"The most honorable title of the French nobility," writes Champfort, "is a direct descent from some 30,000 armed, helmeted, armletted and armored men who, on heavy horses sheathed in armor, trod under foot 8 or 10 millions of naked men, the ancestors of the actual nation. Behold these well-established claims to the respect and affection of their descendants! And, to complete the respectability of this nobility, it is recruited and regenerated by the adoption of those who have acquired fortune by plundering the cabins of the poor who are unable to pay its impositions."[4343]—

"Why should not the Third-Estate send back," says Sieyes, "into the forests of Franconia every family that maintains its absurd pretension of having sprung from the loins of a race of conquerors, and of having succeeded to the rights of conquest? [4344] I can well imagine, were there no police, every Cartouche[4345] firmly establishing himself on the high-road—would that give him a right to levy toll? Suppose him to sell a monopoly of this kind, once common enough, to an honest successor, would the right become any more respectable in the hands of the purchaser?. . . Every privilege, in its nature, is unjust, odious, and against the social compact. The blood boils at the thought of its ever having been possible to legally consecrate down to the eighteenth century the abominable fruits of an abominable feudal system. . . . The caste of nobles is really a population apart, a fraudulent population, however, which, for lack of serviceable faculties, and unable to exist alone, fastens itself upon a living nation, like the vegetable tumors that support themselves on the sap of the plants to which they are a burden, and which wither beneath the load."—They suck all, everything being for them. "Every branch of the executive power has fallen into the hands of this caste, which staffed (already) the church, the robe and the sword. A sort of confraternity or joint paternity leads the nobles each to prefer the other and all to the rest of the nation. . . . The Court reigns, and not the monarch. The Court creates and distributes offices. And what is the Court but the head of this vast aristocracy that covers all parts of France, and which, through its members, attains to and exercises everywhere whatever is requisite in all branches of the public administration?"—Let us put an end to "this social crime, this long parricide which one class does itself the honor to commit daily against the others. . . . Ask no longer what place the privileged shall occupy in the social order; it is simply asking what place in a sick man's body must be assigned to a malignant ulcer that is undermining and tormenting it. . . to the loathsome disease that is consuming the living flesh."—The solution is self-evident: let us eradicate the ulcer, or at least sweep away the vermin. The Third-Estate, in itself and by itself, is "a complete nation," requiring no organ, needing no aid to subsist or to govern itself, and which will recover its health on ridding itself of the parasites infesting its skin.

"What is the Third-Estate?" says Sieyes, "everything. What, thus far, is it in the political body?[4346] Nothing. What does it demand? To become something."

Not something but actually everything. Its political ambition is as great as its social ambition, and it aspires to authority as well as to equality. If privileges are an evil that of the king is the worst for it is the greatest, and human dignity, wounded by the prerogative of the noble, perishes under the absolutism of the king. Of little consequence is it that he scarcely uses it, and that his government, deferential to public opinion, is that of a hesitating and indulgent parent. Emancipated from real despotism, the Third-Estate becomes excited against possible despotism, imagining itself in slavery in consenting to remain subject. A proud spirit has recovered itself, become erect, and, the better to secure its rights, is going to claim all rights. To the people who since antiquity has been subject to masters, it is so sweet, so intoxicating to put themselves in their places, to put the former masters in their place, to say to himself, they are my representatives, to regard himself a member of the sovereign power, king of France in his individual sphere, the sole legitimate author of all rights and of all functions!—In conformity with the doctrines of Rousseau the registers of the Third-Estate unanimously insist on a constitution for France; none exists, or at least the one she possesses is of no value. Thus far "the conditions of the social compact have been ignored;"[4347] now that they have been discovered they must be written out. To say, with the nobles according to Montesquieu, that the constitution exists, that its great features need not be changed, that it is necessary only to reform abuses, that the States-General exercise only limited power, that they are incompetent to substitute another regime for the monarchy, is not true. Tacitly or expressly, the Third-Estate refuses to restrict its mandate and allows no barriers to be interposed against it. It requires its deputies accordingly to vote "not by orders but each by himself and conjointly."—"In case the deputies of the clergy or of the nobility should refuse to deliberate in common and individually, the deputies of the Third-Estate, representing twenty-four millions of men, able and obliged to declare itself the National Assembly not-withstanding the scission of the representation of 400,000 persons, will propose to the King in concert with those among the Clergy and the Nobility disposed to join them, their assistance in providing for the necessities of the State, and the taxes thus assented to shall be apportioned among all the subjects of the king without distinction."[4348]—Do not object that a people thus mutilated becomes a mere crowd, that leaders cannot be improvised, that it is difficult to dispense with natural guides, that, considering all things, this Clergy and this Nobility still form a select group, that two-fifths of the soil is in their hands, that one-half of the intelligent and cultivated class of men are in their ranks, that they are exceedingly well-disposed and that old historic bodies have always afforded to liberal constitutions their best supports. According to the principle enunciated by Rousseau we are not to value men but to count them. In politics numbers only are respectable; neither birth, nor property, nor function, nor capacity, is a title to be considered; high or low, ignorant or learned, a general, a soldier, or a hod-carrier, each individual of the social army is a unit provided with a vote; wherever a majority is found there is the right. Hence, the Third-Estate puts forth its right as incontestable, and, in its turn, it proclaims with Louis XIV, "I am the State."

This principle once admitted or enforced, they thought, all will go well.

"It seemed," says an eye-witness,[4349] "as if we were about to be governed by men of the golden age. This free, just and wise people, always in harmony with itself, always clear-sighted in choosing its ministers, moderate in the use of its strength and power, never could be led away, never deceived, never under the dominion of; or enslaved by, the authority which it confided. Its will would fashion the laws and the law would constitute its happiness."

The nation is to be regenerated, a phrase found in all writings and in every mouth. At Nangis, Arthur Young finds this the sub-stance of political conversation[4350]. The chaplain of a regiment, a curate in the vicinity, keeps fast hold of it; as to knowing what it means that is another matter. It is impossible to find anything out through explanations of it otherwise than "a theoretic perfection of government, questionable in its origin, hazardous in its progress, and visionary in its end." On the Englishman proposing to them the British constitution as a model they "hold it cheap in respect of liberty" and greet it with a smile; it is, especially, not in conformity with "the principles." And observe that we are at the residence of a grand seignior, in a circle of enlightened men. At Riom, at the election assemblies,[4351] Malouet finds "persons of an ordinary stamp, practitioners, petty lawyers, with no experience of public business, quoting the 'Contrat Social,' vehemently declaiming against tyranny, and each proposing his own constitution." Most of them are without any knowledge whatever, mere traffickers in chicane; the best instructed entertain mere schoolboy ideas of politics. In the colleges of the University no history is taught[4352]. "The name of Henry IV., says Lavalette, was not once uttered during my eight years of study, and, at seventeen years of age, I was still ignorant of the epoch and the mode of the establishment of the Bourbons on the throne." The stock they carry away with them consists wholly, as with Camille Desmoulins, of scraps of Latin, entering the world with brains stuffed with "republican maxims," excited by souvenirs of Rome and Sparta, and "penetrated with profound contempt for monarchical governments." Subsequently, at the law school, they learn something about legal abstractions, or else learn nothing. In the lecture-courses at Paris there are no students; the professor delivers his lecture to copyists who sell their copy-books. If a pupil should attend himself and take notes he would be regarded with suspicion; he would be charged with trying to deprive the copyists of the means of earning their living. A diploma, consequently, is worthless. At Bourges one is obtainable in six months; if the young man succeeds in comprehending the law it is through later practice and familiarity with it.—Of foreign laws and institutions there is not the least knowledge, scarcely even a vague or false notion of them. Malouet himself entertains a meager idea of the English Parliament, while many, with respect to ceremonial, imagine it a copy of the Parliament of France.—The mechanism of free constitutions, or the conditions of effective liberty, that is too complicated a question. Montesquieu, save in the great magisterial families, is antiquated for twenty years past. Of what avail are studies of ancient France? "What is the result of so much and such profound research? Laborious conjecture and reasons for doubting."[4353] It is much more convenient to start with the rights of man and to deduce the consequences. Schoolboy logic suffices for that to which collegiate rhetoric supplies the tirades.—In this great void of enlightenment the vague terms of liberty, equality and the sovereignty of the people, the glowing expressions of Rousseau and his successors, all these new axioms, blaze up like burning coals, discharging clouds of smoke and intoxicating vapor. High-sounding and vague language is interposed between the mind and objects around it; all outlines are confused and the vertigo begins. Never to the same extent have men lost the purport of outward things. Never have they been at once more blind and more chimerical. Never has their disturbed reason rendered them more tranquil concerning real danger and created more alarm at imaginary danger. Strangers with cool blood and who witness the spectacle, Mallet du Pan, Dumont of Geneva, Arthur Young, Jefferson, Gouverneur Morris, write that the French are insane. Morris, in this universal delirium, can mention to Washington but one sane mind, that of Marmontel, and Marmontel speaks in the same style as Morris. At the preliminary meetings of the clubs, and at the assemblies of electors, he is the only one who opposes unreasonable propositions. Surrounding him are none but the excited, the exalted about nothing, even to grotesqueness[4354]. In every act of the established regime, in every administrative measure, "in all police regulations, in all financial decrees, in all the graduated authorities on which public order and tranquility depend, there was naught in which they did not find an aspect of tyranny. . . On the walls and barriers of Paris being referred to, these were denounced as enclosures for deer and derogatory to man."—

"I saw," says one of these orators, "at the barrier Saint-Victor, sculptured on one of the pillars—would you believe it?——an enormous lion's head, with open jaws vomiting forth chains as a menace to those who passed it. Could a more horrible emblem of slavery and of despotism be imagined!"—"The orator himself imitates the roar of the lion. The listeners were all excited by it and I, who passed the barrier Saint-Victor so often, was surprised that this horrible image had not struck me. That very day I examined it closely and, on the pilaster, I found only a small buckler suspended as an ornament by a little chain attached by the sculptor to a little lion's mouth, like those we see serving as door-knockers or as water-cocks."—Perverted sensations and delirious conceptions of this kind would be regarded by physicians as the symptoms of mental derangement, and we are only in the early months of the year 1789!—In such excitable and over-excited brains the powerful fascination of words is about to create phantoms, some of them hideous, the aristocrat and the tyrant, and others adorable, the friend of the people and the incorruptible patriot, so many disproportionate, imaginary figures, but which will replace actual living persons, and which the maniac is to overwhelm with his praise or pursue with his fury.



VI. Summary

Thus does the philosophy of the eighteenth century descend among the people and propagate itself. Ideas, on the first story of the house, in handsome gilded rooms, serve only as an evening illumination, as drawing room explosives and pleasing Bengal lights, with which people amuse themselves, and then laughingly throw from the windows into the street. Collected together in the story below and on the ground floor, transported to shops, to warehouses and into business cabinets, they find combustible material, piles of wood a long time accumulated, and here do the flames enkindle. The conflagration seems to have already begun, for the chimneys roar and a ruddy light gleams through the windows; but "No," say the people above, "those below would take care not to set the house on fire, for they live in it as we do. It is only a straw bonfire and a burning chimney, and a little water will extinguish it; and, besides, these little accidents clear the chimney and burn out the soot."

Take care! Under the vast deep arches supporting it, in the cellars of the house, there is a magazine of powder.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 4301: I have verified these sentiments myself, in the narration of aged people deceased twenty years ago. Cf. manuscript memoirs of Hardy the bookseller (analyzed by Aubertin), and the "Travels of Arthur Young."]

[Footnote 4302: Aubertin, ibid., 180, 362.]

[Footnote 4303: Voltaire, "Siecle de Louis XV," ch. XXXI; "Siecle de Louis XIV," ch. XXX. "Industry increases every day. To see the private display, the prodigious number of pleasant dwellings erected in Paris and in the provinces, the numerous equipages, the conveniences, the acquisitions comprehended in the term luxe, one might suppose that opulence was twenty times greater than it formerly was. All this is the result of ingenuity, much more than of wealth. . . The middle class has become wealthy by industry. . . . Commercial gains have augmented. The opulence of the great is less than it was formerly and much larger among the middle class, the distance between men even being lessened by it. Formerly the inferior class had no resource but to serve their superiors; nowadays industry has opened up a thousand roads unknown a hundred years ago."]

[Footnote 4304: John Law (Edinbourgh 1672—dead in Venice 1729) Scotch financier, who founded a bank in Paris issuing paper money whose value depended upon confidence and credit. He had to flee France when his system collapsed and died in misery. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4305: Arthur Young, II. 360, 373.]

[Footnote 4306: De Tocqueville, 255.]

[Footnote 4307: Aubertin, 482.]

[Footnote 4308: Roux and Buchez, "Histoire parlementaire." Extracted from the accounts made up by the comptrollers-general, I. 175, 205.—The report by Necker, I. 376. To the 206,000,000 must be added 15,800,000 for expenses and interest on advances.]

[Footnote 4309: Compare this to the situation in year 1999 where irresponsible democratic governments sell enormous fortunes in the form of bonds to the popular pension funds, fortunes which they expect that the next generation shall repay. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4310: Roux and Buchez, I. 190. "Rapport," M. de Calonne.]

[Footnote 4311: Champfort, p. 105.]

[Footnote 4312: De Tocqueville, 261.]

[Footnote 4313: D'Argenson, April 12, 1752, February 11, 1752, July 24, 1753, December 7, 1753.—Archives nationales, O1, 738.]

[Footnote 4314: Characters in Moliere's comedies.—TR.]

[Footnote 4315: De Segur. I. 17.]

[Footnote 4316: Lucas de Montigny, Letter of the Marquis de Mirabeau, March 23, 1783.]

[Footnote 4317: Mme. Vigee-Lebrun, I. 269, 231. (The domestic establishment of two farmers-general, M. de Verdun, at Colombes, and M. de St. James, at Neuilly).—A superior type of the bourgeois and of the merchant has already been put on the stage by Sedaine in "Le Philosophe sans le Savoir."]

[Footnote 4318: John Andrews, "A comparative view," etc. p. 58.]

[Footnote 4319: De Tilly, "Memoires," I. 31.]

[Footnote 4320: Goffroy, "Gustave III," letter of Mme. Stael (August, 1786).]

[Footnote 4321: Mme. de Genlis, "Adele et Theodore" (1782), I. 312.—Already in 1762, Bachaumont mentions several pieces written by grand seigniors, such as "Clytemnestre," by the Comte de Lauraguais; "Alexandre," by the Chevalier de Fenelon; "Don Carlos," by the Marquis de Ximenes.]

[Footnote 4322: Champfort, 119.]

[Footnote 4323: De Vaublanc, I. 117.—Beugnot, "Memoires," (the first and second passages relating to society at the domiciles of M. de Brienne, and the Duc de Penthievre.)]

[Footnote 4324: Barbier, II, 16; III. 255 (May, 1751). "The king is robbed by all the seigniors around him, especially on his journeys to his different chateaux, which are frequent."—And September, 1750.——Cf. Aubertin, 291, 415 ("Memoires," manuscript by Hardy).]

[Footnote 4325: Treaties of Paris and Hubersbourg, 1763.—The trial of La Chalotais, 1765.—Bankruptcy of Terray, 1770.—Destruction of the Parliament, 1771.—The first partition of Poland, 1772.—Rousseau, "Discours sur l'inegalite," 1753.—"Heloise," 1759.—"Emile" and "Contrat Social," 1762.]

[Footnote 4326: De Barante, "Tableau de la litterature francaise au dix-huitieme siecle," 312.]

[Footnote 4327: "Mercure britannique," vol. II, 360.]

[Footnote 4328: Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'epreuves," p. 21.]

[Footnote 4329: "Memoires," by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.]

[Footnote 4330: "Le Compere Mathieu," by Dulaurens (1766). "Our sufferings are due to the way in which we are brought up, namely, the state of society in which we are born. Now that state being the source of all our ills its dissolution must become that of all our good."]

[Footnote 4331: The "Tableau de Paris," by Mercier (12 vols.), is the completest and most exact portrayal of the ideas and aspirations of the middle class from 1781 to 1788.]

[Footnote 4332: "Correspondence," by Metra, XVII, 87 (August 20, 1784).]

[Footnote 4333: "Belisarious," is from 1780, and the "Oath of the Horatii," from 1783.]

[Footnote 4334: Geffroy, "Gustave II et la cour de France." "Paris, with its republican spirit, generally applauds whatever fails at Fontainebleau." (A letter by Madame de Stael, Sept. 17, 1786).]

[Footnote 4335: Taine uses the French term "passe-droit", meaning both passing over, slight, unjust promotion over the heads of others, a special favour, or privilege. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4336: Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi," II. 24, in the article on Barnave.]

[Footnote 4337: Dr Tilly, "Memoires," I. 243.]

[Footnote 4338: The words of Fontanes, who knew her and admired her. (Sainte-Beuve, "Nouveaux Lundis," VIII. 221).]

[Footnote 4339: "Memoires de Madame Roland," passim. At fourteen years of age, on being introduced to Mme. de Boismorel, she is hurt at hearing her grandmother addressed "Mademoiselle."—Shortly after this, she says: "I could not concoal from myself that I was of more consequence than Mlle. d'Hannaches, whose sixty years and her genealogy did not enable her to write a common-sense letter or one that was legible."—About the same epoch she passes a week at Versailles with a servant of the Dauphine, and tells her mother, "A few days more and I shall so detest these people that I shall not know how to suppress my hatred of them."—"What injury have they done you?" she inquired. "It is the feeling of injustice and the constant contemplation of absurdity!"—At the chateau of Fontenay where she is invited to dine, she and her mother are made to dine in the servants' room, etc.—In 1818, in a small town in the north, the Comte de—dining with a bourgeois sub-prefect and placed by the side of the mistress of the house, says to her, on accepting the soup, 'Thanks, sweetheart,' But the Revolution has given the lower class bourgeoisie the courage to defend themselves tooth and nail so that, a moment later, she addresses him, with one of her sweetest smiles, 'Will you take some chicken, my love?' (The French expression 'mon coeur' means both sweetheart and my love. SR.)]

[Footnote 4340: De Vaublanc, I. 153.]

[Footnote 4341: Beugnot, "Memoires," I. 77.]

[Footnote 4342: Champfort, 16.—"Who would believe it! Not taxation, nor lettres-de-cachet, nor the abuses of power, nor the vexations of intendants, and the ruinous delays of justice have provoked the ire of the nation, but their prejudices against the nobility towards which it has shown the greatest hatred. This evidently proves that the bourgeoisie, the men of letters, the financial class, in short all who envy the nobles have excited against these the inferior class in the towns and among the rural peasantry." (Rivarol, "Memoires.")]

[Footnote 4343: Champfort, 335.]

[Footnote 4344: Sieyes, "Qu'est ce que le Tiers?" 17, 41, 139, 166.]

[Footnote 4345: Cartouche (Luis Dominique) (Paris, 1693—id. 1721). Notorious French bandit, leader of a gang of thieves. He died broken alive on the wheel. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4346: "The nobility, say the nobles, is an intermediary between the king and the people. Yes, as the hound is an intermediary between the hunter and the hare." (Champfort).]

[Footnote 4347: Prud'homme, III. 2. ("The Third-Estate of Nivernais," passim.) Cf, on the other hand, the registers of the nobility of Bugey and of Alencon.]

[Footnote 4348: Prud'homme, ibid.., Cahiers of the Third-Estates of Dijon, Dax, Bayonne, Saint-Severe, Rennes, etc.]

[Footnote 4349: Marmontel, "Memoires," II. 247.]

[Footnote 4350: Arthur Young, I. 222.]

[Footnote 4351: Malouet, "Memoires," I. 279.]

[Footnote 4352: De Lavalette, I. 7.—"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.—. Cf. Brissot, Memoires, I.]

[Footnote 4353: Prudhomme, "Resume des cahiers," the "preface," by J. J. Rousseau.]

[Footnote 4354: Marmontel, II. 245.]



BOOK FIFTH. THE PEOPLE



CHAPTER I. HARDSHIPS.



I. Privations.

Under Louis XIV.—Under Louis XV.—Under Louis XVI.

La Bruyere wrote, just a century before 1789,[5101]:

"Certain savage-looking animals, male and female, are seen in the country, black, livid and sunburned, and attached to the soil which they dig and grub with invincible stubbornness. They seem capable of speech, and, when they stand erect, they display a human face. They are, in fact, men. They retire at night into their dens where they live on black bread, water and roots. They spare other human beings the trouble of sowing, plowing and harvesting, and thus should not be in want of the bread they have planted."

They are, however, in want during the twenty-five years after this, and die in droves. I estimate that in 1715 more than one-third of the population,[5102] six millions, perish with hunger and of destitution. This description is, in respect of the first quarter of the century preceding the Revolution, far from being too vivid, it is rather too weak; we shall see that it, during more than half a century, up to the death of Louis XV. is exact; so that instead of weakening any of its details, they should be strengthened.

"In 1725," says Saint-Simon, "with the profusion of Strasbourg and Chantilly, the people, in Normandy, live on the grass of the fields. The first king in Europe could not be a great king if it was not for all the beggars and the poor-houses full of dying from whom all had been taken even though it was peace-time.[5103]

In the most prosperous days of Fleury and in the finest region in France, the peasant hides "his wine on account of the excise and his bread on account of the taille," convinced "that he is a lost man if any doubt exists of his dying of starvation."[5104] In 1739 d'Argenson writes in his journal[5105]:

"The famine has just caused three insurrections in the provinces, at Ruffec, at Caen, and at Chinon. Women carrying their bread with them have been assassinated on the highways. . . M. le Duc d'Orleans brought to the Council the other day a piece of bread, and placed it on the table before the king 'Sire,' said he, 'there is the bread on which your subjects now feed themselves.'" "In my own canton of Touraine men have been eating herbage more than a year." Misery finds company on all sides. "It is talked about at Versailles more than ever. The king interrogated the bishop of Chartres on the condition of his people; he replied that 'the famine and the morality were such that men ate grass like sheep and died like so many flies.'"

In 1740,[5106] Massillon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, writes to Fleury:

"The people of the rural districts are living in frightful destitution, without beds, without furniture; the majority, for half the year, even lack barley and oat bread which is their sole food, and which they are compelled to take out of their own and their children's mouths to pay the taxes. It pains me to see this sad spectacle every year on my visits. The Negroes of our colonies are, in this respect, infinitely better off; for, while working, they are fed and clothed along with their wives and children, while our peasantry, the most laborious in the kingdom, cannot, with the hardest and most devoted labor, earn bread for themselves and their families, and at the same time pay their charges." In 1740[5107] at Lille, the people rebel against the export of grain. "An intendant informs me that the misery increases from hour to hour, the slightest danger to the crops resulting in this for three years past. . . .Flanders, especially, is greatly embarrassed; there is nothing to live on until the harvesting, which will not take place for two months. The provinces the best off are not able to help the others. Each bourgeois in each town is obliged to feed one or two poor persons and provide them with fourteen pounds of bread per week. In the little town of Chatellerault, (of 4,000 inhabitants), 1800 poor, this winter, are in that situation. . . . The poor outnumber those able to live without begging. . . while prosecutions for unpaid dues are carried on with unexampled rigor. The clothes of the poor, their last measure of flour and the latches on their doors are seized, etc. .. . The abbess of Jouarre told me yesterday that, in her canton, in Brie, most of the land had not been planted." It is not surprising that the famine spreads even to Paris. "Fears are entertained of next Wednesday. There is no more bread in Paris, except that of the damaged flour which is brought in and which burns (when baking). The mills are working day and night at Belleville, regrinding old damaged flour. The people are ready to rebel; bread goes up a sol a day; no merchant dares, or is disposed, to bring in his wheat. The market on Wednesday was almost in a state of revolt, there being no bread in it after seven o'clock in the morning. . . . The poor creatures at Bicetre prison were put on short rations, three quarterons (twelve ounces), being reduced to only half a pound. A rebellion broke out and they forced the guards. Numbers escaped and they have inundated Paris. The watch, with the police of the neighborhood, were called out, and an attack was made on these poor wretches with bayonet and sword. About fifty of them were left on the ground; the revolt was not suppressed yesterday morning."

Ten years later the evil is greater.[5108]

"In the country around me, ten leagues from Paris, I find increased privation and constant complaints. What must it be in our wretched provinces in the interior of the kingdom?. . . My curate tells me that eight families, supporting themselves on their labor when I left, are now begging their bread. There is no work to be had. The wealthy are economizing like the poor. And with all this the taille is exacted with military severity. The collectors, with their officers, accompanied by locksmiths, force open the doors and carry off and sell furniture for one-quarter of its value, the expenses exceeding the amount of the tax. . . "—"I am at this moment on my estates in Touraine. I encounter nothing but frightful privations; the melancholy sentiment of suffering no longer prevails with the poor inhabitants, but rather one of utter despair; they desire death only, and avoid increase. . . . It is estimated that one-quarter of the working-days of the year go to the corvees, the laborers feeding themselves, and with what?. . . I see poor people dying of destitution. They are paid fifteen sous a day, equal to a crown, for their load. Whole villages are either ruined or broken up, and none of the households recover. . . . Judging by what my neighbors tell me the inhabitants have diminished one-third. . . . The daily laborers are all leaving and taking refuge in the small towns. In many villages everybody leaves. I have several parishes in which the taille for three years is due, the proceedings for its collection always going on. . . . The receivers of the taille and of the taxes add one-half each year in expenses above the tax. . . . An assessor, on coming to the village where I have my country-house, states that the taille this year will be much increased; he noticed that the peasants here were fatter than elsewhere; that they had chicken feathers before their doors, and that the living here must be good, everybody doing well, etc.—This is the cause of the peasant's discouragement, and likewise the cause of misfortune throughout the kingdom."—"In the country where I am staying I hear that marriage is declining and that the population is decreasing on all sides. In my parish, with a few fire-sides, there are more than thirty single persons, male and female, old enough to marry and none of them considering it. On being urged to marry they all reply alike that it is not worth while to bring unfortunate beings like themselves into the world. I have myself tried to induce some of the women to marry by offering them assistance, but they all reason in this way as if they had consulted together."[5109]—"One of my curates sends me word that, although he is the oldest in the province of Touraine, and has seen many things, including excessively high prices for wheat, he remembers no misery so great as that of this year, even in 1709. . . . Some of the seigniors of Touraine inform me that, being desirous of setting the inhabitants to work by the day, they found very few of them, and these so weak that they were unable to use their hands."

Those who are able to leave, go.

"A person from Languedoc tells me of vast numbers of peasants deserting that province and taking refuge in Piedmont, Savoy, and Spain, tormented and frightened by the measures resorted to in collecting tithes. . . . The extortioners sell everything and imprison everybody as if prisoners of war, and even with more avidity and malice, in order to gain something themselves."—"I met an intendant of one of the finest provinces in the kingdom, who told me that no more farmers could be found there; that parents preferred to send their children to the towns; that living in the surrounding country was daily becoming more horrible to the inhabitants. . . . A man, well-informed in financial matters, told me that over two hundred families in Normandy had left this year, fearing the collections in their villages."—At Paris, "the streets swarm with beggars. One cannot stop before a door without a dozen mendicants besetting him with their importunities. They are said to be people from the country who, unable to endure the persecutions they have to undergo, take refuge in the cities. . . preferring begging to labor."—And yet the people of the cities are not much better off. "An officer of a company in garrison at Mezieres tells me that the poverty of that place is so great that, after the officers had dined in the inns, the people rush in and pillage the remnants."—"There are more than 12,000 begging workmen in Rouen, quite as many in Tours, etc. More than 20,000 of these workmen are estimated as having left the kingdom in three months for Spain, Germany, etc. At Lyons 20,000 workers in silk are watched and kept in sight for fear of their going abroad." At Rouen,[5110] and in Normandy, "those in easy circumstances find it difficult to get bread, the bulk of the people being entirely without it, and, to ward off starvation, providing themselves with food otherwise repulsive to human beings."—"Even at Paris," writes d'Argenson,[5111] "I learn that on the day M. le Dauphin and Mme. la Dauphine went to Notre Dame, on passing the bridge of the Tournelle, more than 2,000 women assembled in that quarter crying out, 'Give us bread, or we shall die of hunger.'. . . A vicar of the parish of Saint-Marguerite affirms that over eight hundred persons died in the Faubourg St. Antoine between January 20th and February 20th; that the poor expire with cold and hunger in their garrets, and that the priests, arriving too late, see them expire without any possible relief."

Were I to enumerate the riots, the sedition of the famished, and the pillaging of storehouses, I should never end; these are the convulsive twitching of exhaustion; the people have fasted as long as possible, and instinct, at last, rebels. In 1747,[5112] "extensive bread-riots occur in Toulouse, and in Guyenne they take place on every market-day." In 1750, from 6 to 7,000 men gather in Bearn behind a river to resist the clerks; two companies of the Artois regiment fire on the rebels and kill a dozen of them. In 1752, a sedition at Rouen and in its neighborhood lasts three days; in Dauphiny and in Auvergne riotous villagers force open the grain warehouses and take away wheat at their own price; the same year, at Arles, 2,000 armed peasants demand bread at the town-hall and are dispersed by the soldiers. In one province alone, that of Normandy, I find insurrections in 1725, in 1737, in 1739, in 1752, in 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767 and 1768,[5113] and always on account of bread.

"Entire hamlets," writes the Parliament, "being without the necessities of life, hunger compels them to resort to the food of brutes. . . . Two days more and Rouen will be without provisions, without grain, without bread."

Accordingly, the last riot is terrible; on this occasion, the populace, again masters of the town for three days, pillage the public granaries and the stores of all the communities.—Up to the last and even later, in 1770 at Rheims, in 1775 at Dijon, at Versailles, at St. Germain, at Pontoise and at Paris, in 1772 at Poitiers, in 1785 at Aix in Provence, in 1788 and 1789 in Paris and throughout France, similar eruptions are visible.[5114]—Undoubtedly the government under Louis XVI is milder; the intendants are more humane, the administration is less rigid, the taille becomes less unequal, and the corvee is less onerous through its transformation, in short, misery has diminished, and yet this is greater than human nature can bear.

Examine administrative correspondence for the last thirty years preceding the Revolution. Countless statements reveal excessive suffering, even when not terminating in fury. Life to a man of the lower class, to an artisan, or workman, subsisting on the labor of his own hands, is evidently precarious; he obtains simply enough to keep him from starvation and he does not always get that[5115]. Here, in four districts, "the inhabitants live only on buckwheat," and for five years, the apple crop having failed, they drink only water. There, in a country of vine-yards,[5116] "the wine-growers each year are reduced, for the most part, to begging their bread during the dull season." Elsewhere, several of the day-laborers and mechanics, obliged to sell their effects and household goods, die of the cold; insufficient and unhealthy food generates sickness, while, in two districts, 35,000 persons are stated to be living on alms[5117]. In a remote canton the peasants cut the grain still green and dry it in the oven, because they are too hungry to wait. The intendant of Poitiers writes that "as soon as the workhouses open, a prodigious number of the poor rush to them, in spite of the reduction of wages and of the restrictions imposed on them in behalf of the most needy." The intendant of Bourges notices that a great many tenant farmers have sold off their furniture, and that "entire families pass two days without eating," and that in many parishes the famished stay in bed most of the day because they suffer less. The intendant of Orleans reports that "in Sologne, poor widows have burned up their wooden bedsteads and others have consumed their fruit trees," to preserve themselves from the cold, and he adds, "nothing is exaggerated in this statement; the cries of want cannot be expressed; the misery of the rural districts must be seen with one's own eyes to obtain an idea of it." From Rioni, from La Rochelle, from Limoges, from Lyons, from Montauban, from Caen, from Alencon, from Flanders, from Moulins come similar statements by other intendants. One might call it the interruptions and repetitions of a funeral knell; even in years not disastrous it is heard on all sides. In Burgundy, near Chatillon-sur-Seine,

"taxes, seigniorial dues, the tithes, and the expenses of cultivation, split up the productions of the soil into thirds, leaving nothing for the unfortunate cultivators, who would have abandoned their fields, had not two Swiss manufacturers of calicoes settled there and distributed about the country 40,000 francs a year in cash."[5118]

In Auvergne, the country is depopulated daily; many of the villages have lost, since the beginning of the century, more than one-third of their inhabitants[5119].

"Had not steps been promptly taken to lighten the burden of a down-trodden people," says the provincial assembly in 1787, "Auvergne would have forever lost its population and its cultivation."

In Comminges, at the outbreak of the Revolution, certain communities threaten to abandon their possessions, should they obtain no relief[5120].

"It is a well-known fact," says the assembly of Haute-Guyenne, in 1784," that the lot of the most severely taxed communities is so rigorous as to have led their proprietors frequently to abandon their property[5121]. Who is not aware of the inhabitants of Saint-Servin having abandoned their property ten times, and of their threats to resort again to this painful proceeding in their recourse to the administration? Only a few years ago an abandonment of the community of Boisse took place through the combined action of the inhabitants, the seignior and the decimateur of that community;" and the desertion would be still greater if the law did not forbid persons liable to the taille abandoning over-taxed property, except by renouncing whatever they possessed in the community. In the Soissonais, according to the report of the provincial assembly,[5122] "misery is excessive." In Gascony the spectacle is "heartrending." In the environs of Toul, the cultivator, after paying his taxes, tithes and other dues, remains empty-handed.

"Agriculture is an occupation of steady anxiety and privation, in which thousands of men are obliged to painfully vegetate."[5123] In a village in Normandy, "nearly all the inhabitants, not excepting the farmers and proprietors, eat barley bread and drink water, living like the most wretched of men, so as to provide for the payment of the taxes with which they are overburdened." In the same province, at Forges, "many poor creatures eat oat bread, and others bread of soaked bran, this nourishment causing many deaths among infants."[5124] People evidently live from day to day; whenever the crop proves poor they lack bread. Let a frost come, a hailstorm, an inundation, and an entire province is incapable of supporting itself until the coming year; in many places even an ordinary winter suffices to bring on distress. On all sides hands are seen outstretched to the king, who is the universal almoner. The people may be said to resemble a man attempting to wade through a pool with the water up to his chin, and who, losing his footing at the slightest depression, sinks down and drowns. Existent charity and the fresh spirit of humanity vainly strive to rescue them; the water has risen too high. It must subside to a lower level, and the pool be drawn off through some adequate outlet. Thus far the poor man catches breath only at intervals, running the risk of drowning at every moment.



II. The Peasants.

The condition of the peasant during the last thirty years of the Ancient Regime.—His precarious subsistence.—State of agriculture.—Uncultivated farms.—Poor cultivation.— Inadequate wages.—Lack of comforts.

Between 1750 and 1760,[5125] the idlers who eat suppers begin to regard with compassion and alarm the laborers who go without dinners. Why are the latter so impoverished; and by what misfortune, on a soil as rich as that of France, do those lack bread who grow the grain? In the first place many farms remain uncultivated, and, what is worse, many are deserted. According to the best observers "one-quarter of the soil is absolutely lying waste. . . . Hundreds and hundreds of arpents of heath and moor form extensive deserts."[5126] Let a person traverse Anjou, Maine, Brittany, Poitou, Limousin, la Marche, Berry, Nivernais, Bourbonnais and Auvergne, and he finds one-half of these provinces in heaths, forming immense plains, all of which might be cultivated." In Touraine, in Poitou and in Berry they form solitary expanses of 30,000 arpents. In one canton alone, near Preuilly, 40,000 arpents of good soil consist of heath. The agricultural society of Rennes declares that two-thirds of Brittany is lying waste. This is not sterility but decadence. The regime invented by Louis XIV has produced its effect; the soil for a century past has been reverting to a wild state.

"We see only abandoned and ruinous chateaux; the principal towns of the fiefs, in which the nobility formerly lived at their ease, are all now occupied by poor tenant herdsmen whose scanty labor hardly suffices for their subsistence, and a remnant of tax ready to disappear through the ruin of the proprietors and the desertion of the settlers."

In the election district of Confolens a piece of property rented for 2,956 livres in 1665, brings in only 900 livres in 1747. On the confines of la Marche and of Berry a domain which, in 1660, honorably supported two seigniorial families is now simply a small unproductive tenant-farm; "the traces of the furrows once made by the plow-iron being still visible on the surrounding heaths." Sologne, once flourishing,[5127] becomes a marsh and a forest; a hundred years earlier it produced three times the quantity of grain; two-thirds of its mills are gone; not a vestige of its vineyards remains; "grapes have given way to the heath." Thus abandoned by the spade and the plow, a vast portion of the soil ceases to feed man, while the rest, poorly cultivated, scarcely provides the simplest necessities[5128].

In the first place, on the failure of a crop, this portion remains untilled; its occupant is too poor to purchase seed; the intendant is often obliged to distribute seed, without which the disaster of the current year would be followed by sterility the following year[5129]. Every calamity, accordingly, in these days affects the future as well as the present; during the two years of 1784 and 1785, around Toulouse, the drought having caused the loss of all draft animals, many of the cultivators are obliged to let their fields lie fallow. In the second place, cultivation, when it does take place, is carried on according to medieval modes. Arthur Young, in 1789, considers that French agriculture has not progressed beyond that of the tenth century[5130]. Except in Flanders and on the plains of Alsace, the fields lie fallow one year out of three, and oftentimes one year out of two. The implements are poor; there are no plows made of iron; in many places the plow of Virgil's time is still in use. Cart-axles and wheel-tires are made of wood, while a harrow often consists of the trestle of a cart. There are few animals and but little manure; the capital bestowed on cultivation is three times less than that of the present day. The yield is slight: "our ordinary farms," says a good observer, "taking one with another return about six times the seed sown."[5131] In 1778, on the rich soil around Toulouse, wheat returns about five for one, while at the present day it yields eight to one and more. Arthur Young estimates that, in his day, the English acre produces twenty-eight bushels of grain, and the French acre eighteen bushels, and that the value of the total product of the same area for a given length of time is thirty-six pounds sterling in England and only twenty-five in France. As the parish roads are frightful, and transportation often impracticable, it is clear that, in remote cantons, where poor soil yields scarcely three times the seed sown, food is not always obtainable. How do they manage to live until the next crop? This is the question always under consideration previous to, and during, the Revolution. I find, in manuscript correspondence, the syndics and mayors of villages estimating the quantities for local subsistence at so many bushels in the granaries, so many sheaves in the barns, so many mouths to be filled, so many days to wait until the August wheat comes in, and concluding on short supplies for two, three and four months. Such a state of inter-communication and of agriculture condemns a country to periodical famines, and I venture to state that, alongside of the small-pox which out of eight deaths causes one, another endemic disease exists, as prevalent and as destructive, and this disease is starvation.

We can easily imagine that it is the common people, and especially the peasants who suffers. An increase of the price of bread prevents him from getting any, and even without that increase, he obtains it with difficulty. Wheat bread cost, as today, three sous per pound,[5132] but as the average day's work brought only nineteen sous instead of forty, the day-laborer, working the same time, could buy only the half of a loaf instead of a full loaf[5133]. Taking everything into account, and wages being estimated according to the price of grain, we find that the husbandman's manual labor then procured him 959 litres of wheat, while nowadays it gives him 1,851 litres; his well-being, accordingly, has advanced ninety-three per cent., which suffices to show to what extent his predecessors suffered privations. And these privations are peculiar to France. Through analogous observations and estimates Arthur Young shows that in France those who lived on field labor, and they constituted the great majority, are seventy-six per cent. less comfortable than the same laborers in England, while they are seventy-six per cent. less well fed and well clothed, besides being worse treated in sickness and in health. The result is that in seven-eighths of the kingdom, there are no farmers, but simply metayers (a kind of poor tenants)[5134]. The peasant is too poor to undertake cultivation on his own account, possessing no agricultural capital[5135]. "The proprietor, desirous of improving his land, finds no one to cultivate it but miserable creatures possessing only a pair of hands; he is obliged to advance everything for its cultivation at his own expense, animals, implements and seed, and even to advance the wherewithal to this tenant to feed him until the first crop comes in."—"At Vatan, for example, in Berry, the tenants, almost every year, borrow bread of the proprietor in order to await the harvesting."—"Very rarely is one found who is not indebted to his master at least one hundred livres a year."

Frequently the latter proposes to abandon the entire crop to them on condition that they demand nothing of him during the year; "these miserable creatures" have refused; left to themselves, they would not be sure of keeping themselves alive.—In Limousin and in Angoumois their poverty is so great[5136] "that, deducting the taxes to which they are subject, they have no more than from twenty-five to thirty livres each person per annum to spend; and not in money, it must be stated, but counting whatever they consume in kind out of the crops they produce. Frequently they have less, and when they cannot possibly make a living the master is obliged to support them. . . . The metayer is always reduced to just what is absolutely necessary to keep him from starving." As to the small proprietor, the villager who plows his land himself, his condition is but little better. "Agriculture,[5137] as our peasants practice it, is a veritable drudgery; they die by thousands in childhood, and in maturity they seek places everywhere but where they should be."

In 1783, throughout the plain of the Toulousain they eat only maize, a mixture of flour, common seeds and very little wheat; those on the mountains feed, a part of the year, on chestnuts; the potato is hardly known, and, according to Arthur Young, ninety-nine out of a hundred peasants would refuse to eat it. According to the reports of intendants, the basis of food, in Normandy, is oats; in the election-district of Troyes, buck-wheat; in the Marche and in Limousin, buckwheat with chestnuts and radishes; in Auvergne, buckwheat, chestnuts, milk-curds and a little salted goat's meat; in Beauce, a mixture of barley and rye; in Berry, a mixture of barley and oats. There is no wheat bread; the peasant consumes inferior flour only because he is unable to pay two sous a pound for his bread. There is no butcher's meat; at best he kills one pig a year. His dwelling is built of clay (pise), roofed with thatch, without windows, and the floor is the beaten ground. Even when the soil furnishes good building materials, stone, slate and tile, the windows have no sashes. In a parish in Normandy,[5138] in 1789, "most of the dwellings consist of four posts." They are often mere stables or barns "to which a chimney has been added made of four poles and some mud." Their clothes are rags, and often in winter these are muslin rags. In Quercy and elsewhere, they have no stockings, or wooden shoes. "It is not in the power of an English imagination," says Arthur Young, "to imagine the animals that waited on us here at the Chapeau Rouge,—creatures that were called by courtesy Souillac women, but in reality walking dung-hills. But a neatly dressed, clean waiting-girl at an inn, will be looked for in vain in France." On reading descriptions made on the spot we see in France a similar aspect of country and of peasantry as in Ireland, at least in its broad outlines.



III. The Countryside.

Aspects of the country and of the peasantry.

In the most fertile regions, for instance, in Limagne, both cottages and faces denote "misery and privation."[5139] "The peasants are generally feeble, emaciated and of slight stature." Nearly all derive wheat and wine from their homesteads, but they are forced to sell this to pay their rents and taxes; they eat black bread, made of rye and barley, and their sole beverage is water poured on the lees and the husks. "An Englishman[5140] who has not traveled can not imagine the figure made by infinitely the greater part of the countrywomen in France." Arthur Young, who stops to talk with one of these in Champagne, says that "this woman, at no great distance, might have been taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent and her face so hardened and furrowed by labor,—but she said she was only twenty-eight." This woman, her husband and her household, afford a sufficiently accurate example of the condition of the small proprietary husbandmen. Their property consists simply of a patch of ground, with a cow and a poor little horse; their seven children consume the whole of the cow's milk. They owe to one seignior a franchard (forty-two pounds) of flour, and three chickens; to another three franchards of oats, one chicken and one sou, to which must be added the taille and other taxes. "God keep us!" she said, "for the tailles and the dues crush us."—What must it be in districts where the soil is poor!—

"From Ormes, (near Chatellerault), as far as Poitiers," writes a lady,[5141] "there is a good deal of ground which brings in nothing, and from Poitiers to my residence (in Limousin) 25,000 arpents of ground consist wholly of heath and sea-grass. The peasantry live on rye, of which they do not remove the bran, and which is as black and heavy as lead.—In Poitou, and here, they plow up only the skin of the ground with a miserable little plow without wheels. . . . From Poitiers to Montmorillon it is nine leagues, equal to sixteen of Paris, and I assure you that I have seen but four men on the road, and, between Montmorillon and my own house, which is four leagues, but three; and then only at a distance, not having met one on the road. You need not be surprised at this in such a country. . . Marriage takes place as early as with the grand seigniors," doubtless for fear of the militia. "But the population of the country is no greater because almost every infant dies. Mothers having scarcely any milk, their infants eat the bread of which I spoke, the stomach of a girl of four years being as big as that of a pregnant woman. . . . The rye crop this year was ruined by the frost on Easter day; flour is scarce; of the twelve metairies owned by my mother, four of them may, perhaps, have some on hand. There has been no rain since Easter; no hay, no pasture, no vegetables, no fruit. You see the lot of the poor peasant. There is no manure, and there are no cattle. . . . My mother, whose granaries used to be always full, has not a grain of wheat in them, because, for two years past, she has fed all her metayers and the poor."

"The peasant is assisted," says a seignior of the same province,[5142] "protected, and rarely maltreated, but he is looked upon with disdain. If kindly and pliable he is made subservient, but if ill-disposed he becomes soured and irritable. . . . He is kept in misery, in an abject state, by men who are not at all inhuman but whose prejudices, especially among the nobles, lead them to regard him as of a different species of being. . . . The proprietor gets all he can out of him; in any event, looking upon him and his oxen as domestic animals, he puts them into harness and employs them in all weathers for every kind of journey, and for every species of carting and transport. On the other hand, this metayer thinks of living with as little labor as possible, converting as much ground as he can into pasturage, for the reason that the product arising from the increase of stock costs him no labor. The little plowing he does is for the purpose of raising low-priced provisions suitable for his own nourishment, such as buckwheat, radishes, etc. His enjoyment consists only of his own idleness and sluggishness, hoping for a good chestnut year and doing nothing voluntarily but procreate;" unable to hire farming hands he begets children.—

The rest, ordinary laborers, have a few savings, "living on the herbage, and on a few goats which devour everything." Often again, these, by order of Parliament, are killed by the game-keepers. A woman, with two children in swaddling clothes, having no milk, "and without an inch of ground," whose two goats, her sole resource, had thus been slain, and another, with one goat slain in the same way, and who begs along with her boy, present themselves at the gate of the chateau; one receives twelve livres, while the other is admitted as a domestic, and henceforth, '' this village is all bows and smiling faces.''—In short, they are not accustomed to kindness; the lot of all these poor people is to endure. "As with rain and hail, they regard as inevitable the necessity of being oppressed by the strongest, the richest, the most skillful, the most in repute," and this stamps on them, "if one may be allowed to say so, an air of painful suffering."

In Auvergne, a feudal country, covered with extensive ecclesiastic and seigniorial domains, the misery is the same. At Clermont-Ferrand,[5143] "there are many streets that can for blackness, dirt and scents only be represented by narrow channels cut in a dunghill." In the inns of the largest bourgs, "closeness, misery, dirtiness and darkness." That of Pradelles is "one of the worst in France." That of Aubenas, says Young, "would be a purgatory for one of my pigs." The senses, in short, are paralyzed. The primitive man is content so long as he can sleep and get something to eat. He gets something to eat, but what kind of food? To put up with the indigestible mess a peasant here requires a still tougher stomach than in Limousin; in certain villages where, ten years later, every year twenty or twenty-five hogs are to be slaughtered, they now slaughter but three[5144].—On contemplating this temperament, rude and intact since Vercingetorix, and, moreover, rendered more savage by suffering, one cannot avoid being somewhat alarmed. The Marquis de Mirabeau describes

"the votive festival of Mont-Dore: savages descending from the mountain in torrents,[5145] the curate with stole and surplice, the justice in his wig, the police corps with sabers drawn, all guarding the open square before letting the bagpipers play; the dance interrupted in a quarter of an hour by a fight; the hooting and cries of children, of the feeble and other spectators, urging them on as the rabble urge on so many fighting dogs; frightful looking men, or rather wild beasts covered with coats of coarse wool, wearing wide leather belts pierced with copper nails, gigantic in stature, which is increased by high wooden shoes, and making themselves still taller by standing on tiptoe to see the battle, stamping with their feet as it progresses and rubbing each other's flanks with their elbows, their faces haggard and covered with long matted hair, the upper portion pallid, and the lower distended, indicative of cruel delight and a sort of ferocious impatience. And these folks pay the taille! And now they want to take away their salt! And they know nothing of those they despoil, of those whom they think they govern, believing that, by a few strokes of a cowardly and careless pen, they may starve them with impunity up to the final catastrophe! Poor Jean-Jacques, I said to myself, had any one dispatched you, with your system, to copy music amongst these folks, he would have had some sharp replies to make to your discourses!"

Prophetic warning and admirable foresight in one whom an excess of evil does not blind to the evil of the remedy! Enlightened by his feudal and rural instincts, the old man at once judges both the government and the philosophers, the Ancient Regime and the Revolution.



IV. The Peasant Becomes Landowner.

How the peasant becomes a proprietor.—He is no better off. —Increase of taxes.—He is the "mule" of the Ancient Regime.

Misery begets bitterness in a man; but ownership coupled with misery renders him still more bitter. He may have submitted to indigence but not to spoliation—which is the situation of the peasant in 1789, for, during the eighteenth century, he had become the possessor of land. But how could he maintain himself in such destitution? The fact is almost incredible, but it is nevertheless true. We can only explain it by the character of the French peasant, by his sobriety, his tenacity, his rigor with himself, his dissimulation, his hereditary passion for property and especially for that of the soil. He had lived on privations, and economized sou after sou. Every year a few pieces of silver are added to his little store of crowns buried in the most secret recess of his cellar; Rousseau's peasant, concealing his wine and bread in a pit, assuredly had a yet more secret hiding-place; a little money in a woollen stocking or in a jug escapes, more readily than elsewhere, the search of the clerks. Dressed in rags, going barefoot, eating nothing but coarse black bread, but cherishing the little treasure in his breast on which he builds so many hopes, he watches for the opportunity which never fails to come. "In spite of privileges," writes a gentleman in 1755,[5146] "the nobles are daily being ruined and reduced, the Third-Estate making all the fortunes." A number of domains, through forced or voluntary sales, thus pass into the hands of financiers, of men of the quill, of merchants, and of the well-to-do bourgeois. Before undergoing this total dispossession, however, the seignior, involved in debt, is evidently resigned to partial alienation of his property. The peasant who has bribed the steward is at hand with his hoard. "It is poor property, my lord, and it costs you more than you get from it." This may refer to an isolated patch, one end of a field or meadow, sometimes a farm whose farmer pays nothing, and generally worked by a metayer whose wants and indolence make him an annual expense to his master. The latter may say to himself that the alienated parcel is not lost, since, some day or other, through his right of repurchase, he may take it back, while, in the meantime, he enjoys a cens, drawbacks, and the lord's dues. Moreover, there is on his domain and around him, extensive open spaces which the decline of cultivation and depopulation have left a desert. To restore the value of this he must surrender its proprietorship. There is no other way by which to attach man permanently to the soil. And the government helps him along in this matter. Obtaining no revenue from the abandoned soil, it assents to a provisional withdrawal of its too weighty hand. By the edict of 1766, a piece of cleared waste land remains free of the taille for fifteen years, and, thereupon, in twenty-eight provinces 400,000 arpents are cleared in three years[5147].

This is the mode by which the seigniorial domain gradually crumbles away and decreases. Towards the last, in many places, with the exception of the chateau and the small adjoining farm which brings in 2 or 3000 francs a year, nothing is left to the seignior but his feudal dues;[5148] the rest of the soil belongs to the peasantry. Forbonnais already remarks, towards 1750, that many of the nobles and of the ennobled "reduced to extreme poverty but with titles to immense possessions," have sold off portions to small cultivators at low prices, and often for the amount of the taille. Towards 1760, one-quarter of the soil is said to have already passed into the hands of farmers. In 1772, in relation to the vingtieme, which is levied on the net revenue of real property, the intendant of Caen, having completed the statement of his quota, estimates that out of 150,000 "there are perhaps 50,000 whose liabilities did not exceed five sous, and perhaps still as many more not exceeding twenty sous."[5149] Contemporary observers authenticate this passion of the peasant for land. "The savings of the lower classes, which elsewhere are invested with individuals and in the public funds, are wholly destined in France to the purchase of land." "Accordingly the number of small rural holdings is always on the increase. Necker says that there is an immensity of them." Arthur Young, in 1789, is astonished at their great number and "inclines to think that they form a third of the kingdom." This already would be our actual estimate, and we still find, approximately, the actual figures, on estimating the number of proprietors in comparison with the number of inhabitants.

The small cultivator, however, in becoming a possessor of the soil assumed its charges. Simply as day-laborer, and with his arms alone, he was only partially affected by the taxes; "where there is nothing the king loses his dues." But now, vainly is he poor and declaring himself still poorer; the fisc has a hold on him and on every portion of his new possessions. The collectors, peasants like himself, and jealous, by virtue of being his neighbors, know how much his property, exposed to view, brings in; hence they take all they can lay their hands on. Vainly has he labored with renewed energy; his hands remain as empty, and, at the end of the year, he discovers that his field has produced him nothing. The more he acquires and produces the more burdensome do the taxes become. In 1715, the taille and the poll-tax, which he alone pays, or nearly alone, amounts to sixty-six millions of livres; the amount is ninety-three millions in 1759 and one hundred and ten millions in 1789.[5150] In 1757, the charges amount to 283,156,000 livres; in 1789 to 476,294,000 livres.

Theoretically, through humanity and through good sense, there is, doubtless, a desire to relieve the peasant, and pity is felt for him. But, in practice, through necessity and routine, he is treated according to Cardinal Richelieu's precept, as a beast of burden to which oats is sparingly rationed out for fear that he may become too strong and kick, "a mule which, accustomed to his load, is spoiled more by long repose than by work."....

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 5101: Labruyere, edition of Destailleurs, II, 97. Addition to the fourth ed. (1689)]

[Footnote 5102: Oppression and misery begin about 1672.—At the end of the seventeenth century (1698), the reports made up by the intendants for the Duc de Bourgogne, state that many of the districts and provinces have lost one-sixth, one-fifth, one-quarter, the third and even the half of their population. (See details in the "correspondance des controleurs-generaux from 1683 to 1698," published by M. de Boislisle). According to the reports of intendants, (Vauban, "Dime Royale," ch. VII. Sec. 2.), the population of France in 1698 amounted to 19,994,146 inhabitants. From 1698 to 1715 it decreases. According to Forbonnais, there were but 16 or 17 millions under the Regency. After this epoch the population no longer diminishes but, for forty years, it hardly increases. In 1753 (Voltaire, "Dict Phil.," article Population), there are 3,550,499 hearths, besides 700,000 souls in Paris, which makes from 16 to 17 millions of inhabitants if we count four and one-half persons to each fireside, and from 18 to 19 millions if we count five persons.]

[Footnote 5103: Floquet, "Histoire du Parlement de Normandie," VII. 402.]

[Footnote 5104: Rousseau, "Confessions," 1st part, ch. IV. (1732).]

[Footnote 5105: D'Argenson, 19th and 24th May, July 4, and Aug. 1, 1739]

[Footnote 5106: "Resume d'histoire d'Auvergne par un Auvergnat" (M. Tallandier), p. 313.]

[Footnote 5107: D'Argenson, 1740, Aug. 7 and 21, September 19 and 24, May 28 and November 7.]

[Footnote 5108: D'Argenson, October 4, 1749; May 20, Sept. 12, Oct. 28, Dec. 28, 1750.]

[Footnote 5109: D'Argenson, June 21, 1749; May 22, 1750; March 19, 1751; February 14, April 15, 1752, etc.]

[Footnote 5110: Floquet, ibid.. VII. 410 (April, 1752, an address to the Parliament of Normandy)]

[Footnote 5111: D'Argenson, November 26, 1751: March 15, 1753.]

[Footnote 5112: D'Argenson, IV. 124; VI. 165: VII. 194, etc.]

[Footnote 5113: Floquet, ibid. VI. 400-430]

[Footnote 5114: "Correspondance," by Metra, I. 338, 341.—Hippeau, "Le Gouvernement de Normandie," IV. 62, 199, 358.]

[Footnote 5115: "Proces-verbaux de l'assemblee provinciale de Basse Normandie" (1787), p.151.]

[Footnote 5116: Archives nationales, G, 319. Condition of the directory of Issoudun, and H, 1149, 612, 1418.]

[Footnote 5117: Ibid.. The letters of M. de Crosne, intendant of Rouen (February 17, 1784); of M. de Blossac, intendant of Poitiers (May 9, 1784); of M. de Villeneuve, intendant of Bourges (March 28, 1784); of M. de Cypierre, intendant of Orleans (May 28, 1784); of M. de Maziron, intendant of Moulins (June 28, 1786); of M. Dupont, intendant of Moulins (Nov. 16, 1779), etc.]

[Footnote 5118: Archives nationales, H, 200 (A memorandum by M. Amelot, intendant at Dijon, 1786).]

[Footnote 5119: Gautier de Bianzat, "Doleances sur les surcharges que portent les gens du Tiers-Etat," etc. (1789), p. 188.—"Proces-verbaux de I'assemblee provinciale d'Auvergne" (1787), p. 175.]

[Footnote 5120: Theron de Montauge, "L'Agriculture et les chores rurales dans le Toulousain," 112.]

[Footnote 5121: "Proces-verbaux de assemblee provinciale de la Haute-Guyenne," I. 47, 79.]

[Footnote 5122: "Proces-verbaux de l'assemblee provinciale du Soissonais" (1787), p. 457; "de l'assemblee provinciale d'Auch," p. 24.]

[Footnote 5123: "Resume des cahiers," by Prudhomme, III. 271.]

[Footnote 5124: Hippeau, ibid. VI. 74, 243 (grievances drawn up by the Chevalier de Bertin).]

[Footnote 5125: See the article "Fermiers et Grains," in the Encyclopedia, by Quesnay, 1756.]

[Footnote 5126: Theron de Montauge, p.25.—"Ephemerides du citoyen," III. 190 (1766); IX. 15 (an article by M. de Butre, 1767).]

[Footnote 5127: "Proces-verbaux de l'assemblee provinciale de l'Orleanais" (1787), in a memoir by M. d'Autroche.]

[Footnote 5128: One is surprised to see such a numerous people fed even though one-half, or one-quarter of the arable land is sterile wastes. (Arthur Young, II, 137.)]

[Footnote 5129: Archives nationales, H, 1149. A letter of the Comtesse de Saint-Georges (1772) on the effects of frost. "The ground this year will remain uncultivated, there being already much land in this condition, and especially in our parish." Theron de Montauge, ibid.. 45, 80.]

[Footnote 5130: Arthur Young, II. 112, 115.—Theron de Montauge, 52, 61.]

[Footnote 5131: The Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traite de la population," p.29.]

[Footnote 5132: Cf Galiani, "Dialogues sur le commerce des bles." (1770), p. 193. Wheat bread at this time cost four sous per pound.]

[Footnote 5133: Arthur Young, II. 200, 201, 260-265.—Theron de Montauge, 59, 68, 75, 79, 81, 84.]

[Footnote 5134: "The poor people who cultivate the soil here are metayers, that is men who hire the land without ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide cattle and seed and he and his tenants divide the produce."—ARTHUR YOUNG.(TR.)]

[Footnote 5135: "Ephemerides du citoyen," VI. 81-94 (1767), and IX. 99 (1767).]

[Footnote 5136: Turgot, "Collections des economistes," I. 544, 549.]

[Footnote 5137: Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traite de la population," 83..]

[Footnote 5138: Hippeau, VI, 91.]

[Footnote 5139: Dulaure, "Description de l'Auvergne," 1789.]

[Footnote 5140: Arthur Young, I. 235.]

[Footnote 5141: "Ephemerides du citoyen," XX. 146, a letter of the Marquis de—August 17, 1767.]

[Footnote 5142: Lucas de Montigny, "Memoires de Mirabeau," I, 394.]

[Footnote 5143: Arthur Young, I. 280, 289, 294.]

[Footnote 5144: Lafayette "Memoires," V. 533.]

[Footnote 5145: Lucas de Montigny, ibid. (a letter of August 18, 1777).]

[Footnote 5146: De Tocqueville, 117.]

[Footnote 5147: "Proces-verbaux de l'assemblee provinciale de Basse Normandie" (1787), p.205.]

[Footnote 5148: Leonce de Lavergne, p. 26 (according to the tables of indemnity granted to the emigres in 1825). In the estate of Blet (see note 2 at the end of the volume), twenty-two parcels are alienated in 1760.—Arthur Young, I. 308 (the domain of Tour-d'Aigues, in Provence), and II. 198, 214.—Doniol, "Histoire des classes rurales," p.450.—De Tocqueville, p.36.]

[Footnote 5149: Archives nationales, H, 1463 (a letter by M. de Fontette, November 16, 1772).—Cf. Cochut, "Revue des Deux Mondes," September, 1848. The sale of the national property seems not to have sensibly increased small properties nor sensibly diminished the number of the large ones. The Revolution developed moderate sized properties. In 1848, the large estates numbered 183,000 (23,000 families paying 300 francs taxes, and more, and possessing on the average 260 hectares of land, and 160,000 families paying from 230 to 500 francs taxes and possessing on the average 75 hectares.) These 183,000 families possessed 18,000,000 hectares.—There are besides 700,000 medium sized estates (paying from 50 to 250 francs tax), and comprising 15,000,000 hectares.—And finally 3,900,000 small properties comprising 15,000,000 hectares (900,000 paying from 25 to 50 francs tax, averaging five and one-half hectares each, and 3,000,000 paying less than 25 francs, averaging three and one ninth hectares each).—According to the partial statement of de Tocqueville the number of holders of real property had increased, on the average, to five-twelfths; the population, at the same time, having increased five-thirteenths (from 26 to 36 millions).]

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



CHAPTER II. TAXATION THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF MISERY.



I. Extortion.

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

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

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

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



II. Local Conditions.

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

Direct taxation alone is here concerned, the tailles, collateral taxes, poll-tax, vingtiemes, and the pecuniary tax substituted for the corvee[5204] In Champagne, the tax-payer pays on 100 livres income fifty-four livres fifteen sous, on the average, and in many parishes,[5205] seventy-one livres thirteen sous. In the Ile-de-France, "if a taxable inhabitant of a village, the proprietor of twenty arpents of land which he himself works, and the income of which is estimated at ten livres per arpent it is supposed that he is likewise the owner of the house he occupies, the site being valued at forty livres."[5206] This tax-payer pays for his real taille, personal and industrial, thirty-five livres fourteen sous, for collateral taxes seventeen livres seventeen sous, for the poll-tax twenty-one livres eight sous, for the vingtiemes twenty-four livres four sous, in all ninety-nine livres three sous, to which must be added about five livres as the substitution for the corvee, in all 104 livres on a piece of property which he rents for 240 livres, a tax amounting to five-twelfths of his income.

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



III. The Common Laborer.

Four direct taxes on the common laborer.

The taxation authorities, however, in thus bearing down on taxable property has not released the taxable person without property. In the absence of land it seizes on men. In default of an income it taxes a man's wages. With the exception of the vingtiemes, the preceding taxes not only bore on those who possessed something but, again, on those who possessed nothing. In the Toulousain[5210] at St. Pierre de Barjouville, the poorest day-laborer, with nothing but his hands by which to earn his support, and getting ten sous a day, pays eight, nine and ten livres poll-tax. "In Burgundy[5211] it is common to see a poor mechanic, without any property, taxed eighteen and twenty livres for his poll-tax and the taille." In Limousin,[5212] all the money brought back by the masons in winter serves "to pay the taxes charged to their families." As to the rural day-laborers and the settlers (colons) the proprietor, even when privileged, who employs them, is obliged to take upon himself a part of their quota, otherwise, being without anything to eat, they cannot work,[5213] even in the interest of the master; man must have his ration of bread the same as an ox his ration of hay. "In Brittany,[5214] it is notorious that nine-tenths of the artisans, though poorly fed and poorly clothed, have not a crown free of debt at the end of the year," the poll-tax and others carrying off this only and last crown. At Paris[5215] "the dealer in ashes, the buyer of old bottles, the gleaner of the gutters, the peddlers of old iron and old hats," the moment they obtain a shelter pay the poll-tax of three livres and ten sous each. To ensure its payment the occupant of a house who sub-lets to them is made responsible. Moreover, in case of delay, a "blue man," a bailiff's subordinate, is sent who installs himself on the spot and whose time they have to pay for. Mercier cites a mechanic, named Quatremain, who, with four small children, lodged in the sixth story, where he had arranged a chimney as a sort of alcove in which he and his family slept. "One day I opened his door, fastened with a latch only, the room presenting to view nothing but the walls and a vice; the man, coming out from under his chimney, half sick, says to me, 'I thought it was the blue man for the poll-tax."' Thus, whatever the condition of the person subject to taxation, however stripped and destitute, the dexterous hands of the fisc take hold of him. Mistakes cannot possibly occur: it puts on no disguise, it comes on the appointed day and rudely lays its hand on his shoulder. The garret and the hut, as well as the farm and the farmhouse know the collector, the constable and the bailiff; no hovel escapes the detestable brood. The people sow, harvest their crops, work and undergo privation for their benefit; and, should the pennies so painfully saved each week amount, at the end of the year to a piece of silver, the mouth of their pouch closes over it.



IV. Collections And Seizures.—Observe the system actually at work. It is a sort of shearing machine, clumsy and badly put together, of which the action is about as mischievous as it is serviceable. The worst feature is that, with its creaking gear, the taxable, those employed as its final instruments, are equally shorn and flayed. Each parish contains two, three, five, or seven individuals who, under the title of collectors, and under the authority of the election tribunal, apportion and assess the taxes. "No duty is more onerous;"[5216] everybody, through patronage or favor, tries to get rid of it. The communities are constantly pleading against the refractory, and, that nobody may escape under the pretext of ignorance, the table of future collectors is made up for ten and fifteen years in advance. In parishes of the second class these consist of "small proprietors, each of whom becomes a collector about every six years." In many of the villages the artisans, day-laborers, and metayer-farmers perform the service, although requiring all their time to earn their own living. In Auvergne, where the able-bodied men expatriate themselves in winter to find work, the women are taken;[5217] in the election-district of Saint-Flour, a certain village has four collectors in petticoats.—They are responsible for all claims entrusted to them, their property, their furniture and their persons; and, up to the time of Turgot, each is bound for the others. We can judge of their risks and sufferings. In 1785,[5218] in one single district in Champagne, eighty-five are imprisoned and two hundred of them are on the road every year. "The collector, says the provincial assembly of Berry,[5219] usually passes one-half of the day for two years running from door to door to see delinquent tax-payers." "This service," writes Turgot,[5220] "is the despair and almost always the ruin of those obliged to perform it; all families in easy circumstances in a village are thus successively reduced to want." In short, there is no collector who is not forced to act and who has not each year "eight or ten writs" served on him[5221]. Sometimes he is imprisoned at the expense of the parish. Sometimes proceedings are instituted against him and the tax-contributors by the installation of "'blue men' and seizures, seizures under arrest, seizures in execution and sales of furniture." "In the single district of Villefranche," says the provincial Assembly of Haute-Guyenne, "a hundred and six warrant officers and other agents of the bailiff are counted always on the road."

The thing becomes customary and the parish suffers in vain, for it would suffer yet more were it to do otherwise. "Near Aurillac," says the Marquis de Mirabeau,[5222] "there is industry, application and economy without which there would be only misery and want. This produces a people equally divided into being, on the one hand, insolvent and poor and on the other hand shameful and rich, the latter who, for fear of being fined, create the impoverished. The taille once assessed, everybody groans and complains and nobody pays it. The term having expired, at the hour and minute, constraint begins, the collectors, although able, taking no trouble to arrest this by making a settlement, notwithstanding the installation of the bailiff's men is costly. But this kind of expense is habitual and people expect it instead of fearing it, for, if it were less rigorous, they would be sure to be additionally burdened the following year." The receiver, indeed, who pays the bailiff's officers a franc a day, makes them pay two francs and appropriates the difference. Hence "if certain parishes venture to pay promptly, without awaiting constraint, the receiver, who sees himself deprived of the best portion of his gains, becomes ill-humored, and, at the next department (meeting), an arrangement is made between himself, messieurs the elected, the sub-delegate and other shavers of this species, for the parish to bear a double load, to teach it how to behave itself."

A population of administrative blood-suckers thus lives on the peasant. "Lately," says an intendant, "in the district of Romorantin,[5223] the collectors received nothing from a sale of furniture amounting to six hundred livres, because the proceeds were absorbed by the expenses. In the district of Chateaudun the same thing occurred at a sale amounting to nine hundred livres and there are other transactions of the same kind of which we have no information, however flagrant." Besides this, the fisc itself is pitiless. The same intendant writes, in 1784, a year of famine:[5224] "People have seen, with horror, the collector, in the country, disputing with heads of families over the costs of a sale of furniture which had been appropriated to stopping their children's cry of want." Were the collectors not to make seizures they would themselves be seized. Urged on by the receiver we see them, in the documents, soliciting, prosecuting and persecuting the tax-payers. Every Sunday and every fete-day they are posted at the church door to warn delinquents; and then, during the week they go from door to door to obtain their dues. "Commonly they cannot write, and take a scribe with them." Out of six hundred and six traversing the district of Saint-Flour not ten of them are able to read the official summons and sign a receipt; hence innumerable mistakes and frauds. Besides a scribe they take along the bailiff's subordinates, persons of the lowest class, laborers without work, conscious of being hated and who act accordingly. "Whatever orders may be given them not to take anything, not to make the inhabitants feed them, or to enter taverns with collectors," habit is too strong "and the abuse continues."[5225] But, burdensome as the bailiff's men may be, care is taken not to evade them. In this respect, writes an intendant, "their obduracy is strange." "No person," a receiver reports,[5226] "pays the collector until he sees the bailiff's man in his house." The peasant resembles his ass, refusing to go without being beaten, and, although in this he may appear stupid, he is clever. For the collector, being responsible, "naturally inclines to an increase of the assessment on prompt payers to the advantage of the negligent. Hence the prompt payer becomes, in his turn, negligent and, although with money in his chest, he allows the process to go on."[5227] Summing all up, he calculates that the process, even if expensive, costs less than extra taxation, and of the two evils he chooses the least. He has but one resource against the collector and receiver, his simulated or actual poverty, voluntary or involuntary. "Every one subject to the taille," says, again, the provincial assembly of Berry, "dreads to expose his resources; he avoids any display of these in his furniture, in his dress, in his food, and in everything open to another's observation."—"M. de Choiseul-Gouffier,[5228] willing to roof his peasants' houses, liable to take fire, with tiles, they thanked him for his kindness but begged him to leave them as they were, telling him that if these were covered with tiles, instead of with thatch, the subdelegates would increase their taxation."—"People work, but merely to satisfy their prime necessities. . . . The fear of paying an extra crown makes an average man neglect a profit of four times the amount."[5229]—". . . Accordingly, lean cattle, poor implements, and bad manure-heaps even among those who might have been better off."[5230]—"If I earned any more," says a peasant, "it would be for the collector." Annual and illimitable spoliation "takes away even the desire for comforts." The majority, pusillanimous, distrustful, stupefied, "debased," "differing little from the old serfs,[5231]" resemble Egyptian fellahs and Hindoo pariahs. The fisc, indeed, through the absolutism and enormity of its claims, renders property of all kinds precarious, every acquisition vain, every accumulation delusive; in fact, proprietors are owners only of that which they can hide.



V. Indirect Taxes.

The salt-tax and the excise.

The tax-man, in every country, has two hands, one which visibly and directly searches the coffers of tax-payers, and the other which covertly employs the hand of an intermediary so as not to incur the odium of fresh extortions. Here, no precaution of this kind is taken, the claws of the latter being as visible as those of the former; according to its structure and the complaints made of it, I am tempted to believe it more offensive than the other.—In the first place, the salt-tax, the excises and the customs are annually estimated and sold to adjudicators who, purely as a business matter, make as much profit as they can by their bargain. In relation to the tax-payer they are not administrators but speculators; they have bought him up. He belongs to them by the terms of their contract; they will squeeze out of him, not merely their advances and the interest on their advances, but, again, every possible benefit. This suffices to indicate the mode of levying indirect taxes.—In the second place, by means of the salt-tax and the excises, the inquisition enters each household. In the provinces where these are levied, in Ile-de-France, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Orleanais, Berry, Bourbonnais, Bourgogne, Champagne, Perche, Normandy and Picardy, salt costs thirteen sous a pound, four times as much as at the present day, and, considering the standard of money, eight times as much[5232]. And, furthermore, by virtue of the ordinance of 1680, each person over seven years of age is expected to purchase seven pounds per annum, which, with four persons to a family, makes eighteen francs a year, and equal to nineteen days' work: a new direct tax, which, like the taille, is a fiscal hand in the pockets of the tax-payers, and compelling them, like the taille, to torment each other. Many of them, in fact, are officially appointed to assess this obligatory use of salt and, like the collectors of the taille, these are "jointly responsible for the price of the salt." Others below them, ever following the same course as in collecting the taille, are likewise responsible. "After the former have been seized in their persons and property, the speculator fermier is authorized to commence action, under the principle of mutual responsibility, against the principal inhabitants of the parish." The effects of this system have just been described. Accordingly, "in Normandy," says the Rouen parliament,[5233] "unfortunates without bread are daily objects of seizure, sale and execution."

But if the rigor is as great as in the matter of the taille, the vexations are ten times greater, for these are domestic, minute and of daily occurrence.—It is forbidden to divert an ounce of the seven obligatory pounds to any use but that of the "pot and the salt-cellar." If a villager should economize the salt of his soup to make brine for a piece of pork, with a view to winter consumption, let him look out for the collecting-clerks! His pork is confiscated and the fine is three hundred livres. The man must come to the warehouse and purchase other salt, make a declaration, carry off a certificate and show this at every visit of inspection. So much the worse for him if he has not the wherewithal to pay for this supplementary salt; he has only to sell his pig and abstain from meat at Christmas. This is the more frequent case, and I dare say that, for the metayers who pay twenty-five francs per annum, it is the usual case.—It is forbidden to make use of any other salt for the pot and salt-cellar than that of the seven pounds. "I am able to cite," says Letrosne, "two sisters residing one league from a town in which the warehouse is open only on Saturday. Their supply was exhausted. To pass three or four days until Saturday comes they boil a remnant of brine from which they extract a few ounces of salt. A visit from the clerk ensues and a proces-verbal. Having friends and protectors this costs them only forty-eight livres."—It is forbidden to take water from the ocean and from other saline sources, under a penalty of from twenty to forty livres fine. It is forbidden to water cattle in marshes and other places containing salt, under penalty of confiscation and a fine of three hundred livres. It is forbidden to put salt into the bellies of mackerel on returning from fishing, or between their superposed layers. An order prescribes one pound and a half to a barrel. Another order prescribes the destruction annually of the natural salt formed in certain cantons in Provence. Judges are prohibited from moderating or reducing the penalties imposed in salt cases, under penalty of accountability and of deposition.—I pass over quantities of orders and prohibitions, existing by hundreds. This legislation encompasses tax-payers like a net with a thousand meshes, while the official who casts it is interested in finding them at fault. We see the fisherman, accordingly, unpacking his barrel, the housewife seeking a certificate for her hams, the exciseman inspecting the buffet, testing the brine, peering into the salt-box and, if it is of good quality, declaring it contraband because that of the ferme, the only legitimate salt, is usually adulterated and mixed with plaster.