The Modern Regime Volume I Part 23

* the prelates and beneficiaries at the expense of poorly-paid cures and vicars,

* the two highest orders of the clergy at the expense of the third,

* the bourgeoisie at the expense of the people,

* the towns at the expense of the rural districts,

* this or that town or province at the expense of the rest,

* the artisan member of a corporation at the expense of the free workman,

and, in general, the strong, more or less well-to-do, in league and protected, at the expense of the weak, more or less needy, isolated and unprotected (indefendus).[3201]

One hundred years before the Revolution a few clairvoyant, open-hearted and generous spirits had already been aroused by this scandalous disproportion.[3202] Finally, everybody is shocked by it, for, in each local or social group, nearly everybody is a sufferer, not alone the rural, the peasant, the artisan, and the plebeian, not alone the citizen, the cure and the bourgeois notable," but again the gentleman, the grand seignior, the prelate and the King himself.[3203] Each is denouncing the privileges of all others that affect his interests, each striving to diminish another's share in the public cake and to keep his own, all concurring in citing natural right and in claiming or accepting as a principle liberty and equality, but all concurring in misconception and solely unanimous in destroying and in allowing destruction,[3204] to such an extent that, at last, the attack being universal and no defense anywhere, social order itself perishes, entirely owing to the abuses of it.

On the reappearance of the same abuses, the lack of distributive justice in revolutionary France became still more apparent than in monarchical France. Through a sudden transposition, the preferred of the former Regime had become the disgraced, while the disgraced of the former Regime had become the preferred; unjust favor and unjust disfavor still subsisted, but with a change of object. Before 1789, the nation was subject to an oligarchy of n.o.bles and notables; after 1789, it became subject to an oligarchy of Jacobins big or little. Before the Revolution, there were in France three or four hundred thousand privileged individuals, recognizable by their red heels or silver shoe-buckles. After the Revolution, there were three or four hundred thousand of the privileged, recognizable by their red caps or their carmagnoles.[3205] The most privileged of all, the three or four thousand verified n.o.bles, presented at court and of racial antiquity, who, by virtue of their parchments, rode in the royal carriages, were succeeded by three or four thousand Jacobins of a fresh sprout, no less verified and accepted, who, by virtue of their civic patent, sat in the club of the rue Saint-Honore and the latter coterie was still more dominant, more exclusive, more partial than the former one.

Consequently, before the Revolution, the burden of taxation was light for the rich or the well-to-do, crushing for the peasants or the common people; after the Revolution, on the contrary, the peasants, the common people, paid no more taxes,[3206] while from the rich and the well-to-do the government took all, not alone their income but their capital.--On the other hand, after having fed the court of Versailles, the public treasury had to feed the rabble of Paris, still more voracious; and, from 1793 to 1796, the maintenance of this rabble cost it twenty-five times as much as, from 1783 to 1786, the maintenance of the court.[3207]

Finally, at Paris as at Versailles, the subordinates who lived on the favored spot, close to the central manger, seized on all they could get and ate much more than their allowance. Under the ancient Regime, "the ladies of honor, every time they travel from one royal country-house to another, gain 80 %. on the cost of the journey," while the queen's first chambermaid gains, over and above her wages, 38,000 francs a year out of the sales of half-burnt candles.[3208] Under the new Regime, in the distribution of food, "the matadors of the quarter," the patriots of the revolutionary committees, deduct their portions in advance, and a very ample portion, to the prejudice of the hungry who await their turn, one taking seven rations and another twenty.[3209] Thus did the injustice remain; in knocking it over, they had simply made matters worse; and had they wished to build permanently, now was the time to put an end to it; for, in every social edifice it introduced an imbalance. Whether the plumb-line deflects right or left is of little consequence; sooner or later the building falls in, and thus had the French edifice already fallen twice, the first time in 1789, through imminent bankruptcy and hatred of the ancient Regime, and the second time in 1799, through an actual bankruptcy and hatred of the Revolution.

An architect like the French Consul is on his guard against a financial, social and moral danger of this sort. He is aware that, in a well-organized society, there must be neither surcharge nor discharge, no favors, no exemptions and no exclusions. Moreover, "l'Etat c'est lui;"[3210] thus is the public interest confounded with his personal interest, and, in the management of this double interest, his hands are free. Proprietor; and first inhabitant of France in the fashion of its former kings, he is not obliged and embarra.s.sed as they were by immemorial precedents, by the concessions they have sanctioned or the rights they have acquired. At the public table over which he presides and which is his table, he does not, like Louis XV. or Louis XVI., encounter messmates already installed there, the heirs or purchasers of the seats they occupy,[3211] extending in long rows from one end of the room to the other, each in his place according to rank, in an arm-chair, or common chair, or on a footstool, all being the legitimate and recognized owners of their seats, all of them the King's messmates and all authorized by law, tradition and custom to eat a free dinner or pay for it at less than cost, to find fault with the dishes pa.s.sed around, to reach out for those not near by, to help themselves to what they want and to carry off the dessert in their pockets. At the new table there are no places secured beforehand. It is Napoleon himself who arranges the table, and on sitting down, he is the master who has invited whomsoever he pleases, who a.s.signs to each his portion, who regulates meals as he thinks best for his own and the common interest, and who introduces into the entire service order, watchfulness and economy.

Instead of a prodigal and negligent grand-seignior, here at last is a modern administrator who orders supplies, distributes portions and limits consumption, a contractor who feels his responsibility, a man of business able to calculate. Henceforth, each is to pay for his portion, estimated according to his ration, and each is to enjoy his ration according to his quota.--Judge of this by one example: In his own house, customarily a center of abuses and sinecures, there must be no more parasites. From the grooms and scullions of his palace up to its grand officials, even to the chamberlains and ladies of honor, all his domestics, with or without t.i.tles, work and perform their daily tasks in person, administrative or decorative, day or night, at the appointed time, for exact compensation, without pickings or stealing and without waste. His train and his parades, as pompous as under the old monarchy, admit of the same ordinary and extraordinary expenses--stables, chapel, food, hunts, journeys, private theatricals, renewals of plate and furniture, and the maintenance of twelve palaces or chateaux. While, under Louis XV., it was estimated that "coffee with one roll for each lady of honor cost the King 2,000 livres a year," and under Louis XVI.,"

the grand broth night and day" which Madame Royale, aged two years, sometimes drank and which figured in the annual accounts at 5201 livres,[3212] under Napoleon "in the pantries, in the kitchens, the smallest dish, a mere plate of soup, a gla.s.s of sugared water, would not have been served without the authorization or check of grand-marshal Duroc. Every abuse is watched; the gains of each are calculated and regulated beforehand."[3213] Consequently, this or that journey to Fontainebleau which had cost Louis XVI. nearly 2 million livres, cost Napoleon, with the same series of fetes, only 150,000 francs, while the total expense of his civil household, instead of amounting to 25 million livres, remains under 3 million francs.[3214] The pomp is thus equal, but the expense is ten times less; the new master is able to derive a tenfold return from persons and money, because he squeezes the full value out of every man he employs and every crown he spends. n.o.body has surpa.s.sed him in the art of turning money and men to account, and he is as shrewd, as careful, as sharp in procuring them as he is in profiting by them.

II. Equitable Taxation.

The apportionment of charges.--New fiscal principle and new fiscal machinery.

In the a.s.signment of public burdens and of public offices Napoleon therefore applies the maxims of the new system of rights, and his practice is in conformity with the theory. For the social order, which, according to the philosophers, is the only just one in itself, is at the same time the most profitable for him: he adds equity because equity is profitable to him.--And first, in the matter of public burdens, there shall be no more exemptions. To relieve any category of taxpayers or of conscripts from taxation or from military service would annually impoverish the treasury by so many millions of crowns, and diminish the army by so many thousands of soldiers. Napoleon is not the man to deprive himself without reason of either a soldier or a franc; above all things, he wants his army complete and his treasury full; to supply their deficits he seizes whatever he can lay his hands on, both taxable material as well as recruitable material. But all material is limited; if he took too little on the one hand he would be obliged to take too much on the other; it is impossible to relieve these without oppressing those, and oppression, especially in the matter of taxation, is what, in 1789, excited the universal jacquerie, perverted the Revolution, and broke France to pieces.--At present, in the matter of taxation, distributive justice lays down a universal and fixed law; whatever the property may be, large or small, and of whatever kind or form, whether lands, buildings, indebtedness, ready money, profits, incomes or salaries, it is the State which, through its laws, tribunals, police, gendarmes and army, preserves it from ever ready aggression within and without; the State guarantees, procures and ensures the enjoyment of it.

Consequently, property of every species owes the State its premium of a.s.surance, so many centimes on the franc. The quality, the fortune, the age or the s.e.x of the owner is of little importance; each franc a.s.sured, no matter in whose hands, must pay the same number of centimes, not one too much, not one too little.--Such is the new principle. To announce it is easy enough; all that is necessary is to combine speculative ideas, and any Academy can do that. The National a.s.sembly of 1789 had proclaimed it with the rattling of drums, but merely as a right and with no practical effect. Napoleon turns it into a reality, and henceforth the ideal rule is applied as strictly as is possible with human material, thanks to two pieces of fiscal machinery of a new type, superior of their kind, and which, compared with those of the ancient Regime, or with those of the Revolution, are masterpieces.

III. Formation of Honest, Efficient Tax Collectors

Direct real and personal taxation.--In what respect the new machinery is superior to the old.--Full and quick returns.-- Relief to taxpayers.--Greater relief to the poor workman and small farmer.

The collection of a direct tax is a surgical operation performed on the taxpayer, one which removes a piece of his substance: he suffers on account of this and submits to it only because he is obliged to. If the operation is performed on him by other hands he submits to it willingly or not. But that he should do it himself, spontaneously and with his own hands, it is not to be thought of. On the other hand, the collection of a direct tax according to the prescriptions of distributive justice, is a subjection of each taxpayer to an amputation proportionate to his bulk or, at least, to his surface; this requires delicate calculation and is not to be entrusted to the patients themselves, for, not only are they surgical novices and poor calculators, but, again, they are interested in calculating falsely. They have been ordered to a.s.sess their group with a certain total weight of human substance, and to apportion to each individual in their group the lighter or heavier portion he must provide. Everyone will soon understand that, the more that is cut from the others, the less will be required of him. And as each is more sensitive to his own suffering, although moderate, than to another's suffering, even excessive, each, therefore, be his neighbor little or big, is inclined, in order to unjustly diminish his own sacrifice by an ounce, to add a pound unjustly to that of his neighbor.

Up to this time, in the construction of the fiscal machine, n.o.body knew or had been disposed to take into account such natural and powerful sentiments; through negligence or through optimism, the taxpayer had been introduced into the mechanism in the quality of first agent; before 1789, in the quality of a responsible and constrained agent; after 1789, in the quality of a voluntary and philanthropic agent. Hence, before 1789, the machine had proved mischievous, and after 1789, impotent; before 1789, its working had been almost fatal,[3215] and after 1789 its returns scarcely amounted to anything.[3216] Finally, Napoleon establishes independent, special and competent operators, enlightened by local informers, but withdrawn from local influences. These are appointed, paid and supported by the central government, forced to act impartially by the appeal of the taxpayer to the council of the prefecture, and forced to keep correct accounts by the final auditing of a special court (cour des comptes). The are kept interested, through the security they have given as well as by commissions, in the integral recovery of unpaid arrears and in the prompt returns of collected taxes.

All, a.s.sessors, auditors, directors, inspectors and collectors, being good accountants, are watched by good accountants, kept to their duties by fear, and made aware that embezzlements, lucrative under the Directory,[3217] are punished under the Consulate.[3218] They are soon led to consider necessity a virtue, to pride themselves inwardly on compulsory rect.i.tude, to imagine that they have a conscience and hence to acquiring one, in short, to voluntarily imposing on themselves probity and exact.i.tude through amour-propre and honorable scruples.--For the first time in ten years lists of taxes are prepared and their collection begun at the beginning of the year.[3219] Previous to 1789, the taxpayer was always in arrears, while the treasury received only three-fifths of that which was due in the current year.[3220] After 1800, direct taxes are nearly always fully returned before the end of the current year, and half a century later, the taxpayers, instead of being in arrears, are often in advance.[3221] To do this work required, before 1789, about 200,000 collectors, besides the administrative corps,[3222] occupied one half of their time for two successive years in running from door to door, miserable and detested, ruined by their ruinous office, fleecers and the fleeced, and always escorted by bailiffs and constables. Since 1800, from five thousand to six thousand collectors, and other fiscal agents, honorable and respected, have only to do their office-work at home and make regular rounds on given days, in order to collect more than double the amount without any vexation and using very little constraint. Before 1780, direct taxation brought in about 170 millions;[3223] after the year XI, it brought in 360 millions.[3224] By the same measure, an extraordinary counter-measure, the taxable party, especially the peasant-proprietor, the small farmer with n.o.body to protect him, diametrically opposite to the privileged cla.s.s, the drudge of the monarchy, is relieved of three-fourths of his immemorial burden.[3225] At first, through the abolition of t.i.thes and of feudal privileges, he gets back one-quarter of his net income, that quarter which he paid to the seignior and to the clergy; next, through the application of direct taxation to all lands and to all persons, his quota is reduced one-half. Before 1789, he paid, on 100 francs net income, 14 to the seignior, 14 to the clergy, 53 to the State, and kept only 18 or 19 for himself. After 1800, he pays nothing out of 100 francs of income to the seignior or to the clergy; he pays but little to the State, only 21 francs to the commune and department, and keeps 79 francs in his pocket.[3226]

If each franc insured pays so many centimes insurance premium, each franc of manual gain and of salary should pay as many centimes as each franc of industrial or commercial gain, also as each franc of personal or land revenue; that is to say, more than one-fifth of a franc, or 21 centimes.--At this rate, the workman who lives on his own labor, the day-laborer, the journeyman who earns 1 franc 15 centimes per day and who works 300 days of the year, ought to pay out of his 345 francs wages 69 francs to the public treasury. At this rate; the ordinary peasant or cultivator of his own field, owner of a cottage and a small tract of ground which he might rent at 100 francs a year, should pay into the public treasury, out of his land income and from manual labor, 89 francs.[3227] The deduction, accordingly, on such small earnings would be enormous; for this gain, earned from day to day, is just enough to live on, and very poorly, for a man and his family: were it cut down one-fifth he and his family would be obliged to fast; he would be nothing but a serf or half-serf, exploited by the exchequer, his seignior and his proprietor. Because the exchequer, as formerly the proprietary seigniors, would appropriate to itself 60 days of labor out of the 300. Such was the condition of many millions of men, the great majority of Frenchmen, under the ancient Regime. Indeed, the five direct taxes, the taille, its accessories, the road-tax, the capitatim and the vingtiemes, were a tax on the taxpayer, not only according to the net revenue of his property, if he had any, but again and especially "of his faculties" and presumed resources whatever these might be, comprising his manual earnings or daily wages.--Consequently, "a poor laborer owning nothing,"[3228] who earned 19 sous a day, or 270 livres a year,[3229] was taxed 18 or 20 livres. Out of 300 days' work there were 20 or 22 which belonged beforehand to the public treasury.--Three-fifths[3230] of the French people were in this situation, and the inevitable consequences of such a fiscal system have been seen--the excess of extortions and of suffering, the spoliation, privations and deep-seated resentment of the humble and the poor. Every government is bound to care for these, if not from compa.s.sion, at least through prudential considerations, and this one more than any other, since it is founded on the will of the greatest number, on the repeated votes of majorities counted by heads.

To this end, it establishes two divisions of direct taxation: one, the real-estate tax, which has no bearing on the taxpayer without any property; and the other, the personal tax, which does affect him, but lightly: calculated on the rate of rent, it is insignificant on an attic, furnished lodging, hut or any other hovel belonging to a laborer or peasant; again, when very poor or indigent, if the octroi is burdensome, the exchequer sooner or later relieves them; add to this the poll-tax which takes from them 1 franc and a half up to 4.50 francs per annum, also a very small tax on doors and windows, say 60 centimes per annum in the villages on a tenement with only one door and one window, and, in the towns, from 60 to 75 centimes per annum for one room above the second story with but one window.[3231] In this way, the old tax which was crushing becomes light: instead of paying 18 or 20 livres for his taille, capitatim and the rest, the journeyman or the artisan with no property pays no more than 6 or 7 francs;[3232] instead of paying 53 livres for his vingtiemes for his poll, real and industrial tax, his capitatim and the rest, the small cultivator and owner pays no more than 21 francs. Through this reduction of their fiscal charges (corvee) and through the augmentation of their day wages, poor people, or those badly off, who depended on the hard and steady labor of their hands, the plowmen, masons, carpenters, weavers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights and porters, every hired man and artisan, in short, all the laborious and tough hands, again became almost free; these formerly owed, out of their 300 working days, from 20 to 59 to the exchequer; they now owe only from 6 to 19,[3233] and thus gain from 14 to 40 free days during which, instead of working for the exchequer, they work for themselves.--The reader may estimate the value to a small household of such an alleviation of the burden of discomfort and care.

IV. Various Taxes.

Other direct taxes.--Tax on business licenses.--Tax on real-estate transactions.--The earnings of manual labor almost exempt from direct taxation.--Compensation on another side.

--Indirect taxation.--In what respect the new machinery is superior to the old.--Summary effect of the new fiscal regime.--Increased receipts of the public treasury.--Lighter burdens of the taxpayer.--Change in the condition of the small taxpayer.

This infraction of the principle of distributive justice is in favor of the poor. Through the almost complete exemption of those who have no property the burden of direct taxation falls almost entirely on those who own property. If they are manufacturers, or in commerce, they support still another burden, that of the license tax, which is a supplementary impost proportioned to their probable gains.[3234]

Finally, to all these annual and extra taxes, levied on the probable or certain income derived from invested or floating capital, the exchequer adds an eventual tax on capital itself, consisting of the mutation tax, a.s.sessed on property every time it changes hands through gift, inheritance or by contract, obtaining its t.i.tle under free donation or by sale, and which tax, aggravated by the timbre,[3235] is enormous[3236] since, in most cases, it takes 5, 7, 9, and up to 10 1/2 % on the capital transmitted, that is to say, in the case of real-estate, 2, 3 and even 4 years' income from it. Thus, in the first shearing of the sheep the exchequer cuts deep, as deep as possible; but it has sheared only the sheep whose fleece is more or less ample; its scissors have scarcely touched the others, much more numerous, whose wool, short, thin and scant, is maintained only by day-wages, the petty gains of manual labor.--Compensation is to come when the exchequer, resuming its scissors, shears the second time: it is the indirect tax which, although properly levied and properly collected, is, in its nature, more burdensome for the poor than for the rich and well-off.

Through this tax, and through to the previous action of customs-duties, tolls, octrois or monopolies, the State collects a certain percentage on the price of various kinds of merchandise sold. In this way it partic.i.p.ates in trade and commerce and itself becomes a merchant.

It knows, therefore, like all able merchants, that, to obtain large profits, it must sell large quant.i.ties, that it must have a very large body of customers, that the largest body is that which ensures to it and embraces all its subjects, in short, that its customers must consist not only of the rich, who number merely tens of thousands, not only the well-to-do, who number merely hundreds of thousands, but likewise the poor and the half-poor, who number millions and tens of millions. Hence, in the merchandise by the sale of which it is to profit, it takes care to include staple articles which everybody needs, for example, salt, sugar, tobacco and beverages in universal and popular use. This accomplished, let us follow out the consequences, and look in at the shops over the whole surface of the territory, in the towns or in the villages, where these articles are disposed of. Daily and all day long, consumers abound; their large coppers and small change constantly rattle on the counter; and out of every large copper and every small piece of silver the national treasury gets so many centimes: that is its share, and it is very sure of it, for it is already in hand, having received it in advance. At the end of the year, these countless centimes fill its cash-box with millions, as many and more millions than it gathers through direct taxation.

And this second crop causes less trouble than the first one for the taxpayer who is subject to it has less trouble and like-wise the State which collects it.--In the first place, the tax-payer suffers less. In relation to the exchequer, he is no longer a mere debtor, obliged to pay over a particular sum at a particular date; his payments are optional; neither the date nor the sum are fixed; he pays on buying and in proportion to what he buys, that is to say, when he pleases and as little as he wants. He is free to choose his time, to wait until his purse is not so empty; there is nothing to hinder him from thinking before he enters the shop, from counting his coppers and small change, from giving the preference to more urgent expenditure, from reducing his consumption. If he is not a frequenter of the cabaret, his quota, in the hundreds of millions of francs obtained from beverages, is almost nothing; if he does not smoke or snuff, his quota, in the hundreds of millions derived from the tax on tobacco, is nothing at all; because he is economical, prudent, a good provider for his family and capable of self-sacrifice for those belonging to him, he escapes the shearing of the exchequer. Moreover, when he does come under the scissors, these hardly graze his skin; so long as tariff regulations and monopolies levy nothing on articles which are physically indispensable to him, as on bread in France, indirect taxation does not touch his flesh. In general, fiscal or protective duties, especially those which increase the price of tobacco, coffee, sugar, and beverages, do not affect his daily life, but merely deprive him of some of its pleasures and comforts.--And, on the other hand, in the collection of these duties, the exchequer may not show its hand; if it does its business properly, the anterior and partial operation is lost sight of in the total operation which completes and covers this up; it screens itself behind the merchant. The shears are invisible to the buyer who presents himself to be sheared; in any event, he has no distinct sensation of them. Now, with the man of the people, the common run of sheep, it is the positive, actual, animal sensation which is the cause of his cries, his convulsive shudders, and contagious alarms and panics. As long as he is not being excited he can be manipulated; at the utmost, he grumbles at the hard times; the high prices from which he suffers are not imputed to the government; he does not know how to reckon, check off and consider for himself the surplus price which the fiscal impost extorts from him. Even at the present day, one might tell a peasant in vain that the State takes fifteen out of the forty sous which he pays for a pound of coffee, and five centimes out of every two sous he pays for a pound of salt; for him, this is simply a barren notion, a vague calculation at random; the impression on his mind would be very different if, standing before the grocer who weighs out his coffee and salt, he saw with his own eyes, right before him, the clerk of the customs and of the salt-tax actually taking the fifteen sous and the five centimes off the counter.

Such are the good indirect taxes: in order that they may be correct, that is to say, tolerable and tolerated, three conditions, as we see, are requisite. In the first place, the taxpayer, in his own interest, must be free to buy or not to buy the merchandise taxed. Next, in the interest of the taxpayer and of the exchequer, the merchandise must not be so taxed as to be rendered too dear. After that, in the interest of the exchequer, its interference must not be perceptible. Owing to these precautions, indirect taxes can be levied, even on the smaller taxpayers, without either fleecing or irritating them. It is for lack of these precautions before 1789, when people were fleeced in such a clumsy way,[3237] that, in 1789, they first rebelled against indirect taxation,[3238] against the meal-tax, the salt-tax, the tax on liquors, the internal tariffs, and the town octrois, against fiscal officers, bureaux and registries, by murdering, pillaging, and burning, beginning in the month of March in Provence and after the 13th of July in Paris, and then throughout France, with such a universal, determined and persistent hostility that the National a.s.sembly, after having vainly attempted to restore the suspended tax-levies and enforce the law on the populace, ended in subjecting the law to the populace and in decreeing the suppression of indirect taxation entirely.[3239]

Such, in the matter of taxation, is the work of the Revolution. Of the two sources which, through their regular afflux, fill the public Treasury, and of which the ancient Regime took possession and managed badly, violently, through loose and bungling measures, it has nearly dried up the first one, direct taxation, and completely exhausted the second one, indirect taxation. At present, as the empty Treasury must be filled, the latter must be taken in hand the same as the former, its waters newly gathered in and gently conducted without loss. The new government sets about this, not like the old one, in a rude, conventional manner, but as an engineer and calculator who knows the ground, its inclination and other obstacles, in short, who comprehends human sensibility and the popular imagination.[3240]--And, first of all, there is to be no more farming-out (of the collection of the revenues): the State no longer sells its duties on salt or on beverages to a company of speculators, mere contractors, who care for nothing but their temporary lease and annual incomes, solely concerned with coming dividends, bleeding the tax-payer like so many leeches and invited to suck him freely, interested in multiplying affidavits by the fines they get, and creating infractions, authorized by a needy government which, supporting itself on their advances, places the public force at their disposal and surrenders the people to their exactions. Henceforth, the exchequer collects for itself and for its own account. It is the same as a proprietor who, instead of leasing or renting out, improves his property and becomes his own farmer. The State, therefore, considers the future in its own interest; it limits the receipts of the current year so as not to compromise the receipts of coming years; it avoids ruining the present tax-payer who is also the future taxpayer; it does not indulge in gratuitous chicanery, in expensive lawsuits, in warrants of execution and imprisonment; it is averse to converting a profitable laborer into a beggar who brings in nothing, or into a prisoner for debt who costs it something. Through this course, the relief is immense; ten years previous to the Revolution,[3241] it was estimated that, in princ.i.p.al and in accessories, especially in costs of collection and in fines, indirect taxation cost the nation twice as much the king derived from it, that it paid 371 millions to enable him to receive 184 millions, that the salt-tax alone took out of the pockets of the taxpayer 100 millions for 45 millions deposited in his coffers. Under the new government, fines became rarer; seizures, executions and sales of personal property still rarer, while the costs of collection, reduced by increasing consumption, are not to exceed one-twentieth in-stead of one-fifth of the receipts.[3242]--In the second place, the consumer becomes free again, in law as in fact, not to purchase taxed goods. He is no longer constrained, as formerly, in the provinces subject to high salt-tax, to accept, consume, and pay for duty-salt, 7 pounds per head at 13 sous the pound. Provincial, town or seignorial taxes on Bread, a commodity which he cannot do without, no longer exist; there is no piquet, or duty on flour, as in Provence,[3243] no duties on the sale or of grinding wheat, no impediments to the circulation or commerce of grain. And, on the other hand, through the lowering of fiscal charges, in the suppression of internal duties, and the abolition of mult.i.tudinous tolls, other commodities, apart from bread reached by a different tax, now becomes affordable for those of small means. Salt, instead of costing thirteen sous and over, no longer costs more than two sous the pound. A cask of Bordeaux wine no longer pays two hundred livres before it is retailed by the tavern-keeper at Rennes.[3244]

Except in Paris, and even at Paris, so long as the extravagance of munic.i.p.al expenditure does not increase the octroi the total tax on wine, cider and beer does not add, even at retail, more than 18 % to their selling price,[3245] while, throughout France, the vine-grower, or the wine-maker, who gathers in and manufactures his own wine, drinks this and even his brandy, without paying one cent of tax under this heading.[3246]--Consequently, consumption increases, and, as there are no longer any exempt or half-exempt provinces, no more free salt (franc sale),[3247] no more privileges arising from birth, condition, profession or residence, the Treasury, with fewer duties, collected or gained as much as before the Revolution: In 1809 and 1810, 20 millions on tobacco, 54 millions on salt, 100 millions on liquors, and then, as the taxpayer became richer and spent more, still larger and larger sums: in 1884, 305 millions on tobacco: in 1885, 429 millions on liquors,[3248] without counting another 100 millions again raised on liquors through town octrois.--And lastly, the exchequer, with extreme prudence, keeps out of sight and succeeds in almost saving the taxpayer from contact with, or the presence of, its agents. There is an end to a domestic inquisition. The excise man no longer pounces in on the housewife to taste the pickle, to find out whether the ham has been cured with bogus salt, to certify that all the dutiable salt has been used in "the pot and the salt-cellar." The wine-inspector no longer comes suddenly on the wine-grower, or even on the consumer, to gauge his casks, to demand an account of what he drinks, to make an affidavit in case of deficit or over-consumption, to impose a fine should a bottle have been given to a sick person or to a poor one. The 50,000 customs officers or clerks of the ferme, the 23,000 soldiers without a uniform who, posted in the interior along a line of 1200 leagues, guarded the heavily taxed salt districts against the provinces which were less taxed, redeemed or free, the innumerable employees at the barriers, forming a confused and complicated band around each province, town, district or canton, levying on twenty or thirty different sorts of merchandise forty-five princ.i.p.al duties, general, provincial, or munic.i.p.al, and nearly sixteen hundred tolls, in short, the entire body of officials of the old system of indirect taxation has almost wholly disappeared. Save at the entrance of towns, and for the octroi the eye no longer encounters an official clerk. The carters who, from Roussillon or Languedoc, transport a cask of wine to Paris, are no longer subject to his levies, humiliations and moods in twenty different places, nor to ascribe to him the dozen or fifteen days' useless extension of their trip due to his predecessor, and during which they had to wait in his office until he wrote a receipt or a permit. There is scarcely any one now but the inn-keeper who sees his green uniform on his premises. After the abolition of the house-inventory, nearly two millions of proprietors and wine metayers are forever free of his visits;[3249] from now on, for consumers, especially for the people, he seems absent and non existent.

In effect, he has been transferred one or two hundred leagues off, to the salt-establishments in the interior and on the coasts, and on the frontier. There only is the system at fault, nakedly exposing its vice,--a war against exchanges, the proscription of international commerce, prohibition pushed to extreme, the continental blockade, an inquisition of 20,000 customs officials, the hostility of 100,000 defrauders, the brutal destruction of seized goods, an augmentation in price of 100 % on cottons and 400% on sugar, a dearth of colonial articles, privation to the consumer, the ruin of the manufacturer and trader, and acc.u.mulated bankruptcies one after the other in 1811 in all the large towns from Hamburg to Rome.[3250] This vice, however, belongs to the militant policy and personal character of the master; the error that taints the external side of his fiscal system does not reach the internal side. After him, under pacific reigns, it is gradually modified; prohibition gives way to protection and then changes from excessive protection to limited protection. France remains, along with secondary improvements and partial amendments, on the course marked out by the Consulate and the Empire; this course, in all its main lines, is clearly traced, straight, and yet adapted to all things, by the plurality, establishment, distribution, rate of taxation and returns of the various direct and indirect taxes, nearly in conformity with the new principles of political economy, as well as in conformity with the ancient maxims of distributive justice, carefully directed between the two important interests that have to be cared for, that of the people who pays and of the State which collects.

Consider, in effect, what both have gained.--In 1789, the State had a revenue of only 475 millions; afterwards, during the Revolution, it scarcely collected any of its revenues; it lived on the capital it stole, like a genuine brigand, or on the debts it contracted, like a dishonest and insolvent bankrupt. Under the Consulate and during the first years of the Empire, its revenue amounts to 750 to 800 millions, its subjects being no longer robbed of their capital, while it no longer runs in debt.--In 1789, the ordinary taxpayer paid a direct tax to his three former or late sovereigns, namely, to the King, the clergy and the seigniors, more than three-quarters of his net income. After 1800, he pays to the State less than one-quarter, the one sovereign alone who replaces the other three. We have seen how relief came to the old taxable subject, to the rural, to the small proprietor, to the man without any property, who lived on the labor of his own hands; the lightening of the direct tax restored to him from 14 to 43 free days, during which, instead of working for the exchequer, he worked for himself. If married, and the father of two children over 7 years of age, the alleviation of one direct tax alone, that of the salt-tax, again restores to him 12 days more, in all from one to two complete months each year during which he is no longer, as formerly, a man doing statute-work, but the free proprietor, the absolute master of his time and of his own hands.--At the same time, through the re-casting of other taxes and owing to the increasing price of labor, his physical privations decrease. He is no longer reduced to consuming only the refuse of his crop, the wheat of poor quality, the damaged rye, the badly-bolted flour mixed with bran, nor to drink water poured over the lees of his grapes, nor to sell his pigs before Christmas because the salt he needs is too dear.[3251] He salts his pork and eats it, and likewise butcher's meat; he enjoys his boiled beef and broth on Sunday; he drinks wine; his bread is more nutritious, not so black and healthier; he no longer lacks it and has no fear of lacking it.

Formerly, he entertained a lugubrious phantom, the fatal image of famine which haunted him day and night for centuries, an almost periodical famine under the monarchy, a chronic famine and then severe and excruciating during the Revolution, a famine which, under the republic, had in three years destroyed over a million of lives.[3252] The immemorial specter recedes and vanishes; after two accidental and local recurrences, in 1812 and 1817, it never again appears in France.[3253]

V. Conscription or Professional soldiers.

Military service.--Under the Ancient Regime.--The militia and regular troops.--Number of soldiers.--Quality of the recruits.--Advantages of the inst.i.tution.--Results of the new system.--The obligation universal.--Comparison between the burdens of citizens and subjects.--The Conscription under Napoleon.--He lightens and then increases its weight.

--What it became after him.--The law of 1818.

One tax remains, and the last, that by which the State takes, no longer money, but the person himself, the entire man, soul and body, and for the best years of his life, namely military service. It is the Revolution which has rendered this so burdensome; formerly, it was light, for, in principle, it was voluntary. The militia, alone, was raised by force, and, in general, among the country people; the peasants furnished men for it by casting lots.[3254] But it was simply a supplement to the active army, a territorial and provincial reserve, a distinct, sedentary body of reinforcements and of inferior rank which, except in case of war, never marched; it turned out but nine days of the year, and, after 1778, never turned out again. In 1789, it comprised in all 72,260 men, and for eleven years their names, inscribed on the registers, alone const.i.tuted their presence in the ranks.[3255] There were no other conscripts under the monarchy; in this matter, its exactions were not great, ten times less than those of the Republic and of the Empire, since both the Republic and the Empire, using the same constraint, were to levy more than ten times the number of drafted men or conscripts.[3256]

Alongside of this militia body, the entire army properly so called, the "regular" troops were, under, the ancient Regime, all recruited by free enlistment, not only the twenty-five foreign regiments, Swiss, Irish, Germans, and Liegeois, but again the hundred and forty-five French regiments, 177 000 men.[3257] The enlistment, indeed, was not free enough; frequently, through the maneuvers of the recruiting-agent, it was tainted with inveigling and surprises, and sometimes with fraud or violence; but, owing to the remonstrances due to the prevailing philanthropic spirit, these abuses had diminished; the law of 1788 had suppressed the most serious of them and, even with its abuses, the inst.i.tution had two great advantages.--The army, in the first place, served as an issue: through it the social body purged itself of its bad humors, of its overheated or vitiated blood. At this date, although the profession of soldier was one of the lowest and least esteemed, a barren career, without promotion and almost without escape, a recruit was obtainable for about one hundred francs bounty and a "tip"; add to this two or three days and nights of revel in the grog-shop, which indicates the kind and quality of the recruits; in fact, very few could be obtained except among men more or less disqualified for civil and domestic life, incapable of spontaneous discipline and of steady labor, adventurers and outcasts, half-savage or half-blackguard, some of them sons of respectable parents thrown into the army in an angry fit, and others again, regular vagabonds picked up in beggars' haunts, mostly stray workmen and loafers, in short, "the most debauched, the most hot-brained, the most turbulent people in an ardent, turbulent and somewhat debauched community."[3258] In this way, the anti-social cla.s.s was utilized for the public good. Let the reader imagine an ill-kept domain overrun by a lot of stray curs that might prove dangerous: they are enticed and caught; a collar, with a chain attached to it, is put on their necks and they become good watch-dogs.--In the second place, this inst.i.tution preserved to the subject the first and most precious of all liberties, the full possession and the unrestricted management of one's own person, the complete mastery of body and being. This was a.s.sured to him, guaranteed to him against the encroachments of the State. It was better guaranteed than by the wisest const.i.tution, for the inst.i.tution was a recognized custom accepted by everybody. In other words, it was a tacit, immemorial convention,[3259] between the subject and the State, proclaiming that, if the State had a right to draw on purses it had no right to draft persons: in reality and in fact, the King, in his princ.i.p.al function, was merely a contractor like any other; he undertook natural defense and public security the same as others undertook cleaning the streets or the maintenance of a dike. It was his business to hire military workmen as they hired their civil workmen, by mutual agreement, at an understood price and at current market rates.

Accordingly, the sub-contractors with whom he treated, the colonel and captains of each regiment, were subject as he was to the law of supply and demand; he allowed them so much for each recruit,[3260] to replace those dropped out, and they agreed to keep their companies full. They were obliged to procure men at their own risk and at their own expense, while the recruiting-agent whom they dispatched with a bag of money among the taverns, enlisted artillerymen, hors.e.m.e.n or foot-soldiers, after bargaining with them, the same as one would hire men to sweep or pave the street and to clean the sewers.

Against this practice and this principle comes the theory of the Contrat-Social. It declares that the people are sovereign. Now, in this divided Europe, where a conflict between rival States is always imminent, sovereigns are military men; they are such by birth, education, and profession, and by necessity; the t.i.tle carries along with it and involves the function. Consequently, the subject, in a.s.suming their rights, imposes upon himself their duties; in his quota (of responsibility) he, in his turn, is sovereign; but, in his turn and in his person, he is a soldier.[3261] Henceforth, if he is born an elector, he is born a conscript; he has contracted an obligation of a new species and of infinite reach; the State, which formerly had a claim only on his possessions, now has one on his entire body; never does a creditor let his claims rest and the State always finds reasons or pretexts to enforce its claims. Under the threats or trials of invasion the people, at first, had consented to pay this one; they regarded it as accidental and temporary. After victory and when peace came, its government continues to enforce the claim; it becomes settled and permanent. After the treaties of Luneville and Amiens, Napoleon maintains it in France; after the treaties of Paris and Vienna, the Prussian government is to maintain it in Prussia. One war after another and the inst.i.tution becomes worse and worse; like a contagion, it has spread from State to State. At the present time, it has overspread the whole of continental Europe and here it reigns along with its natural companion which always precedes or follows it, its twin-brother, universal suffrage. Each more or less conspicuously "trotted out" and dragging the other along, more or less incomplete and disguised, both being the blind and formidable leaders or regulators of future history, one thrusting a ballot into the hands of every adult, and the other putting a soldier's knapsack on every adult's back:

* with what promises of ma.s.sacre and bankruptcy for the twentieth century,

* with what exasperation of international rancor and distrust,

* with what waste of human labor,

* through what perversion of productive discoveries,

* through what perfection of destructive appliances,