Forbonnais remarks with truth, in his learned "Re- searches on French Finances," that, during the Middle Ages, monarchs usually lived on the produce of their domains; "and as extraordinary necessities," he adds, " were met by extraordinary taxes, they bore equally on the clergy, the nobility, and the people."
Most of the general taxes, voted by the three orders during the fourteenth century, were of this character. Nearly all the taxes established at this time were in- direct, that is to say, they bore on all consumers indis- criminately. When the tax was direct, it bore, not on propert/, but on incomes. For instance, nobles, clergy, and commoners were required to abandon to the AND THE REVOLUTION. 127 king a titlie of tlieir income. And the rule with regard to taxes laid by the States-General applied with equal :force to those which were laid by the Provincial States within their territories.
It is, true that even then the direct tax, called taille, •did not bear on men of rank, who were exempt in con- sideration of serving gratuitously as soldiers in time of war. But the taille, as a general tax, was restrict- ed in its operation; it applied to seigniories more than to the kingdom.
When the king first undertook to impose a tax of his own will and mere motion, he was well aware that policy indicated the selection of one which did not bear upon the nobility, and which they — who were the most powerful class in the kingdom, and the only rivals of the sovereign — would not be provoked to resist; and, accordingly, he chose the taille.
Inequalities enough existed already between the va- rious classes of Frenchmen; this new distinction was more sweeping than \ all, and aggravated while it con- firmed the others. Thencefortli, in proportion to the in- creased necessities which were produced by the enlarged ambition of the central power, the taille increased and multiplied, till the original amount levied was decupled, and every new tax was a taille,'^ Year by year the tax- gathering divided society anew, and re-erected the bar- rier between the taxables and the exempts. The first condition of the tax being its imposition, not on those who could afford to pay it, but on those who could not afford to resist it, government was driven into the monstrous anomaly of sparing the rich and burdening the poor. It is said that Mazarin once intended to 128 THE OLD REGIME supply a pressing exigency by a tax on the principal houses in Paris; Ibut, meeting with more resistance than he had anticipated, he simply added the five mill- ions he wanted to the taille levy. His design had been to tax the most wealthy citizens; in fact, he taxed the poorest; but the treasury got the money.
Taxes so unequal yielded a limited revenue; but there was no limit to the necessities of the throne. Still, king after king refused to convoke the States in order to obtain subsidies, and refrained from taxing the nobility lest the annoyance should provoke them to in- sist on a return to constitutional usage. Hence those prodigious and mischievous financial tours de force, which marked the history of the French treasury dur- ing the last three centuries of the monarchy.
A careful study of the financial 'and administrative history of the old regime shows to what straits and dis- honest shifts the want of money will reduce a govern- ment, however mild it may be, so long as it is uncheck- ed, and fears neither publicity on the one hand, nor revolution — that safeguard of popular liberty — on the other.
That history teems with instances of royal proper- ties sold, then resumed as inalienable; of violated con- tracts; vested rights trampled; public creditors sacri- ficed at every crisis; the public faith constantly broken. ° Privileges, granted as perpetual, were constantly re- voked. If it were possible to sympathize with the suf- ferings of martyrs to vanity, one would pity those un- fortunate new-made noblemen who, during the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, were so often called upon to pay for honors and unjust privileges, whose AND THE REVOLUTION. 129 price they had fully paid at the time of the original purchase. Louis XIV., for instance, annulled all the titles of nobility that had been granted during the nine- ty-two years previous, though most of them had been granted by himself. Their possessors could only retain them on paying more money, " all these titles having been granted by surprise," says the edict. An example which Louis XV. took care to imitate eighty years aft- erward.
It was pronounced illegal for militia-men to serve by substitute, as the practice would tend to enhance the value of recruits.
Cities, corporations, hospitals, were forced to repudi- ate their engagements in order to lend their money to the king. Parishes were hindered from undertaking useful works for fear that the taille might be less reg- ularly paid if their resources were divided.
It is related that M. Orry and M. Trudaine, who were respectively comptroller-general and director-gen- eral of the department of Bridges and Eoads, formed a plan for the commutation of seigniorial corvees on highways into an annual payment in money, to be ap- plied to repairing the roads of each canton. There is much instruction in the reason which deterred these able officials from executing their design; they were afraid, it is said, that it would be impossible to prevent the treasury from embezzling the money, and obliging the people bo^ to labor on the roads and to pay for their repairs besides. I do not hesitate to say that no private individual could escape ruin if he conducted his affairs as the great monarch in all his glory managed the public business.
F2 130 THE OLD REGIME All tlie old mediaeval institutions, whose faults were aggravated as eveiy thing around them improved, may be traced i;o a financial origin; the same is true of the pernicious innovations of a later date. To pay the debts of a day, powers were created which lasted cen- turies.
A particular tax, called the freehold duty {droit de franc fief), had been laid at a very remote period on commoners who possessed estates noble. This duty created the same division among lands as existed among men; and each helped the other. The freehold duty hindered the fusion of the nobility and the people on the neutral ground of real estate; and I dare say it was more effective than any thing else in keeping them apart. It opened a gulf between the nobleman and his neighbor. In England, nothing so powerfully aided the fusion of the two classes as the abolition, in the seventeenth century, of all the distinguishing marks which served to separate feudal lands from freeholds.
During the fourteenth century the feudal freehold duty was light, and only exacted at long intervals. During the eighteenth, when the feudal system was nearly abolished, it was rigorously levied every twenty years, and amounted to a twelvemonth's income of the land. Sons paid it on succeeding to their father. The agricultural society of Tours stated, in 1761, that "this duty was infinitely injurious to the progress of agri- cultural science. No tax levied by the king's govern- ment is so vexatious or so onerous in the country parts as this one." Another contemporary observed that "this imposition, which was originally paid but once in a lifetime, has become a very cruel exaction." The AND THE REVOLUTION. 131 nobility wished to see it abolished, for it operated to hinder commoners from buying their estates;i' but the necessities of government involved its maintenance, and even its extension.
The Middle Ages have been unjustly blamed for much of the mischief produced by the trade-corpora- tions. There is every reason to believe that, in the origin, trade-companies and trade-unions were formed merely for the purpose of uniting the members of each craft together, and establishing a sort of free govern- ment for each branch of industry, in order to assist and control the operatives. It does not appear that Saint Louis contemplated any thing beyond this.
It was not till the beginning of the sixteenth cen- tury, when the revival of civil and religious liberty was in full progress, that the idea of placing labor on the -footing of a privilege to be purchased of government was first broached. It was not till then that each craft became a small, close aristocracy, and a start was given to those monopolies which were so injurious to the progress of the arts and so odious to our an- cestors. From the time of Henry III., who general- ized, if he did not actually create the evil, to that of Louis XVI., who extirpated it, it may be said that the system of trade-companies acquired fresh strength and extension every year; and this, while the progress of society as steadily aggravated their inconvenience, and common sense revealed their absurdity. Year after year the close corporation system was adopted by new trades, while the privileges of the old companies were constantly on the increase. The evil reached its cli- max at the period which is usually termed the glorious 132 THE OLD REGIME portion of the reign of Louis XIV.; for that was the time when the government stood in most urgent need of money, and was most firmly resolved not to appeal to the country.
Letronne remarked very justly in 1775, " Govern- ment established trade-corporations solely for the pur- pose of obtaining ^oney from them, either by the sale of patents, or by the creation of offices which the cor- porations were bound to buy up. The edict of 1673 carried out thoroughly the principles of Henry III. by obliging all corporations to purchase charters from government; the next step was compelling all trades not incorporated to form companies. This wretched business yielded three hundred thousand livres."
We have already seen how the constitutions of cities were overthrown, not from political motives, but in order to supply the public coffers with resources.
The same pecuniary necessities, coupled with a fixed aversion to appeal to the States, led to the sale of of- fices— a feature in the old regime which gradually as- sumed such proportions that history may b© searched in vain for a parallel. It owed its origin to fiscal in- genuity. But it was so well contrived that for three centuries it fed the vanity of the middle classes, and directed the whole of their energies toward the acqui- sition of place; it stamped on the national heart that rasre for offices, which. became the source alike of our revolutions and our servitude.
As the finances became more embarrassed, new offi- ces were created, with exemptions from taxation or privileges by way of salary; and, as they were created to supply the wants of the treasury, and not the re- AND THE REVOLUTION. 133 quirements of the public service, an immense number of them were useless or positively mischievous. 'i As early as 1664, when Colbert instituted an inquiry into the subject, it was discovered that the capital invest- ed in this miserable business nearly amounted to five hundred millions of livres. It is said that Richelieu abolished a hundred thousand offices. They rose anew under fresh names. For a trifle of money, peo- ple trafiicked away the right of directing and control- ling their own servants. The net result of this sys- tem was a government machine, so vast, so compli- cated, so cumbrous, and so inefficient, that it was actu- ally found necessary to let it stand idle, while a new instrument, constructed with more simplicity and bet- ter adapted for use, performed the work which these countless functionaries were supposed to do."^ It may be affirmed that none of these detestable in- stitutions could have lasted twenty years if it had been lawful to discuss their merits. None would have been established or extended if the States had been consulted, or if their complaints had been noticed when they were convened. On the rare occasions when the States met during the later ages of the monarchy, they were uniformly presented as a grievance. These as- semblies frequently traced all the abuses of which they complained to the king's usurpation of the right of levying taxes arbitrarily, or, to use the energetic ex- pressions of the fifteenth century, " of his enriching himself out of the substance of the people without the advice and consent of the three Estates. " They did not confine their remonstrances to their own wrongs; they strenuously demanded, and often succeeded in enforc 134 THE OLD EEGIME 134 THE OLD EEGIME ing respect for the rights of the provinces and cities. Some members protested at everj session against the inequality of the public burdens. They repeatedly demanded the abolition of trade-corporations. They assailed the sale of offices century after century with increasing warmth. " To sell offices," they said, " is to sell justice, which is infamous." When the system of venal offices was firmly established, they complained of its abuse as persistently as ever. They exclaimed against the creation of useless and dangerous privi- leges; but all was in vain. These institutions were barricades against the people. They were devised in order to obviate the necessity of convening the States, and to conceal from the public eye taxes which the government dared not exhibit in an honest light.
JSFor were the good kings any better in this respect than the bad ones. It was Louis XII. who system- atized the sale of offices, and Henry IV. who first sold hereditary ones. So weak was personal virtue against the vice of the system!
It was the desire to avoid meeting the States which led to the original grant of political power to the Par- liaments, whence the judiciary became mixed with government in a manner that could not but be preju^ dicial to business. Policy dictated the establishment of new guarantees in the room of those that were taken away; for the French, who are patient enough under moderate despotisms, do not like the sight of them; and it is always wise to surround absolute power in France with a fence which, though it may not im- pede its movements, may conceal them from the pub- lic eye.
AND THE REVOLUTION. VS5 In fine, it was through fear lest the nation, whose money the kings wanted, should insist upon the resto- ration of its liberties, that class divisions were kept up; for by this means organized resistance or a com- mon understanding was rendered impossible, and the government was certain of having to deal with each small clique separately. In the long course of French history, there reigned many distinguished sovereigns, several who were men of wit, some who were men of talent, while nearly all were men of courage; but there was not a single one who tried to eiface class distinc- tions, or to promote union otherwise than as a condi- tion of dependence. I am wrong; there was one who did desire to see the people united, and tried with all his heart to unite them,, and that one — wonderful mys- tery of God's judgments I — was Louis XVI.!
The great crime of the old kings was the division of the people into classes. Their subsequent policy fol- lowed as a matter of course; for when the wealthy and enlightened portion of a people are debarred from com- bination for public purposes, self-government becomes impossible, and tyranny becomes a necessity.
Turgot, in a secret report to the king, observes sad- ly, "• The nation is composed of several disunited classes and a divided people; hence no one takes thought for any thing but his own private interest. Public spirit is a thing unknown. Villages and cities have no mutual relations with each other, nor have the counties {arrondissementi) in which they are situate. They are even unable to come to an understanding for the repair of the common roads. An incessant war- fare is carried on between rival claims and preten- 136 THE OLD EEaiME sions; the decision is invariably referred to your maj- esty or your servants. An order from you is required before people will pay taxes, or respect the rights of their neighbors, or even exercise their own."
It was no slight task to reunite people who had been strangers to each other, or foes for so many centuries. It was very difficult to teach them to come to an under- standing for the transaction of their common business. Division was a comparatively easy achievement. We have furnished the world with a memorable illustration of the difficulty of the reverse process. When, sixty years ago, the various classes into which French socie- ty was divided were suddenly brought together, after a separation of several centuries, their only points of contact were their old sores; they only met to tear each other in pieces. Their rival jealousies and liatreds sur- vive to this day.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 137 CHAPTER XL OP THE KIND OF LIBERTY ENJOYED UNDER THE OLD REGIME, AND OF ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE REVOLUTION.
IT is impossible to form an accurate conception of the government of tlie old regime, and of the socie- ty which produced the Revolution, without pursuing somewhat farther the perusal of this book.
The spectacle of a people so divided and narrowed into cliques, with a royal authority so extensive and powerful, might lead to the impression that the spirit of independence had disappeared with public liberty, and that all Frenchmen were equally bowed in subjec- tion. Nothing of the kind was the case. The govern- ment was sole and absolute manager of the public bus- iness, but it was not master of individual citizens.
Liberty survived in the midst of institutions already prepared for despotism; but it was a curious kind of liberty, not easily understood to-day. A very close in- spection can alone discern the precise proportions of good and evil which it contained.
While the central government was displacing all the local authorities, and absorbing the whole power of the kingdom, its action was often impeded by institutions which it had either created or refrained from destroying, by old usages and customs, by rooted abuses. These nurtured a spirit of resistance in the minds of individ- uals, and preserved the characters of a good many from losing all their temper and outline.
138 THE OLD REGIME 138 THE OLD REGIME The central government had the same character, used the same means, sought the same ends that it does to- day, but its power was less. Bent on making money- out of every thing, it had sold most of the public of- fices, and made away with the privilege of disposing of its patronage at will.^ One of its passions had been, the detriment of the other; its avarice had counteract- ed its ambition. It could not carry out its measures without employing agents whom it had not trained to the work, and whom it could not discharge for ineffi- ciency. Its positive commands were thus often neu- tralized by the loose manner in which they were carried out. This strange radical vice of the system operated as a sort of check against the omnipotence of govern- ment— a breakwater, irregular in form and badly built, but still serving to break the shock and weaken the force of authority.
Again, the government had not as many favors to dispose of, in the shape of charitable assistance, hon- ors, and money, as it has to-day; its power of seduc- tion, like its power of control, was le§s.
It was not itself aware of the exact limits of its powers. None of them were solidly established or reg- ularly recognized. Its sphere was immense, but it trav- ersed it with uncertain step, groping its way through obscure and unknown paths. And that obscurity, which veiled the limits of its powers, and shrouded all its rights, favorable as it was to the encroachments of royalty, was likewise favorable to the defense of popu- lar freedom.
With the consciousness of its recent rise and slender origin, the administration was invariably timid in the AND THE REVOLUTION. 139 face of obstacles. It is a striking sight to see, in the correspondence of the ministers and intendants of the eighteenth' century, how quickly this government, which was so overbearing and despotic when all was submission, lost its presence of mind at the first show of resistance, was alarmed by the mildest criticism, and terrified at the least noise. On these occasions it stop- ped short, hesitated, tried to compromise matters, and often withdrew from the contest at the sacrifice of a portion of its legitimate authority. Such was the course best suited to the weak selfishness of Louis XV. and the benevolence of his successor. These sovereigns, besides, never supposed for a moment that any one thought of dethroning them. They were strangers to the harshness and distrust which fear has since often planted in the hearts of rulers. They never perceived that they were trampling people under foot.
Many of the prejudices, and privileges, and false no- tions which stood in the way of the foundation of wholesome liberty, encouraged in many minds a spirit of independence and even insubordination.
The nobility held the government proper in supreme contempt, though they had occasional relations with its agents. Even after their power was gone, the nobles preserved some relic of the pride of their ances- tors, who rebelled alike against servitude and against law. They took no thought for the liberty of the masses, and willingly allowed the government to lay its hand heavily on them; but they had no notion of submitting to it themselves, whatever resistance might cost. At the outbreak of the Kevolution, the language and tone of the nobility toward the king and his agents 140 THE OLD REGIME 140 THE OLD REGIME were infinitely more haughty than those of the Third Estate, though the latter was on the point of overturn- ing the throne, by whose side the former were to fall. The nobility claim the invention of nearly all the guar- antees of the rights of the subject that were enjoyed during our thirty-seven years of representative govern- ment. Their old cahiers^ in spite of their errors and prejudices, breathe the spirit of a great aristocracy.' It will always be a subject of regret that the French nobility was destroyed and uprooted instead of being subjected to the control of the laws. The error de- prived the nation of a portion of its substance, and dealt liberty a wound that will never heal. The no- bility had been the first class in the kingdom, and had enjoyed undisputed greatness for so many centuries, that it had acquired a high-mindedness, a self-reliance, a sense of responsibility, which rendered it the most solid portion of the social frame. Virile itself, it im- parted virility to the other classes of society. Its ex- tirpation weakened its very assailants. It can never be wholly restored — can never revive of itself; it may regain the titles and estates of its ancestors, but their spirit, never.
The clergy, who have since been abjectly servile in civil matters to any and every temporal authority, and the most audacious flatterers of any monarch who con- descended to appear to favor the Church, were then the most independent body in the nation, the only one whose peculiar liberties were safe from assault.
When the provinces had lost their franchises, and the city charters were a mere name, when ten nobles could not meet to discuss business without the ex- AND THE REVOLUTION. 141 press permission of the king, the French Church held its periodical assemblies just as usual. Nor were the several ecclesiastical authorities without fixed limits.^ Substantial guarantees shielded the lower clergy from the oppression of their superiors. No arbitrary pow- er in the hands of the bishop schooled them to passive obedience to the king. I have no intention of discuss- ing the old constitution of the Church; I only observe that it did not teach the priests political servility.
Many ecclesiastics, moreover, were men of rank, and carried with them into the Church the pride and in- tractabihty of their class. All held a high rank in the state, and enjoyed privileges. The very feudal rights which militated so gravely against the moral power of the Church, imparted to its individual members a feel- ing of independence toward the civil authority.
Above all, the possession of real estate endowed the clergy with the feelings, and necessities, and opin- ions, and even the passions of citizens. I have had the patience to read most of the reports and debates of the old provincial assemblies, especially those of Languedoc, where the clergy took an unusual share in the details of government, and the reports of the pro- vincial assemblies which were held in 1779 and 1787; and, bringing to bear on these documents our modern ideas, I have been amazed to find bishops and abhes^ many of whom were as eminent in holiness as in learn- ing, report ably on the opening of a road or the con- struction of a canal, argue with knowledge and science on the best means of increasing the agricultural yield of lands, of improving the condition or developing the industry of the people, and prove themselves always 142 THE OLD REGIME 142 THE OLD REGIME the equals, and often the superiors of the laymen with whom they were associated."^ I venture to think, in opposition to the generally re- ceived opinion, that systems which debar the Catholic clergy from the possession of landed property, and pro- vide for their remuneration in money, serve no inter- ests but those of the Papacy and the temporal power, and deprive the people of a very important element of liberty.
For a man whose best qualities are under foreign control, and who can have no family in the land he in- habits, there can be but one substantial motive for patriotism — the ownership of real estate. Remove that motive, and he ceases to belong to any one place rather than another. A stranger to civil society, he lives where chance has planted him, without sharing any of the interests which surround him. His conscience is in the hands of the Pope, his livelihood in those of the sovereign. He has no country but the Church. In political troubles, he thinks of nothing but its dangers^ and its advancement. If it be free and prosperous, what matters the rest? His normal political state is indifference. An excellent member of the Christian city, he is but a poor citizen of any other. Feelings and ideas such as his, in a body intrusted with the ed- ucation of youth and the censorship of morals, can not but enervate the national spirit for all the concerns of public life.
To form a correct idea of the changes that can be wrought in men's minds by changes in their condition, one must read once more the cahiers presented by the clerical order in 1789, AND TllK KEVOLUTION. 143