《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第十七章·何以施恩反而激起民变》第1节
As the common people of France had not appeared for one single moment on the theatre of public affairs for upwards of one hundred and forty years, no one any longer imagined that they could ever again resume their position. They appeared unconscious, and were therefore believed to be deaf; accordingly, those who began to take an interest in their condition talked about them in their presence just as if they had not been there. It seemed as if these remarks could only be heard by those who were placed above the common people, and that the only danger to be apprehended was that they might not be fully understood by the upper classes. The very men who had most to fear from the fury of the people declaimed loudly in their presence on the cruel injustice under which the people had always suffered. They pointed out to each other the monstrous vices of those institutions which had weighed most heavily upon the lower orders: they employed all their powers of rhetoric in depicting the miseries of the common people and their ill-paid labour; and thus they infuriated while they endeavoured to relieve them. I do not speak of the writers, but of the Government, of its chief agents, and of those belonging to the privileged class itself. When the King, thirteen years before the Revolution, tried to abolish the use of compulsory labour, he said, in the preamble to this decree, ‘With the exception of a small number of provinces (the pays d’état), almost all the roads throughout the kingdom have been made by the gratuitous labour of the poorest part of our subjects. Thus the whole burden has fallen on those who possess nothing but their hands, and who are interested only in a secondary degree in the existence of roads; those really interested are the landowners, nearly all privileged persons, whose estates are increased in value by the construction of roads. By forcing the poor to keep them up unaided, and by compelling them to give their time and labour without remuneration, they are deprived of their sole resource against want and hunger, because they are made to labour for the profit of the rich.’
注释摘要
托克维尔在这里揭示了一种看似关怀、实则致命的沟通断裂。法国平民已有一百四十余年未在任何公共事务的舞台上露面，这使得上层阶级在心理上彻底抹去了他们的存在。这不是简单的忽视，而是一种更深的认知瘫痪：精英们把平民的长期沉默误读为无知无觉，进而当作耳聋。他们认为自己谈论平民苦难的那些话语，只有上层阶级能听见，唯一需要担心的是这些话语在上层那里不够有说服力。这种误判…