《旧制度与大革命·卷三·第六章·三级会议陈情书的撰写把彻底革命的念头送进了人心》第2节
In all the countries in which political assemblies are chosen by universal suffrage, no general election takes place which does not deeply agitate the people, unless the freedom of voting be a lie. Here it was not only a universal voting; it was a universal deliberation and inquest. The matter in discussion was not some particular custom or local interest; each member of one of the greatest nations in the world was asked what he had to say against all the laws and all the customs of his country. I think no such spectacle had been seen before upon the earth. All the peasants of France set to work therefore, at the same time, to consider among themselves and recapitulate all that they had suffered, all they had to complain of. The spirit of the Revolution which excited the citizens of the towns, rushed therefore through a thousand rills, penetrated the rural population, which was thus agitated in all its parts, and sunk to its very depths; but the form it assumed was not entirely the same; its shape became peculiar and appropriate to those just affected by it. In the cities, it was a cry for rights to be acquired. In the country, men thought principally of wants to be satisfied. All the large, general, and abstract theories which filled the minds of the middle classes here took a concrete and definite form. When the peasants came to ask each other what they had to complain of, they cared not for the balance of powers, the guarantees of political freedom, the abstract rights of man or of citizens. They dwelt at once on objects more special and nearer to themselves, which each of them had had to endure. One thought of the feudal dues which had taken half his last year’s crop; another of the days of forced labour on which he had been compelled to work without wages. One spoke of the lord’s pigeons, which had picked his seed from the ground before it sprouted; another of the rabbits which had nibbled his green corn. As their excitement grew by the mutual relation of their wretchedness, all these different evils seemed to them to proceed, not so much from institutions, as from that single person, who still called them his subjects, though he had long ceased to govern them--who was the creature of privileges without obligations, and retained none of his political rights but that of living at their cost; and they more and more agreed in considering him as their common enemy.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这里做了一个极富洞察力的对比：他把三级会议陈情书的撰写过程，从一种制度程序，解读为一场史无前例的全民政治启蒙运动。他说，在一切实行普选的国家，每次选举都会深深搅动民众——除非投票自由是假的。但1789年的法国做的不仅是普选投票，更是全民的商议和全民的清查。要讨论的不是某个地方习俗或局部利益，而是这个世界上最伟大民族之一的每一个成员，都被邀请站出来…