The journal of d'Argenson provides no more direct access to the opinions of the public than do the archives of the Bastille or the files of the police or all the other journals and memoirs written by observers of daily life in Paris and Versailles. Nearly all of them mention the wave of hostile songs and poems that engulfed the monarchy in 1749, but none offer an unmediated view of public opinion. No such view exists. Even today, when we speak of public opinion as a fact of life, an active force at work everywhere in politics and society, we know it only indirectly, through polls and journalistic pronouncements; and they often get it wrong - or at least they contradict themselves and are contradicted by other indicators, such as elections and the behavior of consumers.¹³¹ Considering the guesswork of modern professionals, the police work of the Old Regime looks quite impressive. I find it remarkable that the archives of the police provide enough information for one to track six poems through an oral network that disappeared 250 years ago. True, the trail gives out after fourteen arrests, most of them in "le pays latin", or the milieu of students, priests, and law clerks connected with the university. But the surrounding documentation proves that many other Parisians were reciting and singing the same verse; that similar songs and poems were circulating from other sources at the same time; that the poetry conveyed the same themes as popular prints, broadsheets, and rumors; and that all this material spread far and wide throughout the city. Some of it betrayed the fine hand of courtiers; some carried the marks of café gossip and boulevard ballad mongery; some was belted out in taverns and shouted across shop floors. But all of it converged. The lines of transmission intersected, bifurcated, fanned out, and knit together in a communication system so dense that all of Paris was buzzing with news about public affairs. The information society existed long before the internet.

To trace the flow of information through a network is one thing; to identify public opinion another. Can one speak of public opinion at all before the modern era, when it is measured and manipulated by advertisers, pollsters, and politicians? Historians have not hesitated to do so.¹³² But they have not taken account of the objections of discourse analysts, who argue that the thing could not exist until the word came into use. Not only are people incapable of thinking without words - so the argument goes - but reality itself is discursively constructed. Without the concept of public opinion as it was elaborated by philosophers during the second half of the eighteenth century, Frenchmen lacked a fundamental category for organizing their opposition to the Crown and even for making sense of it.¹³³

I think there is much to be said for this argument, although if taken to extremes it could veer off into nominalism. It does justice to a new ingredient in French politics on the eve of the Revolution. Once philosophers and publicists ceased to deprecate public opinion as the fickle mood of the multitude and began to invoke it as a tribunal with the authority to pass judgment on public affairs, the government felt constrained to take it seriously. Ministers like Turgot, Necker, Calonne, and Brienne engaged philosophers like Condorcet and Morellet to mobilize public support for their policies and even to write preambles to their edicts. In its most radical form, the appeal to public opinion could turn into an assertion of popular sovereignty. As Malesherbes put it in 1788, "Ce qu'on appelait l'an passé le public, est ce qu'on appelle aujourd'hui la Nation"¹³⁴ But despite their sympathy for ancient Greece, the philosophers did not envisage anything like the rough and tumble of an agora. Instead, they imagined a peaceful and persuasive force, Reason, operating through the printed word on a citizenry of readers. Condorcet, the most eloquent exponent of this view, conjured up a power that moved the moral world in a manner analogous to gravitation in the realm of physics: it was intellectual action at a distance, quiet, invisible, and ultimately irresistible. In his Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain, he identified it as the dominant force in the eighth epoch of history, his own era, when Enlightenment had led to Revolution:

Il s'est formé une opinion publique, puissante par le nombre de ceux qui la partagent; énergique, parce que les motifs qui la déterminent agissent à la fois sur tous les esprits, même à des distances très éloignées. Ainsi, l'on a vu s'élever, en faveur de la raison et de la justice, un tribunal indépendant de toute puissance humaine, auquel il est difficile de rien cacher et impossible de se soustraire.¹³⁵

This argument consisted of three basic elements - men of letters, the printing press, and the public - which Condorcet worked into a general view of history. As he understood it, history ultimately came down to the playing out of ideas. Men of letters developed conflicting views of public questions, consigned them to print, and after weighing both sides of the debates, the public opted for the better arguments. It could make mistakes, of course; but ultimately truth would out, because truth really existed, in social questions as in mathematics; and thanks to printing, inferior arguments were certain in the long run to be exposed and superior ones to win. Public opinion therefore acted as the motor force of history. It was Reason realized through debate - gently, by reading and reflection in the quiet of the study, far from the clamor of cafés and the noises of the street.

Variations on this theme can be found scattered throughout the literature of the 1780s, accompanied at times by observations on what people were actually reading and saying in cafés and public places. So two versions of public opinion developed side by side: a philosophical variety, which concerned the spread of truth, and a sociological one, which had to do with messages flowing through communication circuits. In some cases, the two co-existed in the works of the same author. The most revealing case, one worth pausing over for the rich profusion of its inconsistencies, is that of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a middle-brow, middle-class writer, with a keen ear for the tone of life in prerevolutionary Paris.

Mercier expressed the same ideas as Condorcet, but in journalistic fashion, without the epistemological prolegomena, the calculus of probability, and the theorizing about a science of society.

Thus Mercier on printing:

C'est le plus beau don que le Ciel en sa clémence ait fait à l'homme. Il changera bientôt la face de l'univers; l'imprimerie verra sortir de ses cases étroites les idées grandes et généreuses auxquelles il sera impossible que l'homme résiste; il les adoptera malgré lui, et l'effet en est déjà visible. L'imprimerie est à peine née, et tout a une pente générale et bien marquée vers la perfection.¹³⁶

On writers:

L'influence des écrivains est telle qu'ils peuvent aujourd'hui annoncer leur pouvoir et ne point déguiser l'autorité légitime qu'ils ont sur les esprits. Affermis sur la base de l'intérêt public et de la connaissance réelle de l'homme, il dirigeront les idées nationales; les volontés particulières sont entre leurs mains. La morale est devenue l'étude principale des bons esprits... . Il est à présumer que cette tendance générale produira une révolution heureuse.¹³⁷

On public opinion:

Depuis trente ans seulement, il s'est fait une grande et importante révolution dans nos idées. L'opinion publique a aujourd'hui en Europe une force prépondérante, à laquelle on ne résiste pas: ainsi, en estimant le progrès des lumières et le changement qu'elles doivent enfanter, il est permis d'espérer qu'elles apporteront au monde le plus grand bien et que les tyrans de toute espèce frémiront devant ce cri universel qui retenti et se prolonge pour remplir et éveiller l'Europe.¹³⁸

While sharing these philosophical ideas, Mercier possessed something that Condorcet lacked: a journalist's sensitivity to what was going on around him. He collected fragments of talk about public affairs from remarks tossed off in market places, discussions in cafés, casual conversations in public gardens, snippets of popular songs, the running commentary on events in the pits of theaters and on the vaudeville stages of the boulevards. They proliferate everywhere in Mercier's works, especially in the scrapbook compilations, Tableau de Paris and Mon Bonnet de nuit, where he threw together everything that struck his ear and eye under chapter headings like: "La Bazoche," "Spectacles gratis," "Langue du maître aux cochers," "Foire Saint-Germain," "Spectacles des boulevards," "Calembours," "Orateurs sacrés," "L'Orthographe publique," "Cafés," "Les Ecrivains des Charniers-Innocents," "Chansons, vaudevilles," "Nouvellistes," "Chanteurs publics," "Placards," "Afficheurs," "Falots," "Estampes licencieuses," "Nouvelles à la main," "Libelles," "Cabale," "Cabarets borgnes," "Tréteaux des boulevards," "Rime," "Livres." To read through these essays is to encounter publics and opinions far removed from public opinion as the "progrès des lumières" that he evoked in the same books.

Not that one can take Mercier's reportage literally, as if it were a stenographic reproduction of the words actually exchanged wherever Parisians crossed paths. On the contrary, Mercier often used his essays and dialogues to vent his own opinions on his favorite topics such as the recklessness of carriage drivers and the mania for punning. But he conveyed the tone of the talk, its setting, its subjects, and the way it shifted from topic to topic at top speed, especially in gathering places like the public gardens, where groups formed and dispersed continuously and strangers did not hesitate to engage one another in conversation about current events. Mercier devoted two full-length books to such talk, Les Entretiens du Palais-Royal de Paris (1786) and Les Entretiens du Jardin des Tuileries de Paris (1788). A chapter on the "affaires du temps" in the latter began as follows:

La plaisante chose, disais-je en moi-même, que cette promptitude avec laquelle tout Paris prend feu pour les nouvelles du jour. Pour peu qu'elles soient importantes et qu'elles aient trait à l'administration publique, chacun est en l'air et s'escrime à dessein de soutenir son opinion.

A peine avais-je ruminé sur cet object, que je me trouve sans m'en apercevoir au milieu du Jardin des Tuileries, et c'était alors un brouhaha qui ne finissait pas. Il a tort, disait l'un, il a raison, disait l'autre; de quoi s'agit-il? De deux célèbres antagonistes qui occupent la scène relative-ment aux affaires des finances.

On avait lu leurs mémoires, on avait examiné leurs calculs, et il fallait absolument prendre parti sur cet objet. Les moins instruits faisaient le plus de bruit, ils entraient dans le café, ils en sortaient, et au milieu de cette agitation, des inconnus me parlaient comme s'il m'avaient toujours fréquenté.

Un abbé prenant ses lunettes, lisait quelques pages d'un nouvel arrêt du parlement; un financier réformé citait une opération de son temps, la disait la plus excellente, et il n'y avait pas jusqu'aux femmes qui, dans cette petite guerre, parlaient avec transport... .

S'il n'y a pas de motions en France comme en Angleterre, dans la crise des affaires publiques, il faut convenir que tout le public y forme une chambre des communes, où chacun opine d'après ses sentiments, ou d'après ses préjugés. L'artisan lui-même, veut être pour quelque chose dans les intérêts de l'Etat; et quoique sa voix ne compte pour rien, il la donne au milieu de sa famille, comme s'il avait droit de juger.¹³⁹

What Mercier observed, however imperfectly and inaccurately, was public opinion, the thing itself, in the process of formation, at street level. But public opinion of this sort, the sociological variety, bore no resemblance to the philosophical distillation of truth that Mercier celebrated elsewhere in his writing. When encountered in the street, "Monsieur le Public" did not look at all like the embodiment of Reason:

C'est un composé indéfinissable. Un peintre qui voudrait le représenter sous ses véritables traits, pourrait le peindre sous la figure d'un personnage en cheveux longs et en habit galonné, une calotte sur la tête et l'épée au côté, portant le manteau court et les talons rouges, tenant en main une canne à bec-à-corbin, ayant une épaulette, la croix à la boutonnière gauche et l'aumuce sur le bras droit. Vous voyez que ce monsieur doit raisonner à peu près comme il est vêtu.¹⁴⁰

Having described this strange creature, Mercier suddenly stopped, as if he had caught himself in an inconsistency, and then invoked the philosophical variety of the same thing: "Il est cependant un public, mais ce n'est pas celui qui a la fureur de juger avant de comprendre. Du choc de toutes les opinions il résulte un prononcé qui est la voix de la vérité, et qui ne s'efface point."¹⁴¹

Mercier's case shows how the two views of public opinion came to occupy a place in contemporary literature by 1789. According to one, public opinion was a philosophical process, which worked toward the betterment of mankind. According to the other, it was a social phenomenon, mixed up inextricably with current events. Each view carried conviction; each was valid in its own way. But could they be reconciled? The question became urgent during the prerevolutionary crisis of 1787-1788, because the fate of the regime hung on a struggle over public opinion. On one side of a clearly-drawn dividing line, the government tried to save itself from bankruptcy by rallying public opinion behind the reform programs of the Calonne and Brienne ministries. On the other, the Assembly of Notables and the parlements raised the cry of ministerial despotism and appealed to the public in a campaign to force the convocation of the Estates General.

At this point, Condorcet entered the fray. His experience is worth reconsidering, because it shows how someone committed to the philosophical view of public opinion confronted the currents swirling through the streets. Condorcet tried to mobilize support for the government. In a series of pamphlets written from the perspective of an American - he had been made an honorary citizen of New Haven and as a friend of Franklin and Jefferson took an active interest in American affairs - he argued that the real danger of despotism came from the parlements. He attacked them as aristocratic bodies determined to defend the tax privileges of the nobility and to dominate whatever new political order might emerge from the crisis. By rallying behind the government, especially during the ministry of Loménie de Brienne, the public could protect itself from aristocratic despotism. It could help enlightened ministers enact progressive, American-type reforms: an egalitarian tax system reinforced by provincial assemblies through which all landowners could participate in the rational resolution of public questions.¹⁴²

Although he adopted the polemical stance of a "citoyen des Etats-Unis" and a "bourgeois de New Haven," Condorcet did not pamphleteer in the manner of Tom Paine. He continued to pitch his argument on a philosophic plane and even cited the abstruse mathematics of his Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix (1785). He produced a rational demonstration of where the public's interest lay: with the government and against the parlements. Many historians would agree with him, but most of his contemporaries did not. Their correspondence, diaries, memoirs, and pamphlets indicate an overwhelming hostility to the government, one expressed not only in casual talk of the kind described by Mercier but also in street demonstrations and violence. The abbé Morellet, a friend of Condorcet's who shared his views, described the events of 1787-1788 in a series of letters to Lord Shelburne in England. After the collapse of the Brienne ministry and the calling of the Estates General, he reported regretfully, "Il n'est pas possible de dissimuler que c'est ici la force de l'opinion publique qui a maîtrisé le gouvernement."¹⁴³

Which "opinion publique"? Not the voice of reason nor anything remotely like the philosophical concept that Morellet and Condorcet espoused, but rather the diktat of a social hybrid, Mercier's "Monsieur le Public", which now looked like a new Leviathan. Condorcet tried to tame it. But when he descended into the public arena and attempted to whip up support for his cause, he found that the public would not heed him. It rallied to the wrong side. He failed again, tragically, in 1793. Yet his failures did not drive him to question his faith in the triumph of truth. On the contrary, he built this conception of public opinion into the core of his theory of progress, which he wrote at the height of the Terror, when the public was howling for his head.

Did public opinion in the street ever run parallel to the discourse of philosophers? I doubt it. Pamphleteers scored points by summoning sovereigns to appear before the tribunal of the public. Orators sought legitimacy by claiming to speak with the public's voice. Revolutionaries tried to bring the abstraction down to street level by celebrating Public Opinion in their patriotic festivals. But the philosophical ideal never coincided with the social reality. Monsieur le Public existed long before the philosophers wrote treatises about public opinion, and he still exists today, whatever the success of the pollsters trying to take his measure. Not that he has always been the same. In eighteenth-century Paris, a public peculiar to the Old Regime took form and began to impose its opinions on events. It was not the abstraction imagined by philosophers. It was a force that welled up from the streets, one already conspicuous at the time of the Quatorze and unstoppable forty years later, when it swept everything before it, including the philosophers, without any concern for their attempts to construct it discursively.

A Conceptual Problem
Policing a Poem
A Communication Network
Ideological Danger?
Court Politics
Crime and Punishment
A Missing Dimension
The Larger Context
Poetry and Politics
Oral Communication
Chansonniers
Reception
A Diagnosis
Public Opinion

Appendix I: The Songs and Poems Distributed by the Quatorze
Appendix II: Texts of "Qu'une bätarde de catin"
Appendix III: Poetry and the Fall of Maurepas
Appendix IV: The Trail of the Quatorze

Notes

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