A Century of Continental History, 1780-1880
by John Holland Rose (9781458995636)

A Century of Continental History, 1780-1880 (Book)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE CONSTITUENT AND LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES.1 Legislation (1789-1790).The old provincial "Parle- ments " had long since regretted their short-sighted opposition to the king's reforming efforts, and now strove to excite the provinces against the capital and the Assembly which they had unwittingly called into being - but they had no popular support, and the Assembly easily swept away the old provincial system. The new division into Departments of equal size or population, and the substitution of natural features for the old historic nomenclature, carried out the spirit of Rousseau's doctrine of natural equality. Furthermore, it aided the growth of national unity; for men now prided themselves only in being Frenchmen, and no longer in the name of Norman, Gascon, or Burgundian. Each of the eighty-three new Departments was divided into districts, each district into cantons, and each canton into rural municipalities or communes; and these last had local powers so considerable that for a time France may be said to have been divided into 44,000 little republics. Meanwhile, bankruptcy was paralysing the State, which could not raise money at ten per cent, though the clergy 1 The first Assembly was called the Constituent, because its work was to pave the way for, and to form, the new Constitution; so also after the Revolution of 1848 the first Assembly was called the Constituent, the second Legislative. could borrow at four per cent on the Church lands. The needs of the treasury and jealousy of the clergy as a powerful order led the Assembly to decree the Confiscation of Church lands for the service of the State (December 2, 1789). Tithes had already been abolished; and now, to facilitate the sale of Church lands, paper-notes, called assignats, were issued with f...

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