《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第十章·政治自由毁弃与阶级隔绝乃旧制度致死之由》第7节
The Middle Ages are sometimes erroneously charged with all the evils arising from the trading or industrial corporations. But at their origin these guilds and companies served only as means to connect the members of a given calling with each other, and to establish in each trade a free government in miniature, whose business it was at once to assist and to control the working classes. Such, and no more, seems to have been the intention of St. Louis. It was not till the commencement of the sixteenth century, in the midst of that period which is termed the Revival of Arts and Letters, that it was proposed for the first time to consider the right to labour in a particular vocation as a privilege to be sold by the Crown. Then it was that each Company became a small close aristocracy, and at last those monopolies were established which were so prejudicial to the progress of the arts and which so exasperated the last generation. From the reign of Henry III., who generalised the evil, if he did not give birth to it, down to Louis XVI., who extirpated it, it may be said that the abuse of the system of guilds never ceased to augment and to spread at the very time when the progress of society rendered those institutions more insupportable, and when the common sense of the public was most opposed to them. Year after year more professions were deprived of their freedom; year after year the privileges of the incorporated trades were increased. Never was the evil carried to greater lengths than during what are commonly called the prosperous years of the reign of Louis XIV., because at no former period had the want of money been more imperious, or the resolution not to raise money with the assent of the nation more firmly taken. Letrone said with truth in 1775--‘The State has only established the trading companies to furnish pecuniary resources, partly by the patents which it sells, partly by the creation of new offices which the Companies are forced to buy up. The Edict of 1673 carried the principles of Henry III. to their furthest consequences by compelling all the Companies to take out letters of confirmation upon payment for the same; and all the workmen who were not yet incorporated in some one of these bodies were compelled to enter them. This wretched expedient brought in three hundred thousand livres.’
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段里处理的是一个看似专门、实则关乎全书命脉的制度史问题：法国行会制度究竟是谁的错。他不否认十八世纪末的行会已经变成了令人憎恶的垄断组织，但他断然拒绝把整个罪名安在中世纪头上。这种拒绝不是出于对中古的浪漫怀旧，而是他作为政治史分析者特有的追根溯源的习惯。他要追问的是，一个起初服务于同业互助、兼有内部控制功能的微型自治体，为何会在近代变成封闭的特…