Dishonoured Bills.
While the unspeakable confusion is everywhere weltering within,
and through so many cracks in the surface sulphur-smoke is
issuing, the question arises: Through what crevice will the main
Explosion carry itself? Through which of the old craters or
chimneys; or must it, at once, form a new crater for itself? In
every Society are such chimneys, are Institutions serving as
such: even Constantinople is not without its safety-valves; there
too Discontent can vent itself,—in material fire; by the number
of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the Reigning
Power can read the signs of the times, and change course
according to these.
We may say that this French Explosion will doubtless first try
all the old Institutions of escape; for by each of these there
is, or at least there used to be, some communication with the
interior deep; they are national Institutions in virtue of that.
Had they even become personal Institutions, and what we can call
choked up from their original uses, there nevertheless must the
impediment be weaker than elsewhere. Through which of them then?
An observer might have guessed: Through the Law Parlements; above
all, through the Parlement of Paris.
Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not
inaccessible to the influences of their time; especially men
whose life is business; who at all turns, were it even from
behind judgment-seats, have come in contact with the actual
workings of the world. The Counsellor of Parlement, the President
himself, who has bought his place with hard money that he might
be looked up to by his fellow-creatures, how shall he, in all
Philosophe-soirées, and saloons of elegant culture, become
notable as a Friend of Darkness? Among the Paris Long-robes there
may be more than one patriotic Malesherbes, whose rule is
conscience and the public good; there are clearly more than one
hotheaded D’Espréménil, to whose confused thought any loud
reputation of the Brutus sort may seem glorious. The
Lepelletiers, Lamoignons have titles and wealth; yet, at Court,
are only styled “Noblesse of the Robe.” There are Duports of deep
scheme; Fréteaus, Sabatiers, of incontinent tongue: all nursed
more or less on the milk of the _Contrat Social_. Nay, for the
whole Body, is not this patriotic opposition also a fighting for
oneself? Awake, Parlement of Paris, renew thy long warfare! Was
not the Parlement Maupeou abolished with ignominy? Not now hast
thou to dread a Louis XIV., with the crack of his whip, and his
Olympian looks; not now a Richelieu and Bastilles: no, the whole
Nation is behind thee. Thou too (O heavens!) mayest become a
Political Power; and with the shakings of thy horse-hair wig
shake principalities and dynasties, like a very Jove with his
ambrosial curls!
Light old M. de Maurepas, since the end of 1781, has been fixed
in the frost of death: ‘Never more,’ said the good Louis, ‘shall
I hear his step overhead;’ his light jestings and gyratings are
at an end. No more can the importunate reality be hidden by
pleasant wit, and today’s evil be deftly rolled over upon
tomorrow. The morrow itself has arrived; and now nothing but a
solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull matter of
fact, like some dull punctual Clerk (which he originally was);
admits what cannot be denied, let the remedy come whence it will.
In him is no remedy; only clerklike “despatch of business”
according to routine. The poor King, grown older yet hardly more
experienced, must himself, with such no-faculty as he has, begin
governing; wherein also his Queen will give help. Bright Queen,
with her quick clear glances and impulses; clear, and even noble;
but all too superficial, vehement-shallow, for that work! To
govern France were such a problem; and now it has grown well-nigh
too hard to govern even the Œil-de-Bœuf. For if a distressed
People has its cry, so likewise, and more audibly, has a bereaved
Court. To the Œil-de-Bœuf it remains inconceivable how, in a
France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry: did
it not _use_ to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of
parsimony, has “suppressed above six hundred places,” before the
Courtiers could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was.
Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian
manœuvres; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not
coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected
military men; the Mousquetaires, with much else are suppressed:
for he too was one of your suppressors; and unsettling and
oversetting, did mere mischief—to the Œil-de-Bœuf. Complaints
abound; scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Œil-de-Bœuf. Besenval
says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy
(such a _tristesse_) about Court, compared with former days, as
made it quite dispiriting to look upon.
No wonder that the Œil-de-Bœuf feels melancholy, when you are
suppressing its places! Not a place can be suppressed, but some
purse is the lighter for it; and more than one heart the heavier;
for did it not employ the working-classes too,—manufacturers,
male and female, of laces, essences; of Pleasure generally,
whosoever could manufacture Pleasure? Miserable economies; never
felt over Twenty-five Millions! So, however, it goes on: and is
not yet ended. Few years more and the Wolf-hounds shall fall
suppressed, the Bear-hounds, the Falconry; places shall fall,
thick as autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac demonstrates, to the
complete silencing of ministerial logic, that his place cannot be
abolished; then gallantly, turning to the Queen, surrenders it,
since her Majesty so wishes. Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny,
and yet not luckier: ‘We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I,’
said King Louis; ‘but if he had even struck me, I could not have
blamed him.’[50] In regard to such matters there can be but one
opinion. Baron Besenval, with that frankness of speech which
stamps the independent man, plainly assures her Majesty that it
is frightful (_affreux_); ‘you go to bed, and are not sure but
you shall rise impoverished on the morrow: one might as well be
in Turkey.’ It is indeed a dog’s life.
How singular this perpetual distress of the royal treasury! And
yet it is a thing not more incredible than undeniable. A thing
mournfully true: the stumbling-block on which all Ministers
successively stumble, and fall. Be it “want of fiscal genius,” or
some far other want, there is the palpablest discrepancy between
Revenue and Expenditure; a _Deficit_ of the Revenue: you must
“choke (_combler_) the Deficit,” or else it will swallow you!
This is the stern problem; hopeless seemingly as squaring of the
circle. Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do
nothing with it; nothing but propose loans, which were tardily
filled up; impose new taxes, unproductive of money, productive of
clamour and discontent. As little could Controller d’Ormesson do,
or even less; for if Joly maintained himself beyond year and day,
d’Ormesson reckons only by months: till “the King purchased
Rambouillet without consulting him,” which he took as a hint to
withdraw. And so, towards the end of 1783, matters threaten to
come to still-stand. Vain seems human ingenuity. In vain has our
newly-devised “Council of Finances” struggled, our Intendants of
Finance, Controller-General of Finances: there are unhappily no
Finances to control. Fatal paralysis invades the social movement;
clouds, of blindness or of blackness, envelop us: are we breaking
down, then, into the black horrors of NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY?
Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all
Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither,
from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature
is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will
come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on
Nature’s Reality, and be presented there for payment,—with the
answer, _No effects_. Pity only that it often had so long a
circulation: that the original forger were so seldom he who bore
the final smart of it! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring,
are passed on; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank;
and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade
and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in
_contact_ with reality, and can pass the cheat no further.
Observe nevertheless how, by a just compensating law, if the lie
with its burden (in this confused whirlpool of Society) sinks and
is shifted ever downwards, then in return the distress of it
rises ever upwards and upwards. Whereby, after the long pining
and demi-starvation of those Twenty Millions, a Duke de Coigny
and his Majesty come also to have their “real quarrel.” Such is
the law of just Nature; bringing, though at long intervals, and
were it only by Bankruptcy, matters round again to the mark.
But with a Fortunatus’ Purse in his pocket, through what length
of time might not almost any Falsehood last! Your Society, your
Household, practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue, unjust,
offensive to the eye of God and man. Nevertheless its hearth is
warm, its larder well replenished: the innumerable Swiss of
Heaven, with a kind of Natural loyalty, gather round it; will
prove, by pamphleteering, musketeering, that it is a truth; or if
not an unmixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth, then better, a
wholesomely attempered one, (as wind is to the shorn lamb), and
works well. Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow
empty! Was your Arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature’s
ways, then how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her
infinite bounty, come to leave it famishing there? To all men, to
all women and all children, it is now indutiable that your
Arrangement was _false_. Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on
the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all
Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it
rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day,
will sweep it down, and make us free of it.