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Thus anonymous libels should no longer be suffered to appear, and bad books generally should bring down punishment on their authors. The cahiers of the clergy, more, perhaps, than any others, insist on the importance of education; and the ecclesiastics generally wish to control it themselves. C., Labourt, iii. A. P., 424, Section 27. Ornans, A. P., iii. 172, Section 4.
Many of the cahiers had suggested that the Estates should draw up a clear statement of the rights of the individual citizen. It was urged that the recurrence of abuses and the insidious encroachments of despotism might in this way be forever prevented.
And so forth, with a gravity and moderation, that were then common in political discussion in France. It gradually disappeared in 1789, when it was found that the privileged orders, even at that time, in their cahiers steadily demanded the maintenance of every one of their most odious and iniquitous rights.
The result of this arrangement was that the parish priests far outnumbered the regular ecclesiastics and dignitaries, and that the clerical cahiers oftenest express the wishes of the lower portion of the secular clergy. This preponderance of the lower clergy appears to have been foreseen and desired by the royal advisers.
I did not bear the first view like a stoic; I was dazzled, my eyes fell, and in a voice somewhat too low I murmured "Prenez vos cahiers de dictee, mesdemoiselles." Not so had I bid the boys at Pelet's take their reading-books.
It was foreshadowed by the mass of well-considered complaints in the cahiers. It was achieved not only by the decrees of the Assembly, but by the forceful expression of the popular will. Great public rejoicing welcomed the formal inauguration of the limited monarchy in 1791. Many believed that a new era of Peace and prosperity was dawning for France.
The town of Bellocq, in the province of Bearn, is more explicit. The financial scheme outlined in the cahiers is, in the main, as follows. As soon as the constitution shall have been settled, the deputies shall call on the royal ministers for accounts and estimates. The latter shall be furnished in two parts.
Let us remark that these cahiers did not represent a previous state of affairs, but an actual condition due to a crisis of poverty produced by the bad harvest of 1788 and the hard winter of 1789. What would these cahiers have told us had they been written ten years earlier? Despite these unfavourable circumstances the cahiers contained no revolutionary ideas.
The cahiers printed in these volumes occupy about 4,000 large octavo pages in double column. These volumes will be referred to in this chapter and the next as A. P. Many cahiers and extracts from cahiers are also found printed in other places. I have not undertaken to give references to all the cahiers on which my conclusions are founded, but only to a few typical examples.
They were known in French political language as Cahiers. The cahiers of the Clergy and of the Nobility were drawn up in the electoral meetings which took place in every district. To these local assemblies of the Clergy, all bishops, abbots, and parish priests, holding benefices, were summoned.
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