The Ancient Regime Part 35

[Footnote 5149: Archives nationales, H, 1463 (a letter by M. de Fontette, November 16, 1772).--Cf. Cochut, "Revue des Deux Mondes,"

September, 1848. The sale of the national property seems not to have sensibly increased small properties nor sensibly diminished the number of the large ones. The Revolution developed moderate sized properties.

In 1848, the large estates numbered 183,000 (23,000 families paying 300 francs taxes, and more, and possessing on the average 260 hectares of land, and 160,000 families paying from 230 to 500 francs taxes and possessing on the average 75 hectares.) These 183,000 families possessed 18,000,000 hectares.--There are besides 700,000 medium sized estates (paying from 50 to 250 francs tax), and comprising 15,000,000 hectares.--And finally 3,900,000 small properties comprising 15,000,000 hectares (900,000 paying from 25 to 50 francs tax, averaging five and one-half hectares each, and 3,000,000 paying less than 25 francs, averaging three and one ninth hectares each).--According to the partial statement of de Tocqueville the number of holders of real property had increased, on the average, to five-twelfths; the population, at the same time, having increased five-thirteenths (from 26 to 36 millions).]

[Footnote 5150: "Compte-general des revenus et depenses fixes au 1er Mai, 1789 (Imprimerie Royale, 1789).--De Luynes, XVI. 49.--Roux and Buchez, I. 206, 374. (This relates only to the countries of election; in the provinces, with a.s.semblies, the increase is no less great). Archives nationales, H2, 1610 (the parish of Bourget, in Anjou). Extracts from the taille rolls of three metayer--farms belonging to M. de Ruille. The taxes in 1762 are 334 livres, 3 sous; in 1783, 372 livres, 15 sous.]

CHAPTER II. TAXATION THE PRINc.i.p.aL CAUSE OF MISERY.

I. Extortion.

Direct taxes.--State of different domains at the end of the reign of Louis XV.--Levies of the t.i.the and the owner.--What remains to the proprietor.

Let us closely examine the extortions he has to endure, which are very great, much beyond any that we can imagine. Economists had long prepared the budget of a farm and shown by statistics the excess of charges with which the cultivator is overwhelmed. If he continues to cultivate, they say, he must have his share in the crops, an inviolable portion, equal to one-half of the entire production, and from which nothing can be deducted without ruining him. This portion, in short, accurately represents, and not a sou too much, in the first place, the interest of the capital first expended on the farm in cattle, furniture, and implements of husbandry; in the second place, the maintenance of this capital, every year depreciated by wear and tear; in the third place, the advances made during the current year for seed, wages, and food for men and animals; and, in the last place, the compensation due him for the risks he takes and his losses. Here is a first lien which must be satisfied beforehand, taking precedence of all others, superior to that of the seignior, to that of the t.i.the-owner (decimateur), to even that of the king, for it is an indebtedness due to the soil.[5201] After this is paid back, then, and only then, that which remains, the net product, can be touched. Now, in the then state of agriculture, the t.i.the-owner and the king appropriate one-half of this net product, when the estate is large, and the whole, if the estate is a small one[5202]. A certain large farm in Picardy, worth to its owner 3,600 livres, pays 1,800 livres to the king, and 1,311 livres to the t.i.the owner; another, in the Soissonnais, rented for 4,500 livres, pays 2,200 livres taxes and more than 1,000 livres to the t.i.thes. An ordinary metayer-farm near Nevers pays into the treasury 138 livres, 121 livres to the church, and 114 livres to the proprietor. On another, in Poitou, the fisc (tax authorities) absorbs 348 livres, and the proprietor receives only 238.

In general, in the regions of large farms, the proprietor obtains ten livres the arpent if the cultivation is very good, and three livres when ordinary. In the regions of small farms, and of the metayer system, he gets fifteen sous the arpent, eight sous and even six sous. The entire net profit may be said to go to the church and into the State treasury.

Hired labor, meantime, is no less costly. On this metayer-farm in Poitou, which brings in eight sous the arpent, thirty-six laborers consume each twenty-six francs per annum in rye, two francs respectively in vegetables, oil and milk preparations, and two francs ten sous in pork, amounting to a sum total, each year, for each person, of sixteen pounds of meat at an expense of thirty-six francs. In fact they drink water only, use rape-seed oil for soup and for light, never taste b.u.t.ter, and dress themselves in materials made of the wool and hair of the sheep and goats they raise. They purchase nothing save the tools necessary to make the fabrics of which these provide the material. On another metayer-farm, on the confines of la Marche and Berry, forty-six laborers cost a smaller sum, each one consuming only the value of twenty-five francs per annum. We can judge by this of the exorbitant share appropriated to themselves by the Church and State, since, at so small a cost of cultivation, the proprietor finds in his pocket, at the end of the year, six or eight sous per arpent out of which, if plebeian, he must still pay the dues to his seignior, contribute to the common purse for the militia, buy his taxed salt and work out his corvee and the rest. Towards the end of the reign of Louis XV in Limousin, says Turgot,[5203] the king derives for himself alone "about as much from the soil as the proprietor." In a certain election-district, that of Tulle, where he abstracts fifty-six and one-half per cent. of the product, there remains to the latter forty-three and one-half per cent. thus accounting for "a mult.i.tude of domains being abandoned."

It must not be supposed that time renders the tax less onerous or that, in other provinces, the cultivator is better treated. In this respect the doc.u.ments are authentic and almost up to the latest hour. We have only to take up the official statements of the provincial a.s.semblies held in 1787, to learn by official figures to what extent the fisc may abuse the men who labor, and take bread out of the mouths of those who have earned it by the sweat of their brows.

II. Local Conditions.

State of certain provinces on the outbreak of the Revolution.--The taille, and other taxes.--The proportion of these taxes in relation to income.--The sum total immense.

Direct taxation alone is here concerned, the tailles, collateral taxes, poll-tax, vingtiemes, and the pecuniary tax subst.i.tuted for the corvee[5204] In Champagne, the tax-payer pays on 100 livres income fifty-four livres fifteen sous, on the average, and in many parishes,[5205] seventy-one livres thirteen sous. In the Ile-de-France, "if a taxable inhabitant of a village, the proprietor of twenty arpents of land which he himself works, and the income of which is estimated at ten livres per arpent it is supposed that he is likewise the owner of the house he occupies, the site being valued at forty livres."[5206]

This tax-payer pays for his real taille, personal and industrial, thirty-five livres fourteen sous, for collateral taxes seventeen livres seventeen sous, for the poll-tax twenty-one livres eight sous, for the vingtiemes twenty-four livres four sous, in all ninety-nine livres three sous, to which must be added about five livres as the subst.i.tution for the corvee, in all 104 livres on a piece of property which he rents for 240 livres, a tax amounting to five-twelfths of his income.

It is much worse on making the same calculation for the poorer generalities. In Haute-Guyenne,[5207] "all property in land is taxed for the taille, the collateral taxes, and the vingtiemes, more than one-quarter of its revenue, the only deduction being the expenses of cultivation; also dwellings, one-third of their revenue, deducting only the cost of repairs and of maintenance; to which must be added the poll-tax, which takes about one-tenth of the revenue; the t.i.the, which absorbs one-seventh; the seigniorial rents which take another seventh; the tax subst.i.tuted for the corvee; the costs of compulsory collections, seizures, sequestration and constraints, and all ordinary and extraordinary local charges. This being subtracted, it is evident that, in communities moderately taxed, the proprietor does not enjoy a third of his income, and that, in the communities wronged by the a.s.sessments, the proprietors are reduced to the status of simple farmers scarcely able to get enough to restore the expenses of cultivation." In Auvergne,[5208] the taille amounts to four sous on the livre net profit; the collateral taxes and the poll-tax take off four sous three deniers more; the vingtiemes, two sous and three deniers; the contribution to the royal roads, to the free gift, to local charges and the cost of levying, take again one sou one denier, the total being eleven sous and seven deniers on the livre income, without counting seigniorial dues and the t.i.the. "The bureau, moreover, recognizes with regret, that several of the collections pay at the rate of seventeen sous, sixteen sous, and the most moderate at the rate of fourteen sous the livre. The evidence of this is in the bureau; it is on file in the registry of the court of excise, and of the election-districts. It is still more apparent in parishes where an infinite number of a.s.sessments are found, laid on property that has been abandoned, which the collectors lease, and the product of which is often inadequate to pay the tax." Statistics of this kind are terribly eloquent. They may be summed up in one word. Putting together Normandy, the Orleans region, that of Soissons, Champagne, Ile-de-France, Berry, Poitou, Auvergne, the Lyons region, Gascony, and Haute-Guyenne, in brief the princ.i.p.al election sections, we find that out of every hundred francs of revenue the direct tax on the tax-payer is fifty-three francs, or more than one-half[5209]. This is about five times as much as at the present day.

III. The Common Laborer.

Four direct taxes on the common laborer.

The taxation authorities, however, in thus bearing down on taxable property has not released the taxable person without property. In the absence of land it seizes on men. In default of an income it taxes a man's wages. With the exception of the vingtiemes, the preceding taxes not only bore on those who possessed something but, again, on those who possessed nothing. In the Toulousain[5210] at St. Pierre de Barjouville, the poorest day-laborer, with nothing but his hands by which to earn his support, and getting ten sous a day, pays eight, nine and ten livres poll-tax. "In Burgundy[5211] it is common to see a poor mechanic, without any property, taxed eighteen and twenty livres for his poll-tax and the taille." In Limousin,[5212] all the money brought back by the masons in winter serves "to pay the taxes charged to their families." As to the rural day-laborers and the settlers (colons) the proprietor, even when privileged, who employs them, is obliged to take upon himself a part of their quota, otherwise, being without anything to eat, they cannot work,[5213] even in the interest of the master; man must have his ration of bread the same as an ox his ration of hay. "In Brittany,[5214]

it is notorious that nine-tenths of the artisans, though poorly fed and poorly clothed, have not a crown free of debt at the end of the year,"

the poll-tax and others carrying off this only and last crown. At Paris[5215] "the dealer in ashes, the buyer of old bottles, the gleaner of the gutters, the peddlers of old iron and old hats," the moment they obtain a shelter pay the poll-tax of three livres and ten sous each. To ensure its payment the occupant of a house who sub-lets to them is made responsible. Moreover, in case of delay, a "blue man," a bailiff's subordinate, is sent who installs himself on the spot and whose time they have to pay for. Mercier cites a mechanic, named Quatremain, who, with four small children, lodged in the sixth story, where he had arranged a chimney as a sort of alcove in which he and his family slept. "One day I opened his door, fastened with a latch only, the room presenting to view nothing but the walls and a vice; the man, coming out from under his chimney, half sick, says to me, 'I thought it was the blue man for the poll-tax."' Thus, whatever the condition of the person subject to taxation, however stripped and dest.i.tute, the dexterous hands of the fisc take hold of him. Mistakes cannot possibly occur: it puts on no disguise, it comes on the appointed day and rudely lays its hand on his shoulder. The garret and the hut, as well as the farm and the farmhouse know the collector, the constable and the bailiff; no hovel escapes the detestable brood. The people sow, harvest their crops, work and undergo privation for their benefit; and, should the pennies so painfully saved each week amount, at the end of the year to a piece of silver, the mouth of their pouch closes over it.

IV. Collections And Seizures.--Observe the system actually at work. It is a sort of shearing machine, clumsy and badly put together, of which the action is about as mischievous as it is serviceable. The worst feature is that, with its creaking gear, the taxable, those employed as its final instruments, are equally shorn and flayed. Each parish contains two, three, five, or seven individuals who, under the t.i.tle of collectors, and under the authority of the election tribunal, apportion and a.s.sess the taxes. "No duty is more onerous;"[5216] everybody, through patronage or favor, tries to get rid of it. The communities are constantly pleading against the refractory, and, that n.o.body may escape under the pretext of ignorance, the table of future collectors is made up for ten and fifteen years in advance. In parishes of the second cla.s.s these consist of "small proprietors, each of whom becomes a collector about every six years." In many of the villages the artisans, day-laborers, and metayer-farmers perform the service, although requiring all their time to earn their own living. In Auvergne, where the able-bodied men expatriate themselves in winter to find work, the women are taken;[5217] in the election-district of Saint-Flour, a certain village has four collectors in petticoats.--They are responsible for all claims entrusted to them, their property, their furniture and their persons; and, up to the time of Turgot, each is bound for the others. We can judge of their risks and sufferings. In 1785,[5218] in one single district in Champagne, eighty-five are imprisoned and two hundred of them are on the road every year. "The collector, says the provincial a.s.sembly of Berry,[5219] usually pa.s.ses one-half of the day for two years running from door to door to see delinquent tax-payers."

"This service," writes Turgot,[5220] "is the despair and almost always the ruin of those obliged to perform it; all families in easy circ.u.mstances in a village are thus successively reduced to want." In short, there is no collector who is not forced to act and who has not each year "eight or ten writs" served on him[5221]. Sometimes he is imprisoned at the expense of the parish. Sometimes proceedings are inst.i.tuted against him and the tax-contributors by the installation of "'blue men' and seizures, seizures under arrest, seizures in execution and sales of furniture." "In the single district of Villefranche," says the provincial a.s.sembly of Haute-Guyenne, "a hundred and six warrant officers and other agents of the bailiff are counted always on the road."

The thing becomes customary and the parish suffers in vain, for it would suffer yet more were it to do otherwise. "Near Aurillac," says the Marquis de Mirabeau,[5222] "there is industry, application and economy without which there would be only misery and want. This produces a people equally divided into being, on the one hand, insolvent and poor and on the other hand shameful and rich, the latter who, for fear of being fined, create the impoverished. The taille once a.s.sessed, everybody groans and complains and n.o.body pays it. The term having expired, at the hour and minute, constraint begins, the collectors, although able, taking no trouble to arrest this by making a settlement, notwithstanding the installation of the bailiff's men is costly. But this kind of expense is habitual and people expect it instead of fearing it, for, if it were less rigorous, they would be sure to be additionally burdened the following year." The receiver, indeed, who pays the bailiff's officers a franc a day, makes them pay two francs and appropriates the difference. Hence "if certain parishes venture to pay promptly, without awaiting constraint, the receiver, who sees himself deprived of the best portion of his gains, becomes ill-humored, and, at the next department (meeting), an arrangement is made between himself, messieurs the elected, the sub-delegate and other shavers of this species, for the parish to bear a double load, to teach it how to behave itself."

A population of administrative blood-suckers thus lives on the peasant.

"Lately," says an intendant, "in the district of Romorantin,[5223] the collectors received nothing from a sale of furniture amounting to six hundred livres, because the proceeds were absorbed by the expenses. In the district of Chateaudun the same thing occurred at a sale amounting to nine hundred livres and there are other transactions of the same kind of which we have no information, however flagrant." Besides this, the fisc itself is pitiless. The same intendant writes, in 1784, a year of famine:[5224] "People have seen, with horror, the collector, in the country, disputing with heads of families over the costs of a sale of furniture which had been appropriated to stopping their children's cry of want." Were the collectors not to make seizures they would themselves be seized. Urged on by the receiver we see them, in the doc.u.ments, soliciting, prosecuting and persecuting the tax-payers. Every Sunday and every fete-day they are posted at the church door to warn delinquents; and then, during the week they go from door to door to obtain their dues. "Commonly they cannot write, and take a scribe with them." Out of six hundred and six traversing the district of Saint-Flour not ten of them are able to read the official summons and sign a receipt; hence innumerable mistakes and frauds. Besides a scribe they take along the bailiff's subordinates, persons of the lowest cla.s.s, laborers without work, conscious of being hated and who act accordingly. "Whatever orders may be given them not to take anything, not to make the inhabitants feed them, or to enter taverns with collectors," habit is too strong "and the abuse continues."[5225] But, burdensome as the bailiff's men may be, care is taken not to evade them. In this respect, writes an intendant, "their obduracy is strange." "No person," a receiver reports,[5226]

"pays the collector until he sees the bailiff's man in his house." The peasant resembles his a.s.s, refusing to go without being beaten, and, although in this he may appear stupid, he is clever. For the collector, being responsible, "naturally inclines to an increase of the a.s.sessment on prompt payers to the advantage of the negligent. Hence the prompt payer becomes, in his turn, negligent and, although with money in his chest, he allows the process to go on."[5227] Summing all up, he calculates that the process, even if expensive, costs less than extra taxation, and of the two evils he chooses the least. He has but one resource against the collector and receiver, his simulated or actual poverty, voluntary or involuntary. "Every one subject to the taille,"

says, again, the provincial a.s.sembly of Berry, "dreads to expose his resources; he avoids any display of these in his furniture, in his dress, in his food, and in everything open to another's observation."--"M. de Choiseul-Gouffier,[5228] willing to roof his peasants' houses, liable to take fire, with tiles, they thanked him for his kindness but begged him to leave them as they were, telling him that if these were covered with tiles, instead of with thatch, the subdelegates would increase their taxation."--"People work, but merely to satisfy their prime necessities. . . . The fear of paying an extra crown makes an average man neglect a profit of four times the amount."[5229]--". . . Accordingly, lean cattle, poor implements, and bad manure-heaps even among those who might have been better off."[5230]--"If I earned any more," says a peasant, "it would be for the collector." Annual and illimitable spoliation "takes away even the desire for comforts." The majority, pusillanimous, distrustful, stupefied, "debased," "differing little from the old serfs,[5231]"

resemble Egyptian fellahs and Hindoo pariahs. The fisc, indeed, through the absolutism and enormity of its claims, renders property of all kinds precarious, every acquisition vain, every acc.u.mulation delusive; in fact, proprietors are owners only of that which they can hide.

V. Indirect Taxes.

The salt-tax and the excise.

The tax-man, in every country, has two hands, one which visibly and directly searches the coffers of tax-payers, and the other which covertly employs the hand of an intermediary so as not to incur the odium of fresh extortions. Here, no precaution of this kind is taken, the claws of the latter being as visible as those of the former; according to its structure and the complaints made of it, I am tempted to believe it more offensive than the other.--In the first place, the salt-tax, the excises and the customs are annually estimated and sold to adjudicators who, purely as a business matter, make as much profit as they can by their bargain. In relation to the tax-payer they are not administrators but speculators; they have bought him up. He belongs to them by the terms of their contract; they will squeeze out of him, not merely their advances and the interest on their advances, but, again, every possible benefit. This suffices to indicate the mode of levying indirect taxes.--In the second place, by means of the salt-tax and the excises, the inquisition enters each household. In the provinces where these are levied, in Ile-de-France, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Orleanais, Berry, Bourbonnais, Bourgogne, Champagne, Perche, Normandy and Picardy, salt costs thirteen sous a pound, four times as much as at the present day, and, considering the standard of money, eight times as much[5232].

And, furthermore, by virtue of the ordinance of 1680, each person over seven years of age is expected to purchase seven pounds per annum, which, with four persons to a family, makes eighteen francs a year, and equal to nineteen days' work: a new direct tax, which, like the taille, is a fiscal hand in the pockets of the tax-payers, and compelling them, like the taille, to torment each other. Many of them, in fact, are officially appointed to a.s.sess this obligatory use of salt and, like the collectors of the taille, these are "jointly responsible for the price of the salt." Others below them, ever following the same course as in collecting the taille, are likewise responsible. "After the former have been seized in their persons and property, the speculator fermier is authorized to commence action, under the principle of mutual responsibility, against the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of the parish."

The effects of this system have just been described. Accordingly, "in Normandy," says the Rouen parliament,[5233] "unfortunates without bread are daily objects of seizure, sale and execution."

But if the rigor is as great as in the matter of the taille, the vexations are ten times greater, for these are domestic, minute and of daily occurrence.--It is forbidden to divert an ounce of the seven obligatory pounds to any use but that of the "pot and the salt-cellar."

If a villager should economize the salt of his soup to make brine for a piece of pork, with a view to winter consumption, let him look out for the collecting-clerks! His pork is confiscated and the fine is three hundred livres. The man must come to the warehouse and purchase other salt, make a declaration, carry off a certificate and show this at every visit of inspection. So much the worse for him if he has not the wherewithal to pay for this supplementary salt; he has only to sell his pig and abstain from meat at Christmas. This is the more frequent case, and I dare say that, for the metayers who pay twenty-five francs per annum, it is the usual case.--It is forbidden to make use of any other salt for the pot and salt-cellar than that of the seven pounds. "I am able to cite," says Letrosne, "two sisters residing one league from a town in which the warehouse is open only on Sat.u.r.day. Their supply was exhausted. To pa.s.s three or four days until Sat.u.r.day comes they boil a remnant of brine from which they extract a few ounces of salt. A visit from the clerk ensues and a proces-verbal. Having friends and protectors this costs them only forty-eight livres."--It is forbidden to take water from the ocean and from other saline sources, under a penalty of from twenty to forty livres fine. It is forbidden to water cattle in marshes and other places containing salt, under penalty of confiscation and a fine of three hundred livres. It is forbidden to put salt into the bellies of mackerel on returning from fishing, or between their superposed layers. An order prescribes one pound and a half to a barrel.

Another order prescribes the destruction annually of the natural salt formed in certain cantons in Provence. Judges are prohibited from moderating or reducing the penalties imposed in salt cases, under penalty of accountability and of deposition.--I pa.s.s over quant.i.ties of orders and prohibitions, existing by hundreds. This legislation encompa.s.ses tax-payers like a net with a thousand meshes, while the official who casts it is interested in finding them at fault. We see the fisherman, accordingly, unpacking his barrel, the housewife seeking a certificate for her hams, the exciseman inspecting the buffet, testing the brine, peering into the salt-box and, if it is of good quality, declaring it contraband because that of the ferme, the only legitimate salt, is usually adulterated and mixed with plaster.

Meanwhile, other officials, those of the excise, descend into the cellar. None are more formidable, nor who more eagerly seize on pretexts for delinquency[5234]. "Let a citizen charitably bestow a bottle of wine on a poor feeble creature and he is liable to prosecution and to excessive penalties. . . . The poor invalid that may interest his curate in the begging of a bottle of wine for him will undergo a trial, ruining not alone the unfortunate man that obtains it, but again the benefactor who gave it to him. This is not a fancied story." By virtue of the right of deficient revenue the clerks may, at any hour, take an inventory of wine on hand, even the stores of a vineyard proprietor, indicate what he may consume, tax him for the rest and for the surplus quant.i.ty already drunk, the ferme thus a.s.sociating itself with the wine-producer and claiming its portion of his production.--In a vine-yard at Epernay[5235]

on four casks of wine, the average product of one arpent, and worth six hundred francs, it levies, at first, thirty francs, and then, after the sale of the four casks, seventy five francs additionally. Naturally, "the inhabitants resort to the shrewdest and best planned artifices to escape" such potent rights. But the clerks are alert, watchful, and well-informed, and they pounce down unexpectedly on every suspected domicile; their instructions prescribe frequent inspections and exact registries "enabling them to see at a glance the condition of the cellar of each inhabitant."[5236]--The manufacturer having paid up, the merchant now has his turn. The latter, on sending the four casks to the consumer--again pays seventy-five francs to the ferme. The wine is dispatched and the ferme prescribes the roads by which it must go; should others be taken it is confiscated, and at every step on the way some payment must be made. "A boat laden with wine from Languedoc,[5237]

Dauphiny or Roussillon, ascending the Rhone and descending the Loire to reach Paris, through the Briare ca.n.a.l, pays on the way, leaving out charges on the Rhone, from thirty-five to forty kinds of duty, not comprising the charges on entering Paris." It pays these "at fifteen or sixteen places, the multiplied payments obliging the carriers to devote twelve or fifteen days more to the pa.s.sage than they otherwise would if their duties could be paid at one bureau."--The charges on the routes by water are particularly heavy. "From Pontarlier to Lyons there are twenty-five or thirty tolls; from Lyons to Aigues-Mortes there are others, so that whatever costs ten sous in Burgundy, amounts to fifteen and eighteen sous at Lyons, and to over twenty-five sous at Aigues-Mortes."--The wine at last reaches the barriers of the city where it is to be drunk. Here it pays an octroi[5238] of forty-seven francs per hogshead.--Entering Paris it goes into the tapster's or innkeeper's cellar where it again pays from thirty to forty francs for the duty on selling it at retail; at Rethel the duty is from fifty to sixty francs per puncheon, Rheims gauge.--The total is exorbitant. "At Rennes,[5239]

the dues and duties on a hogshead (or barrel) of Bordeaux wine, together with a fifth over and above the tax, local charges, eight sous per pound and the octroi, amount to more than seventy-two livres exclusive of the purchase money; to which must be added the expenses and duties advanced by the Rennes merchant and which he recovers from the purchaser, Bordeaux drayage, freight, insurance, tolls of the flood-gate, entrance duty into the town, hospital dues, fees of gaugers, brokers and inspectors. The total outlay for the tapster who sells a barrel of wine amounts to two hundred livres." We may imagine whether, at this price, the people of Rennes drink it, while these charges fall on the wine-grower, since, if consumers do not purchase, he is unable to sell.

Accordingly, among the small growers, he is the most to be pitied; according to the testimony of Arthur Young, wine-grower and misery are two synonymous terms. The crop often fails, "every doubtful crop ruining the man without capital." In Burgundy, in Berry, in Soisonnais, in the Trois-Eveche's, in Champagne,[5240] I find in every report that he lacks bread and lives on alms. In Champagne, the syndics of Bar-sur-Aube write[5241] that the inhabitants, to escape duties, have more than once emptied their wine into the river, the provincial a.s.sembly declaring that "in the greater portion of the province the slightest augmentation of duties would cause the cultivators to desert the soil."--Such is the history of wine under the ancient regime. From the producer who grows to the tapster who sells, what extortions and what vexations! As to the salt-tax, according to the comptroller-general,[5242] this annually produces 4,000 domiciliary seizures, 3,400 imprisonments, 500 sentences to flogging, exile and the galleys.--

If ever two taxes were well combined, not only to despoil, but also to irritate the peasantry, the poor and the people, here they were.

VI. Burdens And Exemptions.

Why taxation is so burdensome.--Exemptions and privileges.

Evidently the burden of taxation forms the chief cause of misery; hence an acc.u.mulated, deep-seated hatred against the fisc and its agents, receivers, store-house keepers, excise officials, customs officers and clerks.--But why is taxation so burdensome? As far as the communes which annually plead in detail against certain gentlemen to subject them to the taille are concerned, there is no doubt. What renders the charge oppressive is the fact that the strongest and those best able to bear taxation succeed in evading it, the prime cause of misery being the vastness of the exemptions[5243].

Let us look at each of these exemptions, one tax after another.--In the first place, not only are n.o.bles and ecclesiastics exempt from the personal taille but again, as we have already seen, they are exempt from the cultivator's taille, through cultivating their domains themselves or by a steward. In Auvergne,[5244] in the single election-district of Clermont, fifty parishes are enumerated in which, owing to this arrangement, every estate of a privileged person is exempt, the taille falling wholly on those subject to it. Furthermore, it suffices for a privileged person to maintain that his farmer is only a steward, which is the case in Poitou in several parishes, the subdelegate and the elu not daring to look into the matter too closely. In this way the privileged cla.s.ses escape the taille, they and their property, including their farms.--Now, the taille, ever augmenting, is that which provides, through its special delegations, such a vast number of new offices. A man of the Third-Estate has merely to run through the history of its periodical increase to see how it alone, or almost alone, paid and is paying[5245] for the construction of bridges, roads, ca.n.a.ls and courts of justice, for the purchase of offices, for the establishment and support of houses of refuge, insane asylums, nurseries, post-houses for horses, fencing and riding schools, for paving and sweeping Paris, for salaries of lieutenants-general, governors, and provincial commanders, for the fees of bailiffs, seneschals and vice-bailiffs, for the salaries of financial and election officials and of commissioners dispatched to the provinces, for those of the police of the watch and I know not how many other purposes.--In the provinces which hold a.s.semblies, where the taille would seem to be more justly apportioned, the like inequality is found. In Burgundy[5246] the expenses of the police, of public festivities, of keeping horses, all sums appropriated to the courses of lectures on chemistry, botany, anatomy and parturition, to the encouragement of the arts, to subscriptions to the chancellorship, to franking letters, to presents given to the chiefs and subalterns of commands, to salaries of officials of the provincial a.s.semblies, to the ministerial secretaryship, to expenses of levying taxes and even alms, in short, 1,800,000 livres are spent in the public service at the charge of the Third-Estate, the two higher orders not paying a cent.

In the second place, with respect to the poll-tax, originally distributed among twenty-two cla.s.ses and intended to bear equally on all according to fortunes, we know that, from the first, the clergy buy themselves off; and, as to the n.o.bles, they manage so well as to have their tax reduced proportionately with its increase at the expense of the Third-Estate. A count or a marquis, an intendant or a master of requests, with 40,000 livres income, who, according to the tariff of 1695,[5247] should pay from 1,700 to 2,500 livres, pays only 400 livres, while a bourgeois with 6,000 livres income, and who, according to the same tariff; should pay 70 livres, pays 720. The poll-tax of the privileged individual is thus diminished three-quarters or five-sixths, while that of the taille-payer has increased tenfold. In the Ile-de-France,[5248] on an income of 240 livres, the taille-payer pays twenty-one livres eight sous, and the n.o.bles three livres, and the intendant himself states that he taxes the n.o.bles only an eightieth of their revenue; that of Orleanais taxes them only a hundredth, while, on the other hand, those subject to the taille are a.s.sessed one-eleventh.--If other privileged parties are added to the n.o.bles, such as officers of justice, employee's of the fermes, and exempted townsmen, a group is formed embracing nearly everybody rich or well-off and whose revenue certainly greatly surpa.s.ses that of those who are subject to the taille. Now, the budgets of the provincial a.s.semblies inform us how much each province levies on each of the two groups: in the Lyonnais district those subject to the taille pay 898,000 livres, the privileged, 190,000; in the Ile-de-France, the former pay 2,689,000 livres and the latter 232,000; in the generalship of Alencon, the former pay 1,067,000 livres and the latter 122,000; in Champagne, the former pay 1,377,000 livres, and the latter 199,000; in Haute-Guyenne, the former pay 1,268,000 livres, and the latter 61,000; in the generalship of Auch, the former pay 797,000 livres, the privileged 21,000; in Auvergne the former pay 1,753,000 livres and the latter 86,000; in short, summing up the total of ten provinces, 11,636,000 livres paid by the poor group and 1,450,000 livres by the rich group, the latter paying eight times less than it ought to pay.