liberty of the press ; this means of communicating one's
thought can no more be enchained than the thought
itself." 52 Even when the Convention framed the de-
crees which punished the writing of seditious pamphlets
with death, the debates which prefaced these decrees
50 Choix de Rapports, Vol. I, p. 238 et seq.
51 Choix de Rapports, II, p. 251.
52 Speech of Chapelier. Choix de Rapports, V, p. 219.
RIGHT TO LIBERTY.
were so many glowing tributes to the eternal and in-
alienable liberty of the press. 53
To sum up, in the earlier period, it was held that so-
ciety should have no direct share in looking after the
individual interest, nor in shaping the morality of the
nation. The regulation of his private tastes and occu-
pations, and the practice of his religion was to be left
entirely to each individual. The duty of society was
to protect all individuals and all cults equally. Lib-
erty of person and of thought was to be reserved by the
law to each member of society, with only the limita-
tion respecting the same rights in others. But pas-
sionate as was the love for liberty and the desire for
personal freedom during the Eevolution, the principle
that the well-being of the whole social body took prece-
dence of the individual well-being, gradually got the
upper hand. Even in theory, the idea of liberty for
each went swiftly to the wall after '91, as against the
struggle for a certain kind of liberty for all. After
'92, only one part of the individual natural right re-
mained in full possession to each individual. The
right of each to express his will in the affairs of the
nation, a right affirmed, but not granted, in '89, and
both affirmed and granted in '93, remains a natural and
inalienable right, though in practice, at least, that also
disappears after '93. However, it was in the name of the
theory of the sovereignty of the nation that individual
rights were overshadowed and a tyranny was finally set
up, than which modern history tells of few greater.
53 In Choix de Rapports, Vol. XI, pp. 303, 304, the reader
will find interesting evidence of how far these Conventionnels
were checked by their own theories when those who attacked
them were to be dealt with.
160
PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
The enthusiasm for the idea of liberty had only
slight precedence over the enthusiasm for that of
equality. 54 Even before the two higher Estates had
yielded to the Third and the Constituent Assembly
had been actually organized, these two rights, now so
intimately associated with the Revolution, were de-
manded together, as the imperative need of the time. 55
It is a prevailing thought that " liberty and equality are
the supreme possession " of the French people, that
equality must be " the base of the Constitution." 5 *
Equality is a broad term, and carries with it different
concepts, according to the development of the man who
uses it. As a principle of government, it has covered
all manner of ideals. On the one hand, those who
preach equality have in view carefully supervised com-
munities where groups of men are to be brought up
to eat, dress, act and think alike, using unequal pow-
ers for the single end of the general well-being, and
taking no special account of personal enjoyment; on
the other hand, there is that conception of equality
which interprets the word to mean equal freedom from
impediments in a race where the spoils shall be to the
nimblest.
During the first part of the Revolution, the claims
for equality were really put forward under the influence
of this latter, the physiocratic, idea of equality. Mere
54 La libert et 1'ggalite sont leurs biens suprgmes; il sac-
rifieront tout pour les conserver. Roland. Stance of Septem-
ber 23, 1793. Choix de Rapports, X, p. 24.
55 See, in particular, Mirabeau's famous speech of June 15,
1789, in Moniteur, I, p. 351.
56 Speech of Charles de Lameth, June 19, 1790. Choix
de Rapports, II, p. 115.
RIGHT TO EQUALITY.
liberty of opportunity, the principle of laissez-faire,
was all the equality asked or desired. Mirabeau slur-
ringly spoke of any other idea of equality as " only
a violent fit of revolutionary fever/' 57 which, because
of the inborn vanity of man, could not endure. Each
speech of the early days in the Assembly begins and
ends with the claim for every man's right to an equal
chance in the struggle for existence; that is, for the
right to equal legislation, and equal territorial rights
in each administrative unit in the kingdom, as well as
for the abolition of all special privilege. 88 It was
usually asserted that this sort of equality was dependent
upon an equal protection of each individual by the state,
and could only be insured by laws alike for all. 59 The
successive assemblies delegated to make the laws con-
cerning "the establishment, the formation, the organ-
ization, the functions, the mode of acting, the limits of
all social power," 60 aimed first of all at securing liberty
and equality to the nation; they strove valiantly to-
ward equality by abolishing all heredity in office, or all
long tenure of office, on the ground which later ex-
perience has shown to be so debatable the ground that
no man was specially endowed to serve his country,
but that all were equally able to conduct the simple du-
ties of government. The same theory, of course, was
behind the law making which decreed that each citizen
was eligible to any place under the government. All
57 Correspondence with La Marck, I, p. 351.
58 See speech on Due d'Aiguillon, Moniteur, Vol. I, p. 279.
59 Blanc, op. cit.. Ill, p. 407.
00 Condorcet in report on the projected Constitution of '93,
one of the most political speeches of the Revolution. Choix
de Rapports, XII, p. 279.
11
162 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
men were made equal before the common law, when
feudal privilege was destroyed and the Church reduced
to a civil institution; when the contributions for the
state support were drawn equally from all men and
from all sections of the country. The political and civil
laws of the Revolution had always in view the pro-
vincial, municipal and personal equalization of the
national life.
After 1791, when visionaries held the reins of gov-
ernment, and the lawmakers were in such desperate
haste to realize the rational, there was a distinct differ-
ence in the interpretation of the right of equality. Al-
though the principle is couched in about the same terms,
although equality was still demanded, in order that
each " shall enjoy the same rights," 01 in reality the prin-
ciple is changed. Equality comes to be a doctrine mak-
ing for the leveling-down of all to a certain standard.
The notion of equality now takes legal form as a de-
mand for the support of the poor by the rich. There
are distinct governmental efforts to bring about a more
equal division of fortunes by making the superfluous
useless to him who possesses it, or by turning it to the
advantage of him who is without it, and thus, in either
case, ordering it to the profit of society at large. 62 The
idea of equality comes to take precedence of the idea
of liberty. The earlier notion was absolute liberty
and the greatest possible equality; the later doctrine was
61 Dec. of April, '93. Choix de Rapports, XII.
62 See Chronique de Paris No. 19, January, 1793. (Cited in
Sudre. Histoire de Communisme, p. 258.) Comp. also
Sagnac. La Legislation Civile de la Revolution Frangaise,
especially pp. 246-276.
RIGHT TO EQUALITY.
more nearly absolute equality, to the end of the great-
est possible liberty. The dream of solving for all time
the problem of alimentation by limiting or equalizing
consumption, all to the end of bringing about social
justice, got the upper hand, and the doctrine of equality
came to sound like something very near to communistic
similarity.
The principle of equality, then, like the doctrine of
liberty, changed its aspect during the Eevolution. Al-
though it is the individualistic interpretation of equal-
ity which has been handed on with most persistence, as
having been a principle of Eevolution, the communis-
tic idea of equality had undoubted currency for a con-
siderable period. The equality which in later French
history has been announced as the " revolutionary prin-
ciple of equality," has meant equal right to protection
from the government, and otherwise equal freedom to
follow where individual interests might lead; but under
the most distinctive period of the Revolution, equality
meant the nearest possible approach to similarity of
possession, of habits and of opportunities for culture
and enjoyment.
Because of the wholesale appropriation of property
which went on during its course, the whole revolution
has sometimes been called a socialistic movement, un-
der the interpretation of socialism which takes the
theory to include all social movements made in favor of
state action directed toward the equalization of prop-
erty-holding. 63 Whenever modern political theorists
63 See e. g. Espinas La Philosophic Sociale, au XVIIIe
si&cle et la Revolution.
164 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
so interpret the property doctrine of the Revolution,
they then, hold that the revolutionary theory of prop-
erty-right started with the idea of state as possessor.
On the other hand, because of what is contained in both
declarations of rights, others have asserted that the
principle which controlled the whole revolutionary
thinking concerning property was that individualistic
theory which holds the state to be the only guarantor of
an original and inalienable natural right. Probably it
is most correct to say that, so far as practice was con-
cerned, the principle which was behind the acts of legis-
lation was what has been recently called the " appro-
priationist " M principle, a principle by which one " ex-
propriates first and then apportions again to the best
of one's ability." Throughout the Revolution the idea
was not so much to discredit the right of individual
land-holding as it was to establish the state's right to
regulate the character of that holding.
Two currents of opinion are plainly discernible when
account is taken of those principles concerning private
holding which the leaders of the new movement laid
down in the course of the frequent debates upon ques-
tions of property that took place during the four years
under discussion. The prevailing opinions group under
two heads: There was one theory which contended
that property was a right anterior to society, a right
resting on labor, and that the state was only the
64 E. Faguet in La Grande Revue for May, 1899. Art. " Le
Socialisme dans la Revolution Frangaise," p. 371. The French
verb " approprier," it will be remembered, means to apportion,
requiring the reflexive form before it gets our meaning of
" appropriate."
RIGHT TO PROPERTY.
guardian of that right; there was another which re-
garded personal holdings as a right deriving from so-
ciety. In the latter view, society was held to be the
depositary of all rights, and thus, by the terms of
an original arrangement, had always the final power
to decide upon the right of each and all to retain per-
sonal possession. It seems to have been pretty gen-
erally admitted by all factions, until 1791, that the
natural man needed property in order to fulfill his des-
tiny of earthly happiness, and, in the interests of such
a need, had retained that right on entering society.
After 1791, it was not usual to hear any one of the
leaders urge that a primitive right took precedence of
a social claim at least to arbitrate upon all property,
but the idea of the state as the protector of all personal
property had preference during the first half of the
Revolution. 65
In support of the theory of absolute individual con-
trol of all possessions, it was contended that property
rests on a law anterior to all constitutions. " Each en-
ters into the social compact, bringing with him his
property, and the protection of his possessions is the
sole object of the social contract; therefore, it is sacred,
unless the nation should dispose of it for the general
good, and in return for a just and preliminary indem-
nity." 66 All those who stand for inviolability of prop-
erty admit this final qualifying clause, 67 but men of all
65 So prominent a man as Mirabeau was, however, a dis-
senter from it.
66 Lasource in the Convention. Moniteur, XVI, p. 7.
67 See the debates of August 4, 1780 (Moniteur, I, pp.
279 et seq.), and other debates on property cited elsewhere.
1(36 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
factions, Constitutionalists, Monarchists, Feuillants and
Girondists agreed that, unless the right deriving from
the condition antecedent to society was to be protected
and preserved by society, the right should not be sur-
rendered. It was held that unless the individual prop-
erty-right was respected, " liberty itself would disap-
pear * * * industry would be made tributary to
stupidity, activity to laziness, economy to dissipation;
over the laborious, intelligent and economic man, the
tyranny of ignorance, idleness and debauchery would
be set up." 68 Even opportunists like Danton 69 de^
manded that the laws should declare " all properties,
territorial, individual and industrial, eternally invio-
lable." 70 Though his motion received the applause of
the majority, it was criticised by Cambon, who reminded
the Assembly that property, like everything else, was
subject to the will of the people. Here is the keynote
of the other theory which holds property to be a social
right, not one inherent in the individual.
The right of property, as deriving from the consent
of the whole nation, which is thus made the original
possessor, was the theory of property which, surviving
from the century preceding, chiefly influenced the
thought and act of the Kevolution. The most interest-
ing and best-known exponent of this theory is Mirabeau,
who, it is well known, held property to be a social, not
68 Vergniaud on property, cited in Sudre, op. cit., pp. 263,
264.
G9 The word " opportunist " is here taken to mean nothing
derogatory. It implies one who is ready to use any means
which he believes will bring about the well-being of the coun-
try he holds dear.
TOMoniteur, XVI, p. 7.
RIGHT TO PROPERTY. 167
a natural right, and the proprietor simply a govern-
ment official. " I know hut three ways of existing in
society," says Mirabeau ; " one must be beggar, thief or
wage-earner (salarie)." The proprietor is himself
only the first of wage-earners; that which is vulgarly
called property is nothing but the price which society
pays to its proprietors for the distribution which he
is charged to make to the other individuals by his con-
sumption and his expenses. " Les proprietaires sont
les agents, les economes de corps social ; " 71 and when
circumstances make it necessary for state to assert this
property-right, proprietors cannot justly deny the pre-
eminent right of society to claim its own. Mirabeau
was not alone in this opinion. Not so often in the con-
ventions of state, perhaps, but in all the club reunions
and in the papers and pamphlets of the time, this doc-
trine finds untiring support. 72 Sometimes, it goes
along with the suggestion of communism, 73 but no one
seriously broached the idea of communistic or collect-
ivist property-holding. 74 It is true that, pursuant to
71 See the whole very suggestive speech in stance of August
10, 1789. Moniteur, I, p. 327; comp. also his speech on
succession in direct line, " la societ qui avait cre"e le droit
de propriete, pouvait & son gre" lui limiter." (Comp. also Tron-
chet and Camus; speeches on occasion of debates on the in-
heritance laws, April, 1791.)
72 Comp. Robespierre on property, Moniteur, XVI, p. 213.
Dubois de Crance, discours, February, 1793 (cited in Lichten-
berger, Le Socialisms et la Revolution Frangaise, p. 117);
also the major part of the speeches of Chabot, Billaud-Varen-
nes, Fauchet. The most important debates on property were
those of August 4, 1789, and the day or two succeeding; the
month of August, 1790; the 3-6 of July, 1791, and August
14, 1792.
73 As, for instance in the doctrines of Pere Duchesne and
Claude Fauchet.
74 Communistic ideals had no real force in the Revolution.
168 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
this right, it was considered the duty of the represen-
tatives of the sovereign to decide whether in the last
resort an individual was entitled to possess property, 75
and also to determine what amount each should pos-
sess. 76 Thus property might be appropriated on
grounds of crimes against the sovereign people; the
popular will should assert itself, on the question
of how much a man might bequeath to his heirs
and what part the amount of his property should play
in determining his share of the contribution to state
support. The corollaries of the principle of the state's
final right to property were thus laws of confiscation
laws limiting the size of fortunes, inheritance laws, and
a progressive tax. But however much such laws may
smack of communistic or socialistic theories, they did
not result in a social system which resembled any type
of socialistic society; not even when the idea behind
such interference with the personal right was the con-
Although the Convention listened with attention to a discourse
(Carra. Seance of 25 February, '93. Choix de Rapports, XI,
p. 304 et seq.) in which the question of appropriating for-
tunes gained in an illicit fashion was discussed, and it was
pleaded that such appropriation be decreed, because " partout
ou le peuple retrouve son bien, il a le droit de le prendre;
c'est un axiome incontestable, non seulement de sa sou-
verainete, mais de la justice, de la raison et de la politique
universelle," the motion was rejected as tending to encour-
age a popular expectation of an agrarian law. On motion of
Barere, arch time-server, the Convention voted " la peine de
mort centre quiconque proposera une loi agraire ou toute
autre, subversive des proprieties territoriales, commerciales
et industrielles." (Choix de Rapports, XI, p. 318.)
75 See laws on confiscation of goods of the aristocrats e. g.
in act establishing Revolutionary Tribunal, Choix de Rap-
ports, XII.
76 See laws on limitation of large fortune, Sagnac, op. cit.,
pp. 217-243,
RIGHT TO PROPERTY.
ception of state as rightful possessor of all the sources
and means of production.
The reason for this is important and not far to seek.
The root principle behind either idea of property was
one entirely individualistic. It was believed, that in
order to fulfill the end for which the greater number
had been given the controlling power, that is, in order
to best further the common happiness by means of in-
dividual freedom, the state must proceed by way of
the segregation, not the aggregation, of possessions.
The social duty, from which the social right over prop-
erty derived, was the equitable division of property, in
order to insure his share of happiness to each member
of society. Even when it was held that the state had
the right to take away from one citizen, it was only
desired that it should do so in order that it might carry
out completely its service of giving to another who was
more deserving of possession. In all cases, the ideal
was only state control of the partition of property, not
state ownership of property. If the sovereign seques-
trated, whether on the grounds of being the real pos-
sessor, as was sometimes urged, or on the grounds of
social utility, it was not in order to retain control of
the property, but in order to an immediate redistribu-
tion on a basis which it conceived to be more nearly in
consonance with those principles of freedom and equity
that it had been created to preserve. During the Revo-
lution, this theory that the state finally controlled prop-
erty expressed itself in a minute partition of the land,
because it went along with, and was in a sense sec-
ondary to, a theory that the individual was, by natural
170 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
law, free, and was best left free to seek the satisfac-
tion of his own wants for himself. The whole aim of
the Revolution was a new distribution of political
power; the new distribution of property came in the
minds of the revolutionary parties merely as a neces-
sary measure in the course of such a repartition of the
government control. "When the power of the Church
was to be diminished; when the defection of the nobles
was to be punished and the ecclesiastical and manorial
properties were expropriated by the state, the grounds
of such confiscation were oftenest that it was the state
duty to appropriate property wherever the individual
had failed in his duty to the state. The estates of
the guilds, of the suspects, of persons condemned to
the death penalty, these and any of the quasi-public or
private domains which were eventually alienated, were
always adjudged to the state on grounds of public util-
ity, whether state right or state duty was the final
argument which sanctioned the appropriation. .
To sum up, the theory of property current during
the Eevolution shows an interesting separation of
opinion as to the right of property. Along with the
doctrine of the sacredness and inviolability of individ-
ual property on grounds of a natural right, deriving
from labor, it gave conspicuous importance to the prin-
ciple that the final and real proprietor was always the
state. Both parties were, however, so influenced by a
belief in the intimate connection between the develop-
ment of the individual and his inherent right to seek
and hold any means he deemed most needful for his
personal happiness, that there was no tendency to talk
RIGHT TO PROPERTY.
of state ownership of land. In regard to property, the
principle which emerges most positively from the Kevo-
lution is the idea of the state as arbiter concerning all
questions of property. State appropriations were al-
ways made on grounds of social utility, whether in the
name of a state right or a state duty. "Whenever such
appropriations were made, the public necessity was al-
ways urged, in accordance with the requirements of
the articles of both declarations, 77 even when the " in-
demnity " they also provided for was not forthcoming.
The ideas of prope'rty prevailing during the Eevolution
may be said to have focused; not so much to a unity of
opinion concerning the source of the right of property,
but rather to a uniformity of opinion which served
greatly to widen the sphere of state activity.
One important general fact derives from this review
of the revolutionary opinion concerning natural rights.
It must have been observed that, whether in regard to
the physical or mental freedom of the individual, his
social status, or his property, always the revolutionary
tendency was to accent increasingly the state's right
to arbitrate concerning the share of each individual in
such rights. While it is never to be forgotten that, in
the eyes of the revolutionists, social institutions were
only conceived to exist for the sake of the individual,
just because the individual interests were held to need
social institutions, this problem of the state and its du-
ties grew to be of increasing importance. The whole
political problem really resolved finally into this one of
77 Declaration of '89, art. XVII; Declaration of '93, arts.
XVI and XIX.
172 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
finding an answer for the question as to what were the
powers and duties of the state. Here, as at later
periods, the question was, how far collective action must
aid moral and physical well-being; in a word, what was
the relation of the state to the individual? To find
the reply which the Kevolution gave to this question is
to find the revolutionary answer to the pivotal political
problem of that or any time. In this summary state-
ment of the revolutionary principles, it remains then
to discuss the position of the revolutionists on two
fundamental political principles. It must be clearly
understood what the state, or sovereign, was conceived
to be, and what was supposed to be the relation of the
sovereign to each individual in the nation. The least
skilled of political theorists who remembers that the
spirit of '93 was one of logical completeness, can work
out the Constitution of '93, if the revolutionary idea
of sovereignty and of relation between tke state and
the individual is made clear.
IV.
Under the influence of the prevailing moral and