《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第二十章·革命自然从既有事实中产生》第10节
The Central Power, moreover, exercised in Languedoc the same political rights which were everywhere else acknowledged to belong to it. The laws which the Crown was pleased to promulgate, the general ordinances it was continually passing, the general measures of its policy, were applicable there as well as in the rest of the kingdom. The Crown exercised there all the natural functions of government; it had there the same police and the same agents; there, as well as everywhere else, it created numerous new public officers, whose places the province was compelled to buy up at a large price. Languedoc was governed, like the other provinces of France, by an Intendant. This Intendant had, in each district, his Sub-delegates, who corresponded with the heads of the parishes and directed them. The Intendant exercised the tutelage of the administration as completely as in the pays d’élection. The humblest village in the gorges of the Cevennes was precluded from making the smallest outlay until it had been authorised by an Order of the King’s Council from Paris. That part of the judicial administration which is now denominated in France the contentieux administratif, or the litigated questions referred to the Council of State, was not only not less, but more comprehensive than in the remainder of France. The Intendant decided, in the first instance, all questions relating to the public ways; he judged all suits relating to roads; and, in general, he pronounced on all the matters in which the Government was, or conceived itself to be, interested. The Government extended the same protection as elsewhere to all its agents against the rash prosecutions of the citizens whom they might have oppressed. What then did Languedoc possess which distinguished it from the other provinces of the kingdom, and which caused them to envy its institutions? Three things sufficed to render it entirely different from the rest of France. I. An Assembly, composed of men of station, looked up to by the population, respected by the Crown, to which no officer of the Central Power, or, to use the phraseology then in use, ‘no officer of the King,’ could belong, and in which, every year, the special interests of the province were freely and gravely discussed. The mere fact that the royal administration was placed near this source of light caused its privileges to be very differently exercised; and though its agents and its instincts were the same, its results in no degree resembled what they were elsewhere.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段里做了一个精巧的以退为进。他先主动承认，中央权力在朗格多克省行使着与法兰西王国其他任何地方别无二致的政治权利——国王颁布的法律、不断推出的普遍性敕令、政府的政策举措，在这里一体适用；行政监护的整套机器照常运转：总督坐镇省府，各级的副代表深入每个税区、对应每个堂区并实际主导其事务；连最为偏远的塞文山壑中的小村子，要动一文钱的公共开支，也必须获…