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303
A living French historian boasts that, in his own country, ‘toute la société féodale formait ainsi une échelle de clientelle et de patronage.’ Cassagnac, Révolution Française, vol. i. p. 459.
304
This is 18 Edw. I. c. 1; respecting which, see Blackstone's Comment. vol. ii. p. 91, vol. iv. p. 425; Reeve's Hist. of English Law, vol. ii. p. 223; Dalrymple's Hist. of Feudal Property, pp. 102, 243, 340.
305
The history of the decay of that once most important class, the English yeomanry, is an interesting subject, and one for which I have collected considerable materials; at present, I will only say, that its decline was first distinctly perceptible in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and was consummated by the rapidly-increasing power of the commercial and manufacturing classes early in the eighteenth century. After losing their influence, their numbers naturally diminished, and they made way for other bodies of men, whose habits of mind were less prejudiced, and therefore better suited to that new state which society assumed in the last age. I mention this, because some writers regret the almost total destruction of the yeoman freeholders; overlooking the fact, that they are disappearing, not in consequence of any violent revolution or stretch of arbitrary power, but simply by the general march of affairs; society doing away with what it no longer requires. Compare Kay's Social Condition of the People, vol. i. pp. 43, 602, with a letter from Wordsworth in Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 440; a note in Mill's Polit. Econ. vol. i. pp. 311, 312; another in Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. p. 323; and Sinclair's Correspond. vol. i. p. 229.
306
This is stated as an admitted fact by French writers living in different periods and holding different opinions; but all agreed as to there being only two divisions: ‘comme en France on est toujours ou noble, ou roturier, et qu'il n'y a pas de milieu.’ Mém. de Rivarol, p. 7. ‘La grande distinction des nobles et des roturiers.’ Giraud, Précis de l'Ancien Droit, p. 10. Indeed, according to the Coutumes, the nobles and roturiers attained their majority at different ages. Klimrath, Hist. du Droit, vol. ii. p. 249 (erroneously stated in Story's Conflict of Laws, pp. 56, 79, 114). See further respecting this capital distinction, Mém. de Duplessis Mornay, vol. ii. p. 230 (‘agréable à la noblesse et au peuple’); Œuvres de Turgot, vol. viii. pp. 222, 232, 237; Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 256; Mably, Observations, vol. iii. p. 263; and Mercier sur Rousseau, vol. i. p. 38: ‘On étoit roturier, vilain, homme de néant, canaille, dès qu'on ne s'appelloit plus marquis, baron, comte, chevalier, etc.’
307
‘Les états-généraux sont portés dans la liste de nos institutions. Je ne sais cependant s'il est permis de donner ce nom à des rassemblemens aussi irréguliers.’ Montlosier, Monarchie Française, vol. i. p. 266. ‘En France, les états-généraux, au moment même de leur plus grand éclat, c'est à dire dans le cours du xive siècle, n'ont guère été que des accidents, un pouvoir national et souvent invoqué, mais non un établissement constitutionnel.’ Guizot, Essais, p. 253. See also Mably, Observations, vol. iii. p. 147; and Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xiv. p. 642.
308
This is frankly admitted by one of the most candid and enlightened of all the foreign writers on our history, Guizot, Essais, p. 297: ‘En 1307, les droits qui devaient enfanter en Angleterre un gouvernement libre étaient définitivement reconnus.’
309
See an account of the policy of Philip the Fair, in Mably, Observations, vol. ii. pp. 25–44; in Boulainvilliers, Ancien Gouvernement, vol. i. pp. 292, 314, vol. ii. pp. 37, 38; and in Guizot, Civilisation en France, vol. iv. pp. 170–192. M. Guizot says, perhaps too strongly, that his reign was ‘la métamorphose de la royauté en despotisme,’ On the connexion of this with the centralizing movement, see Tocqueville's Démocratie, vol. i. p. 307: ‘Le goût de la centralisation et la manie réglementaire remontent, en France, à l'époque où les légistes sont entrés dans le gouvernement; ce qui nous reporte au temps de Philippe le Bel.’ Tennemann also notices, that in his reign the ‘Rechtstheorie’ began to exercise influence; but this learned writer takes a purely metaphysical view, and has therefore misunderstood the more general social tendency. Gesch. der Philos. vol. viii. p. 823.
310
As several writers on law notice this system with a lenient eye Origines du Droit Français, in Œuvres de Michelet, vol. ii. p. 321; and Eschbach, Etude du Droit, p. 129: ‘le système énergique de la centralisation’, it may be well to state how it actually works.
Mr. Bulwer, writing twenty years ago, says: ‘Not only cannot a commune determine its own expenses without the consent of the minister or one of his deputed functionaries, it cannot even erect a building, the cost of which shall have been sanctioned, without the plan being adopted by a board of public works attached to the central authority, and having the supervision and direction of every public building throughout the Kingdom.’ Bulwer's Monarchy of the Middle Classes, 1836, vol. ii. p. 262.
M. Tocqueville, writing in the present year (1856), says, ‘Sous l'ancien régime, comme de nos jours, il n'y avait ville, bourg, village, ni si petit hameau en France, hôpital, fabrique, couvent ni collège, qui pût avoir une volonté indépendante dans ses affaires particulières, ni administrer à sa volonté ses propres biens. Alors, comme aujourd'hui, l'administration tenait donc tous les Français en tutelle, et si l'insolence du mot ne s'était pas encore produite, on avait du moins déjà la chose.’ Tocqueville, l'Ancien Régime, 1856, pp. 79, 80.
311
The number of civil functionaries in France, who are paid by the government to trouble the people, passes all belief, being estimated, at different periods during the present century, at from 138,000 to upwards of 800,000. Tocqueville, de la Démocratie, vol. i. p. 220; Alison's Europe, vol. xiv. pp. 127, 140; Kay's Condition of the People, vol. i. p. 272; Laing's Notes, 2d series, p. 185. Mr. Laing, writing in 1850, says: ‘In France, at the expulsion of Louis Philippe, the civil functionaries were stated to amount to 807,030 individuals.’
312
‘The government in France possesses control over all the education of the country, with the exception of the colleges for the education of the clergy, which are termed seminaries, and their subordinate institutions.’ Report on the State of Superior Education in France in 1843, in Journal of Statist. Soc. vol. vi. p. 304. On the steps taken during the power of Napoleon, see Alison's Europe, vol. viii. p. 203: ‘Nearly the whole education of the empire was brought effectually under the direction and appointment of government.’
313
Much attention is paid to the surveillance of pupils; it being a fundamental principle of French education, that children should never be left alone. Report on General Education in France in 1842, in Journal of Statist. Soc. vol. v. p. 20.
314
A distinguished French author says: ‘La France souffre du mal du siècle; elle en est plus malade qu'aucun autre pays; ce mal c'est la haine de l'autorité.’ Custine, Russie, vol. ii. p. 136. Compare, Rey, Science Sociale, vol. ii. p. 86 note.
315
It is to the activity of this protective and centralizing spirit that we must ascribe, what a very great authority noticed thirty years ago, as ‘le défaut de spontanéité, qui caractérise les institutions
