priests knocked on the head." And, in fact, "a young lady accompanied by her mother is whipped on the steps of the church." Elsewhere nuns are the sufferers, even the sisters of Saint-Vincent de Paul; and, from April, 1793, onward; the same outrages on modesty and against life are propagated from town to town. At Dijon, rods are nailed fast to the gates of all the convents; at Montpellier, two or three hundred ruffians, armed with large iron—bound sticks, murder the men and outrage the women.—Nothing remains but to put the gangsters under the shelter of an amnesty, which is done by the Constituent Assembly, and to legally sanction the animosity of local administrations, which is done by the Legislative Assembly.2281 Henceforth the nonjuring ecclesiastics are deprived of their sustenance; they are declared "suspected of revolt against the law and of evil intentions against the country."—Thus, says a contemporary Protestant, "on the strength of these suspicions and these intentions, a Directory, to which the law interdicts judicial functions, may arbitrarily drive out of his house the minister of a God of peace and charity, grown gray in the shadow of the altar" Thus, "everywhere, where disturbances occur on account of religious opinions, and whether these troubles are due to the frantic scourgers of the virtuous sisters of charity or to the ruffians armed with cow-hides who, at Nîmes and Montpellier, outrage all the laws of decorum and of liberty for six whole months, the non-juring priests are to be punished with banishment. Torn from their families whose means of living they share, they are sent away to wander on the highways, abandoned to public pity or ferocity the moment any scoundrel chooses to excite a disturbance that he can impute to them."—Thus we see approaching the revolt of the peasantry, the insurrections of Nîmes, Franche-Comté, la Vendée and Brittany, emigration, transportation; imprisonment, the guillotine or drowning for two thirds of the clergy of France, and likewise for myriads of the loyal, for husbandmen, artisans, day-laborers, seamstresses, and servants, and the humblest among the lower class of the people. This is what the laws of the Constituent Assembly are leading to.—In the institution of the clergy, as in that of the nobles and the King, it demolished a solid wall in order to dig through it an open door, and it is nothing strange if the whole structure tumbles down on the heads of its inmates. The true course was to respect, to reform, to utilize rank and corporations: all that the Assembly thought of was the abolition of these in the name of abstract equality and of national sovereignty. In order to abolish these it executed, tolerated, or initiated all the attacks on persons and on property. Those it is about to commit are the inevitable result of those which it has already committed; for, through its Constitution, bad is changed to worse, and the social edifice, already half in ruins through the clumsy havoc that is effected in it, will fall in completely under the weight of the incongruous or extravagant constructions which it proceeds to extemporize.
2201 (return) [ Cf. "The Ancient Régime," books I. and V.]
2202 (return) [ Perhaps we are here at the core of why all regimes end up becoming corrupt, inefficient and sick; their leaders take their privileges for granted and become more and more inattentive to the work which must be done if the people are to be kept at work and possible adversaries kept under control. (SR.)]
2203 (return) [ A special tax paid the king by a plebeian owning a fief. (TR)]
2204 (return) [ The right to an income from trust funds. (SR.)]
2205 (return) [ Arthur Young, I. 209, 223. "If the communes steadily refuse what is now offered to them, they put immense and certain benefits to the chance of fortune, to that hazard which may make posterity curse instead of bless their memories as real patriots who had nothing in view but the happiness of their country."]
2206 (return) [ According to valuations by the Constituent Assembly, the tax on real estate ought to bring 240,000,000 francs, and provide one-fifth of the net revenue of France, estimated at 1,200,000,000. Additionally, the personal tax on movable property, which replaced the capitation, ought to bring 60,000,000. Total for direct taxation, 300,000,000, or one-fourth—that is to say, twenty-five per cent, of the net revenue.—If the direct taxation had been maintained up to the rate of the ancient régime (190,000,000, according to Necker's report in May, 1689), this impost would only have provided one-sixth of the net revenue, or sixteen percent.]
2207 (return) [ Dumont, 267. (The words of Mirabeau three months before his death:) "Ah, my friend, how right we were at the start when we wanted to prevent the commons from declaring themselves the National Assembly! That was the source of the evil. They wanted to rule the King, instead of ruling through him."]
2208 (return) [ Gouverneur Morris, April 29, 1789 (on the principles of the future constitution), "One generation at least will be required to render the public familiar with them."]
2209 (return) [ Cf. "The Ancient Régime," book II, ch. III.]
2210 (return) [ French women did not obtain the right to vote until 1946. (SR.)]
2211 (return) [ According to Voltaire ("L'Homme aux Quarante Écus"), the average duration of human life was only twenty-three years.]
2212 (return) [ Mercure, July 6, 1790. According to the report of Camus (sitting of July 2nd), the official total of pensions amounted to thirty-two millions; but if we add the gratuities and allowances out of the various treasuries, the actual total was fifty-six millions.]
2213 (return) [ I note that today in 1998, 100 years after Taine's death, Denmark, my country, has had total democracy, that is universal suffrage for women and men of 18 years of age for a considerable time, and a witty author has noted that the first rule of our unwritten constitution is that "thou shalt not think that thou art important". I have noted, however, that when a Dane praises Denmark and the Danes even in the most excessive manner, then he is not considered as a chauvinist but admired as being a man of truth. In spite of the process of 'democratization' even socialist chieftains seem to favor and protect their own children, send them to good private schools and later abroad to study and help them to find favorable employment in the party or with the public services. A new élite is thus continuously created by the ruling political and administrative upper class. (SR.).]
2214 (return)
