《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第一章·何以封建权利在法国最招人恨》第4节
The districts of Germany in which, at the close of the eighteenth century, the peasants were possessed of land and lived almost as freely as in France, lay on the banks of the Rhine. In those same districts the revolutionary passions of France spread with the utmost velocity, and have always been most intense. The tracts of Germany which remained, on the contrary, for the longest time inaccessible to these passions, are those where no such tenures of land had yet been introduced. The observation deserves to be made. It is, then, a vulgar error to suppose that the subdivision of landed property in France dates from the Revolution. This state of things is far older. The Revolution, it is true, caused the lands of the Church and a great portion of the lands of the nobility to be sold; but if any one will take the trouble, as I have sometimes done, to refer to the actual returns and entries of these sales, it will be seen that most of these lands were purchased by persons who already held other lands; so that though the property changed hands, the number of proprietors increased far less than is supposed. There was already an immensity of these persons, to borrow the somewhat ambitious but, in this case, not inaccurate expression of M. Necker. The effect of the Revolution was not to divide the soil, but to liberate it for a moment. All these small landowners were, in reality, ill at ease in the cultivation of their property, and had to bear many charges or easements on the land which they could not shake off. These charges were no doubt onerous. But the cause which made them appear insupportable was precisely that which might have seemed calculated to diminish the burden of them. The peasants of France had been released, more than in any other part of Europe, from the government of their lords, by a revolution not less momentous than that which had made them owners of the soil. Although what is termed in France the Ancien Régime is still very near to us, since we live in daily intercourse with men born under its laws, that period seems already lost in the night of time. The radical revolution which separates us from it has produced the effect of ages: it has obliterated all that it has not destroyed. Few persons therefore can now give an accurate answer to the simple question--How were the rural districts of France administered before 1789? And indeed no answer can be given to that question with precision and minuteness, without having studied, not books, but the administrative records of that period.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段中做了一个被他自己称为“值得注意”的比较历史观察。他注意到，18世纪末的德意志地区内部存在着一个醒目的对照：在莱茵河沿岸，农民不仅拥有土地，而且生活方式几乎与法国农民一样自由；恰恰在这些地区，来自法国的革命激情传播得最为迅猛、也最为持久。反观那些尚未出现此类土地占有模式的德意志地区，革命热情则长时间无法渗透。托克维尔通过这个地理上的对比，把…