ESSAYS IN REFORM ON THE EVE OF REVOLUTION THE ACADEMY OF CHALONS-SUR-MARNE 1776-1789 Janis Spurlock Submitted for the PhD degree University College University of London October 1993 wm,BBL ProQuest Number: 10046154 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10046154 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Essays in Reform on the Eve of Revolution The Academy of Châlons-sur-Marne, 1776-1789 This thesis recounts the history of the Academy of Châlons-sur-Marne and its use of its privilege as a royal academy to hold essay contests to promote public discussion of France’s social and economic structures and the Crown’s recent attempts to reform them. A study of the public and private activities of the Academy, it grants insight into the revolutionary education of both the academicians and their public. It seeks to understand the process whereby those without legitimate political voice considered themselves summoned by this academy to express their views and then analyzes the texts which were for many a first written formulation of political opinion. It surveys the Academy’s success in attracting public interest in its competitions and shows how this proved prejudicial to its survival and that of the reforms its essay contests had been designed to support. The Châlons contests provoked essays from across the social and geographic spectrum. They constitute a signficant sample of literate opinion on the eve of the Revolution and provide, along with the Academy’s correspondence with Crown ministers, 14,000 pages of primary source material for this study. Chapter one sets the context with an overview of French academies and the Crown’s intentions in founding them. Chapter two surveys the Châlons Academy’s history and its relationship to the movement for reform. Chapter three profiles its essay competitors; chapters four and five analyze its competition essays on the begging and labouring poor. Chapter six summarizes the reception given its contests by the public and government and considers their response to the questions announced after the first contest. Chapter seven recounts the government’s censorship of the Academy’s activities and the response it evoked. The thesis concludes with an assessment of the influence of the Châlons Academy and its competitions on the events of the Revolution. Janis Spurlock TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 8 PART ONE THE CROWN AND THE ACADEMY: CULTURAL CONTROL AND SOCIAL CHANGE 16 I. The Royal Academy: Institutional, Intellectual and Social 17 Context The Paris and Provincial Academies and the Institutionalization of Culture 17 The Social Profile and Role of the Royal Academician 29 The Public Face of Academe: The Prize Essay Contest 36 II. A Local Perspective on National Reform: The Literary Society and Academy of Châlons-sur-Marne 62 The Enlightened Notables of Chalons’s Learned Societies 70 Champagne: A Province Rich in Poor Men 97 The Social Utilitarian Focus of the Literary and Academic Societies 109 Champagne’s Enlightened Intendant: The Societies’ Relations to Rouillé d ’Orfeuil and the Movement for Reform 116 PART TWO THE PUBLIC ESSAY COMPETITOR 138 III. The Competitors in the Châlons Contests 139 Cultural Contact and Cultural Isolation 145 A Social, Professional and Geographic Profile 168 PART THREE THE PUBLIC, THE POOR AND A CALL FOR RADICAL REFORM: THE ESSAY CONTESTS OF 1776-1777 AND 1782-1783 187 IV. A Consensus View of the Problem, Its Causes and Effects 188 Disparate Voices but a Consensus View 189 Demographic, Economic and Social Causes of Poverty 201 Situation of the Small Peasant Proprietor 206 Plight of the Primarily Wage-Earning Poor 234 Economic and Social Polarization and Popular Discontent 249 V. Recommendations for Reform 264 Government Supervision of the Labour and Grain Markets 266 Government Intervention in the Land Market Royal Reduction of the Burden of Transfer Payments 284 Public Relief for the 111, Old and Very Young Funding 294 PART FOUR A RADICAL PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC REFORM 328 VI. Reformist Optimism 329 Evidence for Optimism 335 An Agenda for Reform 361 VII. Ministerial Reaction and the Academy’s Essays in Reform 382 Government Opposition 383 The Academy’s Response and the Years to Revolution 400 POSTSCRIPT 428 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 436 SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 438 LIST OF TABLES I. Socio-Occupational Positions of All Contest Essayists 179 II. Professional Classification of Identified Essayists Competing in the Contests of the Chalons Academy 1776-1789 180 IIA. Professional Classification of Identified Essayists Writing on the Begging and Labouring Poor for Contests of the Châlons Academy 180 III. Essayists* Assessment of Factors Contributing to Public Emiseration 202 IV. Advocates of Direct Government Intervention to Relieve Labouring Poor and Their Dependents 267 V. Essayists Advocating Land Reform 268 VI. Essayists Advocating Long-Term Structural Reform 269 MAP Geographic Distribution of the Châlons Essayists 183 Note on Quotations from Eighteenth-Century Sources Citations from the previously unpublished eighteenth-century sources used in this thesis retain the original spelling, accents and punctuation of the men and women who wrote them in order that twentieth-century readers may themselves judge not only the content but also the different levels of literary sophistication present in this material. Although the Crown through the Académie Française had been endeavouring for more than a century to provide polite society with a standardized orthography and guide to acceptable literary usage through publication of the Academy’s Dictionnaire. the men and women submitting their views to the minor provincial academy at Châlons-sur-Marne were very often a world apart from those whose designs for the French language had made them arbiters of acceptability in the Paris Academy. The original orthography of the Châlons sources is, therefore, retained in the hope that modern readers of their views may enter more easily into the mental universe of largely non­ professional writers for whom the essays submitted to the public competitions of the Châlons Academy may have been their only public literary endeavour. Pour y réussir je n ’ay pas été puiser dan les anciens ce qu’ils ont put écrire sur cette matière, je n ’ay pas été feuilleter nos auteurs modernes pour y découvrir des lumières sur cet objet important, je me suis renfermé dans l’examen de nos moeurs, des différents ressorts qui ordinairement nous déterminent. je n ’ai donc pas paré ce discours des richesses d ’une vaste érudition, des ornement de l ’Eloquence, j ’aurois cru m ’ecarter et m ’eloigner du but; mon tems, d ’ailleurs, n ’est pas assez à ma disposition pour en distraire cette portion que demanderoit des recherches, cette noblesse et cette beauté dans le langage qui charme et ravit le lecteur. une simple et courte expostion de mon sujet sera tout le mérité de mes foibles essais; je n ’ay voulu que me rendre utile à ma patrie: puisse je avoir réussi. M le curé de la paroisse de St Jean de Châlons INTRODUCTION Each year between 1776 and 1789 Parisian, provincial and foreign journals carried advertisements placed by the Académie des Sciences, arts, et belles lettres of Châlons-sur-Marne, France, to announce the subject of its annual prize essay competition. The announcements usually appeared in early September, shortly after the Academy’s annual public meeting held on the feast day of St Louis, 25 August, and included a short résumé of the Academy’s work for the year. They gave details of the specific question to be treated for the forthcoming year’s contest and an explanation of the social, economic or political context in which the question had been conceived, for this academy openly expressed its intent to allow members of the public to offer their views about reform subjects made topical by recent government initiatives. The Academy’s competitions were open to all and potential contestants were advised that their essays, which could be written in French or Latin, were to reach the Academy by July of the year following the announcement. Essays were to be submitted with no identification on the essay itself since the Châlons academicians were committed to the principle that in a true Republic of Letters the views of enlightened men and women should be judged on the basis of merit alone; the competitor’s name, address and any other identifying material were to be written on a separate document which would repeat the devise given on the competition essay. The Academy in its announcements also advised potential competitors that it was interested not in theoretical treatises but in essays which contained information and ideas that were practical and useful. 9 The Châlons Academy was only one of thirty-two provincial academies in France which, in the decade before the Revolution, were holding public essay competitions and offering prize money and publication for the best essay or essays submitted to them by members of the general public. However, with few exceptions these other academies, both in their private and public functions, were concerned with essentially literary or scientific matters that reflected the secure positions their members enjoyed within the social hierarchy and their tacit agreement with the Crown that everything that had to do with the social, economic and judicial administration of the country was not a matter for ’academic’ discussion.