The Ancient Regime Part 36

With respect to the vingtiemes, the disproportion is less, the precise amounts not being attainable; we may nevertheless a.s.sume that the a.s.sessment of the privileged cla.s.s is about one-half of what it should be. "In 1772," says[5249] M. de Calonne, "it was admitted that the vingtiemes were not carried to their full value. False declarations, counterfeit leases, too favorable conditions granted to almost all the wealthy proprietors gave rise to inequalities and countless errors.

A verification of 4,902 parishes shows that the product of the two vingtiemes amounting to 54,000,000 should have amounted to 81,000,000."

A seigniorial domain which, according to its own return of income, should pay 2,400 livres, pays only 1,216. The case is much worse with the princes of the blood; we have seen that their domains are exempt and pay only 188,000 livres instead of 2,400,000. Under this system, which crushes the weak to relieve the strong, the more capable one is of contributing, the less one contributes.--The same story characterizes the fourth and last direct taxation, namely, the tax subst.i.tuted for the corvee. This tax, attached, at first, to the vingtiemes and consequently extending to all proprietors, through an act of the Council is attached to the taille and, consequently, bears on those the most burdened[5250].

Now this tax amounts to an extra of one-quarter added to the princ.i.p.al of the taille, of which one example may be cited, that of Champagne, where, on every 100 livres income the sum of six livres five sous devolves on the taille-payer. "Thus," says the provincial a.s.sembly, "every road used by active commerce, by the multiplied coursing of the rich, is repaired wholly by the contributions of the poor."--As these figures spread out before the eye we involuntarily recur to the two animals in the fable, the horse and the mule traveling together on the same road; the horse, by right, may prance along as he pleases; hence his load is gradually transferred to the mule, the beast of burden, which finally sinks beneath the extra load.

Not only, in the corps of tax-payers, are the privileged disburdened to the detriment of the taxable, but again, in the corps of the taxable, the rich are relieved to the injury of the poor, to such an extent that the heaviest portion of the load finally falls on the most indigent and most laborious cla.s.s, on the small proprietor cultivating his own field, on the simple artisan with nothing but his tools and his hands, and, in general, on the inhabitants of villages. In the first place, in the matter of taxes, a number of the towns are "abonnees," or free.

Compiegne, for the taille and its accessories, with 1,671 firesides, pays only 8,000 francs, whilst one of the villages in its neighborhood, Canly, with 148 firesides, pays 4,475 francs[5251]. In the poll-tax, Versailles, Saint-Germain, Beauvais, Etampes, Pontoise, Saint-Denis, Compiegne, Fontainebleau, taxed in the aggregate at 169,000 livres, are two-thirds exempt, contributing but little more than one franc, instead of three francs ten sous, per head of the population; at Versailles it is still less, since for 70,000 inhabitants the poll-tax amounts to only 51,600 francs[5252]. Besides, in any event, on the apportionment of a tax, the bourgeois of the town is favored above his rural neighbors.

Accordingly, "the inhabitants of the country, who depend on the town and are comprehended in its functions, are treated with a rigor of which it would be difficult to form an idea. . . . Town influence is constantly throwing the burden on those who are trying to be relieved of it, the richest of citizens paying less taille than the most miserable of the peasant farmers[5253]." Hence, "the horror of the taille depopulates the rural districts, concentrating in the towns all the talents and all the capital[5254]." Outside of the towns there is the same differences. Each year, the elus and their collectors, exercising arbitrary power, fix the taille of the parish and of each inhabitant. In these ignorant and partial hands the scales are not held by equity but by self-interest, local hatreds, the desire for revenge, the necessity of favoring some friend, relative, neighbor, protector, or patron, some powerful or some dangerous person. The intendant of Moulins, on visiting his generalship, finds "people of influence paying nothing, while the poor are over-charged." That of Dijon writes that "the basis of apportionment is arbitrary, to such an extent that the people of the province must not be allowed to suffer any longer."[5255] In the generalship of Rouen "some parishes pay over four sous the livre and others scarcely one sou."[5256] "For three years past that I have lived in the country,"

writes a lady of the same district, "I have remarked that most of the wealthy proprietors are the least pressed; they are selected to make the apportionment, and the people are always abused."[5257]--"I live on an estate ten leagues from Paris," wrote d'Argenson, "where it was desired to a.s.sess the taille proportionately, but only injustice has been the outcome since the seigniors made use of their influence to relieve their own tenants." [5258] Besides, in addition to those who, through favor, diminish their taille, there are others who buy themselves off entirely.

An intendant, visiting the subdelegation of Bar-sur-Seine, observes"

that the rich cultivators succeed in obtaining petty commissions in connection with the king's household and enjoy the privileges attached to these, which throws the burden of taxation on the others."[5259] "One of the leading causes of our prodigious taxation," says the provincial a.s.sembly of Auvergne, "is the inconceivable number of the privileged, which daily increases through traffic in and the a.s.signment of offices; cases occur in which these have enn.o.bled six families in less than twenty years." Should this abuse continue, "in a hundred years every tax-payer the most capable of supporting taxation will be enn.o.bled."[5260] Observe, moreover, that an infinity of offices and functions, without conferring n.o.bility, exempt their t.i.tularies from the personal taille and reduce their poll-tax to the fortieth of their income; at first, all public functionaries, administrative or judicial, and next all employments in the salt-department, in the customs, in the post-office, in the royal domains, and in the excise.[5261] "There are few parishes," writes an intendant, "in which these employees are not found, while several contain as many as two or three."[5262]

A postmaster is exempt from the taille, in all his possessions and offices, and even on his farms to the extent of a hundred arpents. The notaries of Angouleme are exempt from the corvee, from collections, and the lodging of soldiers, while neither their sons or chief clerks can be drafted in the militia. On closely examining the great fiscal net in administrative correspondence, we detect at every step some meshes through which, with a bit of effort and cunning, all the big and average-sized fish escape; the small fry alone remain at the bottom of the scoop. A surgeon not an apothecary, a man of good family forty-five years old, in commerce, but living with his parent and in a province with a written code, escapes the collector. The same immunity is extended to the begging agents of the monks of "la Merci" and "L'Etroite Observance." Throughout the South and the East individuals in easy circ.u.mstances purchase this commission of beggar for a "louis," or for ten crowns, and, putting three livres in a cup, go about presenting it in this or that parish:[5263] ten of the inhabitants of a small mountain village and five inhabitants in the little village of Treignac obtain their discharge in this fashion. Consequently, "the collections fall on the poor, always powerless and often insolvent," the privileged who effect the ruin of the tax-payer causing the deficiencies of the treasury.

VII. Munic.i.p.al Taxation.

The octrois of towns.--The poor the greatest sufferers.

One word more to complete the picture. People seek shelter in the towns and, indeed, compared with the country, the towns are a refuge. But misery accompanies the poor, for, on the one hand, they are involved in debt, and, on the other, the closed circles administering munic.i.p.al affairs impose taxation on the poor. The towns being oppressed by the fisc, they in their turn oppress the people by pa.s.sing to them the load which the king had imposed. Seven times in twenty-eight years[5264] he withdraws and re-sells the right of appointing their munic.i.p.al officers, and, to get rid of "this enormous financial burden," the towns double their octrois. At present, although liberated, they still make payment; the annual charge has become a perpetual charge; never does the fisc release its hold; once beginning to suck it continues to suck. "Hence, in Brittany," says an intendant, "not a town is there whose expenses are not greater than its revenue."[5265] They are unable to mend their pavements, and repair their streets, "the approaches to them being almost impracticable." What could they do for self-support, obliged, as they are, to pay over again after having already paid? Their augmented octrois, in 1748, ought to furnish during a period of eleven years a total of 606,000 livres; but, the eleven years having lapsed, the tax authorities, in spite of having been paid, still maintains its exigencies, and to such an extent that, in 1774, they have contributed 2,071,052 livres, the provisional octroi being still maintained.--Now, this exorbitant octroi bears heavily everywhere on the most indispensable necessities, the artisan being more heavily burdened than the bourgeois. In Paris, as we have seen above, wine pays forty-seven livres a hogshead entrance duty which, at the present standard of value, must be doubled. "A turbot, taken on the coast at Harfleur and brought by post, pays an entrance duty of eleven times its value, the people of the capital therefore being condemned to dispense with fish from the sea."[5266] At the gates of Paris, in the little parish of Aubervilliers, I find "excessive duties on hay, straw, seeds, tallow, candles, eggs, sugar, fish, f.a.ggots and firewood."[5267] Compiegne pays the whole amount of its taille by means of a tax on beverages and cattle[5268]. "In Toul and in Verdun the taxes are so onerous that but few consent to remain in the town, except those kept there by their offices and by old habits."[5269] At Coulommiers, "the merchants and the people are so severely taxed they dread undertaking any enterprise."

Popular hatred everywhere is profound against octroi, barrier and clerk.

The bourgeois oligarchy everywhere first cares for itself before caring for those it governs. At Nevers and at Moulins,[5270] "all rich persons find means to escape their turn to collect taxes by belonging to different commissions or through their influence with the elus, to such an extent that the collectors of Nevers, of the present and preceding year, might be mistaken for real beggars; there is hardly any small village whose tax collectors are solvent, since the tenant farmers (metayers) have had to be appointed." At Angers, "independent of presents and candles, which annually consume 2,172 livres, the public pence are employed and wasted in clandestine outlays according to the fancy of the munic.i.p.al officers." In Provence, where the communities are free to tax themselves and where they might be expected to show some consideration for the poor, "most of the towns, and notably Aix, Ma.r.s.eilles and Toulon,[5271] pay their impositions," local and general, "exclusively by the tax called the "piquet." This is a tax "on all species of flour belonging to and consumed on the territory;" for example, of 254,897 livres, which Toulon expends, the piquet furnishes 233,405. Thus the taxation falls wholly on the people, while the bishop, the marquis, the president, the merchant of importance pay less on their dinner of delicate fish and becaficos than the caulker or porter on his two pounds of bread rubbed with a piece of garlic! Bread in this country is already too dear! And the quality is so poor that Malouet, the intendant of the marine, refuses to let his workmen eat it!

"Sire," said M. de la Fare, bishop of Nancy, from his pulpit, May 4th, 1789, "Sire, the people over which you reign has given unmistakable proofs of its patience. . . . They are martyrs in whom life seems to have been allowed to remain to enable them to suffer the longer."

VIII. Complaints In The Registers [5272].

"I am miserable because too much is taken from me. Too much is taken from me because not enough is taken from the privileged. Not only do the privileged force me to pay in their place, but, again, they previously deduct from my earnings their ecclesiastic and feudal dues. When, out of my income of 100 francs, I have parted with fifty-three francs, and more, to the collector, I am obliged again to give fourteen francs to the seignior, also more than fourteen for t.i.thes,[5273] and, out of the remaining eighteen or nineteen francs, I have additionally to satisfy the excise men. I alone, a poor man, pay two governments, one the old government, local and now absent, useless, inconvenient and humiliating, and active only through annoyances, exemptions and taxes; and the other, recent, centralized, everywhere present, which, taking upon itself all functions, has vast needs, and makes my meager shoulders support its enormous weight."

These, in precise terms, are the vague ideas beginning to ferment in the popular brain and encountered on every page of the records of the States-General.

"Would to G.o.d," says a Normandy village,[5274] "the monarch might take into his own hands the defense of the miserable citizen pelted and oppressed by clerks, seigniors, justiciary and clergy!"

"Sire," writes a village in Champagne,[5275] "the only message to us on your part is a demand for money. We were led to believe that this might cease, but every year the demand comes for more. We do not hold you responsible for this because we love you, but those whom you employ, who better know how to manage their own affairs than yours. We believed that you were deceived by them and we, in our chagrin, said to ourselves, If our good king only knew of this!. . . We are crushed down with every species of taxation; thus far we have given you a part of our bread, and, should this continue, we shall be in want. . . . Could you see the miserable tenements in which we live, the poor food we eat, you would feel for us; this would prove to you better than words that we can support this no longer and that it must be lessened. . . . That which grieves us is that those who possess the most, pay the least. We pay the tailles and for our implements, while the ecclesiastics and n.o.bles who own the best land pay nothing. Why do the rich pay the least and the poor the most? Should not each pay according to his ability? Sire, we entreat that things may be so arranged, for that is just. . . . Did we dare, we should undertake to plant the slopes with vines; but we are so persecuted by the clerks of the excise we would rather pull up those already planted; the wine that we could make would all go to them, scarcely any of it remaining for ourselves. These exactions are a great scourge and, to escape them, we would rather let the ground lie waste.

. . . Relieve us of all these extortions and of the excis.e.m.e.n; we are great sufferers through all these devices; now is the time to change them; never shall we be happy as long as these last. We entreat all this of you, Sire, along with others of your subjects as wearied as ourselves. . . . We would entreat yet more but you cannot do all at one time."

Imposts and privileges, in the really popular registers, are the two enemies against which complaints everywhere arise[5276].

"We are overwhelmed by demands for subsidies,. . . we are burdened with taxes beyond our strength,. . . we do not feel able to support any more, we perish, overpowered by the sacrifices demanded of us. Labor is taxed while indolence is exempt. . . . Feudalism is the most disastrous of abuses, the evils it causes surpa.s.sing those of hail and lightning. . . .

Subsistence is impossible if three-quarters of the crops are to be taken for field-rents, terrage, etc. . . . The proprietor has a fourth part, the decimateur a twelfth, the harvester a twelfth, taxation a tenth, not counting the depredations of vast quant.i.ties of game which devour the growing crops: nothing is left for the poor cultivator but pain and sorrow."

Why should the Third-Estate alone pay for roads on which the n.o.bles and the clergy drive in their carriages? Why are the poor alone subject to militia draft? Why does "the subdelegate cause only the defenseless and the unprotected to be drafted?" Why does it suffice to be the servant of a privileged person to escape this service? Destroy those dove-cotes, formerly only small pigeon-pens and which now contain as many as 5,000 pairs. Abolish the barbarous rights of "motte, quevaise and domaine congeable[5277] under which more than 500,000 persons still suffer in Lower Brittany." "You have in your armies, Sire, more than 30,000 Franche-Comte serfs;" should one of these become an officer and be pensioned out of the service he would be obliged to return to and live in the hut in which he was born, otherwise; at his death, the seignior will take his pittance. Let there be no more absentee prelates, nor abbes-commendatory. "The present deficit is not to be paid by us but by the bishops and beneficiaries; deprive the princes of the church of two-thirds of their revenues." "Let feudalism be abolished. Man, the peasant especially, is tyrannically bowed down to the impoverished ground on which he lies exhausted. . . . There is no freedom, no prosperity, no happiness where the soil is enthralled. . . . Let the lord's dues, and other odious taxes not feudal, be abolished, a thousand times returned to the privileged. Let feudalism content itself with its iron scepter without adding the poniard of the revenue speculator."[5278]

Here, and for some time before this, it is not the Countryman who speaks but the procureur, the lawyer, who places professional metaphors and theories at his service. But the lawyer has simply translated the countryman's sentiments into literary dialect.

NOTES:

[Footnote 5201: "Collection des economistes," II. 832. See a tabular statement by Beaudan.]

[Footnote 5202: "Ephemerides du citoyen," IX. 15; an article by M. de Butre, 1767.]

[Footnote 5203: "Collection des economistes," I. 551, 562.]

[Footnote 5204: "Proces-verbaux de l'a.s.semblee provinciale de Champagne"

(1787), p. 240.]

[Footnote 5205: Cf., "Notice historique sur la Revolution dans le departement de l'Eure," by Boivin-Champeaux, p. 37.--A register of grievances of the parish of Epreville; on 100 francs income the Treasury takes 22 for the taille, 16 for collaterals, 15 for the poll-tax, 11 for the vingtiemes, total 67 livres.]

[Footnote 5206: "Proces-verbaux de l'a.s.semblee provinciale de Ile-de-France" (1787), p. 131.]

[Footnote 5207: "Procex-verbaux de l'a.s.s. prov de la Haute-Guyenne"

(1784), II. 17, 40, 47.]

[Footnote 5208: "Proces-verbaux de l'a.s.s. prov. d'Auvergne" (1787), p.

253.--Doleances, by Gautier de Biauzat, member of the council elected by the provincial a.s.sembly of Auvergne. (1788), p.3.]

[Footnote 5209: See note 5 at the end of the volume.]

[Footnote 5210: "Theron de Montauge," p. 109 (1763). Wages at this time are from 7 to 12 sous a day during the summer.]

[Footnote 5211: Archives nationales, proces-verbaux and registers of the States-General, V. 59, p. 6. Memorandum to M. Necker from M. d'Orgeux, honorary councilor to the Parliament of Bourgogne, 25 Oct. 1788..]

[Footnote 5212: Ibid. H, 1418. A letter of the intendant of Limoges, Feb. 26, 1784.]

[Footnote 5213: Turgot, II. 259.]

[Footnote 5214: Archives nationales, H, 426 (remonstrances of the Parliament of Brittany, Feb. 1783).]

[Footnote 5215: Mercier; XI. 59; X. 262.]

[Footnote 5216: Archives nationales, H, 1422, a letter by M d'Aine, intendant of Limoges (February 17, 1782) one by the intendant of Moulins (April, 1779); the trial of the community of Mollon (Bordelais), and the tables of its collectors.]

[Footnote 5217: "Proces-verbaux de l'a.s.s. prov. d'Auvergne," p. 266.]

[Footnote 5218: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," I. 72]

[Footnote 5219: "Proces-verbaux de l'a.s.s. prov. de Berry" (1778), I.

pp.72, 80.]

[Footnote 5220: De Tocqueville, 187.]