《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第六章·旧制度下的行政积习》第7节
In the eighteenth century the central authority in France had not yet acquired that sound and vigorous constitution which it has since exhibited; nevertheless, as it had already succeeded in destroying all intermediate authorities, and had left only a vast blank between itself and the individuals constituting the nation, it already appeared to each of them from a distance as the only spring of the social machine, the sole and indispensable agent of public life. Nothing shows this more fully than the writings even of its detractors. When the long period of uneasiness which preceded the Revolution began to be felt, all sorts of new systems of society and government were concocted. The ends which these various reformers had in view were various, but the means they proposed were always the same. They wanted to employ the power of the central authority in order to destroy all existing institutions, and to reconstruct them according to some new plan of their own device; no other power appeared to them capable of accomplishing such a task. The power of the State ought, they said, to be as unlimited as its rights; all that was required was to force it to make a proper use of both. The elder Mirabeau, a nobleman so imbued with the notion of the rights of his order that he openly called the Intendants ‘intruders,’ and declared that if the appointment of the magistrates was left altogether in the hands of the Government, the courts of justice would soon be mere ‘bands of commissioners,’--Mirabeau himself looked only to the action of the central authority to realise his visionary schemes. These ideas were not confined to books; they found entrance into men’s minds, modified their customs, affected their habits, and penetrated throughout society, even into every-day life. No one imagined that any important affair could be properly carried out without the intervention of the State. Even the agriculturists--a class usually refractory to precept--were disposed to think that if agriculture did not improve, it was the fault of the Government, which did not give them sufficient advice and assistance. One of them writes to an Intendant in a tone of irritation which foreshadows the coming Revolution. ‘Why does not the Government appoint inspectors to go once a year into the provinces to examine the state of cultivation, to instruct the cultivators how to improve it--to tell them what to do with their cattle, how to fatten, rear, and sell them, and where to take them to market? These inspectors should be well paid; and the farmers who exhibited proofs of the best system of husbandry should receive some mark of honour.’
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段里把目光从行政技术的细枝末节抬起，转而诊断一种更为致命的精神状态：中央权力在物理上摧毁了所有中间团体之后，又在人们的想象中占据了独一无二的位置。他指出，十八世纪法国的中央权威之所以不再只是庞大的行政机器，是因为它在社会心里已经变成了唯一的生命来源。贵族的地方治理权、教士的自主领域、行会的自治功能、省三级会议的协商空间，统统被磨平之后，国家与…