Chapter III.: That What Is Now Called “the Guardianship of the State” (Tutelle Administrative) Was an Institution of the

MUNICIPAL liberty outlived the feudal system in France. Long after the seigniors had ceased to administer the government of the rural districts, the cities retained the right of self-government. As late as the close of the seventeenth century, several towns continued to figure as little democratic republics, with magistrates freely elected by the people. Municipal life was here still active and public; the citizens were proud of their rights and jealous of their independence.

Elections were not generally abolished till 1692; after that date municipal business was transferred to offices (mis en offices), that is to say, the king sold to certain citizens of each town the right of governing the others forever.

This was destroying, not the freedom of the cities alone, but their prosperity also; for, though the sale of offices has often been followed by happy results in the case of judges, whose independence is the first condition of their usefulness, it has never failed to be most disastrous in every administrative branch of government, because there responsibility, subordination, and zeal are the conditions of efficiency. The government of the old monarchy made no mistake in the matter; it took good care to steer clear of the system it imposed on the towns—it never sold posts of intendant or sub-delegate.

History may well note with scorn that this great revolution was accomplished without the least political design. Louis XI. had curtailed municipal franchises because their democratic tendency frightened him; Louis XIV. abolished, though he did not fear them, for he sold them back again to all the towns which could afford to purchase. His object, indeed, was less to destroy their liberties than to traffic in them. When he did abolish them, it was, so to speak, a mere financial experiment, and, singular to relate, the game was kept up for eighty years. Seven times during that period did the towns purchase the right of electing their magistrates, and seven times was it taken away as soon as they had learned to appreciate its value. The motive of the measure was never varied or concealed. In the preamble to the edict of 1722, the king avowed that “the necessities of our finances compel us to resort to the most effective remedy.” The remedy was effective enough, but it was ruinous to those upon whom this new impost was laid. “I am struck,” says an intendant to the comptroller-general in 1764, “with the enormous aggregate of the sums that have been paid from time to time for the redemption of municipal offices. Had these sums been laid out in works of utility in each city, the citizens would have been great gainers; as it is, the offices have only been a burden.” I am at a loss to find another feature as shameful as this in the whole range of the old regime.

It seems difficult to tell precisely how towns were governed in the eighteenth century; for not only did the source of municipal power change continually, in the manner just described, but each city had preserved some shreds of its old constitution and its peculiar local customs. No two cities in France were, perhaps, alike in every respect, though the contrasts between them are deceptive, and conceal a general similarity.

In 1764, the Council undertook to make a general law for the government of cities. It obtained from its intendants reports on the municipal organization of each town within their province. I have discovered a portion of these reports, and a perusal has completely satisfied me that municipal matters were managed very similarly in all. There are superficial and apparent diversities; substantially the plan was the same every where.

In most cases, cities were governed by two assemblies. This is true of all the large cities, and of most of the small ones.

The first assembly was composed of municipal officers, whose number varied in different localities. This was the executive of the commune, the city corporation (corps de ville), as it used to be called. When the city had obtained or purchased from the king its municipal franchise, members of this assembly were elected for a fixed term. When the king succeeded in selling the municipal offices (which did not always happen, for this kind of merchandise was cheapened by each submission of the municipal to the central authority), they had a life-interest in the posts they bought. In neither case did the municipal officers receive a salary: in both they enjoyed privileges and exemptions from taxes. All were equal in rank; they discharged their functions collectively. No magistrate was charged with any particular supervision, authority, or responsibility. The mayor presided over the corporation, but did not administer the government of the city.

The second assembly, known as the “general assembly,” elected the corporation (wherever elections were still held), and participated in the chief affairs of the city.

In the fifteenth century, the general assembly consisted of the whole population. One of the reports mentioned above observed that this usage was “in accordance with the popular sympathies of our forefathers.” Municipal officers were chosen by the whole people. The people were consulted from time to time, and to them account was rendered by outgoing officials. This custom is still occasionally met with at the close of the seventeenth century.

In the eighteenth century the people no longer constituted the general assembly. That body was almost invariably representative. But it must be carefully borne in mind that it was, in no single city, elected by the people generally, or imbued with a popular spirit. It was invariably composed of notables, some of whom were entitled to seats in virtue of their individual station, while others were delegates from guilds and companies, and were instructed as to their course by their constituents.

With the advance of the century, the number of notables ex officio increases in these assemblies, while the deputies from industrial associations fall off, or disappear entirely. But deputies from guilds are still present; that is to say, mechanics are excluded to make room for burghers. But the people are not so easily duped by sham liberties as many imagine; they cease to take an interest in public affairs, and live at home as unconcernedly as if they were foreigners. In vain do the magistrates endeavor to revive that patriotism which did such wonders in the Middle Age; no one listens to them. No one takes the least thought for the most momentous interests of the city. The polls—deceitful relic of departed liberty—are there still, and the magistrates would be glad if people would vote; but they resolutely abstain. History teems with similar sights. Very few monarchs, from Augustus to our day, have failed to keep up the outward forms of freedom while they destroyed its substance, in the hope that they might combine the moral power of public approval with the peculiar conveniences of despotism. But the experiment has usually failed, and it has soon been found impossible to maintain a deceitful semblance of that which really has no existence.

In the eighteenth century, then, municipal government in cities had universally degenerated into oligarchy. A few families controlled the public affairs in favor of private interests, without the knowledge of or any responsibility to the public. The disease pervaded every municipal organization in France. It is perceived by all the intendants, but the only remedy they can suggest is the still farther subordination of local authorities to the central government.

They were already under pretty extensive subjection. Not only did the Council modify city governments generally, from time to time, but not unfrequently the intendants proposed for particular cities special laws, which the Council passed without preliminary inquiry, and often without the knowledge of the people; and these laws went into effect without the formality of registration. “This measure,” said the inhabitants of a city at which such an Order had been leveled, “has astonished all classes; nothing of the kind was expected.”

Cities were prohibited from establishing town-dues, or levying taxes, or hypothecating, selling, leasing, or administering their property, or going to law, or employing their surplus funds without an order in Council first rendered on the report of the intendant. All public works in cities were executed according to plans and specifications approved by an order in Council. Contracts were adjudged by the intendant or his subdelegates; the state engineer usually exercised a general superintendence over all. Those who imagine that all we see in France is new will not read this without surprise.

But the Council had even a larger share of the direction of city affairs than might be inferred from these rules. Its power was, in fact, greater than the law allowed.

I find, in a circular addressed to intendants by the comptroller-general about the middle of last century, the following language: “You will pay particular attention to the proceedings of municipal assemblies. You will require a full report of all their proceedings and debates, and transmit the same to me with your observations thereon.”

The correspondence between the intendants and their sub-delegates shows that the government had a hand in the management of all the cities in the kingdom, great and small. It was consulted on all subjects, and gave decided opinions on all; it even regulated festivals. It was the government which gave orders for public rejoicing, fireworks, and illuminations. I find it mentioned that an intendant once fined some members of the burgher guard twenty livres for absenting themselves from the Te Deum.

Municipal officers were impressed with a suitable consciousness of their nonentity. Some of them wrote their intendant, “We pray you most humbly, monseigneur, to grant us your good will and protection. We shall try to prove ourselves worthy of it by our submission to the orders of your highness.” Others, who style themselves grandly “city peers,” write to say that they “have never resisted your will, monseigneur.”

It was thus that the burghers were being prepared for government, and the people for liberty.

If this close subjection of the cities had but preserved their financial standing! But it did nothing of the kind. It is said that, were it not for centralization, our cities would ruin themselves. How this may be, I know not; but it is quite certain that, in the eighteenth century, centralization did not save cities from ruin. The financial history of the period is full of city troubles.

Let us pass from cities to villages. We shall find new authorities, new forms, but the same dependence.

I have discovered many indications that, in the Middle Ages, the people of villages formed communities apart from the seigniors. The seigniors used them, superintended, and governed them; but they owned property exclusively, elected their rulers, and administered their government on democratic principles.

This old parochial system may be traced through all the nations which were once organized on a feudal basis, even to the dependencies to which they transported their decaying laws. It is easily discernible in England. Sixty years ago it was in full vigor in Prussia, as the code of Frederick the Great is there to prove. Some vestiges of it still lingered in France in the eighteenth century.

I remember that the first time I examined the archives of an intendant’s office, in order to discover what a parish really was under the old regime, I was quite struck with the discovery, in that poor enslaved community, of several features which I had noticed in the rural districts of America, and erroneously considered as peculiarities of New World institutions. Both communities were governed by functionaries acting independently of each other, and under the direction of the community at large; in neither was there a permanent representative body, or municipal assembly proper. In both, from time to time, the people at large met to elect magistrates, and transact important business. They resembled each other, in fact, as closely as a living body resembles a corpse. Nor is this a matter of surprise, for the two systems, different as their destinies were, had the same origin.

When the rural parish of the Middle Ages was removed beyond the reach of the feudal system and left uncontrolled, it became the New England township. When it was cut loose from the seignior, but crushed in the close grasp of the state in France, it became what remains to be described.

In the eighteenth century parochial officers differed in number and title in the several provinces. Old records show that when the parishes were in full vigor, the number of these officers was greater than when the stream of parochial life became sluggish. In the eighteenth century we find but two in most parishes: the collector, and another officer usually known as the syndic. Generally speaking, these officials were elected, really or nominally, but they served far more as instruments of the state than as agents of the community. Collectors levied the taille under the orders of the intendant. Syndics, receiving orders from day to day from the sub-delegates, acted as their deputies in all matters bearing on public order or government; such, for instance, as militia business, state works, and the execution of general laws.

It has already been observed that the seignior had no part in these details of government. He neither superintended nor assisted the officials. His real power gone, he despised contrivances used to keep up its semblance, and his pride alone forbade him to take any share in their establishment. Though he had ceased to govern, his residence in the parish and his privileges precluded the formation of a sound parochial system in the stead of that in which he had figured. Such a personage, so isolated in his independence and his privileges, could not but weaken or militate against the authority of law.

His presence drove to the cities all persons of means and information, as I shall have occasion to show hereafter. Around him lived a herd of rough, ignorant peasants, quite incapable of administering their collective business. It was Turgot who described a parish as “a collection of huts not more passive than their tenants.”

The records of the eighteenth century abound with complaints of the inefficiency, the carelessness, and the ignorance of parochial collectors and syndics. Every body deplores the fact—ministers, intendants, sub-delegates, even men of rank, but nobody thinks of looking for its true cause.

Until the Revolution the government of rural parishes in France preserved some traces of that democratic aspect which characterized it during the Middle Ages. When municipal officers were to be elected, or public affairs discussed, the village bell summoned the peasantry, poor and rich alike, to the church door. There was no regular debate followed by a vote, but all were free to express their views, and a notary, officiating in the open air, noted, in a formal report, the substance of what was said.

The contrast between these empty semblances of liberty and the real impotence which they concealed furnishes a slight indication of the ease with which the most absolute government may adopt some of the forms of a radical democracy, and aggravate oppression by placing the oppressed under the ridiculous imputation of not being aware of their real state. The democratic parish meeting was free to express its wishes, but it was as powerless to enforce them as the municipal councils of cities; nor could it utter a word till its mouth had been opened by authority. No meeting could be convened until permission had been obtained in express terms from the intendant: this granted, the villagers, who called things by their right names, met “by his good will and pleasure.” No meeting, however unanimous, could impose a tax, or sell or buy, or lease, or go to law, without permission from the Royal Council. The church which a storm had unroofed, or the presbytery wall which was falling to pieces, could not be repaired without a decree of Council. This rule applied with equal force to all parishes, however distant from the capital. I have seen a petition from a parish to the council praying to be allowed to spend twenty-five livres.

In general, the parishioners were still entitled to elect magistrates by universal suffrage; but the intendant frequently took pains to recommend a candidate, who never failed to obtain the votes of the small electoral body. Again, he would occasionally declare of his own authority that an election just held was null and void, would appoint a collector and syndic, and temporarily disfranchise the community. Of this course I have noticed a thousand examples.

No more wretched station than that of these parochial functionaries can be conceived. They were subject to the whim of the lowest agent of the central government, the sub-delegate. He would fine or imprison them, and they could lay no claim to the usual guarantees of the subject against arbitrary oppression. An intendant wrote in 1750, “I have imprisoned a few of the principal grumblers, and made the community pay the expense of sending for the police. By these measures I have checkmated them without difficulty.” Naturally enough, under these circumstances, parochial office, instead of being an honor, became a burden from which all sought to escape.

Yet still, these last traces of the old parochial system were dear to the peasant’s heart. To this very day that system is the only branch of government which he thoroughly understands and cares for. Men who cheerfully see the whole nation submit to a master, rebel at the bare idea of not being consulted in the government of their village. So pregnant with weight are hollow forms!

The remarks I have made upon cities and villages apply also to almost every corporate body which had a separate existence and corporate property.

Under the old regime, as in our own day, neither city, nor borough, nor village, nor hamlet, however small, nor hospital, nor church, nor convent, nor college, could exercise a free will in its private affairs, or administer its property as it thought best. Then, as now, the administration was the guardian of the whole French people; insolence had not yet invented the name, but the thing was already in existence.