The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Europe from 1789 to 1918. Charles Downer Hazen
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but were customary, that is, feudal in origin and in spirit. There were indeed 285 different codes of customary laws in force, that is 285 different ways of regulating legally the personal relations of men with men, within the confines of France.
Again the same diversity in another sphere. Thirteen of the provinces of central France enjoyed free trade, that is, merchandise could move freely from one end of that area to the other without restriction. But the other nineteen provinces were separated from each other, just as nations are, by tariff boundaries, and when goods passed from one such province to another, they passed through custom-houses and duties were paid on them, as on goods that come from Europe to the United States.
All these diversities in laws, all these tariff boundaries, are easily explained. They were historical survivals, troublesome and irritating reminders of the Middle Ages. As the kings of France had during the ages annexed this province and then that, they had, more or less, allowed the local customs and institutions to remain undisturbed. Hence this amazing patchwork which baffles description.
One consequence of all this was the persistence in France of that feeling which in American history is known as the states-rights feeling. While all admitted that they were Frenchmen, provincial feeling was strong and frequently assertive. Men thought of themselves as Bretons, as Normans, were attached to the things that differentiated them, were inflexible or stubborn opponents of all attempts at amalgamation. Before France could be considered strongly united, fusion on a grand scale had to be accomplished. This was to be one of the memorable and durable achievements of the Revolution.
The financial condition of this extravagant and inefficient state was deplorable and dangerous. Almost half of the national income was devoted to the payment of interest on the national debt. Expenditures were always larger than receipts, with the national result that there was an annual deficit which had to be met by contracting a new loan, thus enlarging the debt and the interest charges. It appeared to be the principle of state finance, not that expenditures should be determined by income, but that income should be determined by expenditures. The debt therefore constantly increased, and to meet the chronic deficit the government had recourse to well-known methods which only aggravated the evil - the sale of offices, new loans. During twelve years of the reign of Louis XVI, from 1776 to 1788, the debt increased nearly $600,000,000. People became unwilling to loan to the state, and it was practically impossible to increase the taxes. The national finances were in a highly critical condition. Bankruptcy impended, and bankruptcy can only be avoided in two ways, either by increasing receipts or by reducing expenditures, or both. Attempts were made in the one direction and in the other, but were ineffectual.
The receipts, of course, came from the taxes, and the taxes were already very burdensome, at least for those who paid them. They were of two kinds, the direct and the indirect. The direct taxes were those on real estate, on personal property, and on income. From some of these the nobles and the clergy were entirely exempt and they therefore fell all the more heavily upon the class that remained, the third estate. From others the nobles, though not legally exempted, were in practice largely freed, because the authorities did not assess noble property nearly as high as they did the property of commoners. Tax assessors stood in awe of the great. Thus the royal princes who were subject to the income tax and who ought to have paid nearly two and a half million francs, as a matter of fact paid less than two hundred thousand. Again, a marquis who ought to have paid a property tax of 2,500 francs paid 400 and a bourgeois in the same province who ought to have paid 70 in reality paid 760. Such crass favoritism, which always worked in favor of the nobles, never in favor of members of the third estate, naturally served only deeply to embitter the latter class. Those who were the wealthiest and therefore the best able to support the state were the very ones who paid the least, thus conforming to the principle that to those that have shall be given and from those that have not shall be taken away even that which they have. It has been estimated that the state took from the middle classes, and from the workingmen and peasants, half their annual earnings in the form of these direct taxes.
There was another branch of the system of taxation which was oppressive and offensive for other reasons. There were certain indirect taxes which were collected, not by state officials, but by unpopular private individuals or companies, the farmers of taxes, as taxes they were called, who paid a lump sum to the state and then themselves collected the taxes, seeking of course to extract as much as possible from the people. Not only has this system of tax-collecting always proved most hateful, both in ancient and modern times, as the tax-farmers have always, in order to make as much as possible, applied the screws with pitiless severity, thus generating a maximum of odium and hatred; but in this particular case several of the indirect taxes would have been unjust and oppressive, even if collected with leniency, a thing never heard of. There was, for instance, the salt-tax, or gabelle, which came home, in stark odiousness, to every one. The trade in salt was not open to any one who might wish to engage in it, but was a monopoly of a company that bought the privilege from the state, and that company was most astoundingly favored by the law. For every person above seven years of age was required to buy at least seven pounds of salt annually whether he wished it or not. Even the utterly poor, who had not money enough to buy bread, were severely punished if they refused or neglected to buy the stated amount of salt. Moreover the tax-collectors had the right to search all houses from top to bottom to see that there was no evasion. Illicit trade in this necessary commodity was incessantly tracked down and severely punished. On the very eve of the Revolution it was officially estimated that 20,000 persons were annually imprisoned and over 500 annually condemned to death, or to service in the galleys, which was hardly preferable, for engaging in the illegal trade in salt. Moreover by an extra refinement in the art of oppression the seven pounds that all must buy could be used only for cooking or on the table. If one desired to salt down fish or meats for preservation, one must not use this particular salt for that purpose, but must buy an additional amount.
There was another equally intolerable tax, the excise on wine. The making of wine was a great national industry which had existed for centuries, but if ever there was a system calculated to depress it, it was the one in vogue in France. Wine was taxed all along the line from the producer to the consumer. Taxed at the moment of manufacture, taxed at the moment of sale by the producer, it was also taxed repeatedly in transportation, thirty-five or forty times for instance, between the south of France and Paris, so that the combined taxes amounted in the end to nearly as much as the cost of the original production. A trade exposed to such constant and heavy impositions could not greatly flourish.
Again the taxes both on salt and on wine were not uniform, but varied from region to region, so that the sense of unjust treatment was kept alive every day in the ordinary course of business, and smuggling was in many cases extremely profitable. This in turn led to savage punishments, which only augmented the universal discontent and entered like iron into the souls of men. In the system of taxation, as in the political structure, we find everywhere inequality of of taxation treatment, privileges, arbitrary and tyrannical regulations, unfair and coupled with uncertainty from year to year, for the regulations were not infrequently changed. No wonder that men, even nobles, criticized this fiscal system as shockingly unjust and scandalously oppressive.
The social organization of France, also, was far from satisfactory. On even the most cursory view many notorious abuses, many intolerable grievances, many irritating or harmful maladjustments stood forth, condemned by reason or the interest of large sections of the population.
Forms outworn, and institutions from which the life had departed, but whence issued a benumbing influence, hampered development in many directions. French society was frankly based upon the principle of inequality. There were three classes or orders, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate. Not only were the two classes of former classes privileged, that is, placed upon a better footing than the last, but it is curious to observe how the pervasive principle of unequal rights broke up even the formal unity of each of these classes. There was inequality of classes and there was also inequality between sections of the same class. The two privileged orders were favored in many ways, such as complete or partial exemption from taxes, or the right themselves to tax - the clergy through its right to tithes, the nobility through its right to exact feudal dues. Even some of the members of the third estate enjoyed privileges denied the rest. There were classes within classes. Of the 25,000,000 of Frenchmen, the clergy numbered about