Now that the State has just made a new allotment of the burdens and duties which it imposes it must make a new assignment of the rights and benefits it confers. Distributive justice, on both sides, and long before 1789, was defective, and, under the monarchy, exclusions had become as obnoxious as exemptions; all the more because, through a double iniquity, the ancient RÉgime in each group distinguished two other groups, one to which it granted every exemption, and the other which it made subject to every exclusion. The reason is that, from the first, the king, in the formation and government of the kingdom, in order to secure the services, money, collaboration or connivance which he needed, was obliged to negotiate always with corporations, orders, provinces, seignories, the clergy, churches, monasteries, universities, parliaments, professional bodies or industrial guilds and families, that is to say with constituted powers, more or less difficult to bring under subjection and which, to be kept in subjection, stipulated conditions. Hence, in France, so many different conditions: each distinct body had yielded through one or several distinct capitulations and possessed its own separate statute. Hence, again, such diversely unequal conditions: the bodies, the best able to protect themselves, had, of course, defended themselves the best. Their statutes, written or unwritten, guaranteed to them precious privileges which the other bodies, much weaker, could neither acquire nor preserve. These were not merely immunities but likewise prerogatives, not alone alleviations of taxation and militia dispensations, but likewise political and administrative liberties, remnants of their primitive sovereignty, with many other positive advantages. The very least being precedence, preferences, social priority, with an incontestable right to rank, honors, offices, and favors. Such, notably, were the regions-states possessing their own government (pays d'États), compared with those which elected the magistrates who apportioned taxation (pays d'Élection),3301 the two highest orders, the clergy and the nobles, compared with the third-estate, and the bourgeoisie, and the town corporations compared with the rest of the inhabitants. On the other hand, opposed to these historical favorites were the historical disinherited, the latter much more numerous and counting by millions—the taxable commons, all subjects without rank or quality, in short, the ordinary run of men, especially the common herd of the towns and particularly of the country, all the more ground down on account of their lower status, along with the Jews lower yet, a sort of foreign class scarcely tolerated, with the Calvinists, not only deprived of the humblest rights but, again, persecuted by the State for the past one hundred years.

All these people, who have been transported far outside of civic relationships by historic right, are brought back, in 1789, by philosophic right. After the declarations of the Constituent Assembly, there are no longer in France either Bretons, ProvenÇals, Burgundians or Alsatians, Catholics, Protestants or Israelites, nobles or plebeians, bourgeois or rurals, but simply Frenchmen,

* all with the one title of citizens,

* all endowed with the same civil, religious and political rights,

* all equal before the State,

* all introduced by law into every career, collectively, on an equal footing and without fear or favor from anybody;

* all free to follow this out to the end without distinction of rank, birth, faith or fortune;

* all, if they are good runners, to receive the highest prizes at the end of the race, any office or rank, especially the leading honors and positions which, thus far reserved to a class or coterie, had not been allowed previously to the great multitude.

Henceforth, all Frenchmen, in theory, enjoy rights in common; unfortunately, this is only the theory. In reality, in all state relationships (dans la citÉ), the new-comers appropriate to themselves the offices, the pretensions, and more than the privileges of their predecessors; the latter, consisting of large and small land-owners, gentlemen, parliamentarians, officials, ecclesiastics, notables of every kind and degree, are immediately deprived of the rights of man. Surrendered to rural jacqueries and to town mobs, they undergo, first, the neglect and, next, the hostility of the State: the public gendarme has ceased to protect them and refuses his services; afterwards, on becoming a Jacobin, he declares himself their enemy, treats them as enemies, plunders them, imprisons them, murders them, expels or transports them, inflicts on them civil death, and shoots them if they dare return; he deprives their friends or kindred who remain in France of their civil rights; he deprives the nobles or the ennobled of their quality as Frenchmen, and compels them to naturalize themselves afresh according to prescribed formalities; he renews against the Catholics the interdictions, persecutions and brutalities which the old government had practiced against the Calvinist minority.—Thus, in 1799 as in 1789, there are two classes of Frenchmen, two different varieties of men, the first one superior, installed in the civic fold, and the second, inferior and excluded from it; only, in 1799, the greatest inequality consigned the inferior and excluded class to a still lower, more remote, and much worse condition.

The principle (of equalite), nevertheless, subsists. Since 1789 it is inscribed at the top of every constitution; it is still proclaimed in the new constitution. It has remained popular, although perverted and disfigured by the Jacobins; their false and gross interpretation of it could not bring it into discredit; athwart the hideous grotesque caricature, all minds and sentiments ever recur to the ideal form of the citÉ to the veritable social contract, to the impartial, active, and permanent reign of distributive justice. Their entire education, all the literature, philosophy and culture of the eighteenth century, leads them onward to this conception of society and of rights; more profoundly still, they are predisposed to it by the inner structure of their intelligence, by the original cast of their sensibility7 by the hereditary defects and qualities of their nature and of their race.-The Frenchman easily and quickly grasps some general trait of objects and persons, some characteristic in common; here, this characteristic is the inherent quality of man which he dexterously makes prominent, clearly isolates, and then, stepping along briskly and confidently, rushes ahead on the high-road to consequences.3302 He has forgotten that his summary notion merely corresponds to an extract, and a very brief one, of man in his completeness; his decisive, precipitate process hinders him from seeing the largest portion of the real individual; he has overlooked numerous traits, the most important and most efficacious, those which geography, history, habit, condition, manual labor, or a liberal education, stamp on intellect, soul and body and which, through their differences, constitute different local or social groups. Not only does he overlook all these characteristics, but he sets them aside; they are too numerous and too complex; they would interfere with and disturb his thoughts; however fitted for clear and comprehensive logic he is so much the less fitted for complex and comprehensive ideas; consequently, he avoids them and, through an innate operation of which he is unconscious, he involuntarily condenses, simplifies and curtails henceforth, his idea, partial and superficial as it is, seems to him adequate and complete; in his eyes the abstract quality of man takes precedence of and absorbs all others; not only has this a value, but the sole value. One man, therefore, is as good as another and the law should treat all alike.—Here, amour-propre (self-esteem, pride or arrogance), so keen in France, and so readily excited, comes in to interpret and apply the formula:3303

"Since all men equal each other, I am as good as any man; if the law confers a right on people of this or that condition, fortune or birth, it must confer the same right on me. Every door that is open to them must be open to me; every door that is closed to me must be closed to them. Otherwise, I am treated as an inferior and wounded in my deepest feelings. When the legislator places a ballot in their hands he is bound to place another just like it in my hands, even if they know how to use it and I do not, even if a limited suffrage is of use to the community and universal suffrage is not. So much the worse if I am sovereign only in name, and through the imagination; I consent to my sovereignty being illusory, but with the understanding that the sovereignty of others is regarded likewise; so I prefer servitude and privation for all, rather than liberties and advantages for a few, and, provided the same level is passed over all heads, I submit to the yoke for all heads, including my own."

Such is the internal composition of the instinct of' equality, and such is the natural instinct of Frenchmen. It is beneficial or mischievous according as one or the other of its ingredients predominates, at one time the noble sentiment of equity and at another time the low envy of foolish vanity;3304 healthy or unhealthy, however, its power in France is enormous, and the new RÉgime gratifies it in every possible way, good or bad. No more legal disqualifications! On the one hand, the republican laws of proscription or of exception were all repealed: we have seen an amnesty and the return of the ÉmigrÉs, the Concordat, the restoration of Catholic worship, the compulsory reconciliation of the constitutionalists with the orthodox; the First Consul admits no difference between them; his new clergy are recruited from both groups and, in this respect, he forces the Pope to yield.3305 He gives twelve of the sixty episcopal thrones to former schismatics; he wants them to take their places boldly; he relieves them from ecclesiastical penitence and from any humiliating recantation; he takes care that, in the other forty-eight dioceses, the priests who formerly took the civic oath shall be employed and well treated by their superiors who, at the same epoch, refused to take the civic oath. On the other hand, all the exclusions, inequalities and distinctions of the monarchy remain abolished. Not only are the Calvinist and even Israelite cults legally authorized, the same as the Catholic cult, but, again, the Protestant consistories and Jewish synagogues3306 are constituted and organized on the same footing as the Catholic churches. Pastors and rabbis likewise become functionaries under the same title as bishops and cure's; all are recognized or sanctioned by the government and all equally benefit by its patronage: it is an unique thing in Europe to find the small churches of the minority obtaining the same measure of indifference and good will from the State as the great church of the majority, and, henceforth, in fact as in law, the ministers of the three cults, formerly ignored, tolerated or proscribed, enjoy their rank, titles and honors in the social as well as in the legal hierarchy, equally with the ministers of that cult which was once the only one dominant or allowed

Similarly, in the civilian status, no inferiority or discredit must legally attach to any condition whatever, either to plebeian, villager, peasant or poor man as such, as formerly under the monarchy; nor to noble, bourgeois, citizen, notable or rich man, as recently under the Republic. Each of these two classes is relieved of its degradation; no class is burdened by taxation or by the conscription beyond its due; all persons and all property find in the government, in the administration, in the tribunals, in the gendarme, the same reliable protection.—So much for equity and the true spirit of equality.—Let us now turn around and consider envy and the bad spirit of equality. The plebiscite, undoubtedly, as well as the election of deputies to the Corps Legislatif are simply comedies; but, in these comedies, one rÔle is as good as another and the duke of the old or new pattern, a mere figurant among hundreds and thousands of others, votes only once like the corner-grocer. Undoubtedly, the private individual of the commune or department, in institutions of charity, worship or education, is deprived of any independence, of any initiation, of any control, as the State has confiscated for itself all collective action; but the classes deprived of this are especially the upper classes, alone sufficiently enlightened and wealthy to take the lead, form projects and provide for expenditure: in this usurpation, the State has encroached upon and eaten deeper into the large body of superior existences scattered about than into the limited circle where humbler lives clamber and crawl along; nearly the entire loss, all perceptible privation, is for the large landed proprietor and not for his hired hands, for the large manufacturer or city merchant and not for their workmen or clerks,3307 while the clerk, the workman, the journeyman, the handicraftsman, who grumble at being the groundlings, find themselves less badly off since their masters or patrons, fallen from a higher point, are where they are and they can elbow them.

Now that men are born on the ground, all on the same level, and are confined within universal and uniform limits, social life no longer appears to them other than a competition, a rivalry instituted and proclaimed by the State, and of which it is the umpire; for, through its interference, all are comprised within its enclosure and shut up and kept there; no other field is open to run on; on the contrary, every career within these bounds, indicated and staked out beforehand, offers an opportunity for all runners: the government has laid out and leveled the ground, established compartments, divided off and prepared rectilinear lists which converge to the goal; there, it presides, the unique arbiter of the race, exposing to all competitors the innumerable prizes which it proposes for them.—These prizes consist of offices, the various employments of the State, political, military, ecclesiastical, judiciary, administrative and university, all the honors and dignities which it dispenses, all the grades of its hierarchy from the lowest to the highest, from that of corporal, college-regent, alderman, office—supernumerary, assistant priest up to that of senator, marshal of France, grand master of the university, cardinal, and minister of State. It confers on its possessor, according to the greater or lesser importance of the place, a greater or lesser portion of the advantages which all men crave and seek for money, power, patronage, influence, consideration, importance and social pre-eminence; thus, according to the rank one attains in the hierarchy, one is something, or of some account; outside of the hierarchy, one is nothing.

Consequently, the faculty for getting in and advancing one's self in these lists is the most precious of all: in the new RÉgime it is guaranteed by the law as a common right and is open to all Frenchmen. As no other outlet for them is allowed by the State it owes them this one; since it invites them and reduces everybody to competing under its direction it is bound to be an impartial arbiter; since the quality of citizen, in itself and through it alone, confers the right to make one's way, all citizens indifferently must enjoy the right of succeeding in any employment, the very highest, and without any distinction as to birth, fortune, cult or party. There must be no more preliminary exclusions; no more gratuitous preferences, undeserved favors, anticipated promotions; no more special favors.—Such is the rule of the modern State: constituted as it is, that is to say, monopolizer and omnipresent, it cannot violate this rule for any length of time with impunity. In France, at least, the good and bad spirits of equality agree in exacting adherence to it: on this point, the French are unanimous; no article of their social code is more cherished by them; this one flatters their amour-propre and tickles their imagination; it exalts hope, nourishes illusion, intensifies the energy and enjoyment of life.—Thus far, the principle has remained inert, powerless, held in suspension in the air, in the great void of speculative declarations and of constitutional promises. Napoleon brings it down to the ground and renders it practical; that which the assemblies had decreed in vain for ten years he brings about for the first time and in his own interest. To exclude a class or category of men from offices and promotion would be equivalent to depriving one's self gratuitously of all the talents it contains, and, moreover, to incurring, besides the inevitable rancor of these frustrated talents, the sullen and lasting discontent of the entire class or category. The First Consul would do himself a wrong were he to curb his right to choose: he needs every available capacity, and he takes them where he finds them, to the right, to the left, above or below, in order to keep his regiments full and enroll in his service every legitimate ambition and every justifiable pretension.

Under the monarchy, an obscure birth debarred even the best endowed men from the principal offices. Under the Consulate and the Empire the two leading personages of the State are Lebrun, Maupeou's old secretary, a productive translator,3308 a lawyer, formerly councilor in a provincial court of justice, then third-consul, then Duc de Plaisance and arch-chancellor of the Empire and CambacÉrÈs, second-consul, then Duc de Parme and arch-chancellor of the Empire, both of them being princes. Similarly, the marshals are new men and soldiers of fortune, a few of them born in the class of inferior nobles or in the ordinary bourgeois class, mostly among the people or even amongst the populace, and, in its lowest ranks, MassÉna, the son of a wine-dealer, once a cabin-boy and then common soldier and non-commissioned officer for fourteen years; Ney, son of a cooper, Lefebvre, son of a miller, Murat, son of a tavern-keeper, Lannes, son of an hostler, and Augereau, son of a mason and a female dealer in fruit and vegetables.—Under the Republic, noble birth consigned, or confined, the ablest and best qualified men for their posts to a voluntary obscurity, only too glad when their names did not condemn them to exile, imprisonment or to the guillotine. Under the Empire, M. de Talleyrand is prince of Benevento, minister of foreign affairs and vice-grand-elector with a salary of five hundred thousand francs. We see personages of old nobility figuring in the first ranks: among the clergy M. de Roquelaure, M. de Boisgelin, M. de Broglie, M. Ferdinand de Rohan; in the magistracy, M. SÉguier, M. Pasquier, M. MolÉ; on the domestic and decorative staff of the palace, Comte de SÉgur, grand-master of ceremonies, Comte de Montesquiou-FÉzensac, grand-chamberlain, also as chamberlains, Comtes d'Aubusson de la Feuillade, de Brigode, de Croy, de Coutades, de Louvois, de Brancas, de Gontaut, de Grammont, de Beauvau, de Lur-Saluces, d'Haussonville, de Noailles, de Chabot, de Turenne,3309 and other bearers of historic names.—During the Revolution, at each new parliamentarian, popular or military coup d'État the notabilities of the vanquished party were always excluded from office and generally outlawed. After the coup d'État of Brumaire, not only are the vanquished of the old parties all brought back under the protection of the law, but, again, their notables are promoted to the highest offices. Among the monarchists of the Constituent Assembly Mabuet is made councilor of State, and Maury archbishop of Paris; forty-seven other ecclesiastics who, like himself, refused to take the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, are appointed, like him, to episcopal thrones. Among the Feuillants of the Legislative Assembly, Vaublanc is made prefect, Beugnot a councilor of State and minister of the finances in the grand-duchy of Berg, Matthieu Dumas a brigadier-general and director of reviews, Narbonne becomes the aid-de-camp and the intimate interlocutor of Napoleon, and then ambassador to Vienna; if Lafayette had been willing, not to ask for but to accept the post, he would have been made a marshal of France.—Among the few Girondists or Federalists who did not perish after the 2nd June, Riouffe is prefect and baron, Lanjuinais is senator and count; among others proscribed, or half proscribed, the new RÉgime restores to and places at the head of affairs the superior and special employees whom the Reign of Terror had driven away, or singled out for slaughter, particularly the heads of the financial and diplomatic services who, denounced by Robespierre on the 8th Thermidor, or arrested on the morning of the 9th already felt their necks under the blade of the guillotine; Reinhart and Otto are ambassadors, Mollien is count and treasury minister, Miot becomes councilor of state, Comte de Melito minister of finances at Naples, while Gaudin is made minister of finances in France and Duc de GaËte. Among the transported or fugitives of Fructidor, BarthÉlemy becomes senator, BarbÉ-Marbois director of the Treasury and first president of the Cour des Comptes; SimÉon, councilor of State and then minister of justice in Westphalia; Portalis is made minister of worship, and Fontanes grand-master of the University. The First Consul passes the sponge over all political antecedents: not only does he summon to his side the moderates and half-moderates of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, of the Convention and of the Directory, but again he seeks recruits among pure royalists and pure Jacobins, among the men the most devoted to the ancient RÉgime and amongst those most compromised by the Revolution, at both extremities of the most extreme opinions. We have just seen, on the one side, what hereditary favorites of a venerable royalty, what born supporters of the deposed dynasty, are elevated by him to the first of his magisterial, clerical and court dignities. On the other hand, apart from Chasset, Roederer and GrÉgoire, apart from Fourcroy, BÉrlier and RÉal, apart from Treilhard and Boulay de La Meurthe, he employs others branded or noted for terrible acts, BarÈre himself, at least for a certain period, and in the sole office he was fitted for, that of a denunciator, gazetteer and stimulator of public opinion; everybody has a place according to his faculties, and each has rank according to his usefulness and merit. BarÈre, consequently, becomes a paid spy and pamphleteer; Drouet, the postmaster, who arrested the royal family at Varennes, becomes sub-prefect at Sainte-Menehould; Jean-Bon Saint-AndrÉ, one of the Committee of Public Safety, is made prefect at Mayence; Merlin de Douai, reporter of the law against suspects, is prosecuting attorney in the court of cassation; FouchÉ, whose name tells all, becomes minister of state and Duke of Otranto; nearly all of the survivors of the Convention are made judges of premiÈre instance or of appeal, revenue-collectors, deputies, prefects, foreign consuls, police commissioners, inspectors of reviews, head-clerks in the post-offices, custom-houses and tax-offices, while, in 1808, among these functionaries, one hundred and thirty were regicides.3310