The Old Regime and the Revolution

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Alexis de Tocqueville and Alexis De Tocqueville

A calm, philosophical inquiry into the causes of the French Revolution, and the working of the Old Regime. In this work, M. de Tocqueville has daguerreotyped French political society under the old monarchy; shown us where the real power lay, and how it affected individual Frenchmen in the daily avocations of life; what was the real condition of the nobility, of the clergy, of the middle classes, of the "people", of the peasantry; wherein France differed from all other countries in Europe; why a Revolution was inevitable. The information derived under these various heads, it may safely be said, is now first printed. It has been obtained, as M. de Tocqueville informs us, mainly from the manuscript records of the old intendants' offices and the Council of State. Of the labor devoted to the task, an idea may be formed from the author's statement, that more than one of the thirty odd chapters contained in the volume, alone cost him a year's researches.

"I trust," says M. de Tocqueville in his Preface, "that I have written this work without prejudice; but I can not say I have written without feeling. It would be scarcely proper for a Frenchman to be calm when he speaks of his country, and thinks of the times in which we live. I acknowledge, therefore, that in studying the society of the Old Regime in all its details, I have never lost sight of the society of our own day."

The work abounds with allusions to the Empire and the Emperor. It need hardly be added, that these allusions are not eulogistic of the powers that be. Napoleon has seldom been assailed with more pungent satire or more cogent logic. - Summary by Harper & Brothers, Publishers (7 hr 14 min)

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