all the members when there shall be need.
Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society as to quit every one his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political or civil society. And this is done wherever any number of men, in the state of Nature, enter into society to make one people one body politic under one supreme government; or else when any one joins himself to, and incorporates with any government already made. For hereby he authorizes the society, or which is all one, the legislative thereof, to make laws for him as the public good of the society shall require, to the execution whereof his own assistance (as to his own decrees) is due. And this puts men out of a state of Nature into that of a commonwealth, by setting up a judge on earth with authority to determine all the controversies and redress the injuries that may happen to any member of the commonwealth, which judge is the legislature or magistrates appointed by it. And wherever there are any number of men, however associated, that have no such decisive power to appeal to, there they are still in the state of Nature.
And hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted for the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all. For the end of civil society being to avoid and remedy those inconveniencies of the state of Nature which necessarily follow from every man's being judge in his own case; by setting up a known authority to which every one of that society may appeal upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of the society ought to obey. Wherever any persons are who have not such an authority to appeal to, and decide any difference between them there, those persons are still in the state of Nature. And so is every absolute prince in respect of those who are under his dominion.
For he being supposed to have all both legislative and executive, power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from whence relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconveniency that may be suffered from him, or by his order. So that such a man, however entitled, is as much in the state of Nature, with all under his dominion, as he is with the rest of mankind. For wherever any two men are, who have no standing rule and common judge to appeal to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them, there they are still in the state of Nature, and under all the inconveniencies of it, with only this woeful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince. That whereas, in the ordinary state of Nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, and according to the best of his power to maintain it; but whenever his property is invaded by the will and order of his monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in society ought to have, but, as if he were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or defend his right, and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of Nature, is yet corrupted with flattery and armed with power.
In absolute monarchies, indeed, as well as other governments of the world, the subjects have an appeal to the law, and judges to decide any controversies, and restrain any violence that may happen betwixt the subjects themselves, one amongst another. This every one thinks necessary, and believes; he deserves to be thought a declared enemy to society and mankind who should go about to take it away. But whether this be from a true love of mankind and society, and such a charity as we owe all one to another, there is reason to doubt. For this is no more than what every man, who loves his own power, profit, or greatness, may, and naturally must do, keep those animals from hurting or destroying one another, who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage; and so are taken care of, not out of any love the master has form them, but love of himself, and the profit they bring him. For if it be asked what security, what fence is there in such a state against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler, the very question can scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you that it deserves death only to ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there must be measures, laws, and judges for their mutual peace and security. But as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such circumstances; because he has a power to do more hurt and wrong, it is right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from harm or injury on that side, where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the voice of faction and rebellion. As if when men, quitting the state of Nature, entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws; but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of Nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.
But, whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people's understandings, it never hinders men from feeling; and when they perceive that any man, in what station soever, is out of the bounds of the civil society they are of, and that they have no appeal, on earth, against any harm they may receive from him, they are apt to think themselves in the state of Nature, in respect of him whom they find to be so; and to take care, as soon as they can, to have that safety and security, in civil society, for which it was first instituted, and for which only they entered into it.
No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it. For if any man may do what he thinks fit and there be no appeal on earth for redress or security against any harm he shall do, I ask whether he be not perfectly still in the state of Nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society, unless any one will say the state of Nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm.
The king of France is an old man. We have no instance in our history of a monarch that has reigned so long. They say he possesses to an extraordinary degree the talent of making himself obeyed. He governs with the same ability his family, his court, his state. He has often been heard to say that of all the governments of the world, that of the Turks or that of our own August sultan pleased him most, so greatly he affected the oriental style of politics.
I have made a study of his character, and I find contradictions which I am unable to reconcile: for example, he has a minister who is only eighteen years old, and a mistress who is eighty; he is devoted to religion, and he cannot endure those who say it must be rigorously observed; although he flees the tumult of the city and has intercourse with few, yet he is occupied from morning until night in making himself talked about; he loves trophies and victories, but he is afraid of seeing a good general at the head of his troops, lest he should have cause to fear the chief of a hostile army. He is the only one, I believe, to whom it has ever happened that he was at the same time overwhelmed with more riches than a prince might hope to possess and burdened with a poverty that a private person would be unable to bear.
He loves to gratify those that serve him; but he rewards the efforts, or rather the indolence, of his courtiers more liberally than the arduous campaigns of his captains. Often he prefers a man whose duty it is to disrobe him or hand him his napkin when he seats himself at dinner, to another who takes cities or wins him battles. He believes that the sovereign grandeur ought not to be limited in the distribution of favors; and without investigating as to whether the one upon whom he heaps benefits is a man of merit, he believes that his choice renders him such; so that he has been seen to give a small pension to a man who had run two leagues, and a fine government to another who had run four.
He is magnificent, especially in his buildings. There are more statues in the gardens of his palace than there are citizens in a great city. His guard is as strong as that of the prince before whom all thrones are overturned; his armies are as numerous, his resources are as great, and his finances as inexhaustible.
Paris, the 7th of the moon of Moharram, 1713.
We go to China seeking clay as though we had none of our own; cloth, as though we lacked cloth; a small herb to steep in water, as though we didn't have medicinal plants in our own parts. In repayment, we should like to convert the Chinese; that's very praiseworthy zeal, but we should not question their antiquity, nor tell them they are idolaters. Really, would people like it if a capuchin friar, having been well received in a château of the Montmorencys, tried to persuade them that they were recent nobility, like the secretaries of the King, and accused them of being idolaters because he had found in the château two or three statues of High Constables, for whom they have profound respect?
The celebrated Wolff, professor of mathematics at the university of Halle, one day delivered a fine oration in praise of Chinese philosophy; he praised that ancient species of men who differ from us in their beard, their eyes, their nose, their ears, and their arguments; he praised, I say, the Chinese for worshiping a supreme God and loving virtue; he did the emperors of China, the Kalao, tribunals, the men of letters, full justice. The justice he did the bonzes was of a different kind.
Wolff, I must tell you, attracted to Halle a thousand students from every nation. There was in the same university a professor of theology named Lange, who attracted nobody; in despair at freezing to death alone in his lecture hall, he quite reasonably decided to ruin the professor of mathematics; following the custom of his kind, he promptly accused him of not believing in God.
Some European writers who had never been to China had claimed that the government of Peking was atheistic; Wolff had praised the philosophers of Peking, hence Wolff was an atheist. Envy and hatred never constructed a better syllogism. This argument of Lange's, supported by a cabal and a protector, was considered conclusive by the king of the land, who presented the mathematician with this formal dilemma: leave Halle in twenty-four hours or be hanged. And, excellent reasoner that he was, Wolff promptly left; his departure deprived the King of two or three hundred thousand écus per year which the philosopher had brought to the kingdom through the affluence of his disciples.
This example ought to impress sovereigns that they shouldn't always listen to calumny and sacrifice a great man to the insanity of a fool. But let's return to China.
Why do we presume, on this side of the world, to argue bitterly, amid torrents of insults, over whether there were or were not fourteen princes before Fo-hi, emperor of China, and whether this Fo-hi lived three thousand or two thousand nine hundred years before our common era? I'd like to see two Irishmen take it into their heads to quarrel in Dublin over who, in the twelfth century, was the owner of the lands I occupy today: isn't it obvious that they must refer to me, who has the archives in his hands? In my opinion, the same thing is true of the first emperors of China: we must refer to the tribunals of the country.
Argue as much as you like about the fourteen princes who ruled before Fo-hi, your fine argument will only end by proving that China was very populous at that time, and lived under the rule of law. Now I ask you whether a united nation, with laws and princes, does not suggest prodigious antiquity. Think how much time is needed before an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances leads to the discovery of iron in mines, before it is used in agriculture, before the shuttle and all the other skills are invented.
Those who make children with a stroke of the pen have thought up a very odd calculation. Through a pretty computation, the Jesuit Pétau calculates that two hundred and eighty-five years after the deluge, the world had a hundred times as many inhabitants as we dare estimate it has today. The Cumberlands and the Whistons have made equally comical calculations; these gentlemen need only have consulted the registers of our colonies in America; they would have been greatly astonished: they would have learned how slowly mankind multiplies, and that it often diminishes instead of increasing.
Let us then, men merely of yesterday, descendants of the Celts who have barely cleared the forests of our savage lands—let us leave the Chinese and Indians to enjoy their lovely climate and their antiquity in peace. Above all let us stop calling the emperor of China and the soubab of Decan idolaters. We should not be fanatical about the merits of the Chinese: the constitution of their empire is in fact the best in the world, the only one founded entirely on paternal power (which doesn't prevent the mandarins from caning their children); the only one in which the governor of a province is punished when he fails to win the acclamation of the people upon leaving office; the only one that has instituted prizes for virtue, while everywhere else the laws are restricted to punishing crime; the only one that has made its conquerors adopt its laws, while we are still subject to the customs of the Burgundians, the Franks, and the Goths, who subjugated us. But I must admit that the common people, governed by bonzes, are as rascally as ours; that they sell everything to foreigners very expensively, just as we do; that in the sciences the Chinese are still at the point we were at two hundred years ago; that they have a thousand ridiculous prejudices, as we do; that they believe in talismans and in judicial astrology, as we used to believe for a long time.
Let me admit also that they were amazed at our thermometer, at our manner of freezing liquids with saltpeter, and at all the experiments of Torricelli and Otto von Guericke, just as we were when we saw these scientific amusements for the first time; let me add that their doctors cure mortal illnesses no better than ours do, and that nature cures minor ailments by herself in China, as it does here. Still, four thousand years ago, when we couldn't even read, the Chinese knew all the absolutely useful things we boast about today.
Once again, the religion of the men of letters of China is admirable. No superstitions, no absurd legends, none of those dogmas which insult reason and nature and to which the bonzes give a thousand different meanings, because they don't have any. The simplest cult has seemed to them the best for more than forty centuries. They are what we think Seth, Enoch, and Noah were; they are content to worship a God with all the sages of the world, while in Europe we are divided between Thomas and Bonaventure, between Calvin and Luther, between Jansenius and Molina.
"Dogmas"
On the 18th of February of the year 1763 of the common era, with the sun entering the sign of Pisces, I was conveyed to heaven, as all my friends know. Borac, Mahomet's mare, was not my mount; Elijah's fiery chariot was not my car; I was carried neither on the elephant of Sammonocodom the Siamese, nor on the horse of St. George, patron saint of England, nor on St. Anthony's pig: I confess without guile that I took my trip I don't know how.
You can imagine how dazzled I was; but what you won't believe is that I saw the judging of all the dead. And who were the judges? They were, if you please, all those who had done well by mankind. Confucius, Solon, Socrates, Titus, the Antoinines, Epictetus, all the great men who, having taught and practiced the virtues God demands, alone seemed to have the right to pronounce his judgments.
I won't say what thrones they were sitting on, nor how many million celestial beings were prostrated before the creator of all globes, nor what a crowd of inhabitants from these innumerable globes appeared before the judges. Here I shall only give an account of a few small, quite interesting details that struck me.
I observed that every dead man who pleaded his case and paraded his fine sentiments was instantly surrounded by all the witnesses of his true actions. For example, when the cardinal of Lorraine boasted that he had got the Council of Trent to adopt some of his views, and demanded eternal life as a reward for his orthodoxy, immediately courtesans (or ladies of the court) appeared, each bearing on her forehead the number of her rendezvous with the cardinal. I saw those who had laid the foundations of the League with him; all the accomplices of his perverse plans surrounded him.
Opposite the cardinal of Lorraine was C . . . , who boasted in his crude dialect that he had kicked the papal idol with his feet after others had thrown it down. "I wrote against painting and sculpture," he said; "I made it clear that good works count for nothing at all, and I proved that it is diabolical to dance the minuet: drive the cardinal of Lorraine away quickly, and put me at the side of St. Paul."
As he was speaking, I saw a burning stake near him; a frightful specter, wearing a half-burned Spanish frill around his neck, rose from the flames with dreadful cries. "Monster," he shouted, "execrable monster, tremble! recognize S . . . , whom you put to death by the cruelest of tortures, because he had argued with you about the manner in which three persons can make a single substance." Then all the judges ordered the cardinal of Lorraine thrown into the abyss, but C . . . , to be punished even more severely.
I saw an immense crowd of dead who said: "I believed, I believed"; but on their foreheads it was written, "I acted" and they were condemned.
The Jesuit Le Tellier proudly appeared, the bull Unigenitus in his hand. But at his side a pile of two thousand lettres de cachet suddenly heaped itself up. A Jansenist set fire to them: Le Tellier was burned to a cinder; and the Jansenist, who had plotted no less than the Jesuit, received his share of the burning too.
I saw troops of fakirs arriving right and left, Buddhist priests, white, black, and gray monks, who all imagined that in order to pay their court to the Supreme Being, they must either chant or scourge themselves, or walk stark naked. I heard a terrible voice ask them: "What good did you do mankind?" This question was succeeded by a gloomy silence; no one dared to answer; presently they were all led off to the madhouse of the universe: that's one of the biggest buildings you can imagine.
One shouted: "We must believe in the metamorphoses of Xaca"; another: "In those of Sammonocodom."—"Bacchus stopped the sun and the moon," said that one. "Here is the bull In Coena Domini," said a newcomer; and the judges' usher shouted: "To the madhouse, to the madhouse!"
When all these cases were completed, I heard this judgment promulgated:
"By order of the eternal Creator, Conserver, Rewarder, Avenger, Forgiver, etc., etc., be it known to all the inhabitants of the hundred thousand millions of billions of worlds it has pleased us to create, that we will never judge any of the said inhabitants on their chimerical ideas, but solely on their actions; for such is our justice."
I confess that this was the first time I heard such an edict: all the ones I have read on the little grain of sand where I was born end with these words: For such is our pleasure.
"Fanaticism"
Fanaticism is to superstition what delirium is to fever and rage to anger. The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities and his fancies for prophecies, is an enthusiast; the man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic. Jean Diaz, in retreat at Nuremberg, was firmly convinced that the pope was the Antichrist of the Apocalypse, and that he bore the sign of the beast; he was merely an enthusiast; his brother, Bartholomew Diaz, who came from Rome to assassinate his brother out of piety, and who did in fact kill him for the love of God, was one of the most abominable fanatics ever raised up by superstition.
Polyeucte, who goes to the temple on a solemn holiday to knock over and smash the statues and ornaments, is a less dreadful but no less ridiculous fanatic than Diaz. The assassins of the duke François de Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henri III, of King Henri IV, and of so many others, were fanatics sick with the same mania as Diaz.
The most detestable example of fanaticism was that of the burghers of Paris who on St. Bartholomew's Night went about assassinating and butchering all their fellow citizens who did not go to mass, throwing them out of windows, cutting them in pieces.
There are cold-blooded fanatics: such as judges who condemn to death those who have committed no other crime than failing to think like them; and these judges are all the more guilty, all the more deserving of the execration of mankind, since, unlike Clément, Châtel, Ravaillac, Damiens, they were not suffering from an attack of insanity; surely they should have been able to listen to reason.
Once fanaticism has corrupted a mind, the malady is almost incurable. I have seen convulsionaries who, speaking of the miracles of St. Pâris, gradually grew impassioned despite themselves: their eyes got inflamed, their limbs trembled, madness disfigured their faces, and they would have killed anyone who contradicted them.
The only remedy for this epidemic malady is the philosophical spirit which, spread gradually, at last tames men's habits and prevents the disease from starting; for, once the disease has made any progress, one must flee and wait for the air to clear itself. Laws and religion are not strong enough against the spiritual pest; religion, far from being healthy food for infected brains, turns to poison in them. These miserable men have forever in their minds the example of Ehud, who assassinated king Eglon; of Judith, who cut off Holofernes' head while she was sleeping with him; of Samuel, who chopped king Agag in pieces. They cannot see that these examples which were respectable in antiquity are abominable in the present; they borrow their frenzies from the very religion that condemns them.
Even the law is impotent against these attacks of rage; it is like reading a court decree to a raving maniac. These fellows are certain that the holy spirit with which they are filled is above the law, that their enthusiasm is the only law they must obey.
What can we say to a man who tells you that he would rather obey God than men, and that therefore he is sure to go to heaven for butchering you?
Ordinarily fanatics are guided by rascals, who put the dagger into their hands; these latter resemble that Old Man of the Mountain who is supposed to have made imbeciles taste the joys of paradise and who promised them an eternity of the pleasures of which he had given them a foretaste, on condition that they assassinated all those he would name to them. There is only one religion in the world that has never been sullied by fanaticism, that of the Chinese men of letters. The schools of philosophers were not only free from this pest, they were its remedy; for the effect of philosophy is to make the soul tranquil, and fanaticism is incompatible with tranquility. If our holy religion has so often been corrupted by this infernal delirium, it is the madness of men which is at fault.
"Toleration"
What is toleration? It is the endowment of humanity. We are all steeped in weaknesses and errors; let us forgive each other our follies; that is the first law of nature.
In the stock exchanges of Amsterdam, London, Surat, or Basra, the Gheber, the Banian, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Chinese Deist, the Brahmin, the Greek Christian, the Roman Christian, the Protestant Christian, the Quaker Christian, trade with one another: they don't raise their dagger against each other to gain souls for their religion. Why then have we butchered one another almost without interruption since the first Council of Nicaea?
Constantine began by issuing an edict which tolerated all religions; but he ended up by persecuting. Before him, people denounced the Christians only because they had started to build a party in the state. The Romans permitted all cults, even that of the Jews, even that of the Egyptians, although they had so much contempt for both. Why did Rome tolerate these cults? Because neither the Egyptians nor even the Jews tried to exterminate the ancient religion of the empire; they didn't cross land and sea to make proselytes, but thought only of making money. It is undeniable, however, that the Christians wanted their religion to be the dominant one. The Jews didn't want the statue of Jupiter in Jerusalem; but the Christians didn't want it in the capitol. St. Thomas was candid enough to confess that if the Christians hadn't dethroned the emperors, it was because they couldn't. It was their view that the whole world should be Christian. They were therefore necessarily the enemies of the whole world, until it was converted.
Among themselves, they battled each other over every controversial point. First of all, was it necessary to regard Jesus Christ as God? Those who denied it were anathematized under the name of Ebionites, who in turn anathematized the worshipers of Jesus.
When some of them wanted all goods to be held in common, as they supposedly were in the age of the apostles, their adversaries called them Nicolaites and accused them of the most infamous crimes. When others laid claim to mystical devotion, they were called Gnostics, and people attacked them furiously. When Marcion disputed over the Trinity, he was called an idolater.
Tertullian, Praxcas, Origen, Novatus, Novatian, Sabellius, Donatus, were all persecuted by their brethren before Constantine; and hardly had Constantine made the Christian religion prevail than the Athanasians and the Eusebians tore each other to pieces; and from that time on down to our day the Christian Church has been inundated in blood.
I admit the Jewish people was a pretty barbarous people. It butchered without pity all the inhabitants of an unfortunate little country to which it had no more right than it had to Paris and London. Still, when Naaman was cured of his leprosy by plunging seven times into the Jordan; when, to show his gratitude to Elisha, who had taught him this secret, he told him that he would worship the God of the Jews out of gratitude, he reserved to himself the liberty to worship the God of his king at the same time; he asked Elisha's permission to do so, and the prophet didn't hesitate to give it to him. The Jews worshiped their God; but they were never astonished that each nation should have its own. They thought it right that Chemosh gave a certain district to the Moabites, provided their God gave them one too. Jacob didn't hesitate to marry the daughters of an idolater. Laban had his God as Jacob had his. These are examples of toleration among the most intolerant and cruel nation of all antiquity: we have imitated it in its irrational frenzies and not in its leniency.
It is clear that every individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of his opinion, is a monster. There is no problem about that. But the government, the magistrates, the princes, how shall they deal with those who have a religion different from theirs? If they are powerful foreigners, it is certain that a prince will make an alliance with them. Francis I, Most Christian, allies himself with the Muslims against Charles the Fifth, Most Catholic. Francis I gives money to the Lutherans of Germany to support their rebellion against the emperor; but he begins by having the Lutherans in his own country burned, as is the practice. He pays them in Saxony for political reasons; he burns them in Paris for political reasons. But what will happen? The persecutions make proselytes; soon France is full of new Protestants. At first they allow themselves to be hanged, and afterward they do some hanging in their own turn. There are civil wars, then comes Saint Bartholomew, and this corner of the world is worse than anything the ancients and the moderns ever said about Hell.
Maniacs, who have never been able to offer pure worship to the God who made you! Wretches, who could never learn from the example of the Noachides, the Chinese literati, the Parsis, and all the sages! Monsters, who need superstitions as the gizzard of a raven needs carrion! We have already told you, and there is nothing more to say: if there are two religions in your country, they will cut one another's throats; if there are thirty of them, they will live in peace. Look at the Grand Turk: he governs Ghebers, Banians, and Greek, Nestorian, Roman Christians. The first man who stirs up a tumult is impaled, and all is peaceful.
"Toleration"—Second Section
Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most toleration, but till now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.
Because Jesus stooped to be born in poverty and humble estate, like his brothers, he never deigned to practice the art of writing. The Jews had a law written in the greatest detail, but we don't have a single line from the hand of Jesus. The apostles disagreed on a number of points. St. Peter and St. Barnabas ate forbidden meat with foreigners recently turned Christian and then abstained with Jewish Christians. St. Paul reproached them for this conduct, and this very St. Paul—Pharisee, disciple of the Pharisee Gamaliel, the very St. Paul who had persecuted the Christians with fury, and who turned Christian himself after he broke with Gamaliel—nevertheless went afterward to sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem, in the temple of his apostolate. For a week he publicly observed all the ceremonies of the Judaic law, which he had renounced; he even performed supererogatory devotions and purifications; he Judaized completely. For a week the greatest apostle of the Christians did the very things for which men are condemned to the stake in most Christian nations.
Theodas and Judas had called themselves Messiahs before Jesus. Dositheus, Simon, Menander, called themselves Messiahs after Jesus. From the first century of the Church onward, and even before the name of Christian was known, there was a score of sects in Judea.
The contemplative Gnostics, the Dositheans, the Corinthians, existed before the disciples of Jesus took the name of Christians. Soon there were thirty gospels, each of which belonged to a different society; and from the end of the first century we can count thirty sects of Christians in Asia Minor, Syria, Alexandria, and even Rome.
All these sects, despised by the Roman government and concealed in their obscurity, nevertheless persecuted each other in the tunnels in which they crept; that is, they insulted each other, for that was all they were able to do in their abjectness—they were almost wholly made up of the scum of the people.
When at last some Christians adopted the doctrines of Plato and mixed a little philosophy with their religion, they separated from the Jewish cult and gradually won some eminence. But they remained divided into sects; there was never a time when the Christian Church was United. It was born amid the divisions of the Jews—Samaritans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Judaites, disciples of John, Therapeutes. It was divided in its cradle; it was even divided during the occasional persecutions it endured under the first emperors. Often the martyr was regarded as an apostate by his brethren, and the Carpocratian Christian expired under the sword of the Roman executioner, excommunicated by the Ebionite Christian, which Ebionite had been anathematized by the Sabellian.
The terrible dissension which has endured for so many centuries is a striking lesson teaching us mutually to forgive our errors; dissension is the great evil of mankind, and toleration is its only remedy.
There is nobody who doesn't agree with this truth, whether he meditates calmly in his study or amicably examines the truth with his friends. Why then do the very men who embrace kindness, beneficence, and justice in private denounce these virtues in public with so much fury? Why? Because their self-interest is their god, because they sacrifice everything to the monster they worship.
I possess a dignity and power founded on ignorance and credulity; I tread on the heads of men prostrate at my feet: if they stand up and look me in the face, I am lost; therefore I must keep them bound to the ground with chains of iron.
Thus argue the men whom centuries of fanaticism have made powerful. They have other powerful men below them, and these have still others, who all enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, fatten on their blood, and laugh at their foolishness. They all detest toleration, as political hackers who have enriched themselves at the public's expense are afraid to give an accounting and as tyrants dread the word freedom. Then, to top it all off, they hire fanatics to shout in a great voice:
"Respect the absurdities of my master, tremble, pay, and shut up."
This is how people have acted for a long time in a large part of the world; but today, when so many sects balance each other in power, how shall we choose among them? Every sect, as we know, is a certificate of error; there are no sects of geometers, algebraists, and arithmeticians because all the propositions of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic are true. In all other sciences men may make mistakes. What Thomist or Scotist theologian would dare to say seriously that he is sure of his facts?
If there is one sect that recalls the times of the first Christians, it is surely the Quakers. None resembles the apostles more closely. The apostles received the spirit, and the Quakers receive the spirit. The apostles and disciples spoke three or four at a time in the assembly on the third floor; the Quakers do the same on the ground floor. According to St. Paul women were allowed to preach, and according to the same St. Paul they were forbidden to; female Quakers preach by virtue of the first permission.
The apostles and disciples swore by Yes and No, the Quakers swear no differently.
No rank, no difference in attire among the disciples and the apostles; the Quakers have sleeves without buttons, and all dress in the same manner.
Jesus Christ did not baptize any of his apostles; the Quakers are not baptized.
It would be easy to push the parallel further; it would be even easier to see how the Christian religion of today differs from the religion that Jesus practiced. Jesus was a Jew, and we are not Jews. Jesus abstained from pork because it was impure, and from rabbit because it ruminated and did not have a cloven foot; we boldly eat pork because for us it is not impure, and rabbit which has a cloven foot and doesn't ruminate.
Jesus was circumcised, and we retain our foreskin. Jesus ate the paschal lamb with lettuce, he celebrated the feast of the tabernacles, and we do neither. He observed the sabbath, and we have changed it; he sacrificed, and we do not sacrifice.
Jesus always concealed the mystery of his incarnation and his rank; he did not say that he was equal to God; St. Paul says expressly in his Epistle to the Hebrews that God created Jesus lower than the angels; and despite ill the words of St. Paul, Jesus was acknowledged to be God at the Council of Nicaea.
Jesus gave the pope neither the borderland of Ancona, nor the duchy of Spoleto; and yet the pope has them by divine right.
Jesus did not make a sacrament of marriage or of holy orders; and with us, holy orders and marriage are sacraments.
If we wish to study the matter closely: the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion is in all its ceremonies and dogmas the opposite of the religion of Jesus.
But really! Must we all Judaize because Jesus Judaized all his life?
If we were allowed to argue consistently in religious matters, it is clear that we should all turn Jews, because Jesus Christ our Saviour was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, and died as a Jew, and because he said expressly that he came to realize, to fulfill, the Jewish religion. But it is even clearer that we should all mutually tolerate each other, because we are all weak, inconsistent, a prey to change and error. Should a reed bowed into the mud by the wind say to the neighboring reed, bowed in the opposite direction: "Creep in my fashion, wretch, or I'll send in a request to have you uprooted and burned"?
It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist. In an extensive republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too considerable to be placed in any single subject; he has interests of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy and glorious by oppressing his fellow-citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country.
In an extensive republic the public good is sacrificed to a thousand private views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one the interest of the public is more obvious, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have less extent, and, of course, are less protected.
A monarchical state ought to be of moderate extent. Were it small, it would form itself into a republic; were it very large, the nobility, possessed of great estates, far from the eye of the prince, with a private court of their own, and secure, moreover, from sudden executions by the laws and manners of the country—such a nobility, I say, might throw off their allegiance, having nothing to fear from too slow and too distant a government.
A large empire supposes a despotic authority in the person who governs. It is necessary that the quickness of the prince's resolutions should supply the distance of the places they are sent to; that fear should prevent the remissness of the distant governor or magistrate; that the law should be derived from a single person, and should shift continually, according to the accidents which necessarily multiply in a state in proportion to its extent.
A NEW PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE SLAVERY OF ASIA, AND OF THE LIBERTY OF EUROPE
In Asia they have always had great Empires; in Europe these could never subsist. Asia has larger plains; it is cut out into much more extensive divisions by mountains and seas; and as it lies more to the south, its springs are more easily dried up; the mountains are less covered with snow; and the rivers being not so large, form more contracted barriers.
Power in Asia ought then to be always despotic; for if their slavery was not severe they would soon make a division inconsistent with the nature of the country.
In Europe the natural division forms many nations of a moderate extent, in which the ruling by laws is not incompatible with the maintenance of the state; on the contrary, it is so favorable to it, that without this the state would fall into decay, and become a prey to its neighbors.
It is this which has formed a genius for liberty that renders every part extremely difficult to be subdued and subjected to a foreign power, otherwise than by the laws and the advantage of commerce.
On the contrary, there reigns in Asia a servile spirit, which they have never been able to shake off, and it is impossible to find in all the histories of that country a single passage that discovers a freedom of spirit; we shall never see anything there but the excess of slavery.
What is necessary that a nation should subsist and prosper? Individual effort and public functions.
All individual efforts may be included in four classes: (1) Since the earth and the waters furnish crude products for the needs of man, the first class, in logical sequence, will be that of all families which devote themselves to agricultural labor. (2) Between the first sale of products and their consumption or use, a new manipulation, more of less repeated, adds to these products a second value more or less composite. In this manner human industry succeeds in perfecting the gifts of nature, and the crude product increases twofold, tenfold, one hundred-fold in value. Such are the efforts of the second class. (3) Between production and consumption, as well as between the various stages of production, a group of intermediary agents establish themselves, useful both to producers and consumers; these are the merchants and brokers: the brokers who, comparing incessantly the demands of time and place, speculate upon the profit of retention and transportation; merchants who are charged with distribution, in the last analysis, either at wholesale or at retail. This species of utility characterizes the third class. (4) Outside of these three classes of productive and useful citizens, who are occupied with real objects of consumption and use, there is also need in a society of a series of efforts and pains, whose objects are directly useful or agreeable to the individual. This fourth class embraces all those who stand between the most distinguished and liberal professions and the less esteemed services of domestics.
Such are the efforts which sustain society. Who puts them forth? The Third Estate.
Public functions may be classified equally well, in the present state of affairs, under four recognized heads: the sword, the robe, the church, and the administration. It would be superfluous to take them up one by one, for the purpose of showing that everywhere the Third Estate attends to nineteen-twentieths of them, with this distinction; that it is laden with all that which is really painful, with all the burdens which the privileged classes refuse to carry. Do we give the Third Estate credit for this? That this might come about, it would be necessary that the Third Estate should refuse to fill these places, or that it should be less ready to exercise their functions. The facts are well known. Meanwhile they have dared to impose a prohibition upon the order of the Third Estate. They have said to it: "Whatever may be your services, whatever may be your abilities, you shall go thus far; you may not pass beyond!" Certain rare exceptions, properly regarded, are but a mockery, and the terms which are indulged in on such occasions, one insult the more.
If this exclusion is a social crime against the Third Estate; if it is a veritable act of hostility, could it perhaps be said that it is useful to the public weal? Alas! who is ignorant of the effects of monopoly? If it discourages those whom it rejects, is it not well known that it tends to render less able those whom it favors? It is not understood that every employment from which free competition is removed, becomes dearer and less effective?
In setting aside any function whatsoever to serve as an appanage for a distinct class among citizens, is it not to be observed that it is no longer the man alone who does the work that it is necessary to reward, but all the unemployed members of that same caste, and also the entire families of those who are employed as well as those who are not? Is it not to be remarked that since the government has become the patrimony of a particular class, it has been distended beyond all measure; places have been created, not on account of the necessities of the governed, but in the interests of the governing, etc., etc.? Has not attention been called to the fact that this order of things, which is basely and—I even presume to say—beastly respectable with us, when we find it in reading the History of Ancient Egypt or the accounts of Voyages to the Indies, is despicable, monstrous, destructive of all industry, the enemy of social progress; above all degrading to the human race in general, and particularly intolerable to Europeans, etc., etc.? But I must leave these considerations, which, if they increase the importance of the subject and throw light upon it, perhaps, along with the new light, slacken our progress.
It suffices here to have made it clear that the pretended utility of a privileged order for the public service is nothing more than a chimera; that with it all that which is burdensome in this service is performed by the Third Estate; that without it the superior places would be infinitely better filled; that they naturally ought to be the lot and the recompense of ability and recognized services, and that if privileged persons have come to usurp all the lucrative and honorable posts, it is a hateful injustice to the rank and file of citizens and at the same time a treason to the public weal.
Who then shall dare to say that the Third Estate has not within itself all that is necessary for the formation of a complete nation? It is the strong and robust man who has one arm still shackled. If the privileged order should be abolished, the nation would be nothing less, but something more. Therefore, what is the Third Estate? Everything; but an everything shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? Everything, but an everything free and flourishing. Nothing can succeed without it, everything would be infinitely better without the others.
It is not sufficient to show that privileged persons, far from being useful to the nation, cannot but enfeeble and injure it; it is necessary to prove further that the noble order does not enter at all into the social organization; that it may indeed be a burden upon the nation, but that it cannot of itself constitute a nation.
In the first place, it is not possible in the number of all the elementary parts of a nation to find a place for the caste of nobles. I know that there are individuals in great number whom infirmities, incapacity, incurable laziness, or the weight of bad habits render strangers to the labors of society. The exception and the abuse are everywhere found beside the rule. But it will be admitted that the less there are of these abuses, the better it will be for the State. The worst possible arrangement of all would be where not alone isolated individuals, but a whole class of citizens should take pride in remaining motionless in the midst of the general movement, and should consume the best part of the product without bearing any part in its production. Such a class is surely estranged to the nation by its indolence.
The noble order is not less estranged from the generality of us by its civil and political prerogatives.
What is a nation? A body of associates, living under a common law, and represented by the same legislature, etc.
It is not evident that the noble order has privileges and expenditures which it dares to call its rights, but which are apart from the rights of the great body of citizens? It departs there from the common order, from the common law. So its civil rights make of it an isolated people in the midst of the great nation. This is truly imperium in imperio.
In regard to its political rights, these also it exercises apart. It has its special representatives, which are not charged with securing the interests of the people. The body of its deputies sit apart; and when it is assembled in the same hall with the deputies of simple citizens, it is none the less true that its representation is essentially distinct and separate: it is a stranger to the nation, in the first place, by its origin, since its commission is not derived from the people; then by its object, which consists of defending not the general, but the particular interest.
The Third Estate embraces then all that which belongs to the nation; and all that which is not the Third Estate, cannot be regarded as being of the nation. What is the Third Estate? It is the whole.
ARTICLE I. The National Assembly hereby completely abolishes the feudal system. It decrees that, among the existing rights and dues, both feudal and censuel, all those originating in or representing real or personal serfdom (mainwork) or personal servitude, shall be abolished without indemnification. All other dues are declared redeemable, the terms and mode of redemption to be fixed by the National Assembly. Those of the said dues which are not extinguished by this decree shall continue to be collected until indemnification shall take place.
II. The exclusive right to maintain pigeon-houses and dove-cotes is abolished. The pigeons shall be confined during the seasons fixed by the community. During such periods they shall be looked upon as game, and everyone shall have the right to kill them upon his own land.
III. The exclusive right to hunt and to maintain unenclosed warrens is likewise abolished, and every land owner shall have the right to kill or to have destroyed on his own land all kinds of game, observing, however, such police regulations as may be established with a view to the safety of the public.
All hunting captainries, including the royal forests, and all hunting rights under whatever denomination, are likewise abolished. Provision shall be made, however, in a manner compatible with the regard due to property and liberty, for maintaining the personal pleasures of the king.
The president of the assembly shall be commissioned to ask of the King the recall of those sent to the galleys or exiled, simply for violations of the hunting regulations, as well as for the release of those at present imprisoned for offenses of this kind, and the dismissal of such cases as are now pending.
IV. All manorial courts are hereby suppressed without indemnification. But the magistrates of these courts shall continue to perform their functions until such time as the National Assembly shall provide for the establishment of a new judicial system.
V. Tithes of every description, as well as the dues which have been substituted for them, under whatever denomination they are known or collected (even when compounded for), possessed by secular or regular congregations, by holders of benefices, members of corporations (including the Order of Malta and other religious and military orders,) as well as those devoted to the maintenance of churches, those impropriated to lay persons and those substituted for the portion congrue, are abolished, on condition, however, that some other method be devised to provide for the expenses of divine worship, the support of the officiating clergy, for the assistance of the poor, for repairs and rebuilding of churches and parsonages, and for the maintenance of all institutions, seminaries, schools, academies, asylums, and organizations to which the present funds are devoted. Until such provision shall be made and the former possessors shall enter upon the enjoyment of an income on the new system, the National Assembly decrees that the said tithes shall continue to be collected according to law and in the customary manner.
Other tithes, of whatever nature they may be, shall be redeemable in such manner as the Assembly shall determine. Until such regulation shall be issued, the National Assembly decrees that these, too, shall continue to be collected.
VI. All perpetual ground rents, payable either in money or in kind, of whatever nature they may be, whatever their origin and to whomsoever they may be due, as to members of corporations, holders of the domain or appanages or to the Order of Malta, shall be redeemable. Champarts, of every kind and under all denominations, shall likewise be redeemable at a rate fixed by the Assembly. No due shall in the future be created which is not redeemable.
VII. The sale of judicial and municipal offices shall be suppressed forthwith. Justice shall be dispensed gratis. Nevertheless, the magistrates at present holding such offices shall continue to exercise their functions and to receive their emoluments until the Assembly shall have made provision for indemnifying them.
VIII. The fees of the country priests are abolished, and shall be discontinued so soon as provision shall be made for increasing the minimum salary [portion congrue] of the parish priests and the payment to the curates. A regulation shall be drawn up to determine the status of the priests in the towns.
IX. Pecuniary privileges, personal or real, in the payment of taxes are abolished forever. Taxes shall be collected from all the citizens, and from all property, in the same manner and in the same form. Plans shall be considered by which the taxes shall be paid proportionally by all, even for the last six months of the current year.
X. Inasmuch as a national constitution and public liberty are of more advantage to the provinces than the privileges which some of these enjoy, and inasmuch as the surrender of such privileges is essential to the intimate union of all parts of the realm [empire], it is decreed that all the peculiar privileges, pecuniary or otherwise, of the provinces, principalities, districts [pays], cantons, cities and communes, are once for all abolished and are absorbed into the law common to all Frenchmen.
XI. All citizens, without distinction of birth, are eligible to any office or dignity, whether ecclesiastical, civil or military; and no profession shall imply any derogation.
XII. Hereafter no remittances shall be made for annates or for any other purpose to the court of Rome, the vice-legation at Avignon, or to the nunciature at Lucerne. The clergy of the diocese shall apply to their bishops in regard to the filling of benefices and dispensations the which shall be granted gratis without regard to reservations, expectancies and papal months, all the churches of France enjoying the same freedom.
XIII. The rights of dèport, of cotte-morte, dèpouilles, vacat, droits, censaux, Peters pence, and other dues of the same kind, under whatever denomination, established in favor of bishops, archdeacons, archpresbyters, chapters, and regular congregations which formerly exercised priestly functions [curés primitifs], are abolished, but appropriate provision shall be made for those benefices of archdeacons and archpresbyters which are not sufficiently endowed.
XIV. Pluralities shall not be permitted hereafter in cases where the revenue from the benefice or benefices held shall exceed the sum of three thousand livres. Nor shall any individual be allowed to enjoy several pensions from benefices, or a pension and a benefice, if the revenue which he already enjoys from such sources exceeds the same sum of three thousand livres.
XV. The National Assembly shall consider, in conjunction with the King, the report which is to be submitted to it relating to pensions, favors and salaries, with a view to suppressing all such as are not deserved and reducing those which shall prove excessive; and the amount shall be fixed which the King may in future disburse for this purpose.
XVI. The National Assembly decrees that a medal shall be struck in memory of the recent grave and important deliberations for the welfare of France, and that a Te Deum shall be chanted in gratitude in all the parishes and the churches of France.
XVII. The National Assembly solemnly proclaims the King, Louis XVI., the Restorer of French Liberty.
XVIII. The National Assembly shall present itself in a body before the King, in order to submit to him the decrees which have just been passed, to tender to him the tokens of its most respectful gratitude and to pray him to permit the Te Deum to be chanted in his chapel, and to be present himself at this service.
XIX. The National Assembly shall consider, immediately after the constitution, the drawing up of the laws necessary for the development of the principles which it has laid down in the present decree. The latter shall be transmitted without delay by the deputies to all the provinces, together with the decree of the tenth of this month, in order that it may be printed, published, announced from the parish pulpits, and posted up wherever it shall be deemed necessary.
The number of individuals in France is about 26 million; but according to calculations that seem to be very definite, the number of active citizens, with deductions made for women, minors, and all those who are deprived of political rights for legitimate reasons, is reduced to one-sixth of the total population. One must only count therefore about 4,400,000 citizens qualifying to vote in the primary assemblies of their canton [local administrative unit]. . . .
The Committee proposes that the necessary qualifications for the title of active citizen in the primary assembly of the canton be: (1) to be French or to have become French; (2) to have reached one's majority [be a legal adult; the age was set at 25]; (3) to have resided in the canton for at least one year; (4) to pay direct taxes at a rate equal to the local value of three days of work, a value that will be assessed in monetary terms by the provincial assemblies; (5) to not be at the moment a servant, that is to say, in personal relationships that are all too incompatible with the independence necessary to the exercise of political rights.
To be eligible for office, either at the town or departmental level, one must have fulfilled all the conditions cited above with the sole difference that instead of paying a direct tax equal to the local value of three days of work, one must pay one equal to the value of ten days of work.
All citizens, whoever they are, have the right to aspire to all levels of office-holding. Nothing is more in line with your declaration of rights, according to which all privileges, all distinctions, all exceptions must disappear. The Constitution establishes that sovereignty resides in the people, in all the individuals of the people. Each individual therefore has the right to participate in making the law which governs him and in the administration of the public good which is his own. If not, it is not true that all men are equal in rights, that every man is a citizen. If he who only pays a tax equivalent to a day of work has fewer rights than he who pays the equivalent to three days of work, and he who pays at the level of ten days has more rights than he whose tax only equals the value of three; then he who enjoys 100,000 livres of revenue has 100 times as many rights as he who only has 1,000 livres of revenue. It follows from all your decrees that every citizen has the right to participate in making the law and consequently that of being an elector or eligible for office without distinction of wealth.
Sirs, in the declaration that you believed you should put at the head of the French constitution you have established, consecrated, the rights of man and citizen. In the constitutional work that you have decreed relative to the organization of the municipalities, a work accepted by the King, you have fixed the conditions of eligibility that can be required of citizens. It would seem, Sirs, that there is nothing else left to do and that prejudices should be silent in the face of the language of the law; but an honorable member has explained to us that the non-Catholics of some provinces still experience harassment based on former laws, and seeing them excluded from the elections and public posts, another honorable member has protested against the effect of prejudice that persecutes some professions. This prejudice, these laws, force you to make your position clear. I have the honor to present you with the draft of a decree, and it is this draft that I defend here. I establish in it the principle that professions and religious creed can never become reasons for ineligibility. . . .
The professions that the adversaries of my opinion claim to mark as infamous come down to two: the executioners and the actors who occupy our various theaters. I blush to compare the children of the arts with the instrument of the penal laws, but the objections force me to it. . . . What the law orders is inherently good; the law orders the death of a guilty person, the executioner only obeys the law. It is against all justice for the law to inflict upon him a legal punishment; it is against reason to tell him, do this and if you do it, you will be considered infamous.
I pass to the discussion of actors, and I will certainly have less trouble disarming a prejudice that has been weakened for a long time by the influence of the Enlightenment, the love of the arts, and reason. I will not say to you, Sirs, all that they have been and all that they can be. Several causes have motivated the opinion that attacks them: the license of morals, and let us not forget, Sirs, that a government that never had another goal than to compel obedience often had to take measures to corrupt and that the plays, by their influence both on morals and on opinions, have been directed toward this goal by the police, one of the most corrupt branches of the former administration. . . . In any case, we should either forbid plays altogether or remove the dishonor associated with acting. Nothing infamous should endure in the eyes of the law, and nothing that the law permits is infamous.
I have said enough about the professions; I come to the subject of religion, without doubt much more important. . . . There is no middle way possible: either you admit a national religion, subject all your laws to it, arm it with temporal power, exclude from your society the men who profess another creed and then, erase the article in your declaration of rights [freedom of religion]; or you permit everyone to have his own religious opinion, and do not exclude from public office those who make use of this permission. . . .
Every creed has only one test to pass in regard to the social body: it has only one examination to which it must submit, that of its morals. It is here that the adversaries of the Jewish people attack me. This people, they say, is not sociable. They are commanded to loan at usurious rates; they cannot be joined with us either in marriage or by the bonds of social interchange; our food is forbidden to them; our tables prohibited; our armies will never have Jews serving in the defense of the fatherland. The worst of these reproaches is unjust; the others are only specious. Usury is not commanded by their laws; loans at interest are forbidden between them and permitted with foreigners. . . .
This usury so justly censured is the effect of our own laws. Men who have nothing but money can only work with money: that is the evil. Let them have land and a country and they will loan no longer: that is the remedy. As for their unsociability, it is exaggerated. Does it exist? What do you conclude from it in principle? Is there a law that obliges me to marry your daughter? Is there a law that obliges me to eat hare [a kind of rabbit] and to eat it with you? No doubt these religious oddities will disappear; and if they do survive the impact of philosophy and the pleasure of finally being true citizens and sociable men, they are not infractions to which the law can or should pertain.
But, they say to me, the Jews have their own judges and laws. I respond that is your fault and you should not allow it. We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals. We must withdraw recognition from their judges; they should only have our judges. We must refuse legal protection to the maintenance of the so-called laws of their Judaic organization; they should not be allowed to form in the state either a political body or an order. They must be citizens individually. But, some will say to me, they do not want to be citizens. Well then! If they do not want to be citizens, they should say so, and then, we should banish them. It is repugnant to have in the state an association of non-citizens, and a nation within the nation. . . . In short, Sirs, the presumed status of every man resident in a country is to be a citizen.
The exclusion of executioners is not at all founded on prejudice. It is in the soul of every good man to shudder at the sight of him who assassinates in cold blood his fellow man. . . .
I go on to actors. The opinion that excludes them is not at all a prejudice; on the contrary, it honors the people who thought of it. Morals are the first law; the profession of acting essentially violates this law, because it removes a son from paternal authority. Revolutions in opinion cannot be as quick as our decrees. Some have always made use of a sophism by saying that men excluded from administrative functions are thereby dishonored; but you yourselves have excluded servants from your constitution. . . .
Let us go on to a subject more worthy of this Assembly. I observe first of all that the word Jew is not the name of a sect, but of a nation that has laws which it has always followed and still wishes to follow. Calling Jews citizens would be like saying that without letters of naturalization and without ceasing to be English and Danish, the English and Danish could become French. . . .
The Jews have passed through seventeen centuries without involving themselves with other nations. They have never undertaken anything other than commerce based on money; they have been the scourge of agricultural provinces; not one of them has yet known how to ennoble his hands by driving a plow. The law that they follow leaves them no time to engage in agriculture; in addition to the sabbath they have fifty-six more festivals each year than the Christians. In Poland, they have a large province. And so! The sweat of Christian slaves waters the furrows in which the opulence of the Jews germinates, and they, while their fields are thus cultivated, weigh the ducats [money] and calculate what they can remove from the currency without exposing themselves to legal penalties. . . .
In Alsace they hold 12 million mortgages on the land. In a month, they would become owners of half of this province; in ten years, they would have entirely conquered it, and it would be nothing but a Jewish colony. People feel for the Jews a hatred that cannot fail to explode as a result of this aggrandizement. For their own safety, we should table this matter.
They should not be persecuted: they are men, they are our brothers; and a curse on whomever would speak of intolerance! No one can be disturbed for his religious opinions; you have recognized this, and from that moment on you have assured Jews the most extended protection. Let them be protected therefore as individuals and not as Frenchmen for they cannot be citizens.
It should not be concluded from what I have said about the Jews that I confuse the Protestants with them. Protestants have the same religion and the same laws as us, but they do not have the same creed; however, since they already enjoy the same rights, I see no reason to deliberate on the section that concerns them in the proposed motion.