《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第十五章·何以法国人先求改革后求自由》第5节
The point was, then, not to destroy this absolute power, but to convert it. ‘The State must govern according to the rules of essential order,’ said Mercier de la Rivière, ‘and when this is the case it ought to be all powerful.’ ‘Let the State thoroughly understand its duty, and then let it be altogether free.’ From Quesnay to the Abbé Bodeau they were all of the same mind. They not only relied on the royal administration to reform the social condition of their own age, but they partially borrowed from it the idea of the future government they hoped to found. The latter was framed in the image of the former. These economists held that it is the business of the State not only to command the nation, but to fashion it in a certain manner, to form the character of the population upon a certain preconceived model, to inspire the mind with such opinions and the heart with such sentiments as it may deem necessary. In fact, they set no limits to the rights of the State, nor to what it could effect. The State was not only to reform men, but to transform them--perhaps if it chose, to make others! ‘The State can make men what it pleases,’ said Bodeau. That proposition includes all their theories. This unlimited social power which the French economists had conceived was not only greater than any power they ever beheld, but it differed from every other power by its origin and its nature. It did not flow directly from the Deity, it did not rest on tradition; it was an impersonal power; it was not called the King, but the State; it was not the inheritance of a family, but the product and the representative of all. It entitled them to bend the right of every man to the will of the rest. That peculiar form of tyranny which is called Democratic Despotism, and which was utterly unknown to the Middle Ages, was already familiar to these writers. No gradations in society, no distinctions of classes, no fixed ranks--a people composed of individuals nearly alike and entirely equal--this confused mass being recognised as the only legitimate sovereign, but carefully deprived of all the faculties which could enable it either to direct or even to superintend its own government. Above this mass a single officer, charged to do everything in its name without consulting it. To control this officer, public opinion, deprived of its organs; to arrest him, revolutions, but no laws. In principle, a subordinate agent; in fact, a master.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这里做了一个极为精准的转向。他抓住的不是重农学派对君主专制的批判，而是他们内心深处对绝对权力的另一种渴望。他说，他们不打算摧毁这架绝对权力的机器，而是要改造它、利用它，让它为自己设想的那种社会变革服务。梅尔西埃·德·拉里维耶尔的公式很清楚：一旦国家按“根本秩序”来治理，它就应当是全能的。这里的“根本秩序”不是后世自由主义讲的法治框架，而是重农学派…