Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Bibliographical Note
- Chronology
- TOCQUEVILLE: THE ANCIEN RÉGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
- Foreword
- Book I
- Book II
- Book III
- III.1 How, Toward the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, Men of Letters Became the Country's Leading Politicians, and the Effects That Followed from This
- III.2 How Irreligion Was Able to Become a General and Dominant Passion in Eighteenth-Century France, and How It Influenced the Character of the Revolution
- III.3 How the French Wanted Reforms Before They Wanted Liberties
- III.4 That the Reign of Louis XVI Was the Most Prosperous Era of the Old Monarchy, and How That Very Prosperity Hastened the Revolution
- III.5 How Attempts to Relieve the People Stirred Them to Revolt
- III.6 On Some Practices That Helped the Government Complete the People's Revolutionary Education
- III.7 How a Great Administrative Revolution Preceded the Political Revolution, and on the Consequences It Had
- III.8 How the Revolution Emerged Naturally from the Foregoing
- Appendix: On the Pays d'états, and in Particular Languedoc
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
III.5 - How Attempts to Relieve the People Stirred Them to Revolt
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Bibliographical Note
- Chronology
- TOCQUEVILLE: THE ANCIEN RÉGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
- Foreword
- Book I
- Book II
- Book III
- III.1 How, Toward the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, Men of Letters Became the Country's Leading Politicians, and the Effects That Followed from This
- III.2 How Irreligion Was Able to Become a General and Dominant Passion in Eighteenth-Century France, and How It Influenced the Character of the Revolution
- III.3 How the French Wanted Reforms Before They Wanted Liberties
- III.4 That the Reign of Louis XVI Was the Most Prosperous Era of the Old Monarchy, and How That Very Prosperity Hastened the Revolution
- III.5 How Attempts to Relieve the People Stirred Them to Revolt
- III.6 On Some Practices That Helped the Government Complete the People's Revolutionary Education
- III.7 How a Great Administrative Revolution Preceded the Political Revolution, and on the Consequences It Had
- III.8 How the Revolution Emerged Naturally from the Foregoing
- Appendix: On the Pays d'états, and in Particular Languedoc
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Summary
For 140 years, the people had been entirely absent from the political scene, so it was simply taken for granted that they would never be capable of putting in an appearance. Because they seemed so impassive, they were deemed to be deaf. When their fate began to arouse interest, others began to speak in front of them as if they were not there. Apparently, only those situated above the people were supposed to be able to hear what was said, and the only danger to fear was that they might not get the point.
Those who had the most to fear from the people's wrath discussed out loud, and in their presence, the cruel injustices of which the people had always been the victims. They pointed out to one another the monstrous flaws in the institutions that had oppressed the people most. They used their rhetorical skills to depict the people's misery and ill-remunerated labor. By thus attempting to relieve the people, they filled them with fury. I speak not of writers but of the government and its principal agents and of the privileged themselves.
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- Information
- Tocqueville: The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution , pp. 160 - 165Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011