《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第五章·中央集权如何潜入旧权威而不摧之》第1节
Let us now briefly recapitulate what has been said in the three preceding chapters. A single body or institution placed in the centre of the kingdom regulated the public administration of the whole country; the same Minister directed almost all the internal affairs of the kingdom; in each province a single Government agent managed all the details; no secondary administrative bodies existed, and none which could act until they had been set in motion by the authority of the State; courts of extraordinary jurisdiction judged the causes in which the administration was interested, and sheltered all its agents. What is this but the centralisation with which we are so well acquainted? Its forms were less marked than they are at present; its course was less regular, its existence more disturbed; but it is the same being. It has not been necessary to add or to withdraw any essential condition; the removal of all that once surrounded it at once exposed it in the shape that now meets our eyes. Most of the institutions which I have just described have been imitated subsequently, and in a hundred different places; but they were at that time peculiar to France; and we shall shortly see how great was the influence they had on the French Revolution and on its results. But how came these institutions of modern date to be established in France amidst the ruins of feudal society? It was a work of patience, of address, and of time, rather than of force or of absolute power. At the time when the Revolution occurred, scarcely any part of the old administrative edifice of France had been destroyed; but another structure had been, as it were, called into existence beneath it. There is nothing to show that the Government of the old French monarchy followed any deliberately concerted plan to effect this difficult operation. That Government merely obeyed the instinct which leads all governments to aim at the exclusive management of affairs--an instinct which ever remained the same in spite of the diversity of its agents. The monarchy had left to the ancient powers of France their venerable names and their honours, but it had gradually subtracted from them their authority. They had not been expelled but enticed out of their domains. By the indolence of one man, by the egotism of another, the Government had found means to occupy their places. Availing itself of all their vices, never attempting to correct but only to supersede them, the Government at last found means to substitute for almost all of them its own sole agent, the Intendant, whose very name was unknown when those powers which he supplanted came into being.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这里做的是一个极简的总结，但他总结出来的，却是一个几乎贯穿全书的核心诊断。他先把前三章刻画的那架行政机器摆在我们面前：王国中央只有一个机构或一个单一建制，统辖全国公共行政；同一位大臣几乎主导王国所有的内部事务；在各省，只有一个政府代理人管理一切大小事项；不存在真正意义的次级行政体，凡是想办理什么事的地方机构，都得先等国家权威来启动；对于行政管理中…