BOOKS.
HURRAY'S FRENCH FINANCE AND FINANCIERS UNDER LOUIS THE FIFTEENTH.* A rtriff. history of French finance from the time when the cul- pable necessities of Louis the Fourteenth compelled him to strain the resources of the country to the last degree, until the Revolu- tion of 1789, would be a very valuable work ; especially if in ad- dition to the tabular and verbal expositions of taxation and its working, the narrative were to depict from contemporary descrip- tions or from fair economical deductions, the popular misery and universal irritation to which that taxation gave rise. That the disordered state of the French finances was one of the immediate causes of the great French Revolution is generally, admitted, and that this disorder was to a great extent produced by royal profli- gacy and extravagance, and the corruption of the old noblesse, may be equally true. Constituted as men are, and as French society then was, with its various privileges and peculiar opinions, this disorder was beyond cure ; or if remedied by some great monarch such as the world has rarely seen, the evil would quickly have returned again. In fact, on more than one occasion during the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, the expenditure was brought to nearly a level with the income, or was in a fair way of being so, when the finances were again embarrassed by the national love of "glorious war," or by a brilliant short cut to wealth, as with Law and his Mississippi scheme. A turn for gambling speculations or
i a morbid desire of war for its own sake, is not, however, peculiar to Frenchmen of the eighteenth century ; nor would these alone have brought the finances into such a state of confusion, or ren- dered a healthy restoration impossible. The two great causes were the privileges of different classes and the class selfishness prevailing in old France. Beyond the irritation which political or social privileges always keep up among the excluded, especially when scarcely inferior in wealth and education, it may be that little obvious injury ensued from the privileges of the old noblesse ; while the wealthy by buying an office could al- ways buy nobility. The great evil lay in the immunity from taxation which the various privileged orders enjoyed, and the practical impossibility of enforcing an equality of taxation, (save, perhaps during the severest pressure of a war,) because these privileged classes generally combined together to oppose the government efforts. The church to the very last suc- cessfully resisted all direct taxation, as an outrage to religion ; claiming the right of making a free gift to the king. The dif- ferent privi4eged classes had actually or in effect various fiscal ad- vantages ; hut all were released from taxes which by their nature must directly fall upon agriculture, as the corvee, or which theo- retically were imposed upon the profits of agriculture, but took the nature of a personal tax, the taille. Even the taxes that were intended to fall equally upon income or capital generally were made in their levy to press very unequally upon the poor and the lowest of the middle classes, owing to the power which the privileged possessed of escaping from the payment of their fair quota. Some of the partiality and insolent tyranny charged upon the French local officers, belongs rather to human nature than to French tax-collecting nature ; but a portion of these offensive qualities beyond all doubt originated in the pride of privilege. The consequence of this state of things was doubly disastrous. Not only was the heaviest pressure of taxation and often in its most oppressive forms, as the corvee and the taille, thrown upon the classes least able io bear it, but improvement was practically impossible, from the resistance offered by the most powerful sec- tions of the community to that thoough change of system which alone could have been of service. There was this further evil ; that the very nature of some of the imposts and the working of more were in reality taxes on industry, not merely subtracting from the store of wealth, but also impeding its production.
It is not of course meant that taxation alone, apart from moral causes, produced the Revolution, or that no remedy could be found in theory for the fiscal evils. Any one could now sit down and draw up a plan that should have placed the finances of France upon a sound system. Men did so at the time ; even ministers proposed extensive improvements ; but the corruptions of the court and the interests of the privileged, which included the smallest placeholder, prevented them from being carried out. In looking at the merely possible, it should never be forgotten that the most original mind is to a great degree the creature of circumstances, and can only act directly upon society by means of human agents. The most powerful despot that ever lived is subject to the influence of his training, and must carry out his purposes by ad- ministrators who may perhaps thwart them. Nor can a monarch peaceably succeeding to a throne do what can be accomplished after a convulsion. William the Conqueror could not, as a legitimate monarch, have effected the changes he did. No king of Eng- land would ever have attempted to govern the country by Major- Generals, as Cromwell was able to do after the disorganization of the Great Rebellion. No monarch of the old regime could have - tried what the Republicans or Bonaparte effected with ease. Yet even now the French system of taxation is not good.
Glimpses of the power of the privileged classes, of the ter- rible social effects of the old French taxation in its daily working, and of the Government's tampering with the currency or with the Public liabilities, will be found in Mr. Murray's volume. He has
• Fkeneh Finance and Pinanciu•a under Lewis IV. By James Murray. Pub- lished by Loagmaws and Co.
not aimed at a history such as we have hinted at, nor in strict- ness can his work be considered as a history of French Finance for the sixty years he treats of, namely from the death of Louis the Fourteenth in 1715, to the accession of Louis the Sixteenth in 1774. He notices the nature of the taxes proposed, imposed, or repealed, but he gives no general account of French taxation ; and though he exhibits the sum totals of what might be called the budget at certain periods, he is altogether deficient in the arithmetic of French finance. Like the history of Mr. Francis on British Banking, &e., Mr. Murray is rather prone to sacrifice the inform- ing to the popular. Indeed, French financiers, court intrigues, and court expenditure, form more prominent topics than French finance.. This renders the narrative more readable than a closer and specific treatment would do. It is easier to peruse an account of the flatteries of the Empress Maria Theresa towards Madame de Pompadour and the efforts made by the latter to influence king andiministry to adopt a favourable policy towards Austria, or fol low the not very edifying story of this Madame or her successor Madame Dubarry, than to examine the particulars of the bills to which all this vice and folly led. There are financial expositions in the volume, however, of an informing though very general nature. Such is the story of the means by which Noailles and his council succeeded in bringing affairs into promising order after the death of Louis the Fourteenth, when John Law ruined the future prospects by persuading the Regent Orleans to adopt his magnificent schemes. These projects, too, are well and clearly unfolded ; and though the biography of Law does not seem di- rectly connected even with French financiers, yet it is necessary, to account for that adventurer's success with ihe Regent. The misery in which the French peasantry lived is spoken of by all observers, even before the disasters of Louis the Four- teenth's reign began. Burnet, in 1685, mentions the " misery " he saw all the way from Paris to Lyons, " not only in villages, but even in big towns, where all the marks of an extreme poverty showed themselves both in the buildings, the cloaths, and almost in the looks of the inhabitants." The idea of French poverty and hard living—frogs and soup maigre—was universal in this country even to the beginning of the present century. Whether the people were worse off under Louis the Fifteenth than Louis the Fourteenth may be doubted. France like England had grown richer ; there is a constant tendency in the mind to exaggerate the superiority of past times, and men were perhaps restless, in the eighteenth cen- tury, under miseries not greater than those which they doggedly submitted to in the seventeenth. Possibly generalization may add to the effect of the following picture relating to 1730-'40, but it seems difficult to imagine anything worse.
" The intendants, in their reports, described the country as sinking into such a state of distress, as to be unable to pay the ordinary taxes, es ' the talk and capitation. Many villages had been abandoned by t eir in- habitants, unable to endure the fiscal burdens imposed upon them. There was no possibility of evading those burdens except by flight, foi as long as a man had a house, or a single article of furniture, the tax- gatherer regarded him as one from whom something might be ob- tained. If nothing else could be got, the arrest of the defaulter would account for the deficiency in the returns, and ward off the cen- sure which the inferior collector of revenue might have incurred. Se far as the masses of the people were concerned, any addition to existing taxes was an evil of the most serious nature. The poor peasant or petty farmer, if his crops failed, or any of the common misfortunes of life befell him, found himself at once reduced to the position of a criminal, liable to imprisonment or the galleys, merely because he could not answer the ever- increasing demands of the tax-gatherer. By bribing this official he might for a time obtain indulgence, but when it was no longer in his power to do even this much, not only was his home broken up, but he was personally liable to innumerable pains and penalties. "It is terrible indeed to think of the condition to which the country dis- tricts of France were often reduced under the old regime. The corvee be- came from day to day more sweeping in its range, and more pitiless in its exactions. During the journey of the Queen to Paris, D'Argenson, an eye- witness, gives a woful account of the sufferings endured by the peasants. The harvest had failed, the weather was deplorable' and it required immense labour to render the roads fit for the passage of the royal travellers. Them there were requisitions of horses as well as of men, and the farmers were compelled to keep these horses ready harnessed night and day, that no de- lay might take place when their services were wanted. The local author- ities, in order to pay court to their superiors or to gratify their own inso- lent tyranny, were accustomed to demand twice or three times as many horses as were really necessary. Thus the poor animals were driven merci- lessly, and left for days without food, because when one broke down another was always at hand to supply its place. In war, this kind of oppression naturally rose to its height, and men, horses, and waggons were ruthlessly abstracted from their proper employments to construct roads for troops, convey military stores, and remount the cavalry, whose horses had perished or become disabled. When to all this was added an increase of the faille, or of the duty upon salt, war, even when triumphant, must have proved a frightful scourge to France."
Yet a few years later and matters really appear to have got worse, and that too under one of the most incorrupt and inex- pensive ministers France had—Cardinal Fleury.
" Towards the close of his administration it became very difficult for him to maintain his usual indifference. On every side were heard complaints that an unprecedented degree of distress prevailed in the provinces. Even before peace had been interrupted, and when the harvests, if not extremely abundant, had been good average ones, it was stated that in many parts of the country people were feeding upon grass, and from sheer starvation dying in heaps. If grain was at a moderate price no one had money to purchase it. In Normandy some of the best land was left uncultivated, and as no farmers were to be found, landlords had to employ bailiffs, or to allow the ground to lie waste. The attention of the chief persons in the state was drawn to this alarming condition of things. In full council, the Due d'Orlains produced a piece of bread made of fern, and, placing it upon the Bing's table, said, See, Sire, in what manner your subjects are com- pelled to support themselves.' The Bishop of Chartres was questioned by the King as to the state of his diocese. He gave frightful accounts of the
misery and mortality which prevailed. Les hommes broutaient l'herbe
comme les moutons.' Nor was Path without symptoms that the general suffering had reached the place where its manifestations were most danger- ous. As the King was passing through the street Saint-Victor, the people exclaimed, as usual, le Bei,' but added the words lilisere, famine,
du pain.' "
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