The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte
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truly patriotic. It is therefore probable that, of the forty-three millions of returns from the direct imposts and from the patriotic contribution, they have furnished the larger portion, perhaps two thirds of it, or even three-quarters. If this be the case, the peasant, the former tax-payer, gave nothing or almost nothing from his pocket during the first year of the Revolution. For instance, in regard to the patriotic contribution, the Assembly left it to the conscience of each person to fix his own quota; at the end of six months, consciences are found too elastic, and the Assembly is obliged to confer this right on the municipalities. The result is3248 that this or that individual who taxed himself at forty-eight livres, is taxed at a hundred and fifty; another, a cultivator, who had offered six livres, is judged to be able to pay over one hundred. Every regiment contains a small number of select brave men, and it is always these who are ready to advance under fire. Every State contains a select few of honest men who advance to meet the tax-collector. Some effective constraint is essential in the regiment to supply those with courage who have but little, and in the State to supply those with probity who do not possess it. Hence, during the eight months which follow, from May 1st, 1790, to January 1st, 1791, the patriotic contribution furnishes but 11,000,000 livres. Two years later, on the 1st of February, 1793, out of the forty thousand communal tax-rolls which should provide for it, there are seven thousand which are not yet drawn up; out of 180,000,000 livres which it ought to produce, there are 70,000,000 livres which are still due.—The resistance of the tax-payer produces a similar deficit, and similar delays in all branches of the national income.3249 In the month of June, 1790, a deputy declares in the tribune that "out of thirty-six millions of imposts which ought to be returned each month only nine have been received."3250 In the month of November, 1791, a reporter on the budget states that the receipts, which should amount to forty or forty-eight millions a month, do not reach eleven millions and a half. On February 1, 1793, there remains still due on the direct taxes of 1789 and 1790 one hundred and seventy-six millions. It is evident that the people struggle with all their might against the old taxes, even authorized and prolonged by the Constituent Assembly, and all that is obtained from them is wrested from them.
Will the people be more docile under the new taxation? The Assembly exhorts them to be so and shows them how, with the relief they have gained and with the patriotism they ought to possess, they can and should discharge their dues. The people are able to do it because, having got rid of tithes, feudal dues, the salt-tax, octrois and excise duties, they are in a comfortable position. They should do so, because the taxation adopted is indispensable to the State, equitable, assessed on all in proportion to their fortune, collected and expended under rigid scrutiny, without perversion or waste, according to precise, clear, periodical and audited accounts. No doubt exists that, after the 1st of January, 1791, the date when the new financial scheme comes into operation, each tax-payer will gladly pay as a good citizen, and the two hundred and forty millions of the new tax on real property, and the sixty millions of that on personal property, leaving out the rest—registries, license, and customs duties—will flow in regularly and easily of their own accord.
Unfortunately, before the tax-gatherer can collect the first two levies these have to be assessed, and as there are complicated writings and formalities, claims to settle amidst great resistance and local ignorance, the operation is indefinitely prolonged. The personal and land-tax schedule of 1791 is not transmitted to the departments by the Assembly until June, 1791. The departments do not distribute it among the districts until the months of July, August, and September, 1791. It is not distributed by the districts among the communes before October, November, and December, 1791. Thus in the last month of 1791 it is not yet distributed to the tax-payers by the communes; from which it follows that on the budget of 1791 and throughout that year, the tax-payer has paid nothing.—At last, in 1792, everybody begins to receive this assessment. It would require a volume to set forth the partiality and dissimulation of these assessments. In the first place the office of assessor is one of danger; the municipal authorities, whose duty it is to assign the quotas, are not comfortable in their town quarters. Already, in 1790,3251 the municipal officers of Monbazon have been threatened with death if they dared to tax industrial pursuits on the tax-roll, and they escaped to Tours in the middle of the night. Even at Tours, three or four hundred insurgents of the vicinity, dragging along with them the municipal officers of three market-towns, come and declare to the town authorities "that for all taxes they will not pay more than forty-five sous per household." I have already narrated how, in 1792, in the same department, "they kill, they assassinate the municipal officers" who presume to publish the tax-rolls of personal property. In Creuse, at Clugnac, the moment the clerk begins to read the document, the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and "tear it up with countless imprecations;" the municipal council is assailed, and two hundred persons stone its members, one of whom is thrown down, has his head shaved, and is promenaded through the village in derision.—When the small tax-payer defends himself in this manner, it is a warning that he must be humored. The assessment, accordingly, in the village councils is made amongst a knot of cronies. Each relieves himself of the burden by shoving it off on somebody else. "They tax the large proprietors, whom they want to make pay the whole tax." The noble, the old seigneur, is the most taxed, and to such an extent that in many places his income does not suffice to pay his quota.—In the next place they make themselves out poor, and falsify or elude the prescriptions of the law. "In most of the municipalities, houses, tenements, and factories3252 are estimated according to the value of the area they cover, and considered as land of the first class, which reduces the quota to almost nothing." And this fraud is not practiced in the villages alone. "Communes of eight or ten thousand souls might be cited which have arranged matters so well amongst themselves in this respect that not a house is to be found worth more than fifty sous."—Last expedient of all, the commune defers as long as it can the preparation of its tax-rolls. On the 30th of January, 1792, out of 40,211, there are only 2,560 which are complete; on the 5th of October, 1792, the schedules are not made out in 4,800 municipalities, and it must be noted that all this relates to a term of administration which has been finished for more than nine months. At the same date, there are more than six thousand communes which have not yet begun to collect the land-tax of 1791, and more than fifteen thousand communes which have not yet begun to collect the personal tax; the Treasury and the departments have not yet received 152,000,000 francs, there being still 222,000,000 to collect. On the 1st February, 1793, there still remains due on the same period 161,000,000 francs, while of the 50,000,000 assessed in 1790, to replace the salt-tax and other suppressed duties, only 2,000,000 have been collected. Finally, at the same date, out of the two direct taxes of 1792, which should produce 300,000,000, less than 4,000,000 have been received.—It is a maxim of the debtor that he must put off payment as long as possible. Whoever the creditor may be, the State or a private individual, a leg or a wing may be saved by dint of procrastination. The maxim is true, and, on this occasion, success once more demonstrates its soundness. During the year 1792, the peasant begins to discharge a portion of his arrears, but it is with assignats. In January, February, and March, 1792, the assignats diminish thirty-four, forty-four, and forty-five per cent. in value; in January, February, and March, 1793, forty-seven and fifty percent.; in May, June, and July, 1793, fifty-four, sixty, and sixty-seven per cent. Thus has the old credit of the State melted away in its hands; those who have held on to their crowns gain fifty per cent. and more. Again, the greater their delay the more their debts diminish, and already, on the strength of this, the way to release themselves at half-price is found.
Meanwhile, hands are laid on the badly defended landed property of this feeble creditor.—It is always difficult for rude brains to form any conception of the vague, invisible, abstract entity called the State, to regard it as a veritable personage and a legitimate proprietor, especially when they are persistently told that the State is everybody. The property of all is the property of each, and as the forests belong to the public, the first-comer has a right to profit by them. In the month of December, 1789,3253 bands of sixty men or more chop down the trees in the