350 Chapter XV
the modern theory of the democratic state) that the country did not, strictly speak-
ing, “consent” to taxation; it authorized and raised the taxes by its own agents and
its own name.^3
Robespierre had developed the class hatred, the intolerance, the self-
righteousness, and the quarrelsome habit of seeing great principles in passing inci-
dents that may be said to characterize a revolutionary psychology.
There were endless other evidences of the same state of mind. There was Bris-
sot’s feeling that no theory could be more “atrocious” than existing reality. There
was Mirabeau’s execration of “the eternal race of aristocrats.” There was repudia-
tion of ordinary social bonds: “since you degrade the Third Estate by your scorn, it
owes you nothing.”^4 There was utopi an ism, as in Dupont’s faith in a “perfect soci-
ety,” a beau idéal, even better than that of the Americans. There was the habit of
seeing questions of policy as plain clashes between truth and error: the function of
lawmaking bodies is to legislate “the truth,” according to Condorcet. And always
there was the sense of outrage, of burning injustice, of true merit humiliated by a
false system of values. “What a society,” cried Sieyès, “in which work is said to
derogate; where it is honorable to consume, but humiliating to produce, where the
laborious occupations are called vile, as if anything were vile except vice, or as if the
classes that work were the most vicious!”^5
Nevertheless, if the French people—or a good many of them—were in a radical
mood at the beginning of 1789, they had been brought to it by their own hitherto
accepted superiors. The King himself, and Calonne, had hurled the words “abuse,”
“privilege,” “aristocracy.” The parlements had flung back the epithet “despotism.”
Each had undermined confidence in the good faith of the other. Both had raised
up great expectations. The King had spoken of the need for equalization of taxes,
and for elected assemblies based on equal representation of landowners. The parle-
ments had publicized the need for a constitution, for public participation in gov-
ernment, and for security of individual rights. Both had given the impression that
something was radically wrong with the country, that great evils existed, and that
these must and soon could be corrected.
This belief was in harmony with the whole philosophy of the century, and had
been powerfully reinforced by the American Revolution. In the drama of the con-
tinents the cause of liberty and equality appeared as a world- wide movement, and
it seemed that a new era had already dawned.
Repeatedly, however, expectations had been disappointed, and hopes had been
raised only to be let down. The first Assembly of Notables had come to nothing.
The new provincial assemblies had ended up too often in bickering between the
orders. The country had come to the defense of the Parlement of Paris against the
May Edicts, and during this controversy the King’s promise of the Estates Gen-
eral, as demanded by the Parlement, had aroused a sense of imminent national re-
newal. There was therefore a sense of betrayal, or a feeling that a veil had been torn
3 Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre (Paris, 1950), VI, 6–9, 19, 30–31, 66–67.
4 Le dernier mot du Tiers Etat à la noblesse de France (n.p. n.d., January, 1789), 6. For the references
here to Brissot, Mirabeau and Dupont, see above pp. 196, 203–4, 210–11.
5 Condorcet, Lettre à M. le comte de Montmorency (Paris, 1789), 14; E. Sieyès, Quest- ce que le Tiers
Etat? (3rd ed., 1789), 83–84.