The Eve of the French Revolution

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Within a given province or district, there was no proportional equality
among persons in the matter of taxation. It was sometimes said that the
noble paid with his blood, the villein with his money. But the order of
the Nobility had come to include many persons who never thought of
shedding their blood for their country; to include, in fact, the rich
and prosperous generally. These were not (as they are sometimes
represented to have been), quite free from taxation. Something like one
half of the taxes were indirect, and might be supposed to be paid by all
classes in proportion to their consumption. Yet even for the indirect
taxes, privileged persons managed to find ways partially to escape. Some
of the direct taxes were deducted from salaries, or imposed on incomes,
but it was said that the rich and powerful often succeeded in having
their incomes lightly assessed. By way of increasing the inequality of
taxation, the government had a habit, when in need of more money than
usual, of adding a percentage to some old tax, instead of devising a new
one, thus bearing most heavily with the new impost on those classes
which were most severely taxed already.

First among French taxes, both in blundering unfairness and in evil
fame, came the Land Tax or _Taille_, producing for the twenty-four
districts a revenue of about forty-five million livres, or with its
accessory taxes, of about seventy-five millions.[Footnote: Bailly, ii.
307. Necker, _De l'Administration_, i. 6, 35, puts the taille at 91
millions, but I think he includes the tailles abonnees, paid by the Pays
d'etats, although not those paid by cities.]

The taille was of feudal origin, and in the Middle Ages was paid to the
lord by his tenants. In the fifteenth century, however, it had already
been diverted to the royal treasury, and its product was employed in the
maintenance of troops. It was therefore paid only by villeins, for the
nobles served in person, and the clergy by substitute, if at all.

The exemption of the upper orders from liability to the taille clung
to that tax after the reason for such freedom had ceased to exist. The
tax itself early grew to be of two kinds, real and personal. The
_taille reele_, common in the southern provinces of France, was a true
land-tax, assessed according to a survey and valuation on all lands
not accounted noble, nor belonging to the church, nor to the
public. The distinction between noble and peasant lands was an old
one; and the peasant lands paid the tax even when owned by privileged
persons. [Footnote: Turgot, iv. 74.]

Over the greater part of France, however, the _taille reele_ did
not exist, and only the _taille personelle_ was in force. This bore
on the profits of the land and on all forms of industry; but the
churchmen and the nobles were exempt, at least in part.[Footnote: There
appears to have been a limit to the exemption of nobles cultivating
their own lands.] Owing to its personal nature, the tax was payable at
the residence of the person taxed. If a peasant lived in one parish and
derived most of his income from land situated in another, he was taxable
at the place of his residence, at a rate perhaps entirely different from
that of the parish in which his farm was situated. It might happen that
a large part of the lands of a parish were owned by non-residents, and
that the ability of the parish to pay its taxes was thus reduced. But
there were exceptions to the rule by which the tax followed the person,
and the whole matter was so complicated as to be a fertile cause of
dispute and of double taxation.[Footnote: Turgot, iv. 76.]

The method of assessment and levy was peculiar. The gross amount of the
taille was determined twice a year by the royal council, and apportioned
arbitrarily among the twenty-four districts (generalites) of France, and
then subdivided by various officials among the sub-districts (elections)
and the parishes. The divisions thus made were very unequal; some
provinces, sub-districts, and parishes being treated much more severely
than others, apparently rather by accident or custom than for any
equitable reason. An influential person could often obtain a diminution
of the tax of his village. When the work of subdivision was completed,
the syndics and other parish officers were notified of the tax laid on
their parishes, which were thenceforth liable for the amount. But the
taille had still to be apportioned among the inhabitants. For this
purpose from three to seven collectors were elected in every rural
community by popular vote. The collectors assessed their neighbors at
their own discretion, and were personally responsible to the government
for the whole amount assessed on the parish. In consideration of this,
and of their labor, they were allowed to collect a percentage in
addition to the taille, for their own pay.[Footnote: "Six deniers par
livre" = 2 1/2 per cent. Turgot, vii. 125. Sometimes 5 per cent. Babeau,
Le Village, 225.] The whole process was the cause of endless bickerings
and disputes, lawsuits and appeals, and the collectors were frequently
ruined in spite of all their efforts. They were ignorant peasants,
unused to accounts, sometimes unable to read. In some of the mountain
parishes of the Pyrenees their accounts were kept on notched sticks to a
period not very long before the Revolution.[Footnote: Bailly, ii. 159.
Horn, 224 Babeau, Le Village, 222, 224. Turgot, vii. 122, iv. 51.
_Encyclopedie_, xv. 841 (_Taille_). A similar practice existed
in the English Court of Exchequer, to a later date.]

The liability to the taille was joint. A gross sum was laid on the
parish, and if one person escaped, or was unable to pay, his share had
to be borne by the rest. On the other hand, if one man were
overcharged, the burden of his neighbors was lightened. Thus it was
every one's interest to seem poor. And the taxes were so important a
matter, taking so large a part of the yearly income, that they
modified the whole conduct of life. People dared not appear at their
ease, lest their shares should be increased. They hid their wealth and
took their luxuries in secret. One day, Jean Jacques Rousseau,
traveling on foot, as was his wont, entered a solitary farm-house, and
asked for a meal. A pot of skimmed milk and some coarse barley bread
were set before him, the peasant who lived in the house saying that
this was all he had. After a while, however, the man took courage on
observing the manners and the appetite of his guest. Telling Rousseau
that he was sure he was a good, honest fellow, and no spy, he
disappeared through a trap-door, and presently came back with good
wheaten bread, a little dark with bran, a ham, and a bottle of wine.
An omelet was soon sizzling in the dish. When the time came for
Rousseau to pay and depart, the peasant's fears returned. He refused
money, he was evidently distressed. Rousseau made out that the bread
and the wine were hidden for fear of the tax-gatherer; that the man
believed he would be ruined, if he were known to have anything.
[Footnote: Rousseau, xvii. 281 (_Confessions_, Part i. liv. iv.).
Vauban, 51, and _passim_. Bois-Guillebert, 191.]

As it was for the advantage of individuals to be thought poor, so it was
best for villages to appear squalid. The Marquis of Argenson writes in
his journal: "An officer of the _election_ has come into the
village where my country-house is, and has said that the taille of the
parish would be much raised this year; he had noticed that the peasants
looked fatter than elsewhere, had seen hens' feathers lying about the
doors, that people were living well and were comfortable, that I spent a
great deal of money in the village for my household expenses, etc. This
is what discourages the peasants. This is what causes the misfortunes of
the kingdom. This is what Henry IV. would weep over were he living now."
[Footnote: D'Argenson, vi. 256 (Sept. 12, 1750). See also vi. 425, vii.
55, viii. 8, 35, 53.]

The country people had grown to be very distrustful and suspicious
wherever officials of the government were concerned. "I remember a
singular feature of this subject," says Necker. "I think it was twenty
years ago that an intendant, with the laudable intention of encouraging
the manufacture of honey and the cultivation of bees, began by asking
for statistics as to the number of hives kept in the province. The
people did not understand his intentions, they were, perhaps, suspicious
of them, and in a few days almost all the hives were destroyed."
[Footnote: _De l'Administration_, iii. 232.]

No one could be induced to pay promptly, lest he should be thought to
have money. The tax was due in four payments, from the first of October
to the last of April, but the collection of one instalment was seldom
completed before the following one was due; that of one year seldom made
before the next had come. The peasants obliged the collectors to wring
out the hard-earned copper pieces one or two at a time. The tardy were
vexed with fines and distraints. Furniture, doors, the very rafters and
floors were sold for unpaid taxes. In the time of Louis XV., if a whole
village fell too much behindhand, its four principal inhabitants might
be seized and carried off to jail. This corporal joint-liability was
ended by a law passed under the ministry of Turgot, and apparently not
repealed on his fall.[Footnote: Horn, 238; Vauban; Bailly, ii. 203;
Stourm, i. 52; Turgot, vii. 119.]

The assessment and collection of the taille presented many anomalies. In
some places commissioners had been appointed by the intendant, for the
purpose of assessing estates and of reckoning the value of day's labor
of artisans. This method worked well and gave satisfaction, but it
extended only to a few provinces.[Footnote: Babeau, _Le Village_,
214.]

From the land tax we pass to the Twentieths (_vingtiemes_
[Footnote: Not to be confounded with the _Droit de vingtieme_, an
indirect tax on wine. Kaufmann, 33. Notice that the two
_vingtiemes_ are constantly spoken of as the _dixieme_.]),
which, as their name implies, were in theory taxes of five per cent. on
incomes. From these the clergy only were freed (having bought of the
crown a perpetual exemption). Two twentieths and four sous in the livre
of the first twentieth, or eleven per cent., was the regular rate in the
reign of Louis XVI., and was expected to bring in from fifty-five to
sixty million livres a year. A third twentieth was laid in 1782, to last
for three years after the end of the war of the American Revolution,
then in progress. This twentieth brought in twenty-one and a half
millions only, on account of various exemptions that were allowed. The
liability to the twentieths was not joint but individual; so that when a
deduction was made from the amount charged to one tax-payer, the sum
demanded of the others was not increased.

An attempt was made to levy the twentieths on the various sorts of
income. The product of agriculture paid the largest part, but a
percentage was retained on salaries and pensions paid by the government,
and the incomes of public officers receiving fees was estimated. In
spite of the desire to include every income in the operation of this
tax, it was generally believed that valuations were habitually made too
low, and that unfair discrimination took place. The inhabitants of some
provinces, on the other hand, were thought to be overcharged. Attempts
at rectification were resisted by the courts of law, the doctrine being
asserted that the valuation of a man's income for the purposes of this
tax could not legally be increased. It is instructive to compare the
interest thus shown in the rights of the upper classes, who shared in
the payment of the twentieths, with the indifference manifested to the
arbitrary manner in which the common people were treated in levying the
Land Tax.[Footnote: Necker reckons the two _vingtiemes_ and four
sous at 55,000,000 livres. _De l'Administration_, i. 5, 6.
_Compte rendu_, 61. Ibid., _Memoire au roi sur l'establissement
des administrations provinciales_, 25. Necker abolished the
_vingtieme d'industrie_ applied to manufactures and commerce.
_Compte rendu_, 64. In his later book he speaks of it as subsisting
in a few provinces only. _De l'Administration_, i. 159. Turgot, iv.
289. Stourm, i. 54.]

The poll tax (_capitation_) was one only in name. It was in fact a
roughly reckoned income tax, and the inhabitants of France were for its
purposes divided into twenty-two classes, according to their supposed
ability to pay. In the country, the amount demanded for this tax was
usually proportioned to that of the personal taille. People who paid no
taille were assessed according to their public office, military rank,
business, or profession. The rules were complicated, giving rise to
endless disputes. In theory the very poor were exempt, but the exemption
was not very generous, for maid-servants were charged at the rate of
three livres and twelve sous a year, and there were yet poorer people
who paid less than half that amount. If the poor man failed to pay, a
garrison (_garnison_) was lodged upon him. A man in blue, with a
gun, came and sat by his fire, slept in his bed, and laid hands on any
money that might come into the house, thus collecting the tax and his
own wages. The amount levied by the poll-tax and accessories was from
thirty-six to forty-two million livres a year.[Footnote: Bailly, ii.
307. Necker, _De l'Administration_, i. 8. Mercier, iii. 98, xi. 96.
Mercier thinks that the _capitation_ was more feared than the
_dixieme_, and than the _entrees_, because it attached more
directly to the individual and to his person. Does this mean greater
severity in collection? Notice that he writes of Paris, where there is
no taille.]

The indirect taxes of France were mostly farmed. Once in six years the
Controller General of the Finances for the time being entered into a
contract, nominally with a man of straw, but actually with a body of
rich financiers, who appeared as the man's sureties, and who were known
as the Farmers General. The first operation of the Farmers, after
entering into the contract, was to raise a capital sum for the purpose
of buying out their predecessors, of taking over the material on hand,
and of paying an advance to the government; for although many individual
Farmers General held over from one contract to the next, the association
was a new one for each lease. In 1774, just before the death of King
Louis XV., a new contract was made, and the capital advanced amounted to
93,600,000 livres. The Farmers were allowed interest on this sum at the
rate of ten per cent. for the first sixty millions, and of seven per
cent. for the remaining 33,600,000 livres. This interest was, however,
taxed by the government for the two twentieths.

The rent paid by the Farmers under this contract was 152,000,000 livres
a year, for which consideration they were allowed to collect the
indirect taxes and keep the product. This system, which is at least as
old as the New Testament, is now generally condemned, but in the
eighteenth century it found defenders even among liberal writers.

The Farmers General in the contract of 1774 were sixty in number, but
they did not divide among themselves all the profits of the enterprise.
It was the habit to accord to many people a share in the operations of
the farm, without any voice in its management. The people thus favored
were called croupiers; king Louis XV. himself was one of them. His
Controller General, the Abbe Terray, received a fee of three hundred
thousand livres on concluding the contract, and the promise of one
thousand livres for every million of profits. When the bargain had been
struck and the advance paid, he announced to the Farmers that further
croupes would be granted, and that sundry payments must be made to the
treasury. The profits of the undertaking were thus materially reduced.
The Farmers at first threatened to throw up their bargain, but the
Controller told them that if they did so he would not return their
advances, but only pay interest on them. In spite of this swindle, the
lease turned out on the whole much to the benefit of the Farmers.

In 1780, when the lease above mentioned expired, Necker was Director of
the Finances. He introduced reforms into the General Farm, cutting down
the number of Farmers from sixty to forty, and reducing their gains. The
collection of certain taxes was taken from them, and entrusted to new
companies. His contract was for a rent of 122,900,000 livres and the
advance was forty-eight millions, for which the Farmers received seven
per cent. Moreover, the latter were not to take the whole profit above
the rent of the Farm. The first three millions of that profit went to
the treasury, which also received one half of the remaining gains, but
croupes and pensions on the Farm were totally abolished. Necker reckons
the total sum drawn yearly by the Farmers from the people under his
administration at 184,000,000 livres, and the sums collected by the two
new companies of his own devising, for the collection of the excise on
drinkables and for the administration of the royal domains at 92,000,000
more.

The Farmers General were the most conspicuous representatives in
France of the moneyed class, which was just rising into importance
beside the old aristocracy, by whose members it was despised but
courted. Many of the Farmers were of low origin and had risen to
fortune by their own abilities. Others belonged to families which had
long made a mark in the financial world. Their luxurious style of life
was admired by the vulgar and derided by the envious. The offices of
the Farm occupied several historic houses in Paris. In the chief of
these the French Academy had once held its sittings under the
presidency of Seguier, and the walls and ceilings shone with pictures
from the brushes of Lebrun and Mignard. The warehouses and offices for
the monopoly of tobacco occupied a fine building between the Louvre
and the Tuileries, where once the duchesses of Chevreuse and of
Longueville had prosecuted their political and amorous intrigues. The
discontented tax-payers grumbled the louder at seeing the hated
publicans so handsomely lodged.[Footnote: The total receipts of the
Farm, according to Necker, were 186,000,000 livres. Against this sum
must be set 2,000,000 for salt and tobacco sold to foreigners;
16,000,000 for the cost of salt and tobacco, and 8,000,000 for the
cost of other articles to the Farm. The amount of actual taxation
collected by the Farm would therefore seem to have been about
160,000,000. Necker, _De l'Administration,_, i. 9, 14, iii. 122.
Lemoine, _Les derniers fermiers generaux, passim._ Bailly, ii. 185,
_n_. and _passim_. _Encyclopedie_, vi. 515 (_Fermes, Cinq grosses_)
vi. 513, etc. (_Fermes du roi_). Bertin, 480. Mercier, xii. 89.]

The first and most dreaded of the indirect taxes was the Salt Tax
(_gabelle_). As salt is necessary for all, it has from early days
been considered by some governments a good article for a tax, no one
being able to escape payment by going entirely without it. To make the
revenue more secure, every householder in certain parts of France was
obliged to buy seven pounds of salt a year at the warehouses of the
Farm, for every member of his family more than seven years old. In spite
of this, a certain economy in the use of the article became the habit of
the French nation, and the traveler of the nineteenth century may bless
the government of the Bourbons when for once in his life he finds
himself in a country where the cooks do not habitually oversalt the
soup.

The unfortunate Frenchmen of the eighteenth century had to pay dear for
this culinary lesson. But in this matter as in others they did not all
pay alike. The whole product of the salt tax to the treasury was about
sixty million livres, of which two thirds, or forty millions, was taken
from provinces containing a little more than one third of the population
of the kingdom. Necker, who much desired to equalize the impost,
mentions six principal categories of provinces in regard to the salt
tax; varying from those in which the sale was free, and the article
worth from two to nine livres the hundred weight, to those where it was
a monopoly of the Farm, and the salt cost the consumer about sixty-two
livres. Salt being thus worth thirty times as much in one province as in
another, it was possible for a successful smuggler to make a living by a
very few trips. The opportunity was largely used; children were trained
by their parents for the illicit traffic, but the penalties were very
severe. In the galleys were many salt-smugglers; people were shut up on
mere suspicion, and in the crowded prisons of that day were carried off
by jail-fevers.[Footnote: Necker, _De l'Administration_, ii. 1.
Ibid., _Compte rendu_, 82, and see the map of France divided
according to the _gabelle_ in the same volume. Bailly, ii. 163.
Clamageran, iii. 84 _n._, 296, 406. For the numerous officers and
complicated system of the _gabelle_, see _Encyclopedie_, vii.
942 (_Grenier a sel_); _Quintal_=100 French pounds; but which
of the numerous French pounds, I know not.] Of all known stimulants,
tobacco is perhaps the most agreeable and the least injurious to the
person who takes it; but no method of taking it has yet been devised
which is not liable to be offensive to the delicate nerves of some
bystander. It is probably on this account that a certain discredit has
always attached to this most soothing herb, and that it seldom gets fair
treatment in the matter of taxation. Over a large part of France,
containing some twenty-two millions of inhabitants, tobacco had been
subject to monopoly for a hundred years when Louis XVI. came to the
throne,[Footnote: With an interval of two years, during which it was
subject to a high duty. Stourm, i. 361.] yet the use of the article had
become so general that this population bought fifteen million pounds
yearly, or between five eighths and three quarters of a pound per head.
Of this amount about one twelfth was used for smoking in pipes, and the
remainder was consumed in the pleasant form of snuff. Three livres
fifteen sous a pound was the price set by the government and collected
by the Farmers, and the tobacco was often mouldy.[Footnote: Necker,
_De l'Administration_, ii. 100. Babeau, _La vie rurale_, 78.]

The excise on wine and cider (_aides_) was levied not only on the
producer, but also on the consumer, in a most vexatious manner, so that
the revenue officers were continually forcing their way into private
houses, and so that the poor peasant who quietly diluted his measure of
cider with two measures of water was lucky if he got off with a triple
tax, and did not undergo fine and forfeiture for having untaxed cider in
his house. It was moreover a principle with the officers of the excise
that wine was never given away; and as a tax was due on every sale the
poor vine-dresser could not give a part of the produce of his vineyard
to his married children, or even bestow a few bottles in alms on a poor,
sick woman without getting into trouble, and all this notwithstanding
the fact that in France in the eighteenth century, when tea and coffee
were unknown to the rural classes, and when drinking water was often
taken from polluted wells, wine or cider was generally considered
necessary to health and to life.

It is needless to consider in detail the duties on imports and exports
(_traites_). From the beginning of the eighteenth century until
three years after the end of the American War, commerce between France
and England was totally prohibited as to most articles, and subjected to
prohibitory duties in the case of the few that remained. This state of
things was tempered by a great system of smuggling, so successfully
conducted that insurance in many cases was as low as ten and even as
five per cent. Goods were sometimes taken directly from one coast to the
other on dark nights, and no reader of the literature of the last
century will need to be reminded that the "free traders" who brought
them were favorably received by the people among whom they might come to
land. Sometimes the articles were sent by circuitous routes through
Holland or Germany, on whose frontiers the same walls of prohibition did
not exist. But there were many things which could not conveniently be
smuggled, and in their case the want of competition, and still more the
lack of standards of comparison, tended to retard and injure production.
While improved machinery for spinning and weaving was common in England,
the old spindle, wheel, and house-loom still held their own in France.
In the year 1786, a commercial treaty was signed between the two
countries. By its provisions French wines were put on a better footing,
and many manufactured articles, as hardware, cutlery, linen, gauze, and
millinery were to pay but ten or twelve per cent. The confusion of
business which was the natural result of so great a change had not
ceased to be felt when the great Revolution began to disturb all
commercial relations.

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