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The old régime and the French Revolution

Alexis de Tocqueville, known and still frequently quoted for his book on democracy in America, started at the end of his life to write a book on the French Revolution, only the first part of which came to fruition, as de Tocqueville’s life was cut short by cholera in his fifties. This first part is not intended as a history of the Revolution as such, indeed there is almost no mention of the the day to day affairs of the process, and apart from an indirect reference to Louis XVI as ill-starred, no mention of the Kings decapitation is to be found, but is meant as a history of its precedent, providing an attempt to explain why it arose, and why in France particularly. Thus the bulk of the book is devoted to the ancien regime of the 18th century, immediately preceding the revolutionary cataclysm. The writings of the author is no mere speculation, although there is plenty of that in the book as well, but is based on extensive archival research, which no doubt took him years to pursue, and fragments of which found their place in the extended endnotes. His thesis is that in spite of the wide gulf that seems to separate us from the old regime, after all at the time of his writing, many people who had been born in those distant times were still alive, there is a remarkable continuity between the old and the new. In fact the reason the revolution took place, according to the author, is because of this very continuity. Political revolutions seldom if ever involve such total repudiations of the past as do scientific and technical, even if the French Revolution strikes the author as a most singular event in the history of mankind, and unlike any other political revolution, as it was imbued with a universal appeal, formerly more characteristic of the missions of the great religions. The author is an aristocrat and he is a conservative. The former may have only a slight effect on his point of view, the second is fundamental. No matter how assiduously you collect empirical evidence, there is no point to such exercises, unless they are guided by some overarching principle. Unsurprisingly de Tocqueville is in sympathy with Burke, whom he often quotes with approval, although from time to time censoring him for his unfamiliarity with the French social scene. Being a political conservative, is of course not the same as being a reactionary and being undemocratic, fanatically opposed to reform; nor does it necessarily mean to be indifferent to injustice let alone callous, although the term ’compassionate conservatism’ has recently come in disrepute due to the Bush administration. Burke, to take an immediate example, was a Whig and a forceful advocate for the abolition of slavery. What it means is a deep appreciation of tradition. With this comes a distrust of abstract schemes of thought, especially when applied to the affairs of quotidian politics. As noted above, there is no principal opposition to reform in the mind of the conservative, but reform should be piecemeal and address concrete issues. One of the virtues of a conservative observer is the mild cynicism that comes with a long perspective and the concomitant predilection to spot unintended consequences of well-meant