Marseillaise ( Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin) Allons enfants de la patrie! Entendez-vous dans les campagnes Refrain: Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons, Que veut cet horde d'esclaves, Francais! Pour nous, ah quel outrage! Refrain Amour sacré de la patrie, Sous nos drapeaux que la Victoire Refrain Refrain |
The Marseillaise (The War Song for the Army of the Rhine) Forward children of the homeland! Do you hear the roar of ferocious soldiers Refrain: To arms, citizens, form your battalions, What do they want, this horde of slaves, French people! For us, oh what an insult! Refrain Sacred love of the homeland, Beneath our banners to which Victory Refrain Refrain |
How many times, whenever a public outcry echoed from all corners, has your parlement been ready to bring to the Sovereign its justifiable complaints against such obvious abuses as the Unigenitus Constitution? Touched by these public ills, only the justifiable fear of precipitously venturing facts of such importance when they have not yet been sufficiently proven in the judicial system could stop these dramatic steps.
Living in the city of Orléans, in the parish of Saint-Catherine, a woman by the name of Dupleix saw that she was falling dangerously ill from a disease and would soon die from it. She had asked the parish priest to administer the last rites. The priest went to her, but before doing anything else he asked her to state that she had submitted to the decisions of the Church. Not satisfied with the answer of this dying woman, who wanted to live and die within the Catholic, apostolic and Roman faith, the priest persisted. He asked her if she had submitted to the Unigenitus Constitution and told her that he would not administer the last rites until she accepted the Constitution. Then he left.
The illness became more threatening, and the priest was again summoned. The same questions, the same answers, the same refusal.
There are two important questionings here . . . the direct questions and preconditions requiring the dying woman to declare that she had submitted to the Constitution, as well as the priest's refusals to administer the last rites until she had satisfied him. . . .
The Church is necessarily a part of the body of the State. Any new danger from clerics, any enterprise that could lead to trouble for the State or shake the solid foundations of public tranquility, ties and commits ecclesiastics as members of the State and as subjects of Your Majesty.
Whatever they may say, two combined issues equally involve the rights of the Church and of the State. Also, the execution of these rights and the state police power belong to Your Majesty, both as the protector of the Church or as Sovereign responsible for maintaining the peace of the kingdom.
Such are the issues of marriage and vows. Such are the public scandals that Your Majesty always has an interest in suppressing and that the regulations accomplish for a number of royal cases. Such would be the abuse that the clerics could achieve with the power that is confided to them for administering the sacraments. From that point, there would be intervention and competition between the two powers in certain cases to conduct the clerics' trial in accordance with the laws of the kingdom. From that point, there would begin a means of recourse to the sovereign's authority or appeals as abuses, almost as old as the monarchy and that has been so useful to preceding kings, conserving the rights of your throne and our freedoms which always provide it the greatest support.
To contest the sovereign's rights in these important matters under the pretext that they deal directly or indirectly with the spirituality or administration of the sacraments, would be to attack the most permanent maxims and open a sure and easy way for clerics to increase their power and ruin royal authority. And in all of these cases your parlement, tasked by you and under your authority with watching over the public peace in the kingdom, has the right and obligation to propose legitimate solutions to this task as circumstances warrant and as soon as necessary.
If a confessor, unworthy of the sanctity of his ministry, got carried away to the point of profaning the sacraments in order to seduce the person confessing, whether it be on a spiritual or administrative matter, who could doubt that this abuse of the holy mysteries did not constitute an external and public crime which would immediately subject him to temporal law and the legitimate authority of the magistrates who exercise this justice in Your name? . . .
Sire, we know that the love of your People and the zeal and fidelity of your parlement is sufficient to prevent and ward off these extreme ills which we can only remember with sorrow. But the enslavement of the principles that strengthen royal authority and the tranquility of the State are the same in all of these cases mentioned above.
The sovereign to whom providence has confided the government of this great kingdom is, by the sole title of king and the right of his crown, also the defender of the Church. To defend the Church is to defend its legitimate rights and its ancient canons, and to have them executed by the clerics themselves in the entire expanse of his realm. From this defense comes the title of external bishop that is accorded to emperors and sovereigns. From this defense comes many examples of trials against clerics who, while teaching the truth of the Gospel, by their spurious enthusiasm slandered and personally attacked those where listening to them. This defense is often reiterated in the decrees and laws against causing public scandals by the indiscreet refusal of those who work in front of the altar. The strict observance of these ancient canons, which make up the fundamental basis of our freedoms, also make up the laws of the State. This observance is still in the hands of Your Majesty, and as soon as the clerics infringe on it, He is in his rights and has the obligation to provide it with his authority. . . .
These immutable principles have always been the solid foundation of the monarchy, and your parlement is tasked by you with watching over the public order. It has learned however that under the direction of a few bishops the priests of their dioceses are trying to establish the Constitution as a rule of faith, or at least all of the characteristics of such. They are attempting to remove the communion of the faithful from the heart of the Church, as well as all participation in the sacraments by those of your subjects who do not state above all else that they accept the Constitution purely and simply. Your parlement has the proof, acquired through judicial inquiry and by similar depositions given by honest witnesses, that under this pretext the parish priest of Saint-Catherine persists in repeatedly refusing to allow a sick woman to die without the sacraments. This woman states that she wants to die in the communion of the Catholic, apostolic and roman Church.
The threat of her imminent death increases every second. Based on new complaints, your parlement again sends back a request to the bishop of the diocese to provide the sacrament. At the same time, it is forced to again remind him of the need to warn us of anything that he deals with that could tend to disrupt the peace of the Church and State. . . . What will the consequences be when clerics can use fear to wring declarations that they have no right to require from people who would never declare as much if they were fully conscious and with their full faculties? With such suspect and dangerous ways as these to spread the rights of the Constitution, would it not be more proper to destroy them than to strengthen them? . . .
Respectfully,
Parlement, 24 July 1731
Signed: Portail.
11 August 1764
Sire,
The magistracy of your kingdom has been continuously resented by those who have undertaken to change the principles of government. At this moment, your parlement is undergoing cruel proof of this. Brittany has exemptions and immunities which have never been touched, consecrated by the most authentic titles. They form a law similar to the common law of the kingdom, which was peacefully enforced until recently.
The administration of Saint Louis [IX], the decisions of the Estates-General at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and the rulings of 1355, 1560, and 1576, allow little doubt that under the common law of France the consent of the three orders in the assembly of the Estates-General is required to establish or prorogate taxes. . . .
Sire, your parlement, trustee of the laws of the kingdom and guardian of the provinceÕs exemptions and freedoms, has not been able to simply watch them come under attack without calling for Your MajestyÕs justice against this abuse of his authority.
Bound by oath to this precious duty, it can not maintain a guilty silence when the law is being broken. In a monarchical state, it is the preservation of the law which guarantees the security of the monarch and his subjects. This form of government, more perfect than all others, assures that a prince like Your Majesty who wishes to reign in accordance with the laws, will receive the obedience and love of his subjects. Quite unlike despots who recognize no other law than that of their own will, Your Majesty has nothing to fear from these resolutions inspired by tyranny. His will is always in harmony with the law that his people have voluntarily received, consequently the peopleÕs will shall always reflect that of his majesty. . . .
We cannot keep it from you Sire. For a long time now, there has been those working to subjugate a free province of your fortunate realm. The constitution is being undermined and overturned. Everywhere limitations are being placed on the exemptions and freedoms which you yourself enlist us to preserve. The mayors and city representatives to the estates, elected from time immemorial by free vote in the community, can now only be elected with the approval of your commissioners. These commissioners must now also approve the choice, previously made freely by the province, of the men entrusted to distribute and collect the subscribed taxes. Finally, by a surprising order of your council on 12 October 1762, the estates were crushed by destroying their essential and original institution.
A decision which, though couched in no legal form, discounts all titles and customs, rulings and constitutions, common law and national law. A decision which, without any exemptive clause, contradicts and abrogates the oldest and wisest laws, and cannot but be regarded as having been falsely defended to Your Majesty. Sire, in general such is the administration whose members had the temerity to assure you that the province was satisfied.
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.
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.
A great question is pending before the supreme tribunal of France. Will the Jews be citizens or not?
Already, this question has been debated in the National Assembly; and the orators, whose intentions were equally patriotic, did not agree at all on the result of their discussion. Some wanted Jews admitted to civil status. Others found this admission dangerous. A third opinion consisted of preparing the complete improvement of the lot of the Jews by gradual reforms.
In the midst of all these debates, the national assembly believed that it ought to adjourn the question. . . . This adjournment was based on the necessity of further clarifying an important question; of seeking more positive information about what the Jews do and what they can be; of knowing more exactly what is in their favor and what is not; and finally, of preparing opinion by a thorough discussion for the decree, whatever it may be, that will definitively pronounce on their destiny.
It was also said that the adjournment was based on the necessity of knowing with assurance what were the true desires of the Jews; given, it was added, the disadvantages of according to this class of men rights more extensive than those they want.
But it is impossible that such a motive could have determined the decree of the National Assembly.
First, the wish of the Jews is perfectly well-known, and cannot be equivocal. They have presented it clearly in their addresses of 26 and 31 August, 1789. The Jews of Paris repeated it in a new address of 24 December. They ask that all the degrading distinctions that they have suffered to this day be abolished and that they be declared CITIZENS.
But moreover, how could it be supposed that the legislators, who trace all their principles to the immutable source of reason and justice, could have wanted to turn away in this matter from their accustomed manner of proceeding to seek what they should do, not in what should be, but solely in what is asked of them? . . . It is not therefore because it was believed important to know exactly what the desires of the Jews are, that the question was adjourned, but because it was judged worthy of a thorough investigation.
Their desires, moreover, as we have just said, are well known; and we will repeat them here. They ask to be CITIZENS.
And the right that they have to be declared such; the disadvantages that would result from a decree opposed to their wishes; all these grounds, and others still, will be set forth in this writing, with the energy suited to men who demand, not a favor, but an act of justice.
Finally, none of the objections made by their adversaries, or rather by the adversaries of their admission to civil status, will remain without response. . . .
If they only had to prevail upon justice, they would have little to say. But they have to combat a prejudice, and this prejudice is still so present in so many minds that they will always fear not having said enough. People argue, moreover, from their religion, their customs, their laws, as if they knew perfectly all these subjects; and it is important to draw attention to errors, which are in this regard widespread, accredited, and which perpetuate the prejudice that oppresses the Jews.
Here is, then, the plan of their memoir. They will begin by establishing the principles which require the right of citizens for the Jews. They will prove, next, that France itself would benefit from according this right to them. They will recall and combat the objections used to deny them civil status. Finally, they will demonstrate that the right of citizens should be accorded to the Jews without restriction and without delay; that is, that it would be at once unjust and dangerous to want to prepare them to receive citizenship by gradual improvements. . . .
[Then begins a detailed examination of the various charges against the Jews.] In truth, [the Jews] are of a religion that is condemned by the one that predominates in France. But the time has passed when one could say that it was only the dominant religion that could grant access to advantages, to prerogatives, to the lucrative and honorable posts in society. For a long time they confronted the Protestants with this maxim, worthy of the Inquisition, and the Protestants had no civil standing in France. Today, they have just been reestablished in the possession of this status; they are assimilated to the Catholics in everything; the intolerant maxim that we have just recalled can no longer be used against them. Why would they continue to use it as an argument against the Jews?
In general, civil rights are entirely independent from religious principles. And all men of whatever religion, whatever sect they belong to, whatever creed they practice, provided that their creed, their sect, their religion does not offend the principles of a pure and severe morality, all these men, we say, equally able to serve the fatherland, defend its interests, contribute to its splendor, should all equally have the title and the rights of citizen. . . .
[The Jews] are reproached at the same time for the vices that make them unworthy of civil status and the principles which render them at once unworthy and incompetent. A rapid glance at the bizarre as well as cruel destiny of these unfortunate individuals will perhaps remove the disfavor with which some seek to cover them and will show if it is right to make them all the reproaches that have been addressed to them.
Always persecuted since the destruction of Jerusalem, pursued at times by fanaticism and at others by superstition, by turn chased from the kingdoms that gave them an asylum and then called back to these same kingdoms, excluded from all the professions and arts and crafts, deprived even of the right to be heard as witnesses against a Christian, relegated to separate districts like another species of man with whom one fears having communication, pushed out of certain cities which have the privilege of not receiving them, obligated in others to pay for the air that they breathe as in Augsburg where they pay a florin an hour or in Bremen a ducat a day, subject in several places to shameful tolls. Here is the list of a part of the harassment still practiced today against the Jews.
And they would dare to complain of the state of degradation into which some of them can be plunged! They would dare to complain of their ignorance and their vices! Oh! Do not accuse the Jews, for that would only precipitate onto the Christians themselves all the weight of these accusations.
The vices of some of them are the work of the peoples who have given them shelter; the degradation of others is the fruit of the institutions that surround them. To say everything in one word, it is not at all the degradation and vices with which they are reproached that has attracted the harassment which overwhelms them but rather these harassments have produced their degradation and their vices. . . .
Let us now enter into more details. The Jews have been accused of the crime of usury. But first of all, all of them are not usurers; and it would be as unjust to punish them all for the offense of some as to punish all the Christians for the usury committed by some of them and the speculation of many. For a great many years now, moreover, the courts have heard fewer and fewer complaints about usury by the Jews. And, often, the Christians who accused them have given up their complaints.
Reflect, then, on the condition of the Jews. Excluded from all the professions, ineligible for all the positions, deprived even of the capacity to acquire property, not daring and not being able to sell openly the merchandise of their commerce, to what extremity are you reducing them? You do not want them to die, and yet you refuse them the means to live: you refuse them the means, and you crush them with taxes. You leave them therefore really no other resource than usury; and especially, you leave only this resource to the most numerous class of these individuals, for whose needs the legitimate interest from a modest sum of money is far from being sufficient. . . .
Everything that one would not have dared to undertake, moreover, or what one would only have dared to undertake with an infinity of precautions a long time ago, can now be done and one must dare to undertake it in this moment of universal regeneration, when all ideas and all sentiments take a new direction; and we must hasten to do so. Could one still fear the influence of a prejudice against which reason has appealed for such a long time, when all the former abuses are destroyed and all the former prejudices overturned? Will not the numerous changes effected in the political machine uproot from the people's minds most of the ideas that dominated them? Everything is changing; the lot of the Jews must change at the same time; and the people will not be more surprised by this particular change than by all those which they see around them everyday. This is therefore the moment, the true moment to make justice triumph: attach the improvement of the lot of the Jews to the revolution; amalgamate, so to speak, this partial revolution to the general revolution. Your efforts will be crowned with success, and the people will not protest, and time will consolidate your work and render it unshakable.
The representatives of the French people, constituted as a National Assembly, and considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public misfortunes and governmental corruption, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man: so that by being constantly present to all the members of the social body this declaration may always remind them of their rights and duties; so that by being liable at every moment to comparison with the aim of any and all political institutions the acts of the legislative and executive powers may be the more fully respected; and so that by being founded henceforward on simple and incontestable principles the demands of the citizens may always tend toward maintaining the constitution and the general welfare.
In consequence, the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and the citizen:
1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.
2. The purpose of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially in the nation. No body and no individual may exercise authority which does not emanate expressly from the nation.
4. Liberty consists in the ability to do whatever does not harm another; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no other limits than those which assure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by the law.
5. The law only has the right to prohibit those actions which are injurious to society. No hindrance should be put in the way of anything not prohibited by the law, nor may any one be forced to do what the law does not require.
6. The law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to take part, in person or by their representatives, in its formation. It must be the same for everyone whether it protects or penalizes. All citizens being equal in its eyes are equally admissible to all public dignities, offices, and employments, according to their ability, and with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.
7. No man may be indicted, arrested, or detained except in cases determined by the law and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who seek, expedite, execute, or cause to be executed arbitrary orders should be punished; but citizens summoned or seized by virtue of the law should obey instantly, and render themselves guilty by resistance.
8. Only strictly and obviously necessary punishments may be established by the law, and no one may be punished except by virtue of a law established and promulgated before the time of the offense, and legally applied.
9. Every man being presumed innocent until judged guilty, if it is deemed indispensable to arrest him, all rigor unnecessary to securing his person should be severely repressed by the law.
10. No one should be disturbed for his opinions, even in religion, provided that their manifestation does not trouble public order as established by law.
11. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may therefore speak, write, and print freely, if he accepts his own responsibility for any abuse of this liberty in the cases set by the law.
12. The safeguard of the rights of man and the citizen requires public powers. These powers are therefore instituted for the advantage of all, and not for the private benefit of those to whom they are entrusted.
13. For maintenance of public authority and for expenses of administration, common taxation is indispensable. It should be apportioned equally among all the citizens according to their capacity to pay.
14. All citizens have the right, by themselves or through their representatives, to have demonstrated to them the necessity of public taxes, to consent to them freely, to follow the use made of the proceeds, and to determine the means of apportionment, assessment, and collection, and the duration of them.
15. Society has the right to hold accountable every public agent of the administration.
16. Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured or the separation of powers not settled has no constitution.
17. Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one may be deprived of it except when public necessity, certified by law, obviously requires it, and on the condition of a just compensation in advance.
Gentlemen, my name is Jean-Baptiste Drouet, and I am the Posting-Master at Sainte-Menehould. . . . On Tuesday the 2nd at half-past seven, after dinner, I saw two carriages in front of my door, namely a coach with six passengers and a cabriolet with two. . . . In the coach there was a woman, whom I thought I recognized as the Queen, and on the seat in front of her to the left was a man. I was struck by the resemblance of his face to the likeness of the King printed on an assignat which I had with me at the time. Since the morning a detachment of about fifty dragoons had been stationed at the Inn nearby. The officer in charge went up to the carriages and spoke in a low voice to the couriers accompanying them. . . . They looked quite confused and kept repeating what they had said. My suspicions increased, but, being unwilling to cause a false alarm and having no one by me to consult, I let the carriages go. This I did most unwillingly. I was furious and ran about the place telling everyone that I believed the King was going away. I thought I had noticed that his face was pimply, but one of my uncles said I must have made a mistake. Perhaps I should have believed him if I had not seen the dragoons preparing to mount their horses. I then gave the alarm and made the drummer beat the call to arms. . . .
I met my postilions who had accompanied the King and who were coming out of Clermont at the moment that we were going in. They told me that instead of following the road to Metz, as the couriers had proposed at my posting-station, the carriages had driven towards Varennes after leaving Clermont. We went by a side-road through the woods and reached Varennes at the same time as the carriages which were drawn up alongside the houses at the top of the town. It was then about half-past eleven and the night was very dark. However, in order not to be recognized or suspected, we took off our cross-belts and only kept our swords and then, as we passed by the carriages at a walk, we said in a loud voice. "Good Lord! we'll be very late getting to Grandpre: perhaps we shan't get there with our horses dead-beat": thus trying to pass ourselves as merchants bound for the fair at Grandpre. The carriages had stopped because there is no posting-stage at Varennes, and the postilions would not go through without resting the horses. Further down the street we found an inn, where the people were still up. I took the landlord aside and said to him, "Are you a good patriot?" He replied. "You may be sure I am." "Very well, then," I went on, "the King is at the top of the hill. He'll be passing through soon. Go quickly and collect all the good citizens you know to prevent him getting away." He went off without a word. My comrade and I wanted at first to sound the alarm, but we thought that if we did so, the King might turn round and go off at a gallop before anyone could get there to prevent him and in that way would elude us. We went to the bridge, the only place where he could get through and fortunately found there a van full of old furniture.
We used it and other vehicles we found in the neighbourhood to block the bridge. We did all this in less time than it takes to tell you about it. On this side of the bridge we saw some dismounted hussars whose horses were on the other side. Then we ran to the Mayor and the Commandant of the National Guards. In less than five minutes we had collected eight or ten armed men . . . and then we marched in front of the coach which was coming down the street. We stopped it. The district attorney questioned the travellers who were they and where were they going? A lady replied that she was the Baroness de Korff (the name appeared to be German). She said she was a foreigner and that she was on her way to Frankfort. She was in a hurry and hoped that she would be allowed to pass. Asked if she had a passport, she said yes, but that she did not think it necessary to have it examined. We insisted. . . . While the passport was being examined, I said to the two ladies that I could not believe that the "baroness" was a foreigner, because if that were so she would not have the privilege in France of being escorted by detachments of dragoons and hussars. I presumed that it was the King and the Queen who were in the berline. My remarks caused the others to discuss the advantage of keeping the travelers until the next morning. The Mayor and the Attorney asked them to leave the coach, which they did without resistance. They then went to the house of the district attorney where they confessed who they were. The King said, "Here is my wife, here are my children, we adjure you to show to us the consideration which Frenchmen have always shown to their King." They were assured that they were under the protection of the law and that they had nothing to fear. This was related to me because during the conversation I was down below talking to the hussars, who were coming up with drawn swords and occupying the street. They numbered perhaps 150. Besides them the street contained about 100 men most of them armed and a great many women and children. The officer in command of the hussars, M. de Douglas or Jouglas, said that he wished to speak to the King and to guard him. He was told that he would neither guard him nor even see him. I added that if he thought he was going to snatch the King away from us, all he would get was death at our hands. I ran into the street and exhorted the women to go back to their houses, but to take with them stones to throw at the hussars, if they started any trouble. All this lasted for less than half an hour. Meantime the Commander of the National Guard had two small pieces of artillery placed at the top of the street and two others at the bottom, . . . so that the hussars would be between two fires. He ordered the officer commanding the detachment to make his men dismount and withdraw from the town. Instead of that they showed signs of slipping behind the cannons and seizing them. I seized the bridle of M. de Jouglas's horse and pushing my pistol into his chest, I cried: "Gunners, stand to. Fire if anyone moves." They took up their positions and held up the fuses, on which the hussars retreated. Then after conferring together they came and threw themselves into the arms of the National Guards. Since then they have behaved very well. Their commanding officer escaped. They made a great mistake in giving in so easily, for the guns were not loaded.