《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第十二章·何以十八世纪法国农民处境反不如十三世纪》第9节
Down to the close of the reign of Louis XIV. the high roads were not repaired, or were repaired at the cost of those who used them, namely, the State and the adjacent landowners. But about that time the roads began to be repaired by forced labour only, that is to say, exclusively at the expense of the peasantry. This expedient for making roads without paying for them was thought so ingenious, that in 1737 a circular of the Comptroller-General Orry established it throughout France. The Intendants were armed with the right of imprisoning the refractory at pleasure, or of sending constables after them. From that time, whenever trade augmented, so that more roads were wanted or desired, the corvée or forced labour extended to new lines, and had more work to do. It appears from the Report made in 1779 to the Provincial Assembly of Berri, that the works executed by forced labour in that poor province were estimated in one year at 700,000 livres. In 1787 they were computed at about the same sum in Lower Normandy. Nothing can better demonstrate the melancholy fate of the rural population; the progress of society, which enriched all the other classes, drove them to despair, and civilisation itself turned against that class alone. I find about the same time, in the correspondence of the Intendants, that leave was to be refused to the peasants to do their forced labour on the private roads of their own villages, since this labour was to be reserved to the great high roads only, or, as they were then called, ‘the King’s highway.’ The strange notion that the cost of the roads was to be defrayed by the poorest persons, and by those who were the least likely to travel by them, though of recent date, took such root in the minds of those who were to profit by it, that they soon imagined that the thing could not be done differently. In 1766 an attempt was made to commute this forced labour into a local rate, but the same inequality survived, and affected this new species of tax.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段里处理的，是一个看似琐细、实则暴烈的事件：道路修筑制度在十八世纪法国发生的剧变。在路易十四末年以前，主干道路要么不修，要么由使用者（国家和沿线地主）出钱来修。但几乎就在旧制度走向鼎盛的那一刻，一种更冷酷的做法诞生了——王室开始用强制劳役来代替财政支出，把筑路的全部负担转移到农民身上。他用了一个在法国旧制度财政史上意味深长的词：corvée，…