G

THE

CONSTITUTIONS

AND OTHER

SELECT DOCUMENTS

ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE

HISTORY OF FRANCE

1789-1901

BY

FRANK MALOY ANDERSON

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

MINNEAPOLIS

THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY

1904

PREFACE

The practice of studying documents in connection with the history courses given in American universities, colleges, and high schools has now become so general, and the results attained so satisfactory, that the method no longer requires any defence. With the introduction of the system has come a new kind of manual, the document-book. So many excellent books of this description have already appeared that the editor of still another may be reasonably expected to offer an adequate explanation for its publication.

Three considerations have induced me to prepare this volume. The first of these is personal and local. For several years past I have made a practice of dividing my class in modern European history into small sections which I could meet once each week around the seminary table. At these meetings we have studied together a considerable part of the documents here included, but the work has been hampered by the lack of a convenient collection of the documents. Fidelity to the interest of my pupils seemed to impose upon me the obligation to remove this difficulty. The second consideration lies in the attractiveness of the documents. After considerable experience in the use of various classes of documents upon European history I have reached the conclusion that students find the modern French documents more attractive than any others. Doubtless the chief reasons for this preference are that modern documents are more easily comprehended than those of more remote periods and that the style of the French is superior to that of English and German documents. Since documentary study must usually be confined to a small part of the field traversed by a class, I believe that for classes in modern European history the preference of the students may well be allowed to control the selection of the period to be studied. The third consideration is the importance of the

field covered. The history of France since the beginning of the Revolution surely deserves a volume in English presenting as large a proportion as possible of the important documents.

The task of selecting the documents for a book of this description is a difficult one. It may be safely asserted that no two persons would make the same selections, however well agreed they might be upon the general principles of choice. My first and foremost aim has been to pick out those documents likely to be serviceable to teachers. I have especially striven to avoid the error of a too rigid application of some definition of the term document or of some classification. The special reason for the inclusion of most of the documents will be found at least hinted at in the introductions. The more general principles which I have applied require some explanation. There appear to be at least five im portant ways in which a document-book may be profitably used in the teaching of history. (1) Much historical data can be acquired through such study. It must be admitted. however, that the same amount of time spent upon a good text-book will in this particular usually produce better results, for the reason that the documents studied are so few in number and so disconnected that no adequate idea of any considerable period is obtained. The defect can be remedied in large measure by using a single class of documents running through a considerable period. In modern French history the constitutions serve the purpose admirably. For this reason all of these are included and no elisions have been made, excepting two or three tabular lists of territorial divisions. (2) Documents may be used as the basis for oral or written reports; usually the work should be done in connection with secondary accounts, but the proofs for the principal statements should be drawn from the documents. Many of the groups, with their accompanying references, are inserted for this purpose. It should be observed that these groups usually contain the materials out of which the student should be able to deduce some quite definite result, such as the evolution of a policy or of an institution or the manner in which an institution operated. (3) In the opinion of many teachers the greatest value to be derived from the study of documents is a certain familiarity with the methods of historical investi