It is just the reverse in 1789 In conformity with the doctrine of the social contract, the principle is set up that every man is born free, and that his freedom has always been inalienable. If he formerly submitted to slavery or to serfdom, it was owing to his having had a knife at his throat; a contract of this sort is essentially null and void. So much the worse for those who have the benefit of it at the present day; they are holders of stolen property, and must restore it to the legitimate owners. Let no one object that this property was acquired for cash down, and in good faith; they ought to have known beforehand that man and his liberty are not commercial matters, and that unjust acquisitions rightly perish in their hands.[20] Nobody dreams that the State which was a party to this transaction is the responsible guarantor. Only one scruple affects the Assembly ; its jurists and Merlin, its reporter, are obliged to yield to proof; they know that in current practice, and by innumerable ancient and modern titles, the noble in many cases is nothing but an ordinary lessor, and that if, in those cases, he collects his dues, it is simply in his capacity as a private person, by virtue of a mutual contract, because he has given a perpetual lease of a certain portion of his land; and he has given it only in consideration of an annual payment in money or produce, or services, together with another contingent claim which the farmer pays in case of the transmission of the lease. These two obligations could not be canceled without indemnity; if it were done, more than one-half of the proprietors in France would be dispossessed in favor of the farmers. Hence the distinction which the Assembly makes in the feudal dues. -- On the one hand it abolishes without indemnity all those dues which the noble receives by virtue of being the local sovereign, the ancient proprietor of persons and the usurper of public. powers; all those which the lessee paid as serf, subject to rights of inheritance, and as former vassal or dependent. On the other hand, it maintains and decrees as redeemable at a certain rate all those which the noble receives through his title of landed proprietor and of simple lessor; all those which the lessee pays by virtue of being a free contracting party, former purchaser, tenant, farmer or grantee of landed estate.
-- By this division it fancies that it has respected lawful ownership by overthrowing illegitimate property, and that in the feudal scheme of obligations, it has separated the wheat from the chaff.[21]
But, through the principle, the drawing up and the omissions of its law, it condemns both to a common destruction; the fire on which it has thrown the chaff necessarily burns up the wheat. -- Both are in fact bound up together in the same sheaf. If the noble formerly brought men under subjection by the sword, it is also by the sword that he formerly acquired possession of the soil. If the subjection of persons is invalid on account of the original stain of violence, the usurpation of the soil is invalid for the same reason. And if the sanction and guarantee of the State could not justify the first act of brigandage, they could not justify the second; and, since the rights which are derived from unjust sovereignty are abolished without indemnity, the rights which are derived from unjust proprietorship should be likewise abolished without compensation. -- The Assembly, with remarkable imprudence, had declared in the preamble to its law that "it abolished the feudal system entirely,"and, whatever its ulterior reservations might be, the fiat has gone forth. The forty thousand sovereign municipalities to which the text of the decree is read pay attention only to the first article, and the village attorney, imbued with the rights of man, easily proves to these assemblies of debtors that they owe nothing to their creditors. There must be no exceptions nor distinctions: no more annual rents, field-rents, dues on produce, nor contingent rents, nor lord's dues and fines, or fifths.[22] If these have been maintained by the Assembly, it is owing to misunderstanding, timidity, inconsistency, and on all sides, in the rural districts, the grumbling of disappointed greed or of unsatisfied necessities is heard:[23]
"You thought that you were destroying feudalism, while your redemption laws have done just the contrary. . . . Are you not aware that what was called a Seigneur was simply an unpunished usurper? . . That detestable decree of 1790 is the ruin of lease-holders. It has thrown the villages into a state of consternation.
The nobles reap all the advantage of it. . Never will redemption be possible. Redemption of unreal claims! Redemption of dues that are detestable!"In vain the Assembly insists, specifies and explains by examples and by detailed instructions the mode of procedure and the conditions of redemption. Neither the procedure nor its conditions are practicable. It has made no provisions for facilitating the agreement of parties and the satisfaction of feudal liens, no special arbitrators, nor bank for loans, nor system of annuities.
And worse still, instead of clearing the road it has barred it by legal arrangements. The lease-holder is not to redeem his annual rent without at the same time compounding for the contingent rent:
he is not allowed on his own to redeem his quota since he is tied up in solidarity with the other partners. Should his hoard be a small one, so much the worse for him. Not being able to redeem the whole, he is not allowed to redeem a part. Not having the money with which to relieve himself from both ground-rents and lord's dues he cannot relieve himself from ground-rents. Not having the money to liquidate the debt in full of those who are bound along with him-self, he remains a captive in his ancient chains by virtue of the new law which announces to him his freedom.