THE MIDDLE CLASS.
I.THE PAST.
The former spirit of the Third-Estate. - Public matters concern the king only. - Limits of the Jansenist and parliamentarian opposition.
The new philosophy, confined to a select circle, had long served as a mere luxury for refined society. Merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, lawyers, attorneys, physicians, actors, professors, curates, every description of functionary, employee and clerk, the entire middle class, had been absorbed with its own cares. The horizon of each was limited, being that of the profession or occupation which each exercised, that of the corporation in which each one was comprised, of the town in which each one was born, and, at the utmost, that of the province which each one inhabited[1]. A dearth of ideas coupled with conscious diffidence restrained the bourgeois within his hereditary barriers. His eyes seldom chanced to wander outside of them into the forbidden and dangerous territory of state affairs; hardly was a furtive and rare glance bestowed on any of the public acts, on the matters which "belonged to the king." There was no critical irritability then, except with the bar, the compulsory satellite of the Parliament, and borne along in its orbit. In 1718, after a session of the royal court (lit de justice), the lawyers of Paris being on a strike the Regent exclaims angrily and with astonishment, "What! those fellows meddling too!"[2] It must be stated furthermore that many kept themselves in the background. "My father and myself," afterwards writes the advocate Barbier, "took no part in the uproars, among those caustic and turbulent spirits." and he adds this significant article of faith: "I believe that one has to fulfill his duties honorably, without concerning oneself with state affairs, in which one has no mission and exercises no power." During the first half of the eighteenth century I am able to discover but one center of opposition in the Third-Estate , the Parliament; and around it, feeding the flame, the ancient Gallican or Jansenist spirit. "The good city of Paris," writes Barbier in 1733, "is Jansenist from top to bottom," and not alone the magistrates, the lawyers, the professors, the best among the bourgeoisie, "but again the mass of the Parisians, men, women and children, all upholding that doctrine, without comprehending it, or understanding any of its distinctions and interpretations, out of hatred to Rome and the Jesuits. Women, the silliest, and even chambermaids, would be hacked to pieces for it. .
. " This party is increased by the honest folks of the kingdom who detest persecutions and injustice. Accordingly, when the various chambers of magistrates, in conjunction with the lawyers, tender their resignations and file out of the palace "amidst a countless multitude, the crowd exclaims: Behold the true Romans, the fathers of the country! and as the two counselors Pucelle and Menguy pass along they fling them crowns." The quarrel between the Parliament and the Court, constantly revived, is one of the sparks which provokes the grand final explosion, while the Jansenist embers, smoldering in the ashes, are to be of use in 1791 when the ecclesiastical edifice comes to be attacked. But, within this old chimney-corner only warm embers are now found, firebrands covered up, sometimes scattering sparks and flames, but in themselves and by themselves, not incendiary; the flame is kept within bounds by its nature, and its supplies limit its heat.
The Jansenist is too good a Christian not to respect powers inaugurated from above. The parliamentarian, conservative through his profession, would be horrified at overthrowing the established order of things. Both combat for tradition and against innovation; hence, after having defended the past against arbitrary power they are to defend it against revolutionary violence, and to fall, the one into impotency and the other into oblivion.
II. CHANGE IN THE CONDITION OF THE BOURGEOIS.
Change in the condition of the bourgeois. - He becomes wealthy.
- He makes loans to the State. - The danger of his creditorship. -He interests himself in public matters.
The uprising is, however, late to catch on among the middle class, and, before it can take hold, the resistant material must gradually be made inflammable. -- In the eighteenth century a great change takes place in the condition of the Third-Estate . The bourgeois has worked, manufactured, traded, earned and saved money, and has daily become richer and richer.[3] This great expansion of enterprises, of trade, of speculation and of fortunes dates from Law;[4] arrested by war it reappears with more vigor and more animation at each interval of peace after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, and that of Paris in 1763, and especially after the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI. The exports of France which amounted to106 millions in 1720124 millions in 1735192 millions in 1748
257 millions in 1755
309 millions in 1776
354 millions in 1788.