I. Distributive Justice in Allotment of Burdens and Benefits.
Requirements previous to the Revolution.--Lack of
distributive justice.--Wrongs committed in the allotment of
social sacrifices and benefits.--Under the ancient Regime.
--During the Revolution.--Napoleon's personal and public
motives in the application of distributive justice.--The
circumstances favorable to him.--His principle of
apportionment.--He exacts proportion in what he grants.
The other group of needs, dating from long before 1789, involve wants
which have survived the Revolution, because the Revolution has not
satisfied these. The first, the most tenacious, the most profound,
the most inveterate, the most frustrated of all is the desire for
distributive justice.--In political society, as in every other society,
there are burdens and benefits to be allotted. When the apportionment
of these is unbiased, it takes place according to a very simple,
self-evident principle:
For each individual the costs must be in proportion to the benefits and
the benefits to the costs, so that, for each one, the final expense
and the final receipt may exactly compensate each other, the larger or
smaller share of expense being always equal to the larger or smaller
share of profits.
Now, in France, this proportion had been wanting for many centuries; it
had even given way to the inverse proportion. If, towards the middle
of the eighteenth century, two sum-totals of the budget, material and
moral, had been calculated, assets on one side and liabilities on the
other:
On the one hand the sum of the apportionments exacted by the State,
taxes in ready money, enforced labor, military service, civil
subordination, every species of obedience and subjection, in short,
every sacrifice of leisure, comfort and self-esteem.
On the other hand the sum of dividends distributed by the State of
whatever kind or shape, security for persons and property, use and
convenience of roads, delegations of public authority land liens on the
public treasury, dignities, ranks, grades, honors, lucrative salaries,
sinecures, pensions, and the like, that is to say, every gratification
belonging to leisure, comfort, or pride--one might have concluded that
the more a man contributed to the receipts the less would his dividend
be, and the greater his dividend the less would he furnish to the
general contribution.
Consequently, every social or local group consisted of two other
groups: a majority which suffered for the benefit of the minority, and
a minority which benefited at the expense of the majority, to such an
extent that the privations of the greatest number defrayed the luxury
of the small number. This was the case in all compartments as on every
story, owing to the multitude, enormity and diversity of honorific
or useful privileges, owing to the legal prerogatives and effective
preferences by which the court nobles benefited at the expense of the
provincial nobility,
* the noblesse at the expense of plebeians,
* the prelates and beneficiaries at the expense of poorly-paid curés 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 (indéfendus).[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 curé 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
Régime had become the disgraced, while the disgraced of the former
Régime 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 nobles 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 nobles, 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-Honoré 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 Régime, "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 Régime, 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 Régime, 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 embarrassed 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 passed 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 assigns 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 titles, 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 châteaux. 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 glass 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 fêtes, 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. Nobody has
surpassed 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 assignment 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
assurance, so many centimes on the franc. The quality, the fortune, the
age or the sex of the owner is of little importance; each franc assured,
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 Assembly 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
Régime, 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 assess 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, nobody 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, assessors, 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 rectitude, to imagine that they have a conscience and hence
to acquiring one, in short, to voluntarily imposing on themselves
probity and exactitude 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 nobody to protect him, diametrically opposite to the privileged
class, the drudge of the monarchy, is relieved of three-fourths of his
immemorial burden.[3225] At first, through the abolition of tithes 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 Régime. Indeed, the five direct
taxes, the taille, its accessories, the road-tax, the capitatim and the
vingtièmes, 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 compassion, 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 vingtièmes 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 (corvée) 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
régime.--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, assessed on property every time it changes hands through gift,
inheritance or by contract, obtaining its title 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
participates 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 quantities, 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 Assembly, 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 Régime 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
principal 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
multitudinous 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
municipal 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 salé),[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 principal duties, general, provincial, or
municipal, 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 métayers 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 accumulated 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 institution.--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 constituted 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 Régime, all recruited by free
enlistment, not only the twenty-five foreign regiments, Swiss, Irish,
Germans, and Liégeois, 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
institution 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 class
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
institution 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 assured to
him, guaranteed to him against the encroachments of the State. It was
better guaranteed than by the wisest constitution, for the institution
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
principal 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, horsemen 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 title carries along
with it and involves the function. Consequently, the subject, in
assuming 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 institution 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 massacre 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,
* through what a recoil to the lower and most unwholesome forms of old
militant societies,
* through what retrograde steps towards brutal and selfish instincts,
* towards the sentiments, habits and morality of the antique city and of
the barbarous tribe
is only too well known.[3262] It is sufficient for us to place the two
military systems face to face, that of former times and that of to-day:
formerly, in Europe, a few soldiers, some hundreds of thousands; to-day,
in Europe, 18 millions of actual or eventual soldiers, all the adults,
even the married, even fathers of families summoned or subject to call
for twenty-five years of their life, that is to say, as long as they
continue able-bodied men; formerly, for the heaviest part of the service
in France, no lives are confiscated by decree, only those bought by
contract, and lives suited to this business and elsewhere idle or
mischievous; about one hundred and fifty thousand lives of inferior
quality, of mediocre value, which the State could expend with less
regret than others, and the sacrifice of which is not a serious injury
to society or to civilization. To-day, for the same service in France,
4 millions of lives are taken by authority, and, if they attempt to
escape, taken by force; all of them, from the twentieth year onward,
employed in the same manual and murderous pursuit, including the least
suited to the purpose and the best adapted to other purposes, including
the most inventive and the most fecund, the most delicate and the most
cultivated, those remarkable for superior talent (Page 232/526)who
are of almost infinite social value, and whose forced collapse, or
precocious end, is a calamity for the human species.
Such is the terminal fruit of the new Régime; military duty is here the
counterpart, and as it were, the ransom of political right; the modern
citizen may balance one with the other like two weights in the scale. On
the one side, he may place his prerogative as sovereign, that is to say,
in point of fact, the faculty every four years of giving one vote among
ten thousand for the election or non-election of one deputy among six
hundred and fifty; on the other side, he may place his positive, active
service, three, four or five years of barrack life and of passive
obedience, and then twenty-eight days more, then a thirteen-days'
summons in honor of the flag, and, for twenty years, at each rumor of
war, anxiously waiting for the word of command which obliges him to
shoulder his gun and slay with his own hand, or be slain. He will
probably end by discovering that the two sides of the scales do not
balance and that a right so hollow is poor compensation for so heavy a
burden.
Of course, in 1789, he foresaw nothing like that; he was optimistic,
pacific, liberal, humanitarian; he knew nothing of Europe nor of
history, nothing of the past nor of the present. When the Constituent
Assembly constituted him a sovereign, he let things go on; he did not
know what he engaged to do, he had no idea of having allowed such a
heavy claim against him. But, in signing the social contract, he made
himself responsible; in 1793, the note came due and the Convention
collected it.[3263] Then comes Napoleon who put things in order.
Henceforth, every male, able-bodied adult must pay the debt of blood; no
more exemptions in the way of military service:[3264] all young men who
had reached the required age drew lots in the conscription and set out
in turn according to the order fixed by their drafted number.[3265] But
Napoleon is an intelligent creditor; he knows that this debt is "most
frightful and most detestable for families," that his debtors are real,
living men and therefore different in kind, that the head of the State
should keep these differences in mind, that is to say their condition,
their education, their sensibility and their vocation; that, not only
in their private interest, but again in the interest of the public,
not merely through prudence but also through equity, all should not be
indistinguishably restricted to the same mechanical pursuit, to the same
manual labor, to the same prolonged and indefinite servitude of soul and
body. Already, under the Directory, the law had exempted young married
men and widowers or divorced persons who were fathers.[3266] Napoleon
also exempts the conscript who has a brother in the active army, the
only son of a widow, the eldest of three orphans, the son of a father
seventy-one years old dependent on his labor, all of whom are family
supports. He joins with these all young men who enlist in one of his
civil militias, in his ecclesiastical militia or in his university
militia, pupils of the École Normale, ignorantin brothers, seminarians
for the priesthood, on condition that they shall engage to do service
in their vocation and do it effectively, some for ten years, others
for life, subject to a discipline more rigid, or nearly as rigid, as
military discipline.[3267] Finally, he sanctions or institutes volunteer
substitutes, through private agreement between a conscript and the
able-bodied, certified volunteer substitute for whom the conscript is
responsible.[3268] If such a bargain is made between them it is done
freely, knowing what they are about, and because each man finds the
exchange to his advantage; the State has no right to deprive either of
them uselessly of this advantage, and oppose an exchange by which it
does not suffer. So far from suffering it often gains by it. For, what
it needs is not this or that man, Peter or Paul, but a man as capable as
Peter or Paul of firing a gun, of marching long distances, of resisting
inclemencies, and such are the substitutes it accepts. They must all
be[3269] "of sound health and robust constitution," and sufficiently
tall; as a matter of fact, being poorer than those replaced, they are
more accustomed to privation and fatigue; most of them, having reached
maturity, are worth more for the service than youths who have been
recruited by anticipation and too young; some are old soldiers: and in
this case the substitute is worth twice as much as the new conscript
who has never donned the knapsack or bivouacked in the open air.
Consequently, those who are allowed to obtain substitutes are "the
drafted and conscripts of all classes,... unable to endure the fatigues
of war, and those who shall be recognized of greater use to the State
by continuing their labors and studies than in forming a part of the
army...."[3270]
Napoleon had too much sense to be led by the blind existences of
democratic formulae; his eyes, which penetrated beyond mere words, at
once perceived that the life of a simple soldier, for a young man well
brought up and a peasant or for day-laborer, is unequal. A tolerable
bed, sufficient clothing, good shoes, certainty of daily bread, a piece
of meat regularly, are novelties for the latter but not for the former,
and, consequently, enjoyments; that the promiscuity and odor of the
barrack chamber, the corporal's cursing and swearing and rude orders,
the mess-dish and camp-bread, physical hardships all day and every
other day, are for the former, but not for the latter, novelties
and, consequently, sufferings. From which it follows that, if literal
equality is applied, positive inequality is established, and that by
virtue even of the new creed, it is necessary, in the name of true
equality as in the name of true liberty, to allow the former, who would
suffer most, to treat fairly and squarely with the latter, who will
suffer less. And all the more because, by this arrangement, the civil
staff preserves for itself its future recruits; it is from nineteen to
twenty-six that the future chiefs and under-chiefs of the great work
of peaceful and fruitful labor, the savants, artists or scholars, the
jurisconsults, engineers or physicians, the enterprising men of commerce
or of industry, receive and undertake for themselves a special and
superior education, discover or acquire their leading ideas, and
elaborate their originality or their competency. If talent is to be
deprived of these productive years their growth is arrested in full
vegetation, and civil capacities, not less precious for the State than
military capacities, are rendered abortive.[3271]--Towards 1804,[3272]
owing to substitution, one conscript out of five in the rural districts,
one conscript out of seven in the towns, and, on the average, one
conscript out of ten in France, escapes this forced abortive condition;
in 1806, the price of a substitute varies from eighteen hundred to four
thousand francs,[3273] and as capital is scarce, and ready money still
more so, a sum like this is sufficiently large. Accordingly, it is the
rich or well-to-do class, in other words the more or less cultivated
class, which buys off its sons: reliance may be placed on their giving
them more or less complete culture. In this way, it prevents the State
from mowing down all its sprouting wheat and preserves a nursery
of subjects among which society is to find its future élite.--Thus
attenuated, the military law is still rigid enough: nevertheless
it remains endurable. It is only towards 1807[3274] that it becomes
monstrous and grows worse and worse from year to year until it becomes
the sepulcher of all French youth, even to taking as canon fodder the
adolescent under age and men already exempt or free by purchase. But,
as before these excesses, it may still be maintained with certain
modifications; it suffices almost to retouch it, to establish exemptions
and the privilege of substitution as rights, which were once simply
favors,[3275] reduce the annual contingent, limit the term of service,
guarantee their lasting freedom to those liberated, and thus secure in
1818 a recruiting law satisfactory and efficacious which, for more than
half a century, will attain its ends without being too detrimental
or too odious, and which, among so many laws of the same sort, all
mischievous, is perhaps the least pernicious.
*****
[Footnote 3201: "The Ancient Régime," book II., ch. 2, 3, 4, and book V.
(Laff. I. pp. 95 to 125 and pp. 245 to 308.)]
[Footnote 3202: La Bruyère is, I believe, the first of these precursors.
Cf. his chapters on "The Great," on "Personal Merit," on "The Sovereign
and the Republic," and his chapter on "Man," his passages on "The
Peasants," on "Provincial Notes," etc. These appeals, later on, excite
the applause given to the "Marriage of Figaro." But, in the anticipatory
indictment, they strike deeper; there is no gayety in them, the dominant
sentiment being one of sadness, resignation, and bitterness.]
[Footnote 3203: "Discours prononcé par l'ordre du roi et en sa presence,
le 22 février 1787," by M. de Calonne, contrôleur-général, p.22. "What
remains then to fill this fearful void (in the finances)? Abuses.
The abuses now demanding suppression for the public weal are the most
considerable and the best protected, those that are the deepest rooted
and which send out the most branches. They are the abuses which weigh
most heavily on the working and producing classes, the abuses of
financial privileges, the exceptions to the common law and to so many
unjust exemptions which relieve only a portion of the taxpayers
by aggravating the lot of the others; general inequality in the
distribution of subsidies and the enormous disproportion which exists
in the taxation of different provinces and among the offices filled
by subjects of the same sovereign; severity and arbitrariness in the
collection of the taille; bureaux of internal transportation, and
obstacles that render different parts of the same kingdom strangers
to each other; rights that discourage industry; those of which the
collection requires excessive expenditure and innumerable collectors."]
[Footnote 3204: De Ségur, "Mémoires," III., 591. In 1791, on his return
from Russia, his brother says to him, speaking of the Revolution:
"Everybody, at first, wanted it.. From the king down to the most
insignificant man in the kingdom, everybody did something to help it
along; one let it come on up to his shoe-buckle, another up to his
garter, another to his waist, another to his breast, and some will not
be content until their head is attacked!"]
[Footnote 3205: My French dictionary tells me that the Carmagnole is
not only a popular revolutionary dance but also a short and tight jacket
worn by the revolutionaries between 1792 and 1795 and that it came via
Marseille with workers from the town of Carmagnola in Piedmont. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3206: "The Revolution," pp. 271-279. (Laff. I. 505 to
509.)--Stourm "Les Finances de l'ancien régime et de la Révolution," I.,
171 to 177.--(Report by Ramel, January 31, 1796.) "One would scarcely
believe it--the holders of real-estate now owe the public treasury over
13 milliards."--(Report by Gaudin, Germinal, year X. on the assessment
and collection of direct taxes.) "This state of things constituted a
permanent, annual deficit of 200 millions."]
[Footnote 3207: "The Ancient Régime," p. 99, and "The Revolution,"
p.407. (Laff. I. pp 77-78 and II. 300) (About 1,200 millions per annum
in bread for Paris, instead of 45 millions for the civil and military
household of the King at Versailles.)]
[Footnote 3208: "The Ancient Régime," p. 68. (Laff. I. p. 55)--Madame
Campan, "Mémoires," I., 291, 292.]
[Footnote 3209: "The Revolution," II., 151, and III., 500. (Laff. II.
282-283)]
[Footnote 3210: "Mémorial." (Napoleon's own words.) "The day when,
adopting the unity and concentration of power, which could alone
save us,... the destinies of France depended solely on the character,
measures and conscience of him who had been clothed with this accidental
dictatorship--beginning with that day, public affairs, that is to stay
the State, was myself... I was the keystone of an entirely new building
and how slight the foundation! Its destiny depended on each of my
battles. Had I been defeated at Marengo you would have then had a
complete 1814 and 1815."]
[Footnote 3211: Beugnot, "Mémoires," II., 317. "To be dressed, taxed, and
ordered to take up arms, like most folks, seemed a punishment as soon as
one had found a privilege within reach," such, for example, as the
title of "déchireur de bateaux" (one who condemns unseaworthy craft
and profits by it), or inspector of fresh butter (using his fingers in
tasting it), or tide-waiter and inspector of salt fish. These titles
raised a man above the common level, and there were over twenty thousand
of them.]
[Footnote 3212: See "The Ancient Régime," p. 129. (Laff. I. p. 99)]
[Footnote 3213: Madame de Rémusat, "Mémoires," III., 316, 317.]
[Footnote 3214: De Beausset, "Intérieur du palais de Napoléon" I., p.
9 et seq.. For the year 1805 the total expense is 2,338,167 francs; for
the year 1806 it reaches 2,770,861 francs, because funds were assigned
"for the annual augmentation of plate, 1,000 silver plates and other
objects."--"Napoleon knew, every New Year's day, what he expended (for
his household) and nobody ever dared overpass the credits he allowed."]
[Footnote 3215: "The Ancient Régime," pp. 350-357.(Laff. I. 259-266)]
[Footnote 3216: "The Revolution," I. pp. 276-281.(Laff. pp.
508-510)--Stourm, ibid., 168-171. (Speech by Bénard-Lagrave to the Five
Hundred, Pluviôse II, year IV.) "It cannot be concealed that, for many
years, people were willingly accustoming themselves to the non-payment
of taxes."]
[Footnote 3217: Stourm, ibid.,II., 365. (Speech of Ozanam to the Five
Hundred, Pluviôse 14, year VII.) "Scandalous traffic.... Most of
the (tax) collectors in the republic are heads and managers of
banks."--(Circular of the minister of the finances, Floréal 25 year
VII.) "Stock-jobbing of the worst kind to which many collectors give
themselves up, using bonds and other public securities received in
payment of taxes."--(Report by Gros-Cassaud Florimond, Sep.19, 1799.)
"Among the corruptible and corrupting agents there are only too many
public functionaries."--Mollien, "Mémoires," I., 222. (In 1800, he had
just been appointed director of the sinking-fund.) "The commonplace
compliment which was everywhere paid to me (and even by statesmen who
affected the sternest morality) was as follows--you are very fortunate
to have an office in which one may legitimately accumulate the largest
fortune in France. "--Cf. Rocquain, "État de la France au 18 Brumaire."
(Reports by Lacuée, Fourcroy and Barbé-Marbois.)]
[Footnote 3218: Charlotte de Sohr, "Napoléon en Belgique et en
Hollande," 1811, vol. I., 243. (On a high functionary condemned
for forgery and whom Napoleon kept in prison in spite of every
solicitation.) "Never will I pardon those who squander the public
funds.... Ah! parbleu! We should have the good old times of the
contractors worse than ever if I did not show myself inexorable for
these odious crimes."]
[Footnote 3219: Stourm, ibid., I., 177. (Report by Gaudin, Sep. 15,
1799.) "A few (tax) rolls for the year V, and one-third of those for the
year VII, are behindhand."--(Report by the same, Germinal I, year X.)
"Everything remained to do, on the advent of the consulate, for the
assessment and collection of direct taxes; 35,000 rolls for the year
VII still remained to be drawn up. With the help of the new office, the
rolls for the year VII have been completed; those of the year VIII were
made out as promptly as could be expected, and those of the year IX
have been prepared with a dispatch which, for the first time since the
revolution, enables the collections to be begun in the very year to
which they belong."]
[Footnote 3220: "Archives parlementaires," VIII., p.11. (Report by
Necker to the States-General, May 5, 1789.) "These two-fifths, although
legitimately due to the king, are always in arrears.... (To-day) these
arrears amount in full to about 80 millions."]
[Footnote 3221: De Foville, "la France économique," p.354.]
[Footnote 3222: "The Ancient Régime," p. 354. (Laff. I. p. 263.)]
[Footnote 3223: Necker, "De l'administration des finances," I., 164,
and "Rapport aux états-généraux," May 5th, 1789. (We arrive at these
figures, 179 millions, by combining these documents, on both sides, with
the observation that the 3rd vingtième is suppressed in 1789.)]
[Footnote 3224: Charles Nicolas, "les Budgets de la France depuis le
commencement du XIXème siècle" (in tabular form).--De Foville, ibid.,
356.--In the year IX, the sum-total of direct taxes is 308 millions;
in the year XI. 360, and in the year XII, 376. The total income from
real-estate in France towards 1800 is 1,500 millions.]
[Footnote 3225: It is only after 1816 that the total of each of the
four direct taxes can be got at (land, individual, personal, doors and
windows). In 1821, the land-tax amounts to 265 millions, and the three
others together to 67 millions. Taking the sum of 1,580 millions,
estimated by the government as the net revenue at this date in France,
we find that, out of this revenue, 16.77 % is deducted for land, and
that, with the other three, it then abstracts from the same revenue 21
%--On the contrary, before 1789, the five corresponding direct taxes,
added to tithes and feudal privileges, abstracted 81.71 % from the net
income of the taxable party. (Cf. "The Ancient Régime," pp.346, 347, 351
et seq. Laff. I. pp. 258, 259, 261 and following pages. )]
[Footnote 3226: These figures are capital, and measure the distance
which separates the old from the new condition of the laboring and poor
class, especially in the rural districts; hence the tenacious sentiments
and judgments of the people with respect to the Ancient Régime, the
Revolution and the Empire.--All local information converges in this
sense. I have verified the above figures as well as I could: 1st, by the
"Statistiques des préfets," of the year IX and year XIII and afterwards
(printed); 2nd, by the reports of the councillors of state on mission
during the year IX (published by Rocquam, and in manuscript in the
Archives nationales); 3rd, by the reports of the senators on their
sénatories and by the prefects on their departments, in 1806, 1809,
1812, 1814 and 1815, and from 1818 to 1823 (in manuscript in the
Archives nationales); 4th, by the observations of foreigners travelling
in France from 1802 to 1815.--For example ("A Tour through several of
the Middle and Western Departments of France," 1802, p.23): "There are
no tithes, no church taxes, no taxation of the poor.... All the taxes
together do not go beyond one-sixth of a man's rent-roll, that is to
say, three shillings and sixpence on the pound sterling."--("Travels
in the South of France, 1807 and 1808," by Lieutenant-Colonel Pinkney,
citizen of the United States, p.162.) At Tours a two-story house, with
six or eight windows on the front, a stable, carriagehouse, garden and
orchard, rents at £20 sterling per annum, with the taxes which are
from £1,10, to £2, for the state and about ten shillings for the
commune.--("Notes on a Journey through July, August and September,
1814," by Morris Birkbeck, p.23.) Near Cosne (Orléanais), an estate of
1,000 acres of tillable land and 500 acres of woods is rented for nine
years, for about 9,000 francs a year, together with the taxes, about
1,600 francs more.--(Ibid., p.91.) "Visited the Brie. Well cultivated
on the old system of wheat, oats and fallow. Average rent 16 francs
the acre with taxes, which are about one-fifth of the rent."--Roederer,
III., 474 (on the sénatorerie of Caen, Dec.. 1, 1803): "The direct tax
is here in very moderate proportion to the income, it being paid without
much inconvenience.--The travellers above quoted and many others are
unanimous in stating the new prosperity of the peasant, the cultivation
of the entire soil and the abundance and cheapness of provisions.
(Morris Birkbeck, p.11.) "Everybody assures me that the riches
and comfort of the cultivators of the soil have been doubled since
twenty-five years." (Ibid., p.43, at Tournon-sur-le-Rhône.) "I had no
conception of a country so entirely cultivated as we have found from
Dieppe to this place."--(Ibid., P.51,, at Montpellier.) "From Dieppe to
this place we have not seen among the laboring people one such famished,
worn-out, wretched figure as may be met in every parish of England, I
had almost said on almost every farm.... A really rich country, and
yet there are few rich individuals."--Robert, "De l'Influence de la
révolution sur la population, 1802," p.41. "Since the Revolution I have
noticed in the little village of Sainte-Tulle that the consumption of
meat has doubled; the peasants who formerly lived on salt pork and
ate beef only at Easter and at Christmas, frequently enjoy a pot-à-feu
during the week, and have given up rye-bread for wheat-bread."]
[Footnote 3227: The sum of 1 fr. 15 for a day's manual labor is an
average, derived from the statistics furnished by the prefects of the
year IX to the year XIII, especially for Charente, Deux-Sèvres, Meurthe,
Moselle and Doubs.]
[Footnote 3228: "The Ancient Régime." p. 353. (Laff. I. p. 262).]
[Footnote 3229: Arthur Young, II., 259. (Average rate for a day's work
throughout France in 1789.)]
[Footnote 3230: About 15 millions out of 26 millions, in the opinion
of Mallet-Dupan and other observers.--Towards the middle of the 18th
century, in a population estimated at 20 millions, Voltaire reckons
that "many inhabitants possess only the value of 10 crowns rental, that
others have only 4 or 5, and that more than 6 millions of inhabitants
have nothing." ("L'homme aux quarante écus.")--A little later, Chamfort
(I., 178) adds: "It is an incontestable truth that, in France, 7
millions of men beg, and 12 millions of men are incapable of giving
anything."]
[Footnote 3231: Law of Floréal 3, year X, title II, articles 13, 14, § 3
and 4.]
[Footnote 3232: Charles Nicolas, ibid.--In 1821, the personal and poll
tax yields 46 millions; the tax on doors and windows, 21 millions:
total, 67 millions. According to these sums we see that, if the
recipient of 100 francs income from real-estate pays 16 fr. 77
real-estate tax, he pays only 4 fr. 01 for his three other direct
taxes.--These figures, 6 to 7 francs, can nowadays be arrived at through
direct observation.--To omit nothing, the assessment in kind, renewed
in principle after 1802 on all parish and departmental roads, should be
added; this tax, demanded by rural interests, laid by local authorities,
adapted to the accommodation of the taxpayer, and at once accepted by
the inhabitants, has nothing in common with the former covée, save
in appearance; in fact, it is as easy as the corvée was burdensome.
(Stourm, I., 122.)]
[Footnote 3233: They thus pay between 2 and 6% in taxes, a very low
taxation if we compare with the contemporary industrial consumer welfare
society, where, in Scandinavia, the average worker pay more than 50% of
his income in direct and indirect taxes. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3234: Charles Nicolas, "Les Budgets de la France depuis le
commencement du XIXe Siècle," and de Foville, "La France économique,"
p. 365, 373.--Returns of licenses in 1816, 40 millions; in 1820, 22
millions; in 1860, 80 millions; in 1887, 171 millions.]
[Footnote 3235: The mutation tax is that levied in France on all
property transmitted by inheritance. or which changes hands through
formal sale (other than in ordinary business transactions), as in the
case of transfers of real-estate, effected through purchase or sale.
Timbre designates stamp duties imposed on the various kinds of legal
documents.-Tr.]
[Footnote 3236: Ibid. Returns of the mutation tax (registration and
timbre). Registration in 1820, 127 millions; in 1860, 306 millions; in
1886, 518 millions.--Timbre, in 1820, 26 millions; in 1860, 56 millions;
in 1886, 156 millions. Sum-total in 1886, 674 millions.--The rate of
corresponding taxes under the ancient régime (contrôle, insinuation
centième denier, formule) was very much lower; the principal one, or
tax of centieme denier, took only 1 per 100, and on the mutations of
real-estate. This mutation tax is the only one rendered worse; it was
immediately aggravated by the Constituent Assembly, and it is rendered
all the more exorbitant on successions in which liabilities are not
deducted from assets. (That is to say, the inheritor of an indebted
estate in France must pay a mutation tax on its full value. He has the
privilege, however, of renouncing the estate if he does not choose to
accept it along with its indebtedness.)--The taxpayer's resignation to
this tax is explained by the exchequer collecting it at a unique moment,
when proprietorship just comes into being or is just at the point of
birth. In effect, if property changes hands under inheritance or through
free donation it is probable that the new owner, suddenly enriched, will
be only too glad to enter into possession of it, and not object to an
impost which, although taking about a tenth, still leaves him only a
little less wealthy. When property is transferred by contract or sale,
neither of the contracting parties, probably, sees clearly which pays
the fiscal tax; the seller may think that it is the buyer, and the buyer
that it is the seller. Owing to this illusion both are less sensible of
the shearing, each offering his own back in the belief that it is the
back of the other.]
[Footnote 3237: See "The Ancient Régime," pp.358-362. (Ed. Laff. I.
266-268.)]
[Footnote 3238: See "The Revolution," vol. I., pp. 16, 38. (ED. Laff. I.
pp. 326, 342.)]
[Footnote 3239: Decree of Oct. 31--Nov. 5, 1789, abolishing the boundary
taxes between the provinces and suppressing all the collection offices
in the kingdom.--Decree of 21-30 March 1790, abolishing the salt-tax.
Decree of 1-17 March 1791, abolishing all taxes on liquors, and decree
of 19-25 Feb. 1791, abolishing all octroi taxes.--Decree of 20-27 March
1791, in relation to freedom of growing, manufacturing and selling
tobacco; customs-duties on the importation of leaf-tobacco alone are
maintained, and give but an insignificant revenue, from 1,500,000 to
1,800,000 francs in the year V.]
[Footnote 3240: Gaudin, Duc de Gaëte, "Mémoires," I., 215-217.--The
advantages of indirect taxation are well explained by Gaudin. "The
taxpayer pays only when he is willing and has the means. On the other
hand, when the duties imposed by the exchequer are confounded with the
price of the article, the taxpayer, in paying his due, thinks only of
satisfying a want or of procuring an enjoyment."--Decrees of March 16
and 27, and May 4, 1806 (on salt), of February 25, 1804, April 24, 1806,
Nov. 25, 1808 (on liquors), May 19, 1802, March 6, 1804, April 24, 1806,
Dec.. 29, 1810 (on tobacco).]
[Footnote 3241: Letrosne, "De l'administration des finances et de la
réforme de l'impôt" (1779) pp.148, 162.--Laboulaye, "De l'administration
française sous Louis XVI." (Revue des cours littéraires, 1864-1865,
p.677). "I believe that, under Louis XIII., they took at least five and,
under Louis XIV, four to get two."]
[Footnote 3242: Paul Leroy-Bealieu, "Traité de la science des finances,"
I., 261. (In 1875, these costs amount to 5.20 %.)--De Foville, ibid.
(Cost of customs and salt-tax, in 1828, 16.2 %; in 1876, 10.2 %.--Cost
of indirect taxation, in 1828, 14.90 %; in 1876, 3.7 %.)--De Calonné,
"Collection des mémoires présentés à l'assemblée des notables," 1787,
p.63.]
[Footnote 3243: See "The Ancient Régime," P.23, 370.--"The Revolution,"
I., 10, 16, 17. (Ed. Laff. I. pp. 23-24, 274, 322, 326-327.)]
[Footnote 3244: See "The Ancient Régime," p.361. (Ed. Laff. I. p.268.)]
[Footnote 3245: Leroy-Beaulieu, ibid., I., 643.]
[Footnote 3246: Decrees of November 25, 1808, and December 8, 1824.]
[Footnote 3247: Certain persons under the ancient régime enjoyed an
exemption from the tax on salt.]
[Footnote 3248: Stourm, I., 360, 389.--De Foville, 382, 385, 398.]
[Footnote 3249: These figures are given by Gaudin.]
[Footnote 3250: Thiers, XIII., pp.20 to 25.]
[Footnote 3251: Lafayette, "Mémoires." (Letter of October 17, 1779, and
notes made in Auvergne, August 1800.) "You know how many beggars there
were, people dying of hunger in our country. We see no more of them.
The peasants are richer, the land better tilled and the women better
clad."--"The Ancient Régime," 340, 34, 342.--"The Revolution," III.,
p.366, 402.]
[Footnote 3252: "The Ancient Régime," P.340. (ED. Laff. I. pp. 254,
256.)-" The Revolution," III., 212. (Ed. Laff. II. p. 271, 297.)]
[Footnote 3253: These two famines were due to inclement seasons and
were aggravated, the last one by the consequences of invasion and the
necessity of supporting 150,000 foreign troops, and the former by the
course taken by Napoleon who applies the maximum afresh, with the same
intermeddling, the same despotism and the same failure as under the
Convention.( "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier
de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.) "I do not
exaggerate in stating that our operations in the purchase and transport
(of grain) required a full quarter of the time, and often one-third,
more than would have been required in commerce."--Prolongation of the
famine in Normandy. "Bands of famished beggars overran the country....
Riots and pillaging around Caen; several mills burnt.... Suppression of
these by the imperial guard. In the executions which resulted from
these even women were not spared."--The two principal guarantees at the
present day against this public danger are, first, easier circumstances,
and next the multiplication of good roads and of railroads, the dispatch
and cheapness of transportation, and the superabundant crops of Russia
and the United States.]
[Footnote 3254: J. Gebelin, "Histoire des milices provinciales" (1882),
p.87, 143, 157, 288.--Most of the texts and details may be found in
this excellent work.--Many towns, Paris, Lyons, Reims, Rouen, Bordeaux,
Tours, Agen, Sedan and the two generalities of Flanders and Hainault
are examples of drawing by lot; they furnished their contingent by
volunteers enlisted at their own expense; the merchants and artisans,
or the community itself, paying the bounty for enlistment. Besides
this there were many exemptions in the lower class.--Cf. "The Ancient
Régime," p.390. (Ed. Laff. p. 289.)]
[Footnote 3255: J. Gebelin, ibid., 239, 279, 288. (Except the eight
regiments of royal grenadiers in the militia who turned out for one
month in the year.)]
[Footnote 3256: Example afforded by one department. ("Statistics of
Ain," by Rossi, prefect, 1808.) Number of soldiers on duty in the
department, in 1789, 323; in 1801, 6,729; in 1806, 6,764.--"The
department of Ain furnished nearly 30,000 men to the armies, conscripts
and those under requisition."--It is noticeable, consequently, that
in the population of 1801, there is a sensible diminution of persons
between twenty and thirty and, in the population of 1806, of those
between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age. The number between
twenty and thirty is as follows: in 1789, 39,828; in 1801, 35,648; in
1806, 34,083.]
[Footnote 3257: De Dampmartin. "Evénemens qui se sont passés sous mes
yeux pendant la révolution française," V. II. (State of the French
army, Jan. 1, 1789.) Total on a peace footing, 177,890 men.--This is the
nominal force; the real force under arms was 154,000; in March 1791,
it had fallen to 115,000, through the multitude of desertions and the
scarcity of enlistments, (Yung, "Dubois-Crancé et la Révolution," I.,
158. Speech by Dubois-Crancé.)]
[Footnote 3258: "The Ancient Régime," P 390, 391.--"The Revolution,"
p. 328-330. (Ed. Laff. I. 289 and 290, pp. 542-543)--Albert Babeau, "le
Recrutement militaire sous l'ancien Régime." (In "la Réforme sociale"
of Sept. I, 1888, p. 229, 238.)--An officer says, "only the rabble are
enlisted because it is cheaper."--Yung, ibid., I., 32. (Speech by M.
de Liancourt in the tribune.) "The soldier is classed apart and is too
little esteemed."--Ibid., p. 39. ("Vices et abus de la constitution
actuelle française," memorial signed by officers in most of the
regiments, Sept. 6, 1789.) "The majority of soldiers are derived from
the offscourings of the large towns and are men without occupation."]
[Footnote 3259: Gebelin, p. 270. Almost all the cahiers of the
third-estate in 1789 demand the abolition of drafting by lot, and nearly
all of those of the three orders are for volunteer service, as opposed
to obligatory service; most of these demand, for the army, a volunteer
militia enlisted through a bounty; this bounty or security in money to
be furnished by communities of inhabitants which, in fact, was already
the case in several towns.]
[Footnote 3260: Albert Babeau, ibid., 238. "Colonels were allowed only
100 francs per man; this sum, however, being insufficient, the balance
was assessed on the pay of the officers."]
[Footnote 3261: This principle was at once adopted by the Jacobins.
(Yung, ibid., 19, 22, 145. Speech by Dubois-Crancé at the session
held Dec.12, 1789.) "Every citizen will become a soldier of the
Constitution." No more casting lots nor substitution. "Each citizen must
be a soldier and each soldier a citizen."--The first application of the
principle is a call for 300,000 men (Feb. 26, 1793), then through a
levy on the masses which brings 500,000 men under the flag, nominally
volunteers, but conscripts in reality. (Baron Poisson, "l'Armée et la
Garde Nationale,"III, 475.)]
[Footnote 3262: Taine wrote this in 1888, after the end of the second
French Empire, after the transformation of Prussia into the Empire of
Germany. Taine apparently had a premonition of the terrible wars of the
20th century, of Nazism, Communism and their death and concentration
camps. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3263: Baron Poisson, "l'Armée et la Garde nationale," III.,
475. (Summing up.) "Popular tradition has converted the volunteer of the
Republic into a conventional personage which history cannot accept..
.. 1st. The first contingent of volunteers demanded of the country
consisted of 97,000 men (1791). 60,000 enthusiasts responded to the
call, enlisted for a year and fulfilled their engagement; but for no
consideration would they remain longer. 2nd. Second call for volunteers
in April 1792. Only mixed levies, partial, raised by money, most of them
even without occupation, outcasts and unable to withstand the enemy.
3rd. 300,000 men recruited, which measure partly fails; the recruit can
always get off by furnishing a substitute. 4th. Levy in mass of 500,000
men, called volunteers, but really conscripts."]
[Footnote 3264: "Mémorial" (Speech by Napoleon before the Council
of State). "I am inflexible on exemptions; they would be crimes; how
relieve one's conscience of having caused one man to die in the place
of another?"--"The conscription was an unprivileged militia: it was an
eminently national institution and already far advanced in our customs;
only mothers were still afflicted by it, while the time was coming when
a girl would not have a man who had not paid his debt to his country."]
[Footnote 3265: Law of Fructidor 8, year XIII, article 10.--Pelet de
La Lozère, 229. (Speech by Napoleon, Council of State, May 29,
1804.)--Pelet adds: "The duration of the service was not fixed.... As
a fact in itself, the man was exiled from his home for the rest of his
life, regarding it as a desolating, permanent exile.... Entire sacrifice
of existence.... An annual crop of young men torn from their families
and sent to death."--Archives nationales, F7, 3014. (Reports of
prefects, 1806.) After this date, and even from the beginning, there
is extreme repugnance which is only overcome by severe means.. ..
(Ardeche.) "If the state of the country were to be judged of by
the results of the conscription one would have a poor idea of
it."--(Ariège.) "At Brussac, district of Foix, four or five individuals
arm themselves with stones and knives to help a conscript escape,
arrested by the gendarmes.... A garrison was ordered to this
commune."--At Massat, district of Saint-Girons, on a few brigades of
gendarmes entering this commune to establish a garrison, in order to
hasten the departure of refractory conscripts, they were stoned; a shot
even was fired at this troop.... A garrison was placed in these hamlets
as in the rest of the commune.--During the night of Frimaire 16-17 last,
six strange men presented themselves before the prison of Saint-Girons
and loudly demanded Gouazé, a deserter and condemned. On the jailor
coming down they seized him and struck him down."--(Haute-Loire.)
"'The flying column is under constant orders simultaneously against the
refractory and disobedient among the classes of the years IX, X, XI,
XII, and XIII, and against the laggards of that of year IV, of which
134 men yet remain to be supplied."--(Bouches-du-Rhône.) "50 deserter
sailors and 84 deserters or conscripts of different classes have been
arrested."--(Dordogne.) "Out of 1353 conscripts, 134 have failed to
reach their destination; 124 refractory or deserters from the country
and 41 others have been arrested; 81 conscripts have surrendered as a
result of placing a garrison amongst them; 186 have not surrendered.
Out of 892 conscripts of the year XIV on the march, 101 deserted on the
road."--(Gard.) "76 refractory or deserters arrested."--(Landes.) "Out
of 406 men who left, 51 deserted on the way," etc.--This repugnance
becomes more and more aggravated. (Cf. analogous reports of 1812 and
1813, F7, 3018 and 3019, in "Journal d'un bourgeois d'Evreux," p. 150 to
214, and "Histoire de 1814," by Henry Houssaye, p.8 to 24.)]
[Footnote 3266: Law of Fructidor, year VI.]
[Footnote 3267: Decree of July 29, 1811 (on the exemption of pupils in
the École Normale).--Decree of March 30, 1810, title II., articles 2,
4, 5, 6 (on the police and system of the École Normale).--Decree on the
organization of the University, titles 6 and 13, March 7, 1808.]
[Footnote 3268: Law of Ventôse 17, year VIII, title III., articles I and
13.--Law of Fructidor 8, year XIII, articles 50, 54, and 55.]
[Footnote 3269: Law of Fructidor 8, year XIII, article 51]
[Footnote 3270: Law of Ventôse 17, year VIII, title 3, article I.]
[Footnote 3271: Thibaudeau, p. 108. (Speech of the First Consul before
the Council of State.) "Art, science and the professions must be thought
of. We are not Spartans.... As to substitution, it must be allowed. In a
nation where fortunes are equal each individual should serve personally;
but, with a people whose existence depends on the inequality of
fortunes, the rich must be allowed the right of substitution; only we
must take care that the substitutes be good, and that conscripts
pay some of the money serving to defray the expense of a part of the
equipment of the army of reserve."]
[Footnote 3272: Pelet de La Lozère, 228.]
[Footnote 3273: Archives nationales, F7, 3014. (Reports of prefects,
1806.) Average price of a substitute: Basses Alpes, from 2,000 to 2,500
francs; Bouches-du-Rhône, from 1,800 to 3,000; Dordogne, 2,400; Gard,
3,000; Gers, 4,000; Haute-Garonne, from 2,000 to 3,000; Hérault, 4,000;
Vaucluse, 2,500; Landes, 4,000. Average rate of interest (Ardèche):
"Money, which was from 11/4 to 11/2 %, has declined; it is now at 3 1/4
% a month or 10 % per annum."--(Basses Alpes): "The rate of money has
varied in commerce from 1 to 3/4 % per month."--(Gard): "Interest is at
1 % a month in commerce; proprietors can readily borrow at 9 or 10 %
per annum."--(Hérault): "The interest on money is 1 1/4 % per
month."--(Vaucluse): "Money is from 3/4 to 11/4 % per month."]
[Footnote 3274: Thiers, VII., p.23 and 467. In November 1806,
Napoleon orders the conscription of 1807; in March 1807, he orders the
conscription of 1808, and so on, always from worse to worse.--Decrees
of 1808 and 1813 against young men of family already bought off or
exempted.--"Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," 214. Desolate state
of things in 1813, "general depression and discouragement."--Miot de
Mélito, III., 304. (Report of Miot to the Emperor after a tour in the
departments in 1815.) "Everywhere, almost, the women are your declared
enemies."]
[Footnote 3275: Law of Ventôse 17, year VIII, title 3, articles 6, 7, 8,
9.--Exemption is granted as a favor only to the ignorantin brothers and
to seminarians assigned to the priesthood.--Cf. the law of March 10,
1818, articles 15 and 18.]