anxa 92-B 17538 No. 2. Translations and Reprints FROM THE Be? Original Sources of European History PROTEST OF THE COUR DES AIDES OF PARIS—April 10, 1775. Edited by James Harvey Robinson, ph. d. Professor of History in Columbia University. With an English Version by Grace Reade Robinson — published by The Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pa., 1912. English Agency : P. S. KING & SON, 2 & 4 Great Smith St., Westminster, London, S. W. Price , 80 Cents . Vol. V. No. 2. Translations and Reprints FROM THE Original Sources of European History PROTEST OF THE COUR DES AIDES OF PARIS—APRIL io, i 77 j. EDITED BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON, PH. D., Professor of History in Columbia University With an English Version by GRACE READE ROBINSON PUBLISHED BY The Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania PHILADELPHIA, 1912. Sold by the Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania, « Philadelphia; or Longmans, Green & Co., Fifth Avenue, New York Price , 60 Cents I Copyright, 1899, By DANA C. MUNRO. INTRODUCTION. The rare pamphlet here reprinted furnishes us with a singularly clear and authentic picture of the French government before the Revolu¬ tion. It describes with admirable lucidity and insight the whole oppressive system of taxation which prevailed under the Anciett Regime, and frankly exposes many of the notorious abuses which it was the great achievement of the Revolution to destroy forever. It is a sort of official report presented to the young king Louis XVI., about a year after his accession to the throne, by one of the superior tribunals of France, in the hope that the monarch might remedy the evils por¬ trayed therein. As Louis was then but twenty years old, and presum¬ ably unacquainted with the technicalities of legal procedure and public administration, the magistrates adopted a simple, elementary style of presentation, which greatly enhances the value of the document for students of to-day. During the few months he had been on the throne the king had given many proofs of a real solicitude for the welfare of his people; he was evidently conscientious and well-meaning. He had early dismissed the unscrupulous and discredited advisers of his grand¬ father, Louis XV., and replaced them by better men. Among the new ministers the most distinguished was the well known economist and experienced government official, Turgot, who was put at the head of the finances , 1 and immediately began his wide-reaching reforms. There is no reason, however, to suppose that Turgot inspired the Remontrances or “ Protest ” of which we are speaking, although a denunciation by one of the king’s highest tribunals of the iniquitous system of taxation and administration which weighed so heavily upon the people, could hardly fail to forward his plans. The Remontrances were drawn up by the First President of the court, the upright Malesherbes, who is perhaps best known on account 1 Louis XVI. came to the throne May io, 1774, and Turgot was appointed Con¬ troller General on August 24 of the same year. (iii) f IV INTRODUCTION. of his heroic defense of Louis XVI. when the king came to be tried by the Convention in 1792. Malesherbes was a staunch friend and sup¬ porter of Turgot, and doubtless consulted him in the preparation of the elaborate report before us; but it had fallen to his lot to draft a good many remontrances since he had become First President, twenty- five years before, and while none of his earlier ones are so extensive as these of 1775, some of them are very like them in scope, and in the character and frankness of their criticisms. 1 The Cour des aides of Paris/ in whose name the report was sub¬ mitted to the sovereign, was an ancient tribunal, the functions of which had been clearly defined early in the fifteenth century. Its jurisdic¬ tion included, first and foremost, those cases to which the taxes— e. g., the excise (aides), the salt tax, the faille, etc.— gave rise. It tried suits involving the farmers of the revenue and their contracts with the government, as well as cases which concerned the privileges and ex¬ emptions of the nobility and clergy in the matter of taxation. Con¬ sequently it speaks as one having authority when it calls the young king’s attention to the scandalous abuses, connected with the taxes. The right of the superior courts of France, especially of the parle- ments, to remonstrate with the king when he presented an edict for their registration was a privilege of long standing, and one of which they frequently took advantage in order to hamper the king’s ministers. Louis XIV. had finally commanded the courts to register edicts without any delay whatever, but their right of protest had been restored to them by the Regent. Toward the end of the reign of Louis XV. the repeated interference of the parlements and the protests of the Cour des aides led the king, at the instigation of the chancellor, Maupeou, to abolish these tribunals altogether (in 1771) and substitute in their place a different, and in many ways better, judicial organization. But Louis XVI., against the advice of Turgot, Vergennes and other thought¬ ful men, was induced to reinstate the former tribunals, in November, 1774. Pains were taken, however, in the decree re-establishing them to place certain restrictions upon them, which it was hoped might prevent in the future their interference with legislation. It was in 1 Some of these are reprinted by Eugene de Vignaux in his Memoires sur Lamoi - gnon de Malesherbes , Paris, 1876. 2 Cours des aides had been established in the provinces from time to time, but only one, that of Montpellier, continued in independent existence down to 1789; the others had been suppressed or united with other tribunals. INTRODUCTION. V connection with a protest against these restrictions that the long Remontrances which we reproduce were sanctioned by the Cour des aides. The three years during which the action of the old tribunals had been suspended were naturally viewed by the re-established magistracy as a dark and mournful period, “ when the absence of the ministers of justice and the silence of the law left unrestrained the avidity of the tax-gatherer and the tyranny of the ministers.” The reader will note frequent references in the Remontrances to the despotic conduct of the king’s ministers, with whom the courts were generally on very bad terms. While some allowance must, of course, be made when the court r dwells upon its own particular grievances, the conduct of Louis XV.’s last cabinet, made up of L’abb£ Terray, Maupeou, the Due d’Aiguillon and others, probably merited all the reprobations of the magistrates. Malesherbes read the Retnontratues, which it had taken him some months to prepare, to his court April io, 1775, and about the middle of May they were laid before the king. The ministers, upon learning the nature of the document, were naturally fearful lest it might be made public. The precautions which they took to prevent this have usually been ascribed to the malign influence of the courtiers, who were ready to check even the most salutary reforms. But let us give the devil his due. The Cour des aides , it should be observed, contents itself with denouncing the oppression and unfairness of the existing taxes, and discreetly excuses itself from suggesting any substitutes, by declaring that it is not its business to invent new forms of taxation. Now it may well be that even Turgot himself was fearful lest this long list of abuses, drawn up by a body which passed as the most expert judges in such matters, might, if published, greatly hamper the collection of the revenue and so increase the existing deficit. Anxious as he was for a speedy regeneration of the state, he may have co-operated with con¬ servative ministers, like Maurepas and Miromesnil, the keeper of the seals, in the attempt to prevent the possible printing of the Renion- trances .' However this may have been, the keeper of the seals requested the representatives of the Cour des aides to bring with them the minutes of the Retnontrances, that is, the record which the court kept of its own resolutions. This he retained with the hope of securing its secrecy, explaining the king’s views as follows: “ His Majesty is well aware that the excessive taxation is one of the 1 Cf. Gomel, Histoire Financiere de la Revolution Franfaise, Paris, 1892, 1 ., 473. vi INTRODUCTION. worst misfortunes of his subjects, and he regards as his first duty the lightening of his people’s burdens, whether by reducing the taxes, or by correcting the abuses which may exist in either their assessment or collection. But the king knows, too, that if abuses really exist they ought not to be made public until the time comes to remedy them, and that it is dangerous to increase the ill feeling of the taxpayer against those whose co-operation is necessary to the levying of the taxes. His Majesty does not doubt that you have made the same reflections, and that in drawing up these Remontrances your intention was assuredly not to make them public, but simply to second *his Majesty’s wisdom. You will not, therefore, be surprised by the unusual measures that the king has taken to avoid their publication.” 1 These precautions did not, however, prevent the public from getting wind of the matter and learning the general character of the Protest. Mairobert —who kept a careful diary of occurrences, important and unimportant—reports as early as May 26 that “ People are talking a great deal of the Remontrances of the Cour des aides concerted between M. Turgot and M. Malesherbes, the aim of which is to open the way for the plans of the former regarding the financial system, its betterment, and especially the reform of the abuses.” 2 On June 1 he reverts to the same subject, gives a brief account of the contents of the report, says that it exhibits the “ intolerable atrocity ” of the prevailing method of taxation, and speaks of the retention of the minutes by the council on the ground that the language of the court was too “ lively and picturesque ” to be appropriate for the public ear. Nevertheless, by July, th t Remontrances had been printed. Mairo¬ bert writes (July 19), 11 The Cour des aides, following its custom, has suppressed its Remontrances, which have been secretlv printed and are being sold with the greatest mystery. No work of its class could be bet¬ ter written. It contains nothing of the vague declamation and tiresome rhetoric with which such productions are often filled, but sets forth irre¬ fragable principles and clear deductions, which are expressed in a whole¬ some, austere and nervous style. It is full of striking truths hard for kings to listen to, but which must nevertheless be told them.” The admission of Malesherbes at this time to the king’s council, the author adds, does 1 Quoted by Gomel, op. cit., I., 474. 2 Memoires secrets pour servir 0 I'hisloire de la Rtpublique des Lettres cn France. Londres, 1784 sq. VIII., 47. INTRODUCTION. Vll honor to the uprightness of the monarch’s intentions and proves his aversion to flattery.* The Remontrances do not seem to have become generally known until 1778, when new editions appeared. . Mairobert describes, April 28, 1778, the same edition of which we have made use. 2 On April 30, a copy of it w r as exhibited to the Cour des aides by the king’s representatives, with the request that the work be suppressed, since it contained matter which should never have been made public. The court promptly acceded to the king’s wishes and decreed its sup¬ pression. To one unacquainted with the habits of French magistrates and ministers in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the authenticity 1 of this address to the king might seem incredible. One would naturally infer that it had been composed by some philosophe , like Diderot, who put his violent denunciations into the mouth of a dignified judge in order to give them weight. Nevertheless the general tone adopted by Malesherbes in the discussion which received the official sanction of the Cour des aides was perfectly in accord with the habits of the time. Any one who will take the trouble to look over the remontrances of the Parlement of Paris 3 or of the provincial parlements , or the earlier utter¬ ances of the Cour des aides, from 1756 on, or will read Turgot’s pre¬ ambles to his edicts removing the restrictions on the grain trade and abolishing the corvees, or Necker’s Compte rendu of 1781, will discover the same tendency in government officials publicly and unreservedly to expose the evils of which all were conscious. The reforms of the National Assembly in 1789-90 will seem far less abrupt than they are 1 Mem. Seer., VIII., 120-121, 2 “Elies [the Remontrances ] sont datees du 6 Mai, 1773, et out 180 pages, indes pendammenl de deux lacunes qu'on y remarque." Op. cit., XI., 209. With the kind permission of Professor George L. Burr, the librarian of the President White Library of Cornell University, we reproduce the exact and .complete text of the only copy of the famous Remontrances which is known to exist in this country. The edition generally used by French writers forms a part of a collection published at Bruxelles in 1779, Memoires pour servir a I'histoire du droit public frande la taille,* de la capitation, du vingtieme ; & une partie de ces inconveniens se fait meme sentir dans toutes les prestations de service corporel qui s’exigent du peuple, comme la milice & la corvee. FRANCE RESEMBLES AN ORIENTAL DESPOTISM. 2J [73] Mais la discussion de ces abusnous conduira n^cessairement a de bien plus grandes questions. La perception des droits sur les denies ne tient pas a la forme du gouvernement de l’Etat; mais la re¬ partition des impots directs tient essentiellement a la constitution de la Monarchic. Les vices de cette repartition font partie d’un systeme general d’administration qui depuis longtemps s’introduit dans votre Royaume, & le remede ne peut se trouver que dans la reformation qu’il plaira a VOTRE MAJESTE d’apporter dans l’administration generate. [74] Ainsi nous examineions la regie de chaque impot direct, & VOTRE MAJESTE y verra le developpement de ce systeme funeste: mais il faut auparavant remonter a l’origine ; il faut faiie connoitre a VOTRE MAJESTIC le principe general & ses consequences; & peut- etre serez-vous etonne, SIRE, quand vos verrez jusqu’a quel point on a abuse du pretexte de votre autorite contre cette autorite elle-meme. [ 75 ] Vous nous permettez, SIRE, de nous servir du terme de des- potisme, tout odieux qu’il est; dispensez-nous de recourir a des circon- locutions embarrassantes, quand nous avons des verites importantes a vous rendre sensibles. Le despotisme contre lequel nous iedamons aujourd’hui, est celui qui s’exerce, a votre ins^u, par des emissaires de 1 ’Administration, gens absolument inconnus a VOTRE MAJESTY. Non, SIRE, nous ne venons point offrir a VOTRE MAJEST& des dis¬ sertations inutiles, & peut-etre dangereuses, sur les limites de sa puis¬ sance souveraine; c’est au contraire le droit de recourir a cette puis¬ sance, que nous allons revendiquer pour tous les citoyens, & nous ne nommerons despotisme que le genre de Tadministration qui tend a priver vos sujets de ce droit qui leur est si pr£cieux, & a soustraire a votre justice ceux qui oppriment le peuple. [76] L‘id£e qu’on s’est faite du despotisme, ou de la puissance abso- lue, dans les differens temps & chez les difftkens peuples, n’est pas la meme. On parle souvent d’un genre de gouvernement qu’on nonime le despotisme Oriental: c’est celui dans lequel non-seulement le Souverain jouit d’une autorite absolue & illimit^e, mais chacun des ex£cuteurs de ses ordres use aussi d’un pouvoir sans bornes. II en r^sulte n^cessaire- ment une tyrannie intolerable : car il est une difference infinie entre la puissance exercee par un maitre dont le veritable interet est celui de son peuple, & celle d’un sujet qui, enorgueilli de ce pouvoir auquel il n’etoit pas destine, se plait a en aggraver le poids sur ses egaux ; genre de despotisme qui, etant transmis graduellement a des Ministres de differens ordres, se fait sentir jusqu’au dernier citoyen ; en sorte qu’il n’est personne, dans un grand Empire, qui puisse s’en garantir. 24 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS, [77] Le vice de ce gouvernement est tout a-la-fois dans la constitu¬ tion & dans les moeurs. 3 .Dans,la.constitutioivparce que*les^peuples 1 qui y sont sujets, n’ont ni tribunaux, ni corps de loix, ni repr^sentans du peuple. Point de tribunaux; voila pourquoi 1 ’autorite est exerc£e par un seul homnie. Point de loix fixes & positives; voila pourquoi celui qui a l’autorite en main, statue d’apres ses propres lumieres, c’est-a-dire, ordinairement d’apres ses affections. Point de repr£sen- tans du peuple; voila pourquoi le despote d’une Province peut l’op- primer contre la volonte & a l’insgu du Souverain, & avec l’assurance de l’impunite. [78] Les moeurs contribuent aussi a cette impunite ; car les peuples soumis a ce genre de despotisme sont toujours des peuples en proie a l’ignorance. Personne ne lit, personne n’entretient de relation; les cris de l’opprime ne se font point entendre au-dela du pays qu’il habite. L’innocent n’a done point en sa faveur de recours a l’opinion publique, qui est un frein si puissant contre la tyrannie des subalternes. [79] Telle est done la malheureuse situation de ces peuples, que le Souverain meme le plus juste ne peut faire sentir les effets de sa justice qu’a ceux qui approchent de lui, ou dans le petit nombre d’affaires dont il peut prendre connoissance par lui meme. Tout ce qu’il peut faire pour le reste de ses sujets, est de choisir le moins mal qu’il peut les d^positaires de son autorite, & de les exborter aussi a faire les meilleurs choix qu’ils pourront pour les places inferieures. Mais quelque chose qu’il fasse, le citoyen du dernier ordre g£mit toujours sous Pautorit6 d’un despote du dernier grade, & lui est aussi soumis que les Grands de l’Etat le sont au Souverain lui-meme. [80] II semble qu’une telle forme de gouvernement ne peut pas exister chez les Nations qui ont des loix, des moeurs & des lumieres: aussi dans les pays polices, lors meme que le Prince jouit d’un pouvoir absolu, la condition des peuples doit etre tres-diff£rente. Quelque absolue que soil l’autorit£, la justice peut etre rendue par deliberation, & dans les Tribunaux astreints a des loix certaines. Si les Juges s’ecartent de ces loix, on peut recourir a des Tribunaux superieurs, & enfin a 1 ’autorite souveraine elle-meme. Tous les recours sont possi¬ bles, parce que tous les actes d’autorite sont ecrits, constates, deposes dans des registres publics; qu’il n’est point de citoyen qui ne puisse trouver un defenseur edaire, & que le public meme est le censeur des Juges. Et non-seulement la justice est rendue aux particuliers, mais les Corps, les Communautes, les Villes, les Provinces entieres peuvent TYRANNY OF THE ADMINISTRATION. 25 aussi 1 obtenir, & pour pouvoir defendre leurs droits, doivent avoir des assemblies & des reprisentans. [81] Ainsi dans un pays police, quoique soumis a une puissance ab- solue, il ne doit y avoir aucun intiret, ni giniral, ni particulier, qui ne soit defendu ; & tous les dipositaires de la. puissance souveraine doivent etre soumis a trois sortes de freins, celui des Ioix, celui du recours a l’autorite supirieure, celui de l’opinion publique. L82J Cette distinction entre les diffirens genres de pouvoir absolu n’est point nouvelle. Ces definitions ont ete souvent donnies par des Jurisconsultes, par les Auteurs, tant anciens que modernes, qui ont icrit sur la legislation. Elies sont le resultant de ce qu’on lit dans les histoires & les relations des diffirens pays : mais il nous etoit nicessaire de les retracer, parce que nous avons une grande viriti a en diduire. Nous devons faire connoitre a VOTRE MAJESTY que le gouverne- ment qu’on veut itablir en France est le vrai despotisme des pays non polices; & que chez la Nation la plus instruite, dans le siecle ou les mceurs sont les plus douces, on est menace de cette forme de gouverne- ment oil le Souverain ne peut pas etre eclairi lors meme qu’il le veut le plus sincirement. [83] La France, ainsi que le reste de l’Europe Occidental, etoit regie par le droit feodal • mais chaque Royaume a eprouve differentes revolutions depuis que ce gouvernement est de trait. Il est des Nations qui ont ete admises a discuter leurs droits avec le Souverain, & les prerogatives y ont ete fixees. Dans d’autres, Pautorite absolue a si promptement prevalu, qu’aucun des droits nationaux n’a ete exa-. mine; & il en est resulte au moins un avantage pour ces pays, c’est qu’il n’y a aucun pretexte pour y detruire les corps intermediaires, & enfreindre la liberte naturelle a tous les hommes, de deiiberer en com- mun sur des interets communs, & de recourir a la puissance supreme contre les abus des puissances subalternes. [84] En France, la Nation a toujours eu un sentiment profond de ses droits & de sa liberte. Nos maximes ont ete plus d’une fois re- connues par nos Rois; ils se sont meme glorifies d’etre les Souverains d’un peuple libre: cependant les articles de cette liberte n’ont jamais ete rediges; & la puissance reelle, la puissance des armes, qui, sous le gouvernement feodal, etoit dans les mains des Grands, a ete totalement reunie a la puissance Royale. [85] Alors, quand il y a eu de grands abus d’autorite, les represen- tans de la nation ne se sont pas contentes de se plaindre de la mauvaise 26 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. administration; ils se sont crus obliges a revendiquer les droits nationaux. Ils n’ont pas parie seulement de justice, mais de liberty; & l’effet de Ieurs demarches a £te que les Ministres, toujours attentifs a saisir les moyens de rnettre leur administration a l’abri de tout exa- men, ont eu l’art de rend re suspects & les Corps redamans, & la re¬ clamation elle-meme. Le recours au Roi contre ses Ministies a ete regarde comme un attentat a son autorite. Les doieances des Etats, les remontrances des Magistrats ont ete transformees en demarches dangereuses, dont le Gouvernement devoit se garantir. On a persuade aux plus puissans Rois de la terre qu’ils avoient a craindre jusqu’aux larmes d’un peuple sounds; & c’est sous ce pretexte qu'on a introduit en France un gouvernement bien plus funeste que le despotisme, & digne de la barbarie Orientale; c’est l’administration clandestine par laquelle, sous les yeux d’un Souverain juste, & au milieu d’une nation edairee, 1’injustice peut se montrer, disons plus, elle se commet notoire- rnent. Des branches entieres d’administration sont fondees sur des systemes d’injustices, sans qu’aucun recours, ni au public, ni a l’autorite superieure, soit possible. [86] C’est ce despotisme des Administrateurs, & sur-tout ce systeme de clandestinite, que nous devons denoncer a VOTRE MAJESTE ; car nous n’aurons point la t£m£rit6 de discuter les autres droits sacr£s du trone. II nous suffit que VOTRE MAJESTE ait desavoue, dans l’acte de rdtablissement de la Magistrature, les maximes de tyrannie qui avoient ete execut^es sous un ministereiaujcurd’hui proscrit; & nous nous con- formerons aux intentions de VOTRE MAjESTfi, en n’agitant point des questions qui n’auroient jamais du etre elev^es. [87] Mais ce n’est point blesser la juste subordination , que de rnettre sous vos yeux une suite d’infractions faites a la liberty nationale, a la liberte naturelle de tous les hommes, qui vous mettent aujourd’hui dans 1’impossibilite d’entendre vos sujets, & d’edairer la conduite de vos Administrateurs. i°. On a cherche a an£antir les vrais representans de la nation. 2 0 . On est parvenu a rendre illusoires les reclamations de ceux qu’on n’a pas encore pu detruire. 3 0 . On veut meme les rendre impossibles. C’est pour y parvenir que la clandestinite a ete introduite. II en est de deux genres; l’une qui cherche a derober aux yeux de la nation, a ceux de VOTRE MAJESTE elle-meme, les operations de 1 ’administration; l’autre qui cache au public la personne des Administrateurs. Voila, SIRE, le ABSENCE OF' LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. 27 precis du svsteme que nous d£nongons a VOTRE MAJESTlv, & que nous allons developper. [88] Nous annon^ons comme la premiere demarche de ce despot- isme, celle d’aneantir tous les repr^sentans de la nation, &: si VOTRE MAJESTE veut bien r^flechir sur la reunion de plusieurs faits dont aucun n’est douteux, elle y trouvera la demonstration de cette v£rit£. [89] Les Assemblies ginirales de la Nation n’ont point iti con- voquies depuis cent soixante ans, & long-temps auparavant elles etoient devenues tres-rares, nous oserons meme dire presqu’ inutiles, parce qu’on faisoit sans elles ce qui rendoit leur presence le plus nicessaire, l’itablissement des impots. [90] Quelques Provinoes avoient des Assemblies particulieres ou Etats provinciaux : plusieurs ont iti privies de ce pricieux privilege; & dans les Provinces ou ces Etats existent encore, leur ministere est resserri dans des bornes qui deviennent tous les jours plus itroites. Ce n’est pas une assertion timiraire de dire que dans nos Provinces on entretient entre les dipositaires du pouvoir arbitraire & les repri- sentans des Peuples, une espece de guerre continuelle, ou le despotisme fait tous les jours de nouvelles conquetes.- [91] Les Provinces qui n’avoient pas d’Etats piovinciaux itoient nommies pays d’Election ; & il y existoit riellement des Tribunaux nommis Elections, composis de personnes ilues par la Province elle- merne, qui, au moins pour la ripartition des impots, remplissoient quelques-unes des fonctions des Etats provinciaux. Ces Tribunaux exis¬ tent encore sous le nom d’Elections; mais ce nom est tout ce qu’il leur reste de leur institution primitive. Ces Officiers ne sont plus ri¬ ellement ilus par la Province; & tels qu’ils sont, on les a mis dans la dipendance presqu’ entiere des Intendans pour les fonctions qui leur restent. Nous aurons une autre occasion de parler des Elections, en parlant de I’impot de la taille ; nous ferons meme connoitre a VOTRE MAJESTY en quoi elles diffiroient des Etats provinciaux: il suffit d’observer a present que les vrais Elus des Provinces n’existent plus. [92] Il restoit au moins a chaque Corps, a chaque Communauti de Citoyens le droit d’administrer ses propres affaires, droit que nous ne dirons point qui fasse partie de la constitution primitive du Royaume, car il remonte bien plus haut; c’est le droit naturel, c’est le droit de la raison. Cependant il a £t£ aussi enlev£ a vos Sujets; & nous ne craindrons pas de dire que l’administration est tombee a cet £gard dans des exces qu’on peut nommer pu£riles. 28 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. [93] Depuis que des Ministres puissans se sont fait un principe politique de ne point laisser convoquer d’Assembiee nationale, on en est venu, de consequence en consequence, jusqu’a declarer nulles les deliberations des Habitans d’un village, quand elles ne sont pas au- torisees par l’lntendant; en sorte que si cette Communaute a une de* pense a faire, quelque legere qu’elle soit, il faut prendre l’attache du Subdeiegue de l’lntendant, par consequent suivre le plan qu’il a adopte, employer les ouvriers qu’il favorise, les payer suivant son arbi¬ trage ; & si la Communaute a un proces a soutenir, il faut aussi qu’elle se fasse autoriser par l’lntendant; il faut que la cause de la Com¬ munaute soit plaidee a ce premier Tribunal avant d’etre porte a la Justice; & si l’avis de l’lntendant est contraire aux Habitans, ou si leur adversaire a du credit a 1 ’Intendance, la Communaute est dechue de la faculte de defendre ses droits. [94] Voila, SIRE, par quels moyens on a travailie a etouffer en France tout esprit municipal, a eteindre, si on le pouvoit, jusqu’aux sentimens de citoyen : on a, pour ainsi dire, interdit la Nation entiere, & on lui a donne des tuteurs. [95] L’aneantissement des Corps redamans etoit un premier pas pour aneantir le droit de reclamation lui-meme. On n’a cependant pas ete jusqu’a prononcer en termes expres, que tous recours au Prince, toutes demarches pour les Provinces fussent defendues; mais VOTRE MAJESTY n’ignore pas que toute requete dans laquelle les interets d’une Province ou ceux de la Nation entiere sont stipules, est regardee com me une temerite punissable, quand elle est signee d’un seul par- ' ticulier, & comrne une association illicite, quand elle est signee de plusieurs. Il avoit cependant fallu donner a la Nation une satisfaction apparente, quand on avoit cesse de convoquer les Etats: aussi les Rois avoient-ils annonce que les Cours de Justice tiendroient lieu des Etats, que les Magistrats seroient les representans du Peuple. [96] Mais apres leur avoir donne ce titre, pour consoler la Nation de la perte de ses anciens & veritables representans, on s’est souvenu dans toutes les occasions que les fonctions des Juges etoient restreintes a leur seul territoire & a la Justice contentieuse, & on a mis les mernes limites au droit de representation. [97] Ainsi tous les abus possibles peuvent etre commis dans l’adir.inistration sans que le Roi en soit jamais instruit, ni par les re¬ presentans du Peuple, puisque dans la plupart des Provinces il n’y en a point; ni par les Cours de Justice, puisqu’on les ecarte, comrae in- the Co wee. 29 comp^tentes, d£s qu’elles veulent parler de l’administration ; ni par les particuliers, a qui des exemples de s£v£rite ont appris que c’est un crime d’invoquer la justice de leur Souverain. [98] Malgr£ tous ces obstacles, le cri public, genre de reclamation qu’on ne peut jamais tout-a-fait etouffer, etoit toujours a Craindre pour les Administrateurs & peut etre a-t-on craint aussi qu’un jour un Roi ne voulut, de son propre mouvement, se faire rendre compte de tous les secrets de l’administration. On a done voulu que ce compte fut impossible a rendre, ou au moins qu’il ne put etre rendu que par les seuls Administrateurs, sans etre expose a aucune contradiction ; & c’est pour cela qu’on a fait tant d’efforts pour introduce par-tout l’adminis- tration clandestine. [99] Pour prouver cette verite dans toute son etendue; il faudroit entrer dans le detail de toutes les parties du Gouvernement; mat's quelques exemples suffiront pour la rendre sensible. Nous les choisirons dans les impots qui font notre principal objet, & nous n’hesiterons point de citer les administrations qui ont le plus merite l’approbation publi- que; car nous devons toujours faire connoitre a VOTRE MAJESTY les vices intrinseques d’une administration, quoiqu’ils soient repares pendant un temps par les qualites personelles de l’Administrateur. [100] Par exemple, il est reconnu dans toute l’Europe que rien n’a plus signale le dernier regne que la construction des chemins qui facilitent le commerce, & doublent la valeur des biens du Royaume. Le gouvernement a cru jusqu’a present que la corvee etoit necessaire pour ce grand ouvrage & la corvee n’est autorisee par aucune Loi du Royaume. 1 Il semble qu’il auroit fallu la faire reconnoitre juridique- ment; & alors on auroit pu etablir des regies certaines & publiques sur la repartition de ce travail souvent plus accablant pour le Peuple que la taille elle-meme. [101] Ce n’est pas le parti qu’on a pris: on craignoit, disoit-on, la sensation qu’exciteroit dans le Royaume une Loi qui, en reglant la corvee, sembleroit l’autoriser. En consequence toutes les operation^ se sont faites en secret, & il n’a paroit pas meme qn Arret du Conseil imprime concernant une imposition qui, depuis si long-temps, fait gemir les Peuples. Chaque Province n’apprend que le projet d’un chemin est arrete, que quand on en commence l’execution ; & si le choix de cette route est contraire au bien de la Province, il est trop ' See note, If 100 of the Translation. 30 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. tard pour s’y opposer. Si le travail est reparti avec injustice ou avec trop de durete, ceux qui voudroient se plaindre n’ont ni Juges legaux devant qui se pourvoir, ni regies certaines a opposer a la rigueur des ordres qu’ils ont regus, ni moyens juridiques pour constater l’injustice qui leur a ete faite. [102] On dit aujourd’hui que VOTRE MAJESTE veut adoucir la rigueur de la corvee; ou y substitue une imposition d’un autre genre. La Nation attend ces changemens avec confiance, & deja avec re- connoissance; &: nous osons esp^rer que ce qui sera substitue a la corvee, ne sera point infecte de la meme clandestine. Nous avons cependant du vous representer les abus qu’entrainoit cette administra¬ tion, comme un des exemples les plus frappans du systeme general. [103] II en est de meme du vingtieme; & a cet egard l’abus a en¬ core moins de pr^texte; car on pourroit dire sur la corvee, que la ceierite n£cessaire pour les ouvrages ne permettoit pas d’attendre la discussion de toutes les injustices particulieres : mais le vingtieme est une imposition mise tous les ans sur les memes terres depuis pres de quarante ann£es, presque sans interruption. Croiroit-on que depuis ces quarante ann£es les roles de cette imposition ne sont point encore deposes dans aucuns registres ou les particuliers puissent les consulte'r. [104] Ce n’est point une formality omise par negligence; car cet abus fut represente au Roi par sa Cour des Aides en 1756. Le Minis- tere de ce temps ceda a Pevidence : le feu Roi consentit que ce de¬ pot fut fait; mais les Ministres qui sont venus, apres avoir employe pendant plusieurs annees tous les detours possibles pour s’opposer in- directement a l’effet de cette parole sacree, on finit par obtenir qu’elle soit expressement revoquee. [105] Nous ne rapporterons point ici tout ce qui s’est passe a ce sujet, pour ne pas fatiguer VOTRE MAJESTE du redt d’une affaire finie : si cependant VOTRE MAJESTE vouloit en etre instruite, ces faits ne sont point oublies, &: il seroit aise de les mettre sous ses yeux. Mais aujourd’hui nous nous contenterons d’observer que la plupart des infideiites des Preposes du vingtieme sont necessairement inconnues & impunies, a la faveur de cette clandestinite. Par exemple, quand un Prepose trahit l’interet du fisc, en menageant le contribuable qu’il veut favoriser, & que, pour cacher aux Ministres cette prevarication, il rem- plit le vuide en augmentant injustement les autres quotes, ceux qui se trouvent leses ne peuvent faire connottre cette iniquite, parce qu’ils ne le pourroient que par l’inspection du role entier, & que ce role est secret. IRRESPONSimLITY OF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICIALS. 31 [106] VOTRE MAJESTY voit par cet exemple, que le genre d’abus qui favorise la clandestinite des roles, est precis£ment celui qui est le plus contraire a l’interet du Roi, a l’intdret de finance, a l’intdret fiscal. Ce n’est done point pour cet interet que les Administrateurs ont fait defendre le depot des roles ; e’est done uniquement pour mettre leur administration a 1’abri de tout examen, & pour procurer l’impunite a leurs Preposes. [107] Et quand toutes les precautions prises pour cet objet se trou- vent insuffisantes, quand les vexations sont si evidentes qu’on ne sqauroit les pallier, il arrive encore le plus souvent que ceux qui en sont coupables obtiennent l’impunite par l’effet de l’autre genre de clan¬ destinite, de celle que nous avons nomm.ee clandestine de personnes, & qui consiste en ce que le plus souvent on ne s^ait pas, on ne peut pas meme decouvrir a qui chaque abus d’autorite doit etre impute. [108] L’administration de votre Royaume se fait, SIRE, aupres de la personne de VOTRE MAJESTE, par les Ministres aides de leurs Commis, & dans certaines parties, par les Intendans des Finances, aides pareillement de leurs Commis: dans les Provinces elle se fait par les Intendans & leurs Subdeiegims. Nous allons considerer ces differentes personnes en commengant par le dernier ordre, & par ceux qui ap- prochent le plus pres du peuple. [109] Le Subdeiegue d’un Intendant est un homme sans qualite, sans pouvoir legal, qui n’a le droit de signer aucune Ordonnance : aussi toutes celles qu’il fait rendre sont signees par l’lntendant. On sgait cependant dans les Provinces que e’est le Subdeiegue qui a pro¬ nonce stir beaucoup de details dans lesquels l’lntendant lui-meme ne peut pas entrer. Si ce Subdeiegue abuse de son pouvoir, ce n’est qu’a I’lntendant qu’on peut se pouvoir: mats comment les gens du peuple oseroient-ils exercer ce recours, quand ils voient que e’est sous le nom de l’lntendant lui-meme que 1’Ordonnance a ete rendue, & que sans doute ce Magistrat superieurse croira eompromis, & oblige de soutenir son Ordonnance? [no] Ce qui se passe a cet egard du Subdeiegue a 1’Intendant, est aussi ce qui se passe de l’lntendant au Ministre, & du Ministre a \ O TRE MAJESTY elle-meme. [in] L’lntendant evite autant qu’il peut de prononcer en son nom. Dans toutes les affaires qui pourroient le compromettre, il prend le partie de faire rendre un Arret du Conseil, ou de se faire autoriser par une lettre du Ministre; & le particulier de la Province qui voudroA 3 2 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. se pourvoir contre le jugement de l’lntendant, & porter ses plaintes au Conseil ou au Ministre, reste sans replique, quand il se voit condamn6 d’avance par une decision du Ministre, ou un Arret du Conseil. [112] Pour les Intendans des Finances, qui sont places entre les In- tendans des Provinces & les Ministres, ce sont des puissances tout-a-fait inconnues de tous ceux qui sont £loign£s de la capitale & du s£jour de la Cour. On sgait en g£n£ral que ces Magistrats existent, & qu’ils ont une grande autorit£ dans le Royaume ; cependant on ne voit point quels sont les genres d’affaires pour lesquels il faut recourir a eux, parce que r^ellement il n’en est aucun qui d^pende directement d’eux, & personne sp^cialement ne leur est subordonn^ & n’est tenu de re¬ connoitre leurs ordres. C’est dans leur travail avec le Controleur- G£n6ral qu’ils font toute leur administration, en lui faisant signer des lettres, ou de ces Arrets du Conseil qu’on nomme Arrets de Finance; & le particulier qui croit avoir a se plaindre de ces decisions, ne peut s’en prendre ni a l’lntendant des Finances, qui ne signe rien, & ne peut etre tenu de rien, puisque le Ministre n’est pas oblige a suivre son avis, & s’en £carte quelquefois; ni au Controleur-G£n£ral, qui diroit avec raison qu’il ne peut pas r^pondre de tout ce que lui font signer les six Intendans des Finances. [ 113] Enfin le Ministre lui-meme n’a aucun £tat dans le Royaume, aucune autorit£ directe. C’est cependant en lui que reside toute la puissance, parce que c’est lui qui certifie la signature de VOTRE MAJESTE. Il peut tout, & ne r£pond de rien ; car le nom respec¬ table dont il lui est permis de se servir, ferme la bouche a quiconque oseroit se plaindre. [114] Ainsi, pendant que l’Habitant d’un village n’ose se pourvoir contre la vexation d’un Subdel£gue qui s’est fait autoriser par l’Or- donnance d’un Intendant, nous, Habitans de la capitale, nous person- nellement, Magistrats charges par £tat de faire parvenir la v£rit£ aux oreilles de VOTRE MAJEST&, combien de fois nous nous sommes vus tax£s d’audace pour avoir rdclam£ contre les ordres surpris au Roi par ses Ministres ! [ 11 53 Osons dire a VOTRE MAJESTY la v£rit£ toute entiere. II en a 6t6 mis sous nos yeux dont la fausset^ £toit physiquement d£- montr£e, & d’autres dans lesquels il £toit Evident que ce nom sacr6 avoit £t6 prostitu£ pour des sujets indignes de 1 ’attention du Roi; & quand nous avons fait voir clairement les petites passions subalternes qui avoient fait obtenir ces ordres, les petites vengeances, les petites ABUSE OF THE KING’S SIGNATURE. 33 protections, ne nous a-t-on pas dit que c’^toit manquer a la Majesty Royale, que de r^voquer en doute qu’un ordre sign£ du Roi fut r£- ellement donn£ par lui-meme? Et si VOTRE MAJESTE vouloit que ces faits, que nous ne faisons qu’all^guer, fussent articules & prouv£s, nous serions en £tat de la satisfaire. [116] De plus, ces memes Ministres ont attir£ a eux, depuis un siecle, le detail de tant d’affaires de tous les genres, qu’il letir est impossible de les exp^dier eux-memes. II s’est done £tabli un nouveau genre de puissance interm£diaire entre vos Ministres & vos autres Sujets, qui n’est ni celle des Commandans ni celle des Intendans des Provinces; e’est celle des Commis, personnages absolument inconnus dans l’Etat, & qui cependant parlant & £crivant au nom des Ministres, ont comme eux un pouvoir absolu, un pouvoir irresistible, & sont meme encore plus qu’eux, a l’abri de toutes recherches, parce qu’ils sont beaucoup moins connus. [117] Ainsi un particulier sans appui, sans aucune relation avec la Cour, par exemple, un homme qui vit dans sa Province, peut recevoir l’ordre le plus rigoureux, sans s^avoir ni par qui cet ordre a £t£ d£cern£, pour en obtenir la revocation, ni quelles en sont les causes, pour faire entendre sa justification. L’ordre est signe du Roi; mais ce particulier obscur s^ait bien que le Roi n’a jamais entendu prononcer son nom. La signature du Roi est certifi£e par un Ministre; il s?ait aussi qu’il n’est pas connu des Ministres. II ignore si e’est par l’lntendant de sa Province que l’ordre a 6t£ obtenu, ou si un de ses ennemis a trouv£ acces aupres des Commis de Versailles, du premier, du second ou du troisieme rang, ou si e’est un de ces ordres en blanc qui sont quelque- fois donnas aux differentes puissances de chaque Province: il 1 ’ignore, & il reste dans l’exil, peut-etre dans les fers. [x 18] Nous avons crq n^cessaire, SIRE, de presenter a VOTRE MAJESTE ces notions des difterens genres de despotisme, & surtout de clandestinite ; nous pouvons a present en faire l’application aux trois impositions directes, la taille, la capitation, le vingtieme. [ 11 9 ] La taille, le plus ancien des impots directs, est celui qui se leve sur les roturiers non privil^gies, dans les Provinces qu’on appelle pays d’Election, e’est-a-dire dans celles qui n’ont point d Etats provinciaux; «& comme la taille est personnelle, on la fait payer aussi aux fermiers des Ecctesiastiques, des Nobles & des privileges. Ainsi e’est une imposition qui est aujourd’hui support^ par presque tous les propri£taires des terres. 3 34 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. [120] On a joint ala taille plusieurs impositions qu’on nomme accessoires, & tous les ans on en ajoute de nouvelles. Ces accessoires egalent a present, ou meme surpassent le prjncipal de la taille. On dit que depuis long-temps le principal de la taille n’est jamais aug- mente ; cependant le peuple qui en supporte le poids, se plaint souvent de l’augmentation. Ce n’est qu’une dispute de mots: on n’augmente pas le principal, mais on augmente les accessoires. [ 121 ] II faut exposer a VOTRE MAJEST& comment se font, chaque annee, l’imposition & la repartition de la taille & de ses accessoires. II y a quatre operations. i°. Le brevet de la taille contient l’imposition sur toutes les Genera¬ tes: ainsi, soit qu’on veuille lever une somme accessoire a la taille sur tout le Royaume ou sur quelque Generality en particulier, c’est par ce brevet qu’elle s’impose, & c’est aussi par ce brevet qu’on repartit entre les Generalites la somme totale imposee sur le Royaume. C’est au Conseil que s’arrete le brevet de la taille. 2°. Les commissions contiennent l’imposition sur toutes les Elections. Par consequent si on veut lever une somme sur quelque Election en particulier, c’est par les commissions qu’on l’impose. C’est aussi dans les commissions qu’est faite la repartition entre les Elections de la somme imposee sur chaque Generality. Les commissions, ainsi que le brevet, sont erivoyees du Conseil. 3°. Ce qu’on appelle le departement, est l’acte par lequel on impose chaque paroisse ou communaute. On impose done au departement les sommes qu’on veut lever sur une paroisse en particulier, ce qui arrive souvent pour constructions de presbyteres, rejet de frais de Justice ou autres depenses; & c’est aussi au departement que se fait la repar¬ tition entre les paroisses de la somme imposee sur l’Election. Le departement se fait dans la Province meme, & e'est aujourd’hui par l’lntendant seul, & sans aucuns recours. Les Elus & autres personnes qui ont droit d’assister a l’assembiee du departement, n’y ont plus de voix deliberative, & les Cours ne peuvent plus prendre connoissance de ce qui s’y passe. 4°. Le role de la taille contient l’imposition sur chaque contribuable, ou, ce qui est la meme chose, la repartition entre les contribuables de la somme imposee sur tout la paroisse ou communaute. Le r 61 e de la taille se fait par les contribuables eux-memes, e’est-a-dire, par ceux qui sont k leur tour Asseeurs ou Collecteurs. Cependant l’lntendant a droit d’imposer d’autorite & d’office un contribuable qu’il croit favoiisi ASSESSMENT OF THE Taille. 35 par les Collecteurs. II a aussi le droit, d’envoyer dans les paroisses des Commissaires, qui font assembler les habitans, qui font faire en leur presence le role de la taille, qu’on appelle alors role d’office. La fonction de ces Commissaires devroit se terminer a instruire les con- tribuables des r^glemens faits pour la confection des roles, & a les obliger a s’y conformer: cependant I’autorite d’un hornme envoys par l’Intendant est telle dans les Provinces, que ces Commissaires font faire le role comme ils veulent; & cela est tellement reconnu, que souvent les Intendans donnent des instructions imprim£es pour prescrire a leurs Commissaires les regies suivant lesquelles ils veulent que la repartition soit faite. Au reste, quoique les quotes d’office soient faites par les Intendans, & les roles d’office par les Commissaires, cette quat- rieme repartition n’est pas autant soumise a l’autorite arbitraire que les trois premieres; car les particulars leses ont droit de se pourvoir en Justice. [122] Nous allons considerer ces quatre operations d’abord sous 1 ’aspect d’impositions, ensuite sous celui de repartitions. En les con- siderant comme impositions, on voit evidemment que pendant que les Cours ne cessent de soutenir que leur enregistrement libre est neces- saire pour 1'etablissement des impots, pendant que cette maxime est regardee par la Nation comme son unique ressource depuis qu’elle n’a plus de representans, & que les Rois eux-memes sont convenus en mille occasions du principle, il s’impose cependant tous les ans de nouvelles sommes sur le peuple sans enregistrement, & par des actes d’autorite arbitraire, tels que le brevet de la taille, les commissions, & l’op^ration du departement. [123] S’il faut donner a VOTRE MAJESTfi une idee des abus qui peuvent r£sulter de cette forme arbitraire d’imposition, il est un fait recent & notoire que nous pouvons choisir pour exemple. Depuis 1771, on a impost, comme accessoire de la taille, les sommes qu’on a crues n£cessaires tant pour le remboursement des offices de Magis- trature qu’on vouloit supprimer, que pour le paiement des gages des Officiers par qui on vouloit faire tenir les nouveaux Tribunaux : aujour- d’hui la Magistrature est retablie, & les nouveaux Tribunaux sont detruits, cependant l’imposition subsiste. [124] On pense peut-etre, SIRE, dans voire Conseil, que la suite des operations faites pendant ces quatre ann^es entraine encore aujour- d’hui une depense trop considerable pour etre prise sur les revenus ordinaires.de VOTRE MAJESTE; &a cet egard ces operations 36 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. peuvent etre compares a une guerre qui a fait cr£er des impots qu’on laisse encore subsister quelque temps apres la paix, pour payer les dettes contracts. Bientot la cause cessera, & devons-nous esperer qu’alors l’imposition sera aussi supprimee? Oui, SIRE, nous l’esp^rons, nous ne nous permettons pas meme d’en douter; mais nous devons avouer que notre esp^rance n’est fondle que sur la confiance person- nelle que toute la Nation a dans votre justice: car depuis long-temps personne en France ne se flatte de voir jamais cesser un impot qui peut etre renouvelle tous les ans par un acte secret d’autorit£ arbi¬ trage, comme le brevet de la taille; & si VOTRE MAJESTE vouloit se faire rendre compte de toutes les impositions g£n£rales ou particu- lieres qui se levent dans le Royaume, & qui ont £t<§ ainsi £tablies par l’autorite arbitraire, Elle verroit peut-etre que la plupart ont eu pour motifs des besoins momentan£es qui ont cess£, & que cependant on a continue de lever l’impot. [125] A present, SIRE, nous allons considerer les quatre operations l’une apres l’autre sous le second aspect, c’est-a dire, comme repartition. Commen?ons par le brevet de la taille, qui contient la premiere repar¬ tition entre les Generalites. Nous avons deja dit qu’il s’arrete au Conseil de Finance. Mais VOTRE MAJESTE sail qu’a l’exception du Controleur-Gen^ral & d’un Intendant des Finances, aucun de ceux qui assistent a ce Conseil ne peut etre instruit de la situation des Provinces, ni des besoins de l’Etat: c’est done le Ministre seul qui fixe tous les ans & la somme de l’imposition, & la premiere repartition. Nous ignorons, SIRE, & toute la France ignore par quel principe ce Ministre se determine : nous sgavons seulement qu’avant la fixation du brevet personne dans le Royaume n’a vu prendre aucune information de l’etat des Provinces. Le brevet de la taille est done reellement un acte fait par l’autorite arbitraire, sans avoir pris des connoissances suffisantes pour l’objet qui exigeroit le plus que tous les ordres de l’Etat fussent consults. [126] II en est a peu pres de meme des commissions, qui contien- nent la seconde repartition, puisqu’elles se font au meme Conseil de Finance, par consequent par la seule volonte du Ministre & de l’lntendant des Finances. II y a cependant une difference en ce qu’avant d’expedier les commissions, on demande l’avis des Intendans de chaque Province. C’est done sur le rapport du seul Intendant qu’on statue sur le sort de chaque Province. Or cet Intendant lui-meme est oblige de s’en rapporter a des subalternes; car il ne peut pas con- noitre lui seul & par lui-meme l’etat de toute sa Gdn£ralit [49] For the present, Sire, without venturing to propose to Your Majesty a general reformation of the farmed taxes, special memoirs may be presented to you on various subjects, which may be discussed with your Ministers, for it is impossible that Your Majesty should your¬ self enter into the details of all the devices that have been invented by the Farmers-General to secure the payment of the taxes, and by the delinquents to elude them. What we do ask at present of Your Majesty personally is to institute an investigation into the manner in which all taxes were extended under the last ministry, and into the removals granted with unprecedented profusion. [50] You have commanded us, Sire, to accept without examination whatever has received the stamp of law during the period when we were excluded from our functions. A superior power has prevented us from watching over the interests and rights of the people. It becomes necessary, therefore, for Your Majesty to undertake this duty, and in the investigation which you will institute we beseech you to distinguish with the greatest care what is really essential to the collection of the taxes from what has been introduced only through the blind com¬ plaisance of the ministry toward the Financiers, in order to gratify their despotism. Your Majesty should eliminate from these new laws, all that goes to establish an arbitrary system of justice. We admit that since there are excessive taxes to be collected it is necessary to have rigorous laws, but these laws can at least be definite; for no motive, no consideration, no interest, can justify Your Majesty in permitting the fate of the people to depend upon the avidity of a Farmer or the caprice of a government official. 94 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. [51] Finally, Sire, although it is not a part of our function to sug¬ gest plans to you, and although we must, above all things, avoid sanc¬ tioning doubtful systems, there is nevertheless one truth so important, so evident, so calculated to appeal to Your Majesty, that we feel obliged to submit it to you; that is, that there would be an assured ad¬ vantage for Your Majesty and an immense gain for the people in simpli¬ fying the existing taxes and the laws which provide for their collection. [52] We have already observed that the regulations established by the Farm form an appallingly voluminous code; yet there is no one versed either in jurisprudence or in administration who will not testify that only simple laws are good laws. Now, when one considers the taxes the collection of which has given rise to this code, one finds that the dues on the various commodities differ according to the kind of trade concerned, the localities where they are collected, and the rank of the individual taxpayer. Fraud, always active and industrious, profits by this want of uniformity, and makes its way, so to speak, between the sinuosities of the law; the financial administration is constantly invent¬ ing new methods of pursuing it, and the weapons employed against smugglers annoy and embarrass everybody in the enjoyment of their property and the liberty of their persons. [53] This accounts for the great multiplication of Clerks, who bring their impertinent curiosity to bear upon all the actions of life. In this way the Financiers have acquired the right to inspect merchandise, to enter houses, and to violate family secrets. It is this inequality of the taxes collected in the different provinces which obliged your royal prede¬ cessors to divide the kingdom in every direction by customs lines, which it is necessary to guard, like frontiers, with an innumerable army of Clerks. [ 54 ] All this would be remedied, Sire, by simplifying the taxes. Your Majesty’s Farmers would save a 13 rge part of the expense of ad¬ ministration, and smuggling would become more difficult, for nothing favors it so much as the complication of the taxes and the obscurity of the regulations governing them. The people would enjoy the advan¬ tage of being less tormented by the investigations of'the employees of the Farm—investigations which are nowhere so annoying as in regions where smuggling is to be expected, notably within the limits of the so- called territories of “ the five great Farms,” 1 « the aides," “ the great salt tax,” &c. A portion of central and northern Prance separated from the rest of the country by a customs line. SIMPLIFICATION OF THE .TAXES. 95 [ 55 ] We do not claim, Sire, that this simplification would be an easy task. It is, however, evidently possible theoretically, and it would be of the greatest service to the State ; but to carry it out, it would be necessary to know in the greatest detail not only the revenue pro¬ duced by each tax in each district, but the real source of that revenue as well, and to calculate exactly what increase or diminution each of the proposed changes would produce in the amount. It would be necessary to know not only the actual, but the possible product, to consider not only the interests of the Farm, but those of the cultivator, the manufacturer, the merchant, and the consumer, of each commodity. VVe venture, nevertheless, to assure Your Majesty that this task may be accomplished in spite of its difficulties. There is certainly an enormous amount of material in the registers of the General Farm, in the offices of the Ministers, of the Intendants of Finance, and even of many merchants; it only remains to determine how and by whom it shall be utilized. [56] Shall the Farmers-General themselves be charged with this task? That has been suggested more than once, Sire. They have been asked to propose plans for reform ; but we believe it to be our duty to inform Your Majesty that while the simplification of the taxes would be advantageous to the Farm, the most expert of the Farmers have a personal interest contrary to that of the Farm, because the science which they have been at such pains to acquire would be ren¬ dered useless, and it is this profound science, and the complication of the machine which they have to operate, which makes them necessary to the government, and permits them to dictate laws to the Ministers. Can it be doubted, moreover, that the Financiers, if transformed into legislators, would add to the present severity of the taxes whatever might serve to cement the despotism, at once intolerable to the people and useless to Your Majesty, to which they have already subjected the Nation? [57] Certainly the Farmers-General should be consulted. In spite of the observations which we have made to Your Majesty, there have been those among them who have had sufficient regard for the public welfare to sacrifice to it the interests and prejudices of their position. Nevertheless, in consulting them, it should never be forgotten in what respects their interests are opposed to those of the people and to those of Your Majesty. [58] You have much to expect, Sire, in this undertaking, from the 96 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. zeal and knowledge of the officials at the head of your finances. 1 We even believe that it is important that the work should be done under their direction. But shall they perform the task themselves? Can so great a work be performed by a single man—and a man whose time is, perhaps, already fully occupied by the daily current of affairs in his administration? Doubtless he would employ collaborators; but if the work were put under the control of a single official the same dis¬ advantages which have so often been experienced in the past would inevitably result from being dependent upon one man, and having only a single individual to defend the people against the united efforts of the Financiers. Add to this that his death would some day involve the loss of all the knowledge acquired and of all the work done in that very branch, perhaps, of the subject which it might prove especially necessary to clear up. [59] It would be well, Sire, if all the details of the administration of the Farms could be known both to Your Majesty, for whom the taxes are levied, and to the people, who pay them. Then, when the people addressed their complaints to you, and asked for relief from their burdens, the remedy might be suggested to you, and Your Majesty would be able to form your own opinion upon it. Since this is impos¬ sible in the present state of the laws, it is certainly desirable to endeavor to simplify them. But until this task can be achieved and a new body of laws be given to France, can no restraint be put upon the tyranny of the Farmers, founded as it is upon the general ignorance of the laws and their administration? There is such a remedy, Sire, for you can at once order the Farmers-General to publish exact and circumstantial lists of the taxes to be collected, and a short, clear, and systematic ac¬ count of such of the regulations to be observed as it is important for the public to know. [60] They may tell Your Majesty that this work will be long and difficult; nevertheless, no one can honestly refuse to admit that there is no branch of the farmed taxes with which a number of the Farmers or their directors are not especially occupied. .Each of them has a complete treatise upon his own division of the taxes, which furnishes him with the data that the General Farm requires from time to time; he has also a set of abridged instructions for the direction of his Clerks, and it is but right that these should be communicated to the public, 'The Controller-General is here meant. Turgot was just then at the head of the finances. LETTRES DE CACHET. 97 since it must always be on the defensive against the attempts of these Clerks. The work is then already done, it needs only to be made public. [61] But we must warn Your Majesty that the Farmers will not lend themselves readily to this publication, the necessity of which is clearly proved by their very unwillingness. They do not wish the people to acquire a knowledge of the taxes. They desire to keep the country in blind subjugation to the General Farm. They fear that a body of lawyers will arise in each province who, having studied the financial laws, will be able to aid individual citizens in their contests with the Farmer. But it is your duty, Sire, to help your unhappy subjects by increasing their facilities for self-defense. You owe them the support of the laws, and that support becomes only an illusion when the laws are unknown to those who have the right to invoke them. [62] In thus presenting to you, Sire, a general sketch of the farmed taxes, it has not been our intention to enter in detail into any particular subject. Nevertheless, we must beseech Your Majesty to take into especial consideration the protests addressed to the late King in the month of August, 1770, which up to the present time have received no response. 1 1 One might be tempted to look upon the omission here indicated as a device of the printer to stimulate interest by a show of mystery. The court certainly expresses its opinions of the letires de cachet quite clearly in the paragraphs immediately following the gap in the text. It is possible that in the portion of the document which is left out, Malesherbes briefly reviewed the contents of the remarkable protest of August 14th, 1770, to which he here refers, and which, he declares, had been completely ignored by the government. The curious circumstances that called forth this earlier protest against the abuse of the royal orders for imprisonment, helps to explain the attitude of Malesherbes toward the Farmers of the revenue. The Farm, suspecting a merchant, named Monnerat, of smuggling, obtained a lettre de cachet from the king’s officials, and shut him up in one of the worst of the Parisian prisons. Fie was first confined in a perfectly dark, subterranean dungeon, with a great chain fastened about his neck. After a month or so he Was put into a more tolerable cell, where he was kept for a year and a half. He was then released, and found that he had been im¬ prisoned by mistake, having been unluckily taken for the man for whom the leitre de cachet was really intended. The Farmers-General refused to indemnify him in any w'ay for their error, so he brought suit for damages in the Cour des aides of Paris, of which Malesherbes was, it will be remembered, hirst President. Ihe Farmers, how¬ ever, had sufficient influence to procure the removal Revocation') of the case to the Royal Council, and the Cour des aides was peremptorily forbidden to pursue the matter farther. 7 9 8 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. [63] Why may we not venture to hope, Sire, that this important investigation may lead you to perform an act of justice which would shed the greatest lustre upon the opening of your reign, namely, to choose men worthy of confidence, and entrust to them the examination of all the orders which to-day detain any citizen in exile or captivity? [64] Our hopes carry us still farther; for if Your Majesty decides to have this investigation made, we do not doubt that you will improve the opportunity to establish certain principles in this matter where none have been recognized before. One thing at least will become apparent, that orders affecting the personal liberty of citizens should never be granted to private individuals, either for their personal interest or to avenge their private injuries; for in a country where there are laws individuals should have no need of extra-judicial orders; and, more¬ over, such orders granted to the powerful against the weak, with no chance of redress, constitute the worst form of injustice. [65] It may perhaps be thought that there are certain exceptional cases in which the public good requires acts of authority that are not clothed with the ordinary formalities of justice. It will be urged that it is sometimes desirable to furnish a substitute for the tardy course of jus- In the vigorous protest which the tribunal thereupon submitted to the king, it claims that the proceedings which the ministry had so hastily nullified had brought to light “ a well devised system of despotism ” and a new plan of the financiers to sub¬ stitute acts of arbitrary authority for the regular legal procedure, not only in cases of smuggling but in any instance where the formalities of the law would embarrass them. While the tribunal does not deny that the lettres de cachet may be legitimate in some cases, especially in order to reach offenders who have taken refuge in some nobleman’s residence or other asylum where they are ordinarily exempt from arrest, it maintains that every one who believes himself unjustly imprisoned should be permitted to bring suit for damages agaipst those who obtained the order, for “ this is the only protection against the most dangerous form of persecution.” The removal of Mon- nerat’s case to the Royal Council is, it claims, practically a refusal of justice, “ for will an unfortunate victim who has long languished in prison and dungeon, in virtue of an order granted by your Ministers and procured by the Farmers-General, dare to plead in your Council against these same Fanners? ” The worst of it is, moreover, that this abuse has become a recognized principle with the government officials and financiers. .“They have established the principle in your Council that to bring suit for damages against those who have committed an injustice in executing an order surreptitiously obtained from Your Majesty, is to set at naught your own royal authority.” Now when the Farmers have no other proof for t eir suspicions than delation, or information which the courts would regard as open to suspicion, they proceed to punish the supposed crime “ by means of those orders of \ our Majesty which are called lettres de cachet .” Those who are merely suspected- LETTRES DE CACHET. 99 tice, which might allow criminals to escape ; that police control and the public safety in great cities make it necessary to keep some hold upon suspected persons, and that often public and family interest are at one in requiring the separation from society of an individual who might cause annoyance, and against whom there are no other proofs than those which are controlled by the family itself which is seeking to protect itself from the ignominy of a public trial. [66] But when all these considerations have been discussed in your presence, and all these abuses have been brought to your attention, you will see, Sire, that these are mere pretexts, which could never have furnished a sufficient justification for permitting the liberty of the citizen to be subjected to arbitrary authority, or that, at least, the right of protesting against wrongs should be secured to the oppressed. [67] You will perceive that in cases where justice itself demands prompt and secret measures in order that the delays of the law may not permit the flight of the criminal, it is still possible for a Royal Leg¬ islator to give greater activity to justice without resorting to illegal methods, and that the necessary celerity would thus be attained with- of smuggling are in this way cast into horrible prisons or even into dungeons destined for those guilty of the most hideous crimes, as the treatment of Monnerat clearly shows. Should one of these ill-starred victims of the Farm seek justice on the ground that he is no smuggler or that he has been treated with undue harshness, he is pre¬ vented from gaining his suit by the removal of his case to the King’s Council. Letlres de cachet are, however, by no means confined to the orders granted to the Farmers. “Consider, Sire,” Malesherbes continues, “ how enormously the number of these orders has increased, and upon what a variety of grounds and for what strictly personal reasons they are now granted. Formerly they were reserved for affairs of State, and then, indeed, Sire, it was but right that the courts should respect the secrets of your administration. Next they were granted under certain peculiar circumstances—as when the sympathies of the sovereign were aroused by the tears of a family that feared dishonor. To-day they are supposed to be necessary every time a common man has shown himself wanting in the respect due to a person of quality; as if the powerful had not advantages enough already. They are, too, the usual form of punishment for indiscreet remarks, which can never be substantiated except by delation—always an unreliable form of proof, since the delator is, of ne¬ cessity, subject to suspicion.” Further, the orders are granted with great reckless¬ ness and are despatched by the clerks in the government offices, and even at the instigation of the subdelegates in the provinces.” “The result is, Sire, that no citizen in your realms can be certain that his liberty will not be sacrificed to private vengeance, for no one is so great as to be exempt from the hate of a minister or so insignificant as to be beneath the animosity of a clerk of the Farm. The text of this protest is given by Vignaux’s Mem. sur Malesherbes, pp. 61-96. IOO TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. out depriving the person who has been unjustly arrested of redress against his calumniator. [68] You will perceive that if the public safety demands that some hold shall be kept upon a person who has given just cause for suspicion, the legitimacy of these suspicions should be formally verified, in order that an innocent victim of such precautions may demand and obtain indemnity, or that he may at least know why, and by whom, these vio¬ lent measures have been taken. [69] And, finally, you will perceive that in order to shield a family which has itself invoked aid of the government against one of its mem¬ bers who has dishonored it, it is by no means necessary that this kind of justice should be without possible redress. It is, in reality, only the publicity of legal procedure which it is desired to avoid. But without making the affair public, it is possible to record the reason for the royal order in a document signed by the person who issues the order and by those who have obtained it, to preserve this document at least during the whole time of the detention of the prisoner, and to communicate its contents to him. [70] The prisoner, whatever his crime, should be permitted to pre¬ sent his defense, and even to demand that the reasons for this severe order should be examined afresh by others than those who have issued it, and be reported upon anew to the King, who would naturally choose for this examination men of the most assured and unassailable repu¬ tation. But since it is very difficult and often impossible for a prisoner to reach the King himself, it would be necessary, from time to time, that all the royal prisons should be visited and all the existing lettres de cachet reviewed by persons unconnected with the administration and of acknowledged integrity. [71] If it were known that Your Majesty had taken these precau¬ tions against being misled, and especially could it be remembered that your reign was inaugurated by a strict investigation of all that the previous administration had been reproached with, we are confident, Sire, that the abuse of these orders issued in your name would become very rare. We can only give you a glimpse of the advantages which would result from such an investigation, but if it is once made you will be able to measure its importance by the gratitude of the Nation. We have indulged in a digression, Sire, which we cannot regret, since it has afforded an opportunity of presenting to you certain observations, which may be of some service, upon the species of abuses which have given LETTRES DE CACHET. IOt rise to the greatest complaint on the part of one portion of the Nation,, and which would be among the easiest to reform. [72] It is now time to return to the subject of the taxes. The annoyances occasioned by the collection of the farmed taxes have one excuse, viz., the necessity of obtaining for Your Majesty the consider¬ able revenue which these taxes produce. But it does not seem as if there need be the same annoyances in the case of the taxes which are levied directly upon the people. When the amount to be raised is fixed, as it should always be, it should only remain to choose the fairest, simplest, and least wasteful method of apportionment. The administration is therefore inexcusable when in levying these taxes it introduces a despotism as useless it is odious, and augments the tax itself by an expensive system of collection, the cost of which is always borne by the people. But this is just what happens, Sire, in the levy¬ ing of all the direct taxes, the taille , the poll tax and the twentieth; and a part of these annoyances are even felt in connection with the exaction of personal service demanded of the people, as in the case of the militia and the corvee. [73] But the discussion of these abuses brings us to much larger questions. The collection of the taxes upon commodities does not depend upon the form of government, but the apportionment of the direct taxes is intimately connected with the constitution of the mon¬ archy. The faults of this apportionment form part of a general plan of administration which has long existed in your kingdom, and they can only be remedied by a general reformation to which it might please Your Majesty to subject the whole administrative system. [74] We shall therefore examine the regulations affecting each of the direct taxes in order that Your Majesty may observe the develop¬ ment of this unfortunate system. But we must first consider its origin ; we must make plain to Your Majesty its dominating principle and its consequences, and you may perhaps be astonished to see to what extent the pretext of your authority has been directed against that authority itself. [75] Pardon us, Sire, if we make use of the term despotism, hateful as it is; permit us to dispense with vexatious circumlocutions in view of the important facts which we have to lay before you. The despotism against which we protest is that which is exercised without your knowl¬ edge, by the emissaries of the administration, persons absolutely unknown to Your Majesty. Not, Sire, that it is our intention to offer 102 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. to Your Majesty a useless and perhaps dangerous dissertation upon the limits of your royal authority; on the contrary, it is the right to invoke that authority which we propose to vindicate for every citizen, and by the term despotism we mean that sort of administration which tends to deprive your subjects of this right, which is so precious to them, and to shield those from your justice who oppress your people. [76] The idea of despotism, or of absolute authority, has differed at different times and with different nations. There is, for example, a form of government which is called oriental despotism, a govern¬ ment, namely, in which not only the sovereign enjoys absolute and unlimited power, but in which every executor of his orders also exercises unlimited power. The result is, of course, an intolerable tyranny. For there is an infinite difference between the same power wielded by a ruler, whose real interest is that of his people, and by a subject, who, intoxicated by prerogatives to which he was not destined, delights in aggravating the burdens of his equals. This sort of despotism, trans¬ mitted from the higher to the lower functionaries, reaches in the end every subject, so that there is not an individual in the whole empire who is safe from it. [77] The vices of such a government are due both to its constitution and its customs ; to its constitution, because the people who are subject to it have neither tribunals, nor codes of law, nor representatives. There are no tribunals, therefore authority is exercised by a single man; there are no fixed and positive laws, therefore he to whom authority is given enacts laws at his own pleasure, which means, in general, accord¬ ing to his caprices; there are no representatives of the people, and therefore the governor of a province may oppress it with impunity against the will and without the knowledge of his sovereign. [78] The manners and customs of the country favor this impunity, for the peoples who are subjected to this species of despotism are always a prey to ignorance. No one can read, no general intercourse is main¬ tained ; the cries of the oppressed cannot be heard outside the borders of the province they inhabit. The innocent victim has not therefore the support of public opinion, which is so powerful a restraint upon the tyranny of subordinate officials. [79] Such is the unhappy situation of such a people that the most benevolent of sovereigns cannot make the effects of his justice felt except by those who are near his person, and in the few matters of which he can himself take cognizance. The most that he can do for FRANCE RESEMBLES AN ORIENTAL DESPOTISM. IO3 the rest of his subjects is to choose the higher representatives of his authority as little unwisely as possible, and to urge them to make the best possible choice for the inferior offices. But with all that he can do, the citizens of the lowest class will always be as absolutely subject to the authority of a despot of the lowest grade as the nobles are to the sovereign himself. [80] It would seem that such a form of government could not exist in nations which have laws, intelligence and habits of refinement; and in civilized countries, even when the ruler possesses absolute power, the condition of the people ought to be very different. However absolute the power, justice may be regularly administered by tribunals governed by fixed laws, and when judges depart from these laws it is possible to appeal to a higher court, and, in the end, to the sove¬ reign authority itself. These appeals are possible because all official acts are duly committed to writing and recorded in public registers, because - every citizen may find an enlightened defender, and because the public itself is the censor of the judges. And not only may indi¬ viduals obtain justice, but societies, communities, cities, and whole t provinces as well, but in order to defend their rights they should have assemblies and representatives. [81] Thus in a civilized country, even though it be ruled by an absolute power, there need be no interest, either public or private, left unguarded, for all the representatives of royal authority should be subjected to three kinds of restraint, that of the law, that of appeal to higher authority, and that of public opinion. [82] This distinction between the different kinds of absolute power is not a new one. It has often been made by jurists and authors, both modern and ancient, who have written upon the subject of law. It may be derived from a perusal of the history and the descriptions of various countries; but it was necessary to recall it on account of the important truth which we desire to deduce from it. We must make clear to Your Majesty that the government which it is desired to establish in France is the real despotism of uncivilized countries, and that the most highly cultivated nation, in a century of refined customs and manners, is menaced with that form of government in which the sovereign cannot be enlightened, however sincerely he may desire to be. [83] France, like the rest of Occidental Europe, was governed by feudal law, but each of the European kingdoms has experienced its own particular changes since that form of government was destroyed. 104 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. Certain nations have been permitted to discuss their rights with their sovereign, and the prerogatives of both ruler and people have thus been established. In others absolute sovereign authority asserted itself so speedily that the national rights were disregarded. This has re¬ sulted in at least one advantage for these countries, viz., the absence of any pretext for the destruction of intermediary powers or for the restraint of that liberty, which is the natural right of all men, to deliberate in common upon common interests, and to appeal to the supreme power against the tyranny of subordinate authorities. [84] In France the nation has always been profoundly conscious of its rights and of its freedom. Our traditions have been more than once recognized by our Kings, who have even gloried in being the sovereigns of a free people. Nevertheless the articles of that freedom have never been'duly drawn up, and the real power, the power of arms, which under the feudal system was in the hands of the nobles, has been entirely concentrated in the sovereign. [85] When, therefore, there have been cases of grievous abuse of authority, the representatives of the Nation have not been satisfied with complaining of mal-administration, they have felt obliged to vindicate the national rights. They have talked not merely of justice, but of liberty; and the consequence of their efforts has been that the Min¬ isters, who were always ready to seize every possible means of shielding their administration from examination, have been artful enough to arouse suspicion in regard both to the governmental bodies which pro¬ tested and to the protests themselves. Recourse to the King against his Ministers has been represented as an attack upon his authority. The grievances of the Estates, the remonstrances of the Magistrates, have been distorted into dangerous measures, against which the government should protect itself. The most powerful of Kings have been per¬ suaded that they must fear even the tears of a submissive people. Upon this pretext a government has been introduced into France which is more-fatal than despotism and is worthy of Oriental barbarism, namely, the clandestine system of administration, which under the eyes of a just ruler and in the midst of an enlightened nation permits injustice to show herself, nay more, to flaunt herself openly. Entire depart¬ ments of the administration are founded upon principles of injustice, and no recourse either to public opinion or to a superior authority is possible. [86] It is this administrative despotism, and especially this system TYRANNY OF THE ADMINISTRATION. I0 5 of secrecy, which we would denounce to Your Majesty, for we have no intention of venturing to discuss the consecrated prerogatives of the throne. It is sufficient for us that Your Majesty has disavowed, in the act which re-established the Magistracy, the tyrannical measures enacted under a ministry which is now dismissed. And we intend to conform to the intentions of Your Majesty in ignoring certain questions which ought never to have been raised. [87] But it will not be overstepping the bounds of a due subordina¬ tion to lay before you a series of encroachments upon national liberty, the liberty natural to all men, which make it impossible for you to hear the grievances of your subjects or to watch the conduct of your admin¬ istrative officers. First, an attempt has been made to do away with the real repre¬ sentatives of the nation. Secondly, the protests of those representatives whom it has been impossible to do away with have been rendered illusory. Thirdly, there is an evident desire to make such protests altogether impossible, and to this end the system of secrecy has been introduced. This secrecy is of a double nature; it aims, on the one hand, to shield the operations of the administration from the eyes of the Nation and of Your Majesty himself, and on the other to conceal from the public the identity of the administrative officers. This, Sire, is the outline of the system which we shall now proceed to elucidate. [88] We state as the first aim of this despotism the attempt to do away with all representatives of the people, and if Your Majesty will but consider the significance of several facts, no one of which is open to doubt, you will be convinced of the truth of this statement. [89] General assemblies of the Nation have not been corivened for a hundred and sixty years, and for a long time before that they were very infrequent, and, we venture to say, almost useless, since what should have rendered their presence especially necessary, namely, the fixing of the taxes, was accomplished without them. [90] Certain provinces had their own assemblies or Provincial Estates; but some of the provinces have, been deprived of this precious privilege, and in those where the Estates still exist, their functions have been restricted within limits which become narrower every day. It is not too much to say that a continual warfare is maintained in our provinces between the representatives of the people and the guardians of arbitrary power, and in this warfare despotism gains fresh victories daily. 106 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. [91] The provinces which had no Provincial Estates were called Pays d'Election, and certain tribunals once actually existed there called Elections , composed of persons elected by the province, who, at least in the matter of the apportionment of the taxes, performed some of the functions of Provincial Estates. These tribunals still exist under the same name, Elections , but the name is all that remains of the original institution. Their members are no longer really elected by the province, and, such as they are, they have been almost completely subordinated to the Intendants in the exercise of the functions which remain to them. We shall have occasion to speak later of the Elections in considering the taille. We shall then inform Your Majesty how they differ from the Provincial Estates; for the present, suffice it to say that the province no longer elects any true representatives. ' [92] Each corporation or community still had the right, at least, to administer its own affairs, a right which we will not say formed a part of the original constitution of the realm, for it is more ancient even than that—it is a natural right, a right of all intelligent beings. Never¬ theless even this has been taken away from your subjects; and we do not fear to say that the administration has in this matter fallen into excesses which must be called puerile. [93] Since it has become a political principle with your powerful Ministers, not to permit the National Assemblies to be convoked, things have gone from bad to worse, until the deliberations of the inhabitants of a Village have been declared null and void unless authorized by the Intendant. Hence if a community wishes to make an outlay, however insignificant, it must obtain the assent of the Subdelegate of the Intendant, and must follow the plan w'hich he suggests, employ the workmen whom he favors, and pay them in accordance with his dic¬ tation. If the community wishes to bring a suit at law, the proceedings must be authorized by the Intendant; the community must first plead its cause before his tribunal before taking it to a court of justice, and if the opinion of the Intendant differs from that of the people, or if their opponent enjoys some influence in the Intendant’s office, the community is deprived of the opportunity of defending its rights. [94] Such, Sire, are the means which have been employed to stifle all municipal feeling in France, to extinguish, if possible, even the sentiment of citizenship. The w-hole Nation, so to speak, has been declared incapable of managing its own affairs, and has been put under the charge of guardians. ABSENCE OF LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. 107 [95] destruction of protesting bodies was but the first step toward the abolition of the right of protest itself. It has not yet come to an express prohibition of all recourse to the prince, and of all independent action on the part of the provinces; but Your Majesty knows that every petition which deals with the interests of a province or of the Nation as a whole is regarded, when it is signed by a single individual, as a punishable liberty, and if signed by a number of persons, as evi¬ dence of a seditious association. It was, however, necessary to make some ostensible reparation to the Nation for ceasing to convoke the Estates, so the Sovereign announced that the Courts of Justice should take the place of these Estates, and that the Magistrates should act as the representatives of the people. [96] But after having given the Magistrates this new title to console the Nation for the loss of its real representatives, every opportunity was taken to emphasize the fact that the functions of the Judges were limited to their own district and to matters of litigation; hence the right of representation has been restricted within the same limits. [97J Thus all sorts of abuses may be committed by the administra¬ tion without ever coming to the knowledge of the King, either through the representatives of the people, since in most of the provinces there are no representatives ; or through the Courts of Justice, for they are set aside as incompetent so soon as they venture to speak upon matters of administration ; or through individuals, who have been taught by severe examples in the past that it is a crime to invoke the justice of their Sovereign. [98] In spite of these obstacles the Administrative Officials have always dreaded the voice of the public, a species of protest which can never be wholly silenced; and perhaps they have also been fearful lest a day should come when a King would demand, of his own accord, an account of the secrets of the administration. They were consequently anxious to make such an account impossible, or at least to insure its being rendered by themselves without any chance of contradiction ; and it is to this end that they have made such strenuous efforts to introduce a clandestine system of administration. [99] In order to prove this assertion'in all its bearings we should be obliged to enter into the details of all phases of the government, but a few examples will suffice to render its truth apparent. We shall choose our examples from the taxes, which constitute our principal theme, and we shall not hesitate to cite the administrations of those who have io8 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. done the most to deserve public approval, for we wish to acquaint Your Majesty with the intrinsic vices of the system, however much they may have been neutralized for a time by the personal qualities of the Admin¬ istrator himself. [100] It is acknowledged, for example, throughout Europe that nothing rendered the previous reign more noteworthy than the con¬ struction of roads, which facilitate commerce and double the value of property in the realm. The government has believed hitherto that the corvee was necessary to this great work ; yet the corvee is not authorized by any law of the land. 1 It would seem that it ought to have been legally sanctioned, and then it would have been possible to establish and make public fixed rules for the apportionment of the labor which is often more burdensome to the people than the taille itself. [101] But this method has not been adopted. It was urged that there was reason to fear the sensation which would be excited in the kingdom should a law be enacted which, by regulating the corvee , would seem to authorize it. Consequently all the operations have been carried out in secret, and not even a printed decree of the Council has ever been issued concerning an exaction from which the people have so long suffered. A province learns that the construction of a road has been decreed only when the work on it has begun and it is too late to op¬ pose it, even if the choice of the route is contrary to the interest of the province. If the work is apportioned with injustice, or with too great harshness, those who have complaints to make have no legal judges before whom to plead their cause, no fixed rules to oppose to the rigor of the orders they have received, and no means for legally proving the injustice which has been done them. [102] It is said that Your Majesty is desirous of mitigating the severity of the corvee , or substituting for it some other form of taxation. 2 The Nation awaits these changes with confidence, and already shows its gratitude; and we venture to hope that whatever substitute is found 1 The corvee was originally the unpaid labor which a lord might exact from his tenant. There was no regular royal corvee until 173S, when the new interest in high* ways led the Controller-General to issue a simple instruction to the Inlendants author¬ izing them to employ forced labor in constructing the roads. 2 Turgot substituted for the corvee a general road tax to be paid by all land owners, except the clergy. The preamble to his edict (Feb. 1776) gives an almost sensa¬ tional account of existing abuses. See CEuvres de Turgot , edited by Daire, Vol. II, pp. 287 sqq. THE CORVEE. IO 9 for the corvee will not be infected with the same secrecy. We never¬ theless felt constrained to mention the abuses which occur in this branch of the administration, as they are among the most striking examples of the general system. [103] It is much the same with the tax of the twentieth, except that in this the abuses have a still flimsier pretext. It may be said in regard to the corvee that the celerity required in the execution of public works will not permit waiting on the discussion of instances of indi¬ vidual injustice, but the twentieth has been imposed upon the same land almost without interruption every year for the last forty years. Can it be credited that in all these forty years the rolls of this tax have never been recorded where private individuals might consult them? [104] This formality has not been omitted through negligence, for the matter was presented to the King by his Cour des aides in 1756. The ministry of that period submitted the evidence presented, and the late King consented that such records should be made; but the Min¬ isters who followed, after resorting for several years to all sorts of subterfuges which might indirectly obviate the consequences of the King’s sacred word, finally succeeded in getting it definitely revoked. [105] We shall not here recall all the details of a matter that is past for fear of wearying Your Majesty, but, if Your Majesty desires farther information, the facts have not been forgotten and it will be easy to present them to you. We shall content ourselves for the present with observing that the majority of the deceptions practiced by the Collector of the twentieth are necessarily unknowm and unpunished by reason of this secrecy. For example, when a Collector betrays the interests of the royal treasury by favoring some individual, and, in order to conceal his deception from the Ministers, makes up the sum by unjustly aug¬ menting the quotas of others, the injured parties have no means of proving the injustice without being permitted to inspect the whole list, and this list is kept secret. [106] Your Majesty will see by this example that this sort of abuse, which is permitted by the secrecy of the rolls, is precisely that which is most opposed to the interests of the King, of the department of finance, of the treasury. It is not therefore in the King’s interest that the Administrative Officials have prohibited the publication of the tax- rolls ; it is purely to shield their own conduct from all examination and to insure impunity to their Collectors. [107] When all these precautions are found to be insufficient, and T IO TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. the vexations become so evident that there is no way of palliating them, it usually happens that the culpable persons insure their impunity by means of the second sort of secrecy, which, as we have said, conceals the identity of the Official, and ordinarily makes it impossible to dis¬ cover who is responsible for any particular abuse of authority, [108] The administration of your kingdom, Sire, is conducted, in conjunction with Your Majesty, by Ministers, with the aid of their Clerks, and in certain departments by Intendants of Finance, likewise with the aid of Clerks; in the provinces it is managed by the Intend¬ ants and their Subdelegates. We shall proceed to consider these different officials, beginning with the lowest order, with those, namely, who approach most nearly to the people. [109] The Subdelegate of an Intendant is a man without rank and without legal authority, who has no right to sign any orders, hence all those which he executes are signed by the Intendant. It is neverthe¬ less well known in the provinces that the Subdelegate decides upon many details into which the Intendant himself cannot enter. If the Subdelegate abuses his power one can only complain to the Intendant; but how shall people of the lower classes venture to complain when they see that the order is issued in the name of the Intendant himself, and know that this superior magistrate would doubtless consider himself compromised and feel obliged to uphold his own order if it were questioned ? [no] The relation of the Subdelegate to the Intendant, in such cases, is much the same as that of the Intendant to the Minister, and of the Minister to Your Majesty himself. [in] Whenever it is possible the Intendant avoids making a de¬ cision in his own name. In any affair which may compromise him he takes the precaution of securing a decree of the Council, or of obtain¬ ing authorization by a letter from the Minister. An individual in one of the provinces, who wishes to protest against the decision of an Intendant and carry his case to the Council or to the Minister, is help¬ less when he finds himself condemned in advance by a decision of the Minister or a decree of the Council. [112] As to the Intendants of Finance, whose official position is between the Intendants of the provinces and the Ministers, they are authorities absolutely unknown to those who live at a distance from the capital and the court. It is known in a general way that such officials exist, and that they have real power in the kingdom; but the public IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICIALS. Ill does not understand what classes of affairs they are responsible for, since there are, indeed, no matters directly under their control, and they have no immediate subordinates who are obliged to take orders from them. Their whole administration is carried on in collaboration with the Controller-General, whose signature they obtain for all letters and for those decisions of the Council called Arrets de Finance . The individual w'ho believes himself justified in protesting against such decisions can neither complain to the Intendant of Finance—who signs nothing and may not have had anything to do with the affair, since the Minister is not obliged to follow his opinion and sometimes decides contrary to it—nor to the Controller-General, who might say with reason that he was not responsible for all the documents which he had to sign for the six Intendants of Finance. [i 13] Finally, the Minister himself has no status, no direct authority in the State. It is nevertheless in him that all power resides, since it is he who certifies the signature of Your Majesty. He can do all and yet can not be held responsible for anything, since the authoritative name which he is permitted to use closes the lips of whoever might dare to complain. [114] So, just as the inhabitant of a village dare not defend himself against the petty tyranny of a Subdelegate armed with the authority of an order from the Intendant, we, the inhabitants of the capital, we personally, the Magistrates, whose very office imposes upon us the duty of bringing the truth to the ears of Your Majesty, how often we have seen ourselves accused of audacity for having protested against orders obtained from the King by the artifices of his Ministers ! [115] Let us dare to speak the whole truth to Your Majesty. Orders have been presented to us whose falsity was apparent on their face, and others in which it was evident that the consecrated name had been prostituted to uses unworthy of the King’s attention. And when we have exposed the petty vengeances, the petty passions, the petty patronage, for the gratification of which these orders have been ob¬ tained, we have been told that to doubt that an order signed by the King was actually given by him was to fail in respect due to royalty. If Your Majesty desires that we should formulate and prove the facts which we allege, you will find that we are in a position to comply with your wishes. ^[116] These same Ministers, moreover, have, during the past cen¬ tury, arrogated to themselves jurisdiction in so many affairs of all I 12 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. descriptions that it is impossible for them to give personal attention to them all. A new sort of intermediary power has consequently estab¬ lished itself between your Ministers and your other subjects, which.is neither that of the governors nor of the Intendants of the .provinces, but that of Clerks, persons absolutely unknown to the State, who never¬ theless speak and write in the name of the Ministers, exercise a power as absolute and as irresistible as theirs, and are even safer from all investigation because they are so much more insignificant. [117] Thus an individual without patronage, without any relations with the Court, a man, for example, who lives quietly in his own province, may be the recipient of an order of the greatest harshness, without knowing either by whom it was issued, in order to obtain its revocation, nor the reasons for its issue, in order to present his defence. The order is signed by the King, but this obscure individual well knows that the King has never so much as heard his name. The signature of the King is certified by that of a Minister, but he is equally sure that he is unknown to the Ministers. He is in ignorance whether the order has been obtained by the Intendant of his province, or whether one of his enemies has found access to some Clerk at Versailles, of the first, second or third rank, or whether it is one of those blank orders which are sometimes given to the various authorities in the provinces. He knows nothing, and he remains in exile, perhaps even in irons. [118] We have felt it necessary, Sire, to give Your Majesty some notion of the different kinds of despotism, and especially of the differ¬ ent forms of secrecy in vogue. We may now apply these observations to the three direct taxes, the faille , the poll tax and the tax of the twentieth. [119] The faille, the oldest of the direct taxes, is levied upon the unprivileged commoners in those provinces which are called Pays d' Elections, that is, in those which have no provincial Estates, and as the faille is a personal tax if is paid also by the tenants of ecclesiastics, of nobles, and of members of the privileged classes. Consequently this tax is borne at present by almost all landowners. [120] The faille has been increased by various additions called “ supplements,” and every year new ones are added. These supple¬ ments equal at present, or even surpass, the principal of the faille. It is maintained that the principal of the faille has not been augmented for a long time; nevertheless the people who pay the tax are con¬ stantly complaining of its increase. It is in reality only a question of METHOD OF ASSESSING THE TAILLE. 1 J 3 words; the principal is not augmented, but the supplements are in¬ creased. [121] We must explain to Your Majesty the manner in which each year the taille and its supplements are imposed and assessed. There are four different operations. 1. The warrant f brevet] of the taille provides for its imposition upon all the Generalites. When it is desired to levy a sum supplementary to the taille upon the whole Kingdom, or upon a particular Generality it is by this warrant that it is imposed, and it is also by this warrant that the total sum levied upon the Kingdom is apportioned among the Generalites. The warrant of the taille is drawn up in the Council. 2. The commissions provide for the imposition of the tax upon the Elections .' Consequently when a sum is to be levied upon a particular Election it is imposed by means of the commissions , and it is also by the commissions that the sum imposed upon each Generality is appor¬ tioned among the Elections. The commissions, like the warrant, are drawn up in Council. 3. The act by which the tax is assessed upon each parish or com¬ munity is called the departement. Sums which it is sometimes necessary to raise in a particular parish, are imposed in this way, as, for example, when a house must be built for the priest, or when the community has to pay the costs of litigation or meet other expenses. The assessment among the parishes of the sum imposed upon the Election is determined in the same way. The departement is carried out in the province itself, and at the present time by the Intendant alone, without appeal. The Elus 1 2 and other persons who have a right to be present at the assembly which makes this distribution have no longer a deliberative voice, and the Courts can no longer take cognizance of what goes on there. 4 . The roll of the taille contains the assessment upon each taxpayer, or, what amounts to the same thing, the apportionment among the tax¬ payers of the sum imposed upon the whole parish or community. The roll of the taille is made by the taxpayers themselves, that is to say, by those who are in turn Assessors and Collectors. Nevertheless the Intendant enjoys the right, in virtue of his position and of his office. 1 The Election was the name applied to a subdivison of the Gineralitl, as well as to the inferior court referred to in paragraph 91. 2 See above, paragraph 91. 8 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. 114 of assessing a taxpayer whom he believes to have been favored by the Collectors. He has also a right to send Commissioners into the parish, ■who call the inhabitants together and have the roll of the taille drawn up in their presence, in which case the roll is called role if office. The duties of these Commissioners should terminate after informing the taxpayers of the regulations which govern the drawing up of the rolls and obliging them to conform to these regulations. However, in the provinces, the authority of a man sent by the Intendant is so great that these Commissioners draw up the roll as they like; and this is so clearly recognized that the Intendants often provide their Commis¬ sioners with printed instructions indicating the rules according to which they wish the assessment to be made. However, in spite of the assess¬ ments made by the Intendant in virtue of his office, and the roles if office made by the Commissioners, this fourth distribution is not, after all, so completely subject to arbitrary authority as the first three, for individuals whose rights are violated may have recourse to legal pro¬ ceedings. [122] We shall now proceed to consider these four operations, first as to the imposing of the tax and then as to its assessment. As regards the imposition of the tax it is obvious that, although the Courts do not cease to maintain that their voluntary registration is necessary for the establishment of taxes, although this maxim is regarded by the Nation as its only safeguard since it has lost its representatives, and although the Kings themselves have conceded the principle in hundreds of instances, new sums are nevertheless imposed every year upon the people without registration and by acts of arbitrary authority such as the warrant of the taille , the commissions, and the forms observed in the departemeiii. [123] If it is necessary to give Your Majesty some notion of the abuses which may result from this arbitrary method of taxation, there is a recent and notorious incident which we may select as an example. Since 1771 sums have been imposed as supplements to the taille , which ■were deemed necessary both for the indemnification of the Magistrates, whose offices it w r as desired to suppress, and for the payment of the officers who were destined to form the new‘tribunal. To-day the old Magistracy is re-established and the new tribunals have been abolished : nevertheless the tax continues. [124] It may perhaps be thought by your Council, Sire, that the consequences of the changes made during these four years still entail METHOD OF ASSESSING THE TA1LLE. “5 outlays too considerable to be met by the ordinary revenues of Your Majesty; and in this respect these recent operations may be compared to a war that has given rise to taxes which are maintained some time after peace has been concluded in order to pay the debts contracted. The pretext will soon disappear; may we hope that the tax will be discontinued? Yes, Sire, we do hope so; we do not even permit ourselves the least doubt; but we must confess that our hope is founded only upon the confidence in your personal justice which is enter¬ tained by the whole Nation ; for it is a long time since any one in France could harbor the hope of seeing a tax abandoned which might be re¬ newed every year by a secret act of arbitrary authority, such as the warrant for the taille. And if Your Majesty would have a report made on all the general and particular taxes which are levied in the kingdom, and which have likewise been established by arbitrary power, Your Majesty would perhaps discover that the greater part of them were originally justified by momentary needs which soon disappeared, and yet the tax continued to be levied. [125] We shall proceed now, Sire, to consider the four operations, one after the other, from the second point of view, that of their assess¬ ment. Let us begin with the warrant of the taille, which contains the first apportionment, that among the Generalites. We have already said that this is drawn up by the Council of Finance. But Your Majesty knows that, with the exception of the Controller-General and one Intendant of Finance, none of those who are present in this Council can be familiar with the situation of the provinces or with the needs of the State. It is then the Minister alone who determines every year both the amount of the tax and its first apportionment. We are ignorant, Sire, and all France is ignorant, upon what piin- ciples this Minister bases his conclusions. We only know that no one has noted any attempt to secure information as to the condition of the provinces previous to the determination of the amount of the tax. The warrant for the taille is then, in reality, an act of arbitrary authority, based upon no sufficient previous knowledge, and relating to a matter upon which, above all others, the Orders of the Realm should be consulted. [126] It is much the same with the commissions, which establish the second apportionment, since they are determined in the same Council of Finance, and consequently in accordance with the will merely of the Minister and Intendant of Finance. There is neverthe- TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. 116 less a difference, since the opinion of the Intendant of each province is asked before the commissions are sent out. The fate of each pro¬ vince is, therefore, determined by the report of a single Intendant. Now this Intendant is himself forced to rely upon the opinions of his subordinates, for he cannot familiarize himself with the conditions throughout his generalite. [127] Moreover, it must be noted that the Intendant often has in¬ terests opposed to those of his province. Indeed, we cannot but think that the Intendant is commonly a man bent on improving his condition, that he is in constant need of favors at Court, and that he cannot obtain them except through a Minister,—whom one may usually hope to gratify by aiding him to derive the greatest possible results from the taxes. It is also clear that the precarious tenure and uncertain posi¬ tion of these officers oblige them to conciliate all those persons in their province who enjoy credit at Court. [128] We are nevertheless very far from raising any doubts, Sire, as to the sincerity of the opinions which the Intendants despatch to your Council. We do not doubt that they have the necessary zeal and courage to defend the interests of the province which is confided to their care; we believe, too, that the strictest justice dictates the account which they give of the relative resources of all the Elections in their generalite. [129] It must be urged, however, that the condition of the people should not be represented to you by the Intendants alone, and that it is surprising that neither the corporate bodies nor private individuals in the various provinces are permitted to submit memoirs in the peo¬ ple s interests, before the warrant of the taille and the commissions are determined. [ I 3 °] We observe furthermore to Your Majesty that this warrant of the taille and these commissions are not only acts of arbitrary authority, but they are also executed in secret, for neither the warrant of the taille nor the commissions are ever printed or publicly announced; the commissions are simply sent to the Election, which must conform to them in making the third apportionment, that of the departement. The province consequently only learns its fate when this departement takes place, that is to say, when all is irrevocably determined. It knows nothing of the fate of the other provinces, for nowhere in the kingdom is a general statement to be found. C 1 3 1 3 TTus not only are the provinces judged without a hearing ARBITRARY ASSESSMENT OF THE TAXES. II 7 when the warrant of the taille and the commissions are fixed, but it is absolutely and physically impossible for them to obtain access to Your Majesty in order to protest against the apportionment. If, in fact, a province is taxed to an excessive amount for imaginary needs, or un¬ reasonable expenditures, it does not hear of it until the moment when the tax is to be raised. If this same province has been unjustly treated in the general apportionment, either through ignorance of the prevail¬ ing conditions, or by reason of a predilection of the Minister for other provinces, not only is it excluded from taking any measures against the injustice, but it is not even possible for it to know that such in¬ justice exists. [132] This secrecy, Sire, is a deliberately conceived system ; for we must remind Your Majesty that in the year 1768 the Cour des aides decreed that each Election should send to it each year , during the week succeeding the departement,.a list containing the total amount of the taxes to be apportioned among the parishes . This statement was to specify the total amount of the taille and its supplements , of the poll tax ami of the sums which are added to these impositions at the rate of so' many sous in the fraud, and was to give an exact account of the sums assessed each year upon the basis of the tailles. The Cour des aides desired this general account simply in order to present it to the King, and it may be well to add that it had no other possible use for it, for duly registered laws observed for more than a century do not permit the Cour des aides to take any official action in regard to what is done in the departement . IY33] Would you believe, Sire, that the Administration had suffi¬ cient influence to have this decree annulled? It is difficult to imagine under what pretext, for they did not go so far, probably, as to say ex¬ pressly to the late King that they wished to prevent any one from ac¬ quainting him with the situation of his people : neither do we believe that they would have dared advance in his presence the barbarous maxim, which has too often been asserted, that the people can easily bear their misfortunes provided the Government is clever enough to conceal them. [134] Permit us, Sire, one last reflection upon the arbitrary nature of these two apportionments. It is easy to conceive that the Ministers 1 One of the subterfuges of the Ancien Regime consisted in collecting a certain number of sous in addition to each hvre or franc of the original tax. TRANSITIONS AND REPRINTS. 118 who loved despotism should have desired to arrogate to themselves, in the name of the Council of Your Majesty, the right arbitrarily to im¬ pose upon the people whatever amounts they saw fit. But it is not easy to understand what interest they could have had in depriving the people of a voice in the apportionment of the burden; and we do not believe that even those Ministers, despotic as they were, would have established the form of apportionment which exists to-day if the re¬ flections which we have just made to Your Majestv had been presented to them in all their simplicity. [* 35 ] Moreover, since we have undertaken to tell Your Majesty all sorts of truths with no reserve, we must confess that our predecessors were doubtless at fault in not exposing this system of secrecy as they should have done when it was first introduced. Even at that time there were no longer either Estates-General or provincial Estates, nor even representatives of the provinces commissioned by the people to apportion the taxes. This apportionment was made by Judges who had been substituted for the representatives of the Nation, and ap¬ peals could be taken from the decisions of these Judges to the Ccurs des aides. It is true that these Magistrates protested against the change, but their efforts ended with demanding the execution of the existing laws, that is, in demanding that the apportionment should be made by them instead of by the Council. Hence these protests appeared at the time to deal merely with a question of jurisdiction, a personal affair of the Courts which was of no interest to the general public. [136] If these Courts had vindicated for the people the natural right of all men to be heard before being judged, if they had insisted "upon the necessity of knowing the condition of the provinces before impos¬ ing a tax, if they had, above all, made known to their Sovereigns the difference between despotism and secrecy, it seems to us that the present system would never have been adopted either by the Sovereign or by the chief Ministers, for they had nothing to gain by it. The subordinate Administrative Officials are the only ones who profit by the system, since by means of it they are able to render themselves in¬ dependent of a higher authority. [* 37 ] We pass now to the third process of apportionment, that made in the departemerit , between the parishes or communities of each Elec¬ tion. Formerly this apportionment was not arbitrary but was made by the E/us, who were actually elected by the province. . However, the assembly made up of the E/us must not be assimilated to a meeting of ARBITRARY ASSESSMENT OF THE TAXES. 1 1 9 the provincial Estates; the difference between them is, indeed, very apparent. The provincial Estates grant, or refuse to grant, the don gratuit 1 2 ; they regulate all parts of the administration; they are the defenders of the rights of the provinces, and these rights are, in general, those whose maintenance was guaranteed to the province at the time of its annexation by the Crown. The duties of the Elus did not ex¬ tend to all these matters : they acted as general assessors of the pro¬ vince in apportioning the tax between the parishes and communities, just as in each parish or community there are assessors who apportion among the individual tax-payers the sum imposed upon the whole community. [138] We must observe, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, that these former Elys also exercised that function which is still retained by those who now bear the same name, the function, namely, of Judges in the tribunal of the Election. But we shall not consider them here under this aspect, but as general tax-assessors of the province. [139] The fact that this office of general tax-assessor excited the jealousy of the Administration explains the successive blows which have been dealt at national liberty in this respect. In the first place, the real Elus, who were actually chosen by the people, were done away with, and officers appointed by the government, and who procure their offices by purchase, were substituted for them. In the second place, the Intendant of the province was introduced into the departement 2 and made its presiding officer, and in the end the deliberative functions of the Elus and of all who enjoyed the right of being present in the departement were suppressed. Moreover, the Superior Courts were forbidden to take cognizance of the proceedings, so that now the ap¬ portionment made in the departemetit is the work of the Intendant alone, without recourse or appeal. [140] Your Majesty will readily observe that the second of the above changes rendered the first one unnecessary. It is easy to understand that despotism should have desired to suppress the real 1 /. e., the lump sum paid to the king by the pays d' ttat (that is, the provinces which retained their estates), in lieu of the taxes which the government collected in other parts of the realm. 2 This word department , it will be observed, is sometimes used in the sense of the act which apportioned the tax among the various parishes of the Election; sometimes it means the assembly which made the apportionments. I 20 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. Elus as long as they had any real power. But now that the Commis¬ sioner of the Council 1 has become the absolute master in the depart¬ ment, and no one else has more than an advisory voice there, no farther reason or pretext remains for refusing to accord to the provinces the right of sending representatives to look after their interests. [r4r] Finally, in the third place, a new move was made in 1767, of which we must give an account to Your Majesty. In that year the spirit of secrecy reached such a degree that it seemed desirable that the apportionment made in the departement should be concealed even from those who had the right to take part in it. With this end in view, the idea was conceived of making two warrants for the taille, one of which should be sent to the departement, while the other was kept secret in order that the Intendant alone might determine its ap¬ portionment in his private office. The first warrant dealt only with the principal of the taille which, it was argued, never varied, and upon which it -was, therefore, useless to consult the province. For the second warrant were reserved all the supplements, all the new assess¬ ments, everything which is subject to variation from year to year : in it were noted even the reduction of the supplements of the taille granted to those unfortunate individuals whose misfortunes make it impossible for them to pay, reductions which are justifiable, but which nevertheless ought only to be granted to those who can really claim them, since what is deducted from one quota is added to the others. Upon all this, Sire, the Intendant was allowed to decide by himself, without the inconvenient presence of those who took part in the departement . [142] The Cour des aides addressed to the late King, in the year 1768, certain Protests in which this system of the two warrants was explained. But since for more than a century the Cour des aides has not taken legal cognizance of the proceedings in the departement, it could only enter a protest, and took no farther action. These Protests were probably sent by the late King to the Officers of the Administra¬ tion, that is to the very persons who were anxious to introduce this new secrecy into the apportionment. [^3] But now that we cherish the hope that Your Majesty is willing to listen to us, we testify that of all the operations undertaken by despotism there is none in which the fatal spirit of secrecy is more 1 An official designation of the Intendant. ARBITRARY ASSESSMENT OF THE TAXES. 1 21 manifest than in this system of the two warrants. In a word, since the Elus no longer have a deliberative voice, nor indeed any power whatever, in the departement, we cannot conceive any honest Reasons for removing such witnesses. [144] It only remains, Sire, to speak of the fourth and last appor¬ tionment, namely, that which is made among the individual tax-payers by means of the roll of each parish. When the regulations which govern the faille were made, despotism had not yet made such progress as we have since seen, and of which we shall speak in connection with the poll tax and the twentieth : no one then supposed that arbitrary- authority could decide the fate of each and every individual. That authority had not yet obtained complete control of this fourth appor¬ tionment, although it had made several attacks upon it. We have already mentioned two of these encroachments : the one consists in the custom followed by several Intendants of having all, or almost all, of the rolls drawn up in the presence of Commissioners; the other, in the reductions granted upon the simple authority of the Intendant. [145] As regards the rolls of the Commissioners, the so-called official rolls, it is certainly true that the presence of a Commissioner in an as¬ sembly of country people is too imposing either to leave the Collectors free to draw up their roll according to their best knowledge and belief, or to permit individuals who believe themselves unjustly treated to defend themselves. This disadvantage was foreseen by the Cour des aides when these rolls of the Commissioners were first authorized. It believed that they should only be made at rare intervals, and upon extraordinary occasions, such as, for example, when a new regulation concerning the making of the rolls had been enacted and needed to be explained to the people of the country communities. The Court trusted that it had insured this by forbiding the Commissioners to -receive anything from the tax-payers; it inferred that these commis¬ sions would not be frequent when they were not profitable, and that the Intendant would not be led to multiply them by the desire to provide places for his prot6g£s; nevertheless in several generality everything is done by Commissioners, and certainly they must be well paid. In this way the precautions of the Cour des aides have been rendered ineffectual. It does not appear however that the Intendants rely upon the King to meet these expenses; probably the sum destined for this purpose is levied upon the parishes. This is an extortion pro¬ hibited by law, but the Intendant is able to perpetrate it with impunity. 122 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. since the amount to be paid by the parishes is determined in the de- partement where he is master. [146] As to the reductions granted to individuals who have suffered losses, we have already observed that they are regarded as favors due to the King’s liberality, and they are described as such by the Intend- ant in the department. For if they are not really favors, and if the amount which is deducted from one individual’s tax is to. be borne by the rest of the inhabitants, those who draw up the tax rolls should be the ones to determine the reductions, otherwise a reduction becomes simply a gratuity which the Intendant grants to a favorite, and for which the people must pay. This was also foreseen by the Cour des aides, and it hoped to prevent it by expressly ordering that such reductions and exemptions made by the Intendant should not in any case be re¬ charged upon other taxpayers; but the Intendants have again evaded this enactment by arranging the matter in the departement, where they have entire control. As we have already observed, they have taken care to have all such reductions entered in the secret warrant in order to prevent criticism of their conduct. C 1 47 ] In reality, any reduction granted to an individual is not a favor but an act of justice, and often, of necessity: for in a case where fire or storm has made it physically impossible for an individual to pay his tax, it is necessary to make some rebate. These reductions should not, therefore, depend upon the arbitrary authority of the Intendant, and still less should they be provided for in a secret document where all sorts of injustice may be concealed. The Cour des aides exposed and explained all these schemes and the resulting abuses in its Protest of 176S, nor has justice been done the people, for, as we have already observed, it was referred for examination to the authors of the abuses which it denounced. So the Intendants are still at liberty to grant favors to their prot<§g£s at the expense of the people, under the guise of tax reductions. C 1 4S] There are still other violations of justice and infractions of the rules, committed in drawing up the rolls of the taille. Perhaps some changes should be made in the existing laws. The majorty of your Administrative Officers are said to believe this, and possibly your Cour des aides will come to the same conclusion. These changes, how¬ ever, will necessitate long discussions between Your Majesty and your Ministers; and we ask Your Majesty if you will not immediately do away at least with the secrecy of the first three apportionments. We ARBITRARY ASSESSMENT OF TIIE TAXES. I23 entreat Your Majesty to begin by asking that an account be rendered him of the Protest presented by his Cour des aides in 1768. You will find there a discussion of the two warrants of the taille, and especially of all that concerns the reductions, and we shall hope that as soon as these explanations are presented to Your Majesty, this whole iniquitous system of secrecy will cease to exist. [149] But our hopes and our prayers do not end here: we farther beg Your Majesty to reorganize those provincial assemblies called dl- partevients , by investing them with the power and consequence which they have not enjoyed for a century past. We beg that all the taxes, without exception, which are levied each year in the provinces may be there considered—not only the taille and its supplements, but the poll tax, the twentieth, the sums which are levied for the building of presbyteries, and even the militia and the corvee. We entreat Your Majesty to ordain that all these taxes shall be publicly announced, and that the apportionments shall be made and the rolls published in time to permit those who believe themselves injured to invoke your justice. [ 1 5 °] Finally, Sire, it seems to us time to bestow upon your people the right which they formerly enjoyed of choosing representatives to be pYesent in the assembly where the fate of the province is decided. We have already said that the presence of such deputies cannot in any way suggest an analogy between the assembly of the defiartement and the provincial Estates; so that even despotism itself need not take offense. Neither will it in any way prejudice the position of the official Elus, who will lose none of the functions which are at present attached to their office. 1 Moreover this measure would not necessitate any change whatever in the provincial assembly called the departement: it might therefore be adopted at once, without any expense, and without any preparations. We are not proposing to Your Majesty an innovation but a provision of the ancient constitution of the Kingdom, which we only ask you to revive by granting to each province what is everywhere granted to individuals, namely, the right of being heard before being judged. [ I 5 I ] The former Elus were done away with because as assessors of the taxes they exercised some power, and the Ministers of that period wished to destroy all authority which did not emanate from 1 It has not been deemed necessary to translate the note which the Court adds upon this technical matter. See the French version above, p. 44. TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. I 24 themselves ; but now that the Intendant makes the assessment upon his own authority this pretext no longer exists ; and while the King has not yet done justice to the Nation in this regard, it is doubtless because he has never been asked to do so. We have already admitted that the Magistrates have always failed to insist upon the re-establishment of institutions which were outside their jurisdiction; and that is the reason why, when a preponderating voice in the departement was given to the Intendants, the Courts did not call attention to the fact that, since that despotic measure had been enacted, there was no longer any excuse for refusing to grant to the provinces the right of choosing their Elus. It may be asked what purpose the mere presence of such representatives would serve if they possessed no real power, but is it not well known that the simple presence of a person of con¬ sideration constitutes an obstacle to the perpetration of injustice? The Administrative Officials of the previous reign certainly recognized this fact, for by the system of the two warrants they attempted to conceal their operations even from the knowledge of the official Elus, who certainly would not offer the same opposition that might be expected from persons chosen by the provinces. [152] Moreover, real representatives could hardly be refused the right of recourse to Your Majesty when their protests were not recog¬ nized in the departement where they possessed no authority. They would never be able to retard the execution of a measure, but they might exercise the right which all your subjects should enjoy, and they might make use of it for the benefit of the province. We would farther point out to Your Majesty that even if these representatives chosen by the provinces should rarely enter protests against the conduct of the Intendant, and even if those protests which they did make proved sometimes to be unfounded, it would not follow that their existence was useless, for the real good they would do would consist in the evil which their presence would prevent. C 1 53 ] believe, Sire, that should Your Majesty consent to reslore to the provinces their former representatives, and should their presence give rise to no well-founded complaint against the administration, this in itself would be one proof of the value of their existence; and.jf, in spite of the infrequency and ineffectualness of their complaints, the administration should still seek pretexts for freeing itself from this troublesome criticism, that would simply make the proof more complete. [ 1 543 In presenting to you the annoyances connected with the first THE POLL TAX. 1 2 5 two apportionments, which are determined arbitrarily in your Council, we did not suggest any remedy, for the reason that there is nobodv in the provinces at present who has sufficient knowledge of their situation to furnish information in regard to them to the Council. But when there are certain citizens within the limits of each Election who attend the assembly of the departement as official representatives, and when the apportionment of the sum to be levied upon the province is made in their presence, they will be prepared to furnish instructive infor¬ mation ; and we doubt not that Your Majesty will not only permit but will even order them to present such information to the'Ministers of Finance and to those who compose the Council. The Intendants will then have opponents, and the people, defenders. [1 55 ] We are confident, moreover, Sire, that the Intendants who govern your provinces at present will not fear to be exposed to such criticism. We believe that both they and the Ministers who at present compose your Council ardently desire to be enlightened and guided in that most important operation, the apportionment of the taxes, which has heretofore been performed only at hap-hazard. [156] The two other taxes of which we desire to speak to Your Majesty are founded upon different principles from those which govern the taille. As we have already observed, the tail/e is the oldest of the direct taxes and was for a long time the only one. It was instituted by Charles VII. for the purpose of providing for the pay of regular troops (which w-ere established at that period in almost all the states of Europe). However, as the Nobility was still subject to feudal mili¬ tary service, it seemed right that they should be exempt from the taille. [157] But during the following centuries military service fell into oblivion, and the Nobility no longer served the State except in the regular paid troops. The privileges of the Nobility came to be less and less respected during this period, because when nobility was attached to certain purchasable offices it fell to the lot of the wealthy. So the financial administration conceived the idea of infringing upon, these privileges, though at first only indirectly. The most important of the early encroachments consisted in taxing the commons for the land which the}'' leased from Nobles and other exempted persons. But, finally, Louis XIV., during his later wars, created two taxes to which the Nobility and those otherwise privileged were directly sub¬ jected, namely, the poll tax 1 and the tax of the tenth. 1 The so-called capitation was not in reality a poll tax, but a classified income tax. TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. T 26 [158] We shall not dwell long upon the poll tax, for we feel that anything we might say about it would be superfluous. This tax is, in fact, so objectionable, under whatever aspect it is considered, that Your Majesty’s Ministers cannot but be convinced of its evils. It was es¬ tablished at that unfortunate period when every expedient was seized upon by the Government without examination. In 1713, when peace was made after an unfortunate war, Louis XIV. did not feel himself in a position to fulfill the promise of suppressing it, which he had made to his people. Since then the fate of this tax has been like that of many others: a vicious tax once registered has been retained, instead of substituting for it a more reasonable one, which would, however, have to be submitted to criticism by a new registration. [159] Moreover, the arbitrary character of this tax has made it more popular with some Administrative Officials than any of the other impositions. This character is so maiked that the surplus from the poll tax, the amount of which is variable and uncertain, is entirely at the disposition of the administration, and they have long reserved this sum for their cherished secret expenditures. [160] Your Majesty can now understand why the obvious disad¬ vantages of the poll tax have received no attention. Your Majesty may be told that any surplus which the poll tax yields is essential, because it is the only fund which can be used for making improvements in the provinces. If that is the case, Your Majesty should inquire what means were employed for this purpose before the poll tax was established in France. [161] In fact, Sire, not only is the poll tax fixed by a single man, not only are the rolls secret, but those who are charged with its ap¬ portionment, and who have no wish to make it arbitrary, have no re¬ gulations to guide them. [162] formerly a nobleman from each generalite was associated with the Intendant in drawing up the lists. This formality has fallen into desuetude, and there is little cause to regret.it, since this nobleman was not chosen by the province, but was appointed by the government, and at the instigation of the Intendant, so that he was simply an idle witness of the latter’s operations. 1 lie people of Prance, from the Princes of the Blood down, were divided into twenty- two classes, those in the first class paid 2000 livres, those in the twenty-second class (soldiers, servants, etc.), only one livre. The tax, however, soon lost all semblance of its original form by reason of exemptions, commutations, etc. THE VICES OF THE POLL TAX. 127 [ 1 63] There are, however, certain classes of citizens whose poll tax is not arbitrarily determined. In the case of those, for example, who are subject to the tail/e, the poll tax has become an adjunct of the taillc. Corporations of artisans in certain large cities are, moreover, permitted to apportion the tax among themselves and thus remedy its arbitrary character. But what law or regulation determines the entire sum to be imposed upon each body of artisans? We know of no such law, and it is more than probable that the matter rests entirely with the Administrative Officials. [164] I here is also another class of Your Majesty’s subjects whose poll tax is a fixed amount, namely, those who pay by having a part of their salaries withheld. But although this may not be arbitrary it is unjust, since the poll tax is not a tax upon real property affecting only the property of the taxpayer, but a personal tax which should be pro¬ portionate to all his resources. There is often a great variation in the fortunes of those who hold similar offices, nevertheless they must all pay the same poll tax. [165] For all those who pay the poll tax neither through the reten¬ tion of part of their salaries, nor by contribution as members of an as¬ sociation or guild, nor as an adjunct to the faille, the tax is entirely arbitrary, a shameful subjection of all citizens to the Officials of the Ad¬ ministration. Should we attempt to expose to Your Majesty all the resulting abuses, we fear that we should be suspected of exaggeration. For instance, would Your Majesty credit it if we asserted that the In- tendants had been known to boast of threatening the inhabitants of their generalites with doubling the amount of the poll tax if they did not consent to arrangements which these Officials doubtless believed to be for the good of the province, but which nevertheless they had no right to force upon the citizens? [166] It is impossible, Sire, to demonstrate the truth of such facts, since one of the chief vices of the tax is its secrecy. There is, how¬ ever, one abuse which is committed every year, and which is of so seri¬ ous a nature that we feel obliged to inform Your Majesty of it; and al¬ though we are not in a position to prove it, it would be easy for Your Majesty to do so. [167] Will you not deign, Sire, to ascertain whether it is true that in many towns a poll tax is levied upon the officers of justice which is greater than they can be compelled to pay, which consequently forces them to ask favors of the Intendant and so puts them completely in 128 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. his power? And who are the victims of this tyranny? The Judges •who determine the fate of their fellow-citizens, whose liberty and inde¬ pendence it is therefore most necessary to preserve. You see, Sire, what are the results of arbitrary and secret taxes, and to what length a tyrant will go who is sure of being neither watched nor criticised. As a matter of fact, if the Intendants, without being deprived of any of their power, were simply obliged to publish the rolls of the poll tax, it would be impossible that every Judge should be taxed each year to an exorbitant amount, which is always reduced, except when the Judge has displeased the Intepdant. [ 168] We shall say no more upon the subject of the poll tax. We deem it necessary, however, to assert our right of jurisdiction. The poll tax is one of the regular taxes, and should therefore be sub¬ ject to the jurisdiction of your Cour des aides, which cannot do other¬ wise than claim its rights under all circumstances; for it ought never voluntarily renounce any part of the jurisdiction which has been given it for the good of the people and the maintenance of justice. [169] We would most urgently request Your Majesty to abolish the poll tax altogether, or at least completely to revise it, for it is an in¬ exhaustible source of injustice. We do the Municipal Magistrates of Paris and the Intendants of the provinces the justice to believe that they ardently desire to be relieved from this fantastic assessment, which is as abhorrent to those Magistiates who love order, as it is dear to those who desire to take advantage of the existing system. [170J \* e must now take up the question of the tax of the twentieth, which is at present the subject of the most vigorous protests on the part of the people, for it had always been regarded as an extraordinary measure, to be reserved for times of special need, until the absence of the Magistracy offered the opportunity of making it a permanent tax. Y e should be open to the just reproach of the whole Nation, Sire, if we did not do all in our power to induce Your Majesty to fix a term to its existence. Even if it be true that it was necessary to continue this tax after peace was concluded, in order to pay the war debts, the people need not at least be deprived of all hopes of its removal. Why afflict the Nation with the prospect of its perpetuity? [171] I his tax has been renewed, almost without interruption, for torty years; and Your Majesty knows how little resistance has been made to each of the renewals, which have simply offered an oppor¬ tunity for bringing the miserable condition of his people to the atten- THE TWENTIETHS. I 29 tion of the King; and surely they, who suffer so much, should not be deprived of that consolation. "But we are confident, Sire, that under your rule the protests made on the part of the people will bring some¬ thing more than their own consolation. [172] We beseech Your Majesty to recall what we have but just said in regard to the poll tax. If the duration of that tax had been deter¬ mined after the war of 1701, and if it had only been continued by suc¬ cessive renewals, there might have come a favorable moment when the Courts could have exposed its abuses; and in any case the Adminis¬ tration would not have ventured into such excesses, had they known that at each renewal their conduct would be subject to criticism. [ 1 7 3] Th is is exactly what happened, Sire, in the case of the twen¬ tieth before it was made permanent. In 1763 this tax, already burden¬ some enough in itself, had become more so by reason of the inquisi¬ torial methods employed in levying it, and when the time came to renew it, the Parlement of Paris attempted to put an end to these methods by a provision which prohibited augmenting the rates of 1763. This action was imitated by all the other Courts and was not disapproved by the King. But this amendment, which was designed to remedy the abuse, was displeasing to those who desired to perpetuate it, and consequently, when the tax was renewed during our absence, the amendment was not included either in the text of the law or in the records of those who had taken our places. [174] The people soon felt the cruel effects of the re-establishment of the tax without the amendment of 1763. Your subjects found their taxes raised almost immediately without any reason being given for the sudden increase, and new investigations, of unexampled severity, were instituted throughout the kingdom, as if the Administrators wished to avenge themselves for the constraint under which they had suffered from 1763 to 1771. If we may venture to say so, Sire, it seemed as if they wished to make plain to the people all that they had lost in losing their former Magistrates. [175] Matters have now reached a point where the perpetuity of the tax is perhaps less burdensome to the people than the despotism which it involves. We hope, Sire, that Your Majesty will deign to occupy yourself with this matter, for we believe there is none more worthy of your attention. The real nature of these taxes must be con¬ sidered, and we shall endeavor, therefore, to elucidate the fundamental principles of this department of the administration. 9 130 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. [176] If we merely asked your Majesty to fix the duration of the tax of the twentieth, we should only need to invoke your love for your people; but in order to demonstrate the necessity of re-establishing the amendment of 1763, or of substituting for it some equivalent provision, it is necessary to give Your Maesty a clear and simple idea of this tax, which has existed in France since the commencement of this century, first under the name of the tenth, and later under that of the twentieth, the sou pour livre of the tenth, etc.; and to render this account in¬ telligible we must return to first principles and determine the true nature of real taxes. [177] A real tax is one which is levied upon the property of a subject and not upon his person : accordingly each possession, each bit of real estate, is taxed in proportion to the income it produces. When it is necessary to establish such a tax, it would seem that one should begin by determining the total sum which the King desires to obtain from his people, and then seek the form of apportionment and collection which would be most economical for the King, and which would expose the people as little as possible to arbitrary power and to the annoyances which inevitably result from it. [ 1 7 S] That was not, however, the method pursued in levying the tenth and the twentieths. Every individual was required to pay into the Royal treasury a certain part of his income, and for the execu¬ tion of this law a system of administration has been developed, partic¬ ularly in recent years, which has the double disadvantage of subjecting the King to large expenses and the people to arbitrary power. In regard to this method, we would observe to Your Majesty, in the first place, that a real tax of which the total sum is not fixed is an injustice to the Nation; and in the second place, that this species of tax is vicious in itself because it necessarily involves both expense and arbi¬ trariness. [179] We venture to observe to Your Majesty that such a tax is an injustice to the Nation, because it violates the great principle that a luler should never exact from his subjects either more or less than the necessities of the State demand. If a tax such as the tenth or the twentieth produces less than is required by the State it is necessary to seek other resources, and there are certainly those to be found which are less burdensome to the people than a direct tax. If, on the con¬ tra.}, the tentn or the twentieth produces more than is necessary you can hardly doubt, Sire, that this surplus is employed in expenses for which it would have been unjust to levy a new tax. QUESTION OF A CADASTRE. 131 [180] As we have said, this kind of tax is necessarily both expensive and arbitrary. To render this more comprehensible we must acquaint Your Majesty with the various forms of apportionment employed in the different provinces for raising those taxes of . which the total amount is fixed. We shall examine as briefly as possible their respective advan¬ tages and disadvantages, and it will be easy to demonstrate that the apportionment of the twentieth combines all the disadvantages. It occasions more expense, more tyranny, and more injustice of every kind, than any other form of apportionment, and the amendment of 1763 was a necessary remedy for abuses which had become unbearable. [181] There are some localities where, when the amount of the tax has been determined, the inhabitants are permitted to apportion it among themselves. There are others where a cadastre is made, that is, a fixed valuation of all the property of the tax-payers, in accordance with which the amount of the tax is apportioned each year by a simple arithmetical operation, with no personal interference from anybody. There are reasons for and against both of these systems of assessment. [182] It may be said in favor of the annual apportionment by the tax-payers themselves that it does not involve any expense and does not subject the people to any tyranny on the part of the subordinate officials sent by the government. It may be urged, too, that the tax¬ payers themselves are the only ones who can make a just apportion¬ ment; for there is no farmer who does not know perfectly well the value of his neighbor’s land, and it is impossible that a stranger should ever acquire so exact a knowledge. It is maintained also that all cadastres are unfair, that they are admitted to be so in the provinces where they exist, and that this injustice arises either from the fact that the cadastre was originally made by those who were incapable of doing it well because they were strangers to the parish, or from the fact that since the cadastre was drawn up there have been unexpected variations in the value of property, which may, and often do, arise, from a thou¬ sand different causes. [ 1 ^3] The partisans of the cadastre maintain that'in the provinces where it exists the apportionment is neither expensive nor arbitrary. They admit that the cadastre is drawn up in the first instance at enormous expense and by the despotic authority of the Commissioners of the cadastre, who are permitted to determine the fate of each indi¬ vidual; but this unhappy period once passed, they maintain that the tranquility of the people is forever assured. In fact, in those districts 1 3 2 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. where the cadastre prevails, not only is there no expense and no arbitrariness, but there are no law-suits, while the annual apportionment by the tax-payers is an inexhaustible source of envy, dispute and division. [184] To the objection that the tax-payers have greater reciprocal knowledge of their possessions than a strange Commissioner can have, it may be answered that they have also personal interests and passions which prevent fair dealing. It is claimed that all this is avoided by having the cadastre drawn up by a Commissioner who, being a stranger to the parish, can have no other interest than justice, and that if he lacks local information he can acquire it by listening to the contra¬ dictory statements of the tax-payers, whose common interest gainsays individual statements. [185] It is claimed also in favor of the cadastre as against the annual assessment by the citizens, that the tax-payer’s knowledge of his neighbor’s possessions can only be of use to the inhabitants of a single community; but the taxes must be apportioned also among the com¬ munities of each province and among all the provinces of the kingdom, and it is asserted that these apportionments can only be made justly by means of a cadastre and by government Commissioners. [186] It may be well to observe to Your Majesty that this last ob¬ jection to the system of assessment by the citizens themselves can only hold good so long as the communities and provinces have no representatives, for if they had representatives there would be nothing to prevent all the communities from assembling through their deputies and apportioning among themselves the sum levied on the province, just as the inhabitants of a community apportion among themselves the sum levieo upon the community. Could not the advantages of both systems be combined by having the cadastre made by the tax-payers themseives instead of by Commissioners? After it was once* made there would be no farther expenses, no arbitrariness, no law-suits; and since it would have been made by those who are personally acquainted with the value of the property taxed, and w'hose common interest con¬ sist;, in tieating every individual with justice, there is reason to be¬ lieve that such an apportionment would be more just than any other. [187] This kind of cadastre would have the farther advantage that when variations in the value of property occurred which rendered its revision necessary, the community would itself see this necessity and might proceed to make the revision without waiting for it to be ordered by the government. QUESTION OF A CADASTRE. 133 [188] Finally, in drawing up the cadastre by this method, all the expenses, which are now so great as often to prevent the employment of this form of apportionment, would be saved. The cost incident to the successive sojourns of the Commissioners in all the villages would no longer exist, and we believe that the expense of surveying might also be avoided. We can understand that a survey is necessary for a strange Commissioner who, knowing nothing of the relative value of land, could otherwise only inform himself in general as to which tracts were good, bad, or indifferent, and levy the tax upon each piece according to the acres which it contains and which he supposes to be good, bad, or indifferent in quality : but the country people themselves, who have a direct knowledge of the value of each piece of land, would be spared this labor and could make their cadastre without a pre¬ liminary survey. [189] We may say even more : the cadastre would make itself, with¬ out any order from the government, provided the tax to be apportioned among the citizens were a real tax, a tax levied upon each parcel of land, each tract being definitely designated. As a matter of fact, when the tax-roll had once been carefully made in a parish, it would contain a valuation of all the real estate. It would be acknowledged that the roll of that year had been well made, since the inhabitants of a community constitute a public, and a public never refuses to recognize plain facts. This tax-roll, once recognized as a good one, would become the cadastre. [190] Although the taille is apportioned each year in certain districts by the citizens themselves, the rolls have never produced a cadastre, because the taille is not a real tax. It is not levied upon each piece of property, but upon all the resources which the individual possesses, the amount of which changes from year to year. The considerations of trade and industry, as well as of personal privileges, also enter into the assessment. So that a commoner who is subject to the taille may be taxed one year for a piece of property which the next year may be in the possession of a person exempt from the taille, and thus the rolls of one year are of no use in succeeding years. [191] This is about all there is to be said of the two methods of apportioning a tax of which the amount is fixed in advance. Opinions differ in regard to them, and we do not wish to espouse any one, but simply to present to Your Majesty certain indisputable truths bearing upon the subject. Now it is an indisputable truth that a tax like the r 3 4 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. tenth or the twentieth, which does not consist of a fixed sum to be apportioned but in which a certain part of his income is exacted from each individual, involves by its very nature more inconvenience, more expense and more injustice than either of the methods of appor¬ tionment which we have described. We propose to demonstrate this to Your Majesty and subsequently to show how, in France, a needless secrecy has been added to the inherent vices of the tax. [192] We have observed that apportionment by-the citizens them¬ selves is not accompanied by expense or arbitrariness, but does involve a continual resort to legal processes: and that in the system of the cadastre there is no expense, no arbitrariness, and no law-suits, when the cadastre is once completed, but that the making of it involves large expenditures and is presided over by arbitrary authority, unless it is made by the tax-payers themselves. [193] In the case of the twentieth, an accurate collection of it involves each year all the expense which would be involved in making a cadastre; the people are continually subjected to the same arbitrary power to which the making of the cadastre subjects them for a limited period; and finally, there are continual law-suits, just as in the regions Tfiiere the apportionment is made each year by the tax-payers without producing a fixed valuation. [194] All these annoyances connected with the twentieth are due to a common cause, namely, that in the present method of levying this tax there is an interminable dispute between the King and every indi¬ vidual in his kingdom in regard to the value of each piece of land. [195] In order, therefore, that the tax shall be satisfactorily collected the King must keep a man in every village to look after his interests. The whole of France must be covered with an army of Clerks; and although the number of these Clerks is not at present so very great, it is only because the tax has never yet been collected with the strictness with which it might be, and certainly will be, collected some day unless Your Majesty provides a remedy by revising the law. It is certain that this rigor and the expenditures that it involves have been constantly on the increase ever since the tax was instituted, except during the period when the amendment of 1763 was in force. And its arbitrary character is as perpetual as its costliness, for it is impossible that the power of the government agents should be other than arbitrary. It is said that the Intendant is their judge, but is it possible that the Intendant should be qualified to decide as many suits as there are THE ABUSES IN COLLECTING' THE TWENTIETHS. 135 parcels of land in his generality? How can he inform himself upon all these cases? He is absolutely obliged to depend upon the subordinate officials, and they become, therefore, the real judges of the people. [196] Can it be doubted, Sire, that the government rewards each of these under officials whenever he succeeds in increasing the pro¬ duct of the twentieth in his locality? Who, in fact, would be willing to expose himself gratuitously, and without such encouragement, to the hatred of an entire district? It is then certainly true not only that arbitrary authority presides over the collection of the tax, but that the person in whom this authority is vested has an interest in oppressing the people. Nevertheless it would appear that the inducements to oppression are not yet sufficient always to secure the interests of the government, for there are always some among the tax-payers who are able to offer the officials still more powerful inducements to treat them with leniency. Condescend, Sire, to consider, in this connection, the double vice of arbitrary taxes : the weak are oppressed on the pre¬ text of the King’s interests, while the powerful and the intriguing are favored against the King’s interests. [197] Finally, we assert that the twentieth cannot fail to be, like the faille, an inexhaustible source of litigation. This must continue to be true until the suit of the King against all the tax-payers of his Kingdom is decided, once for all, by making a cadastre from the rolls of the twentieth. But we fear, Sire, that it will never be ter¬ minated in this way, or at least only very gradually and very imperfectly, for the following reason, which Your Majesty must certainly find plausible. [”198] It is admitted that only the inhabitants of a district can have a reciprocal knowledge of the value of their property and that the cadastre can be well made only by them, or at least with their assist¬ ance. In accordance with this, we have suggested that the best method of obtaining a cadastre is to delegate the task to the commun¬ ity. On the other hand, we have observed that if a Commissioner from the outside be charged with the work, he may receive much as¬ sistance from the people themselves, since it is for the general interest that the operation should be performed as justly and accurately as possible, and since the declaration of any individual may often be contradicted by the voice of the community at large. But an agent concerned with the twentieth has no means of obtaining reliable infor¬ mation, because no one has any interest in enlightening him; on the 136 TRANSLATIONS AND RKPR 1 NTS. contrary, it is for the general interest to deceive him, since he is the common enemy of the whole country. [199] As we have said, the vice of secrecy has been added unneces¬ sarily to the disadvantages springing from the nature of the tenth and the twentieth, and moreover both the kinds of secrecy which we defined above are present, namely, that of the transactions and that which conceals the persons involved. [200] As to the secrecy of the transactions, we have already shown Your Majesty that the ministry has made every effort in its power to prevent the rolls of the twentieth from being put on record, which is equivalent to admitting that they desired perfect freedom either to grant favors or to commit malversations. [201] As to the secrecy of the persons concerned, Your Majesty must be informed of the change which was introduced during the last ministry. Formerly a person who believed himself unfairly treated addressed himself to the Intendant of the province. It was perfectly understood that the Intendant would refer the matter to the subordinate official concerned, but at least the Intendant, the official and the tax-payer all lived in the same province where the property in question was situated. There was, therefore, an opportunity for a thorough discussion, and it was possible to verify the facts alleged by both parties. Under the last ministry it would seem that the Ministers themselves became jealous of the authority of the provincial Intendants. There came a time when those who complained to the Intendant were told that now they must address themselves directly to the King’s Council—as if it were possible for the Council, sitting near the person of the King, to decide upon the value of an acre of vineiand or meadow situated at the extremity of the realm ! What redress remained under such a system to an individual who had been made the victim of the cupidity or dis¬ like of a government agent? It might be clear that the injustice from which he suffered was due to the director of the twentieth : never¬ theless that officer might reply indifferently that he was not responsible, that the tax-rolls were made out in the central office, and that those who believed themselves too heavily taxed had only to make the journey to Paris in order to present their grievances. [202] 1 his is not an abuse of long standing, Sire. It was only introduced under the last ministry; we believe it no longer exists under the present one, and we trust that it will not reappear during your reign. Still Your Majesty should know that it has existed, in order HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETHS. 137 to realize the excesses to which the spirit of despotism and secrecy may lead. [203] It now remains for us to explain to Your Majesty, first, how it happened in the beginning that those who desired to establish a real tax in France chose the form of the tenth and the twentieth, in spite of the disadvantages of which we have been treating : second, why the nature of the tax was not changed when experience had demonstrated the abuses of which it was susceptible : and third, what was the effect of the amendment of 1763 while it was in force. [204] We do not wish to slander the memory of the Ministers who conceived and established the tenth in the year 1710. The country was in a critical situation at the time, and the administration of the tax was so mild in the beginning that its disadvantages were not felt. It was a period in which the calamities of an unfortunate war were added to that of famine. There was no question of fixing a certain sum to be levied upon the people, but only of obtaining from them whatever they were able to give ; if it had been possible to levy a much larger sum than the tenth produced, it could have been utilized for the necessities of the government, which were real and urgent. [205] But at first the principal object of the originators of the tax was that it should be borne by those whose resources were not already exhausted by the taille, viz., by the Nobility and the privileged classes. The land of the majority of these was let, and the leases represented its real value, because, up to that time, there was no motive for concealing it. No investigation was made, therefore, into the resources of each individual, and there was no necessity for a costly administration. Each person made his declaration, and the Intendant acted as judge; this he was able to do because there was no doubt as to the honesty of those declarations which were based upon leases, and as for others, they were accepted with almost no examination. [206] When the same tax was imposed in 1733, at the commence¬ ment of a war of aggression and after twenty years of peace; when, a few years later (in 1741), it was again renewed at the commencement of another war; and particularly when the tenth or the twentieth was continued during times of peace in order to pay war debts, the sum which the King desired to obtain and which was demanded by the necessities of the government should have been fixed in advance. [207] But this was not done. The Ministers wished to make the tax yield as large a sum as possible and, on the other hand, tax-payers, TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. US finding that their quotas were based upon their leases, seized all possi¬ ble means of eluding the tax, such as false leases, bribery, etc. And it was at this period that the government established those inquisitorial methods which are equally odious and impracticable, and as burdensome to Your Majesty on account of their cost, as they are prejudicial to the people by reason of the annoyances which accompany them. [208] This.would have been the time to return to the true principle of real taxes, to change the character of the twentieth altogether, and substitute for it another real tax which should not involve perpetual expenses of administration and perpetual despotism. But unfortunately there were other interests concerned than those of the treasury, namely, those of the Administrative Officials. [209] It is in fact evident from the sketch we have just given that the Administrative Officials in this department of the government have greater power than in any other. We believe, Sire, that even in the coun¬ tries where the people are subjected to the most absolute despotism, and where the will of a minister may make or mar the destiny of a whole province—even in these countries, we believe that a minister would not be permitted to decide, and decide by himself, the fate of every individual in the State. Nevertheless this is what we see to-day in France. There is not a landed proprietor in the kingdom who is not obliged either to solicit favors from the agent of the twentieth, or to fear the consequences of his spite. Now it is not in human nature that a person who is invested with such excessive power should lay it down voluntarily; should that ever happen, the person who makes this sacrifice must needs be endowed with extraordinary virtues. These then are the reasons, Sire, why the tax of the twentieth exists in its present form, why it has always been carefully guarded, and why, in spite of the obvious abuses which experience has demonstrated, an effort has been made to make it the basis of all the other taxes. [210] It would seem, therefore, that only a general protest could serve to bring about the reform of so objectionable a tax ; and in 1763 there was such a protest. It must, however, be admitted, Sire, that the voice of the public did not make itself heard so promptly and vigorously as it should have done, for it is a part of the policy of despotism espe¬ cially to favor those who might secure a public hearing. The protest was tardy because the people of influnce were those who had the least to complain of from the administration of the twentieth; and thj£ fact, Sire, merits Your Majesty’s careful attention. HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETHS. 139 [211] Finally, in 1763, the Parlement registered an extension of the twentieth on condition that as /ong as the first and second twentieths existed they should be collected in accordance with the existing rolls, the assessments in which were not to be augumented; the violation of this ordinance to be punishable by special penalties. We ought not to conceal from Your Majesty that this famous clause of 1763 completely changed the nature of the assessment of the tax and converted it into a cadastre. By this means all the abuses were done away with, and the conditions which we have mentioned as necessary to the establishment of a real tax were obtained. First, the sum levied bv the King upon the people was fixed; secondly, the despotism of the officials was no longer to be feared; thirdly, those officials being no longer necessary, the govern¬ ment might save all the expenses of administration. [212] This amendment was not, therefore, open to criticism, ex¬ cept by asserting that the tax-rolls of 1763 had not been made with sufficient accuracy to justify converting them into a cadastre. But this would have been to admit that the work performed at such expense for so many years had not attained its object, for the Administrative Officers had constantly maintained that their investigations in con¬ nection with the twentieth would presently result in a valuation of all the land in the' kingdom, which would render future assessments at once simple and just, and would prevent all disputes. If this result had not been attained, the inference was that the method employed had been bad and that some new form of apportionment must be devised. [213] To this, however, the Administration would not consent, and consequently they had to content themselves with secretly complaining against the amendment of 1763. They asserted that it was unjust be¬ cause it permitted the continuance of unfair assessments, and that, since it forbade increasing the assessment in cases where it had been too low, it made it impossible to diminish it where it had been too high. But as long as the former Magistracy existed, they did not ven¬ ture to propose to the late King to remedy this disadvantage by a law contrary to the amendment, because it was easy to foresee that the reg¬ istration of such a law' would bring about a discussion w’hich would ex¬ pose the vices of the system of apportionment which they wished to retain. They waited, therefore, for an auspicious moment, and in the meantime, viz., from 1763 to 1771, all the offices and all the Clerks which the amendment had seemingly rendered unnecessary were main¬ tained at the King’s expense. Furthermore, the tax-rolls were still left 140 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. unrecorded, although this amendment rendered a record of them more necessary than ever; for when these rolls became the cadastre of the kingdom, they should have been made public. [214] The longed-for moment arrived when the Magistracy was dis¬ solved. The twentieth was made a perpetual tax, without the amend¬ ment of 1763 or any equivalent clause: this occasioned the revival of all the abuses at once, and furnished an excuse for the institution of those inquisitorial methods from which the people have suffered for the last four years. [215] We protest first, Sire, against the perpetuity of the tax, and secondly, against the abolition of the amendment of 1763 ; and we en¬ treat Your Majesty either to re-establish it or to substitute for it some other measure which would produce the same effects, that is, which would fix the total sum to be levied, spare Your Majesty a costly ad¬ ministration, and not leave the whole kingdom in subjection to the despotism of the Administration and the agents of the twentieth. [216] The three taxes wfith which w r e have been dealing are the only direct taxes which are levied in your Kingdom as a whole, and if simi¬ lar ones are levied in certain provinces, under different names, we do not take legal cognizance of them, nor have we had any reason for in¬ vestigating them. We have also mentioned to Your Majesty the ex¬ actions of personal service, such as the militia and the corvee, and we shall not discuss them further. We do not doubt that if there are abuses connected with them, the Ministers who preside over this por¬ tion of the administration, and in whom the public have the greatest confidence, will do all in their power to reform them. [217] The lodging of troops is another kind of service demanded of the people, of which the Coni' des aides does not take legal cognizance. We protest to Your Majesty that we are far from seeking to extend our jurisdiction at this juncture, when we should be occupied only with the interests of the people; but it will not infringe upon the rights of any authority if we inform Your Majesty, in whom resides every species of authority, of what goes on in this connection. In presenting this account of the taxes to you, Sire, we can not leave you in ignorance that in your capital and under your very eyes an assessment is levied upon many houses, nominally for the lodging of troops, which is in reality a real tax imposed upon your subjects without being established by law and without any knowledge on the part of the public of the regula¬ tions which govern its assessment. We know that the product of this TYRANNY OF THE ADMINISTRATION. 41 tax is destined to pay for the lodging of the troops, which is a military service, but that is not a sufficient reason for permitting the military authority to control its apportionment. When the taille was estab¬ lished under Charles VII., it was destined for the payment of troops, but nevertheless there was no thought of establishing it without any ex¬ press law, nor of having it apportioned, judged, and levied by the troops themselves. [218] We do not know, and we have made no effort to inform our¬ selves, whether similar taxes have been established upon similar pre¬ texts in the provinces; we trust that Your Majesty will yourself in¬ vestigate all that concerns this peculiar exaction. As to the city of Paris, we entreat you to investigate, first, by what law the tax which is there levied was originally established? secondly, what law governs its constant increase? thirdly, by whom and according to what rule the tax is levied upon each house? fourthly, to whom may a house-holder address complaints in regard to the tax? When Your Majesty has satisfied yourself upon these points, we do not doubt that you will make known your intentions by means of a public law; for the public has a right to demand a knowledge of the laws to which it is to be subjected.' [219] We assure Your Majesty that it is not our desire in citing these particular facts to arm your severity against the culprits, but it is well that you should know how those in whom arbitrary power is vested have conducted themselves during the period uhen they believed themselves free from the censure of established justice. We cannot but regard the moment, Sire, when despotism, believing itself assured of impunity, shows itself openly, as an auspicious one for pointing out to the King, the friend of justice, the excesses with which we are menaced. [220] We foresee. Sire, that we shall be accused of wishing to in¬ troduce innovations into the administration when, in reality, we are only turning back to the source of the abuses, and proposing to Your Majesty remedies which have long fallen into disuse, such as having the taxes of all kinds considered in the departnnent which is held in each pro¬ vince, or of admitting to this dipartcvient the former representatives 1 [Note by the original editor.] Here again there is a gap in the manuscript; the passage omitted seems to have dealt with the vexations caused by several Ministers and Supervisors of the Finances. 142 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. of the people, who have been ignored for several centuries. Your Majesty should therefore clearly understand that if we propose what are called innovations, but which are really only the re-establishment of former regulations, it is because the progress of despotism and the real innovations which it is constantly introducing render a return to sound principles absolutely necessary. [221] We dare not deceive you, Sire, for we know that it is your desire permanently to establish the happiness of the Nation, which at the moment of your accession demonstrated its devotion to you with so touching a confidence. Your efforts must not be restricted to the reformation of individual abuses; you must attack the whole system of administration. [222] We know that Your Majesty loves justice, we know that your present Ministers desire to promote it. But so long as the welfare o 'your people is founded only upon your personal justice, or that of your Ministers, it will prove but a fleeting blessing, and the coming genera¬ tion will behold despotism avenging itself upon the people for the con¬ straint which it has suffered during your reign. The period of this reign should therefore be utilized to establish barriers for the people against despotism, and especially against secrecy of administration. I. 22 3] have not deemed it our duty therefore to protest against particular abuses; or rather we have only used them as illustrations of the general system. But we would invoke that love of justice which peculiarly characterizes Your Majesty, in order to obtain laws which will establish the permanent welfare of your kingdom , such laws as will enable that justice which fills your heart to survive Your Majesty and to make itself felt by our most distant posterity. [224] These then, Sire, are the general views of some of your former Magistrates who, like other citizens, have been witnesses of the people’s misfortunes, and who, having devoted their lives to the trial of law-suits arising from the taxes, have had peculiar opportunities for observing some of the causes of these misfortunes. We present these reflections with confidence, for we know that the sentiments which dictated them will recommend them to Your Majesty. We realize, however, that in dealing with so many questions we may have fallen into some errors. How, indeed, could we have avoided that, since the Administrative Officials have so long been endeavoring to envelope themselves in an im¬ penetrable veil, and since the chief vice of their operations is the secrecy which makes it impossible to investigate or prove anything? THE GRIEVANCES OF l'HE PUBLIC SHOULD BE HEARD. 143 We should have but ill fulfilled our duty if we had permitted the fear of being mistaken in some details to prevent us from laying before you a mass of important and incontestable facts; and you, Sire—if we may venture to say so—will fall into the trap set for you by the ene¬ mies of your people, if the discovery of these slight mistakes makes you suspicious of the truths which it is so important for you to know. [225] We are not, moreover, so rash as to suppose-that others than ourselves cannot further enlighten you. We shall not imitate, Sire, the guilty presumption of those Administrative agents who for more than a century have sought to keep at a distance from the throne all those who might be able to enlighten the King, as if the truth were never to reach the Ruler except through them. We esteem, Sire, as the whole Nation esteems, the Ministers with whom Your Majesty has surrounded yourself, but nevertheless there are many facts which you will never learn either from the Ministers or from the Magistrates. [226] It is the people at large who bear the burden of the taxes, which are so complicated that each province, each association, each profession, is subjected to some particular revenue law, and has its own grievances to put before Your Majesty. It is not right that a single Minister should decide, without restraint, upon such a multitude of cases, and it is equally impossible that any one body of Magistrates should alone interpret to Your Majesty this enormous number of con¬ flicting interests. [227] The strongest proof of the sincerity of our zeal which we can give is to inform you in what cases and to what degree you must be on your guard against the Ministers and other Administrators, and how you can shield yourself from deception, by listening to the representa¬ tions of others than the Magistrates, who have so long been the only persons in the kingdom who exercised the right of protest, and who are sometimes incapable of fulfilling that important function in all its bearings. [228] The confidence which we feel in the present administration shall not close our mouths. On the contrary, we believe that we should take advantage of this moment when Your Majesty is surrounded by the most learned and the most irreproachable of men, and we hope that they will unite with us, and that they will desire as ardently as ourselves that Your Majesty should be enlightened as to their exercise of the power which has been confided to them, and which they can have no wish to abuse. 144 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. [229] In many respects certainly, and perhaps in most, the Minis¬ ters cf the King deserve his confidence more than any one else, for it may be said, in general, that every thing which affects the glory of his reign affects also that of his Ministers. The Sovereign cannot doubt that they take the sincerest interest in the success of his arms, the maintenance of his authority at home, and his dignity and consider¬ ation among foreign powers. [230] But there are other matters in which the interests of the Ministers do not coincide with those of the King : they differ widely, for example, when the people are subjected to slavery by the tools of the Administration upon the pretext of maintaining the royal authority, or when the Administration is extended until it includes the most insig¬ nificant matters. It is not surprising when one of your subjects becomes a Minister that he should be flattered by the pettiest attribute of authority, that he should everywhere have friends to favor and enemies to perse¬ cute, and that his pride should feed upon the variety of attention and homage which accompanies a multiplicity of powers. But a King is too great, too powerful, too far above his subjects, to be moved by these petty passions, and he cannot feel his authority affected except by important considerations. [231] There is a third class of affairs in which the interests of the Ministers not only differ from that of the King, but are absolutely op¬ posed to it. To this class belong all questions relating to the introduc¬ ing of secrecy into the Administration, for the interest of the King is always served by throwing as much light as possible upon the conduct of his Ministers, while such light is by no means always welcome to the Ministers themselves. [232] There is, finally, a large class of questions in which the in¬ terest of the King, although opposed to that of the Ministers, coincides with that of the people, while all persons of rank and consideration in the State, all w r ho are privileged to approach the King or to gain his attention, are on the side of the Ministers. And what most deserves your attention in this connection, Sire, what is worthy, indeed, of be¬ ing the subject of your most profound attention, is the fact that the interests of the Ministers united to those of all people of influence, almost invariably outweigh that of the King and the people. [233] We have already called attention to this consideration in con¬ nection with the twentieth and the poll tax. These two taxes, in the administration of which the Ministers and their subordinates have DEMAND FOR THE ESTATES GENERAL. r 45 reserved the right to tax your subjects, or arbitrarily to modify their taxes at will, have given rise to a despotism in France which is at once odious and shameful to a free nation. This despotism is contrary to the real interests of Your Majesty, and even to the fiscal interests, which the despots are always ready to sacrifice to personal considerations; but it is most serviceable to persons of position and consideration, for they are always treated with favor by the Ministers, the Intendants, and the other despots in this department of the government. [234] The excessive expenditures furnish another example*, Pro¬ positions are constantly being made for restricting them, and everybody applauds these proposals in theory; but when it comes to putting them into execution all the Ministers and those controlling the expendi¬ tures refuse to carry them out, and they are supported in this refusal by all the influences of the Court and even of the capital; for it is always the people of influence who benefit by the favors of the Ministers. [235] Still another example is the abuse of lettres de cachet granted to individuals. Every person of any authority in the kingdom con¬ siders it his right to ask for them. And we Magistrates, who regard ourselves as the representatives of the people, but who still belong to that favored class who have access to the Ministers, must we not re¬ proach ourselves with never having protested energetically enough against this abuse? [236] In regard to all these questions, Sire, there are necessarily two parties in the kingdom; all those, on the one hand, who are privileged to approach their Sovereign, and on the other, the rest of the Nation. Consequently a King who loves justice must seek his motives in his own heart, and enlightenment in the hearts of the Nation. [237] But how can any communication be established between the King and the Nation which shall not be intercepted by those who sur¬ round the King? Once more, Sire, we must not disguise the truth. The simplest and most natural means, and at the same time the most con¬ formable to the constitution of this Monarchy, would be to listen to the voice of the Nation itself assembled, or at least to permit assemblies in each province. To tell you otherwise were cowardly; you must not be left in ignorance that the unanimous wish of the Nation is to obtain either the Estates-General or, at least, the provincial Estates. [238] But we well know that for more than a century the jealousy of the Ministers, and perhaps of the courtiers as well, has constantly opposed these national assemblies, and if France is ever so happy as to 10 146 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. have Your Majesty pronounce in favor of such assemblies, we foresee that formal difficulties will still be raised. Such difficulties can easily be surmounted if Your Majesty desires it; they cannot constitute a real obstacle to the realization of the ardent desires of the people you love. It is, however, possible that they may postpone for a period the re¬ establishment of the longed-for Estates; in the meantime, is there no other avenue by which the petitions of the people may reach the King who is waiting to hear them ? [239] We do not speak now in a language strange to you, Sire. At the time of your accession, all Europe knew that the first wish of Your Majesty was to facilitate the approach of all your subjects to your throne, and that you made it a rule to receive all the petitions which were presented to you. But the secrecy in the Administration con¬ stantly opposes the mutual desire of the Monarch and the Nation to come to an understanding, and has neutralized that first wish of a young King, which was so important to the people whom he was to govern. [240] You receive petitions, Sire, from all your subjects; but the crying abuses can never be laid before you because there is no record in existence of the transactions of the government. In order, then, that Your Majesty should be enlightened by the petitions which you re¬ ceive, it is necessary that the operations of the Administration should no longer be secret, and that all acts of authority issued in your name should be made known both to the public at large and to the individuals who are chiefly affected. It is necessary also that the motives of these acts should be made public, and that each act should bear the name of the person from whom it emanates, who should be held respon¬ sible for the use which he makes of his authority. Otherwise the petitions presented to the King will serve but little purpose, and abuses of authority will remain unknown and unpunished. [241] \ou receive petitions from all your subjects; but they are only permitted to invoke your justice in their personal affairs, and con¬ sequently associations, provinces, and even the State itself are without defenders. Therefore, until Your Majesty shall have re-established the Estates, there should at least be deputies from each province, chosen by the province itself, who would perform for Your Majesty and your inner Council one of the functions which the Procureurs-giniraux fulfill m the Courts—that of defending the interests of the public, and particularly of the province they represent. This institution would not necessarily involve an assembly of Estates in each province. As we FUTILITY OF PETITIONS. M 7 have already observed, a distinction was formerly made between the pays (TEtats and the pays cTElections, for in spite of the fact that the latter elected representatives, they had no Estates; and there is nothing to prevent the re-establishment of this old usage. 1 The Council has been forced by obvious necessity to summon commercial deputies from each province. Are the interests of commerce the only ones in which the province should be represented? [242] You receive petitions from all your subjects; but you cannot be unaware, Sire, that the majority of your subjects, and particularly those who most need your protection, are absolutely incapable of in¬ voking it, for they have not the necessary intelligence for drawing up a memoir, nor the necessary means for getting it drawn up by others, nor the necessary facilities for getting it into the hands of Your Majesty. And what resource have those who languish in prison, and who are not likely to be permitted to escape, when it is foreseen that the first use that they will make of their liberty will be to implore your justice? The representatives of each province should therefore be especially authorized to constitute themselves the defenders of the poor, the weak, and the oppressed, and, above all, of prisoners, just as, in the established system of justice, the Procureurs and Avocats-generaux are the natural defenders of the absent and the incapacitated, of minors, and, in a word, of all those who cannot defend themselves. [243] You receive petitions from all your subjects; but there is one important fact which we venture to bring to your attention because it is hardly possible that the experience of one year should already have demonstrated it, and that is, that this right of the individual to appear before the King in person is, in reality, utterly illusory; for it is impossi¬ ble that Your Majesty should decide justly and with a knowledge of the facts upon all the complaints and demands—often unwarranted enough —of several millions of persons. [244] Consequently these petitions must be, and are, referred to the different departments of the administration; which means, Sire, that each petition is referred to precisely that person against whom it is directed. For no one appeals to Your Majesty until he has exhausted all the other resources, and is obliged to complain against the Minister himself. But we have made plain that there are very 1 The Court develops certain details of its plan in a note, which may be found in the French original, p. 67 sq. above. 148 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. important cases in which the whole Ministry, and even all those who surround the person of Your Majesty, have interests directly contrary to those of Your Majesty and of the Nation. [245] Since it is essential that Your Majesty should avail yourself of the knowledge and experience of the Nation at large, would it not be possible for the Nation itself to examine, in the first instance, all these petitions and then to indicate by vote which ones deserve Your Majesty’s personal attention? [246] Here we must pause, Sire. We have dared to assert that the recourse of all your subjects to the King in person is ineffec¬ tual and illusory, because it is an obvious fact, of which Your Maj¬ esty must yourself certainly be convinced. But if we should go so far as to propose allowing public protests against the abuses of the administration, we should be accused of audacity. All the enemies of public liberty, and especially all those who are privileged to speak in your name, would assert that we wished to submit the acts of Your Majesty himself to public criticism. Such an objection is calculated to impose the most respectful silence upon us.. Nevertheless we ask your permission, Sire, to give you an account of what goes on before our eyes in the administration of contentious justice. [247] A party who appears in a Sovereign Court has the right to print and publish a memoir of his case, and if he is appealing from the decision of an inferior tribunal, the printed memoir is necessarily a criticism of that tribunal. We are aware also that individuals who appeal to Your Majesty himself against a decision of a Sovereign Court by a petition for reversal, revision, or otherwise, enjoy the same right, and that memoirs signed by an Avocat au Conseil or by private indi¬ viduals are printed and published, which contain criticisms of the deci¬ sions of the Sovereign Court by which they believe themselves wronged. [248] We know, Sire, that the publication of these memoirs does not enjoy unanimous approval. It is even said that there are some among the Magistrates who consider it an abuse, and who maintain that memoirs should only be. used for the instruction of the judges who have to decide the case, and that the public should not be made the judge of the Courts. [ 2 49 ] As f° r ourselves, Sire, we always have believed, and always shall believe, that we are responsible to Your Majesty and to the Nation for the justice we mete out to individuals; and if there are some Magistrates who think otherwise, we, who have warned Your Majesty ADMINISTRATION SHOULD BE SUBJECT TO PUBLIC CRITICISM. 149 to challenge the testimony of the Ministers when they defend the secrecy of administration,—we must admit that you must also challenge that of the Judges who oppose the publication of memoirs. [250] It is, in fact, a fundamental principle of the judicial system in France that its operations should be public. All suits should naturally be argued before the audience of the general public, and to take the -public to witness by means of public memoirs is simply to increase this audience. It may be objected that the profusion of these printed memoirs is a novelty of recent origin; but the charge of inno¬ vation does not constitute a sufficient objection, since there are desirable novelties, and if we had rejected all innovations we should still be living under the empire of ignorance and barbarism. However, we believe, Sire, that this institution, far from being a dangerous innovation, is only the re-establishment of the old judicial procedure in this Kingdom, and that it may perhaps be derived from the original constitution of the Monarchy. This observation, Sire, is not unworthy of your attention. [251] A long-established Monarchy, particularly one which was founded in centuries of ignorance, and which has maintained its exist¬ ence until a period of unexampled enlightenment, must have experi¬ enced revolutions of many kinds. In considering the history of this Nation under this aspect, it will be seen that the progress of enlighten¬ ment has given rise to an immense difference between the customs and the laws of different periods. [252] In the times of our earliest ancestors, all contracts and agree¬ ments between men were verbal, and faith in the testimony of witnesses took the place of documents, which no one would have known how to draw up. The laws themselves were but ill-formulated and often con¬ sisted in vague traditions which left everything to the interpretation of the judge. [253] This arbitrary justice was subject to the most heinous abuses, and it was doubtless their enormity which led to the adoption of the simplest and most qfficacious remedy, namely, publicity. The Kings themselves administered justice to the Nation, in the Assembly of the Champ de Mars, with a dignity and authority unknown to modern times, and the great Nobles followed the King’s example and rendered justice in the presence of the people, each in his own territory. [254] It must be remembered that in this first period the adminis¬ tration was not yet divorced from contentious justice; both were exercised by the King himself with the aid of public opinion. The translations and reprints. 150 redoubtable rulers of that period permitted public complaint to be made to them of the conduct of their Ministers. They did not fear the humble petitions of those who came to implore their aid, and they endeav¬ ored to secure themselves against the deceptions of those who attempted to interpose their doubtful authority between the King and the people. [255] In the following period it became customary to write down the enactments which determined the condition and the obligations of men, and a code of written law came into existence, to which all decisions had to conform. This period, which may be called that of Writing, had great advantages over the preceding one, since the rights of citizens now rested upon a permanent foundation, and they might hope to be judged henceforth by the law itself instead of by the caprices of their fellowmen. [256] The new judicial system nevertheless involved difficulties un¬ known to previous centuries. There was now a body of definite laws, but the study of them had become so complicated that no one who did not devote himself entirely to it could perform the functions of a judge, or even administer understanding^ his own affairs. A new order of citizens arose in the State, namely the lawyers, some of whom took the place of the Nobles in their function of judges, while others undertook to secure the rights of private individuals and of the Nation, the greater part of which was still in a condition of profound ignorance and so was forced to repose a blind confidence in them. [257] The administration of justice also became less public than in the earlier period. Each tribunal still held its public sessions, but w enever the details of a case required the examination of documents, the judges made such examination in secret deliberations, so that their conduct was no longer wholly open to public criticism. [258] We must observe, moreover, that it was during this period that administration was separated from contentious justice. Lawsuits, and particularly appeals, had multiplied to such an extent, and jurispru¬ dence had become so profound a science, that it was no longer possible for the King and the Nobles to administer justice in person. The Kings therefore confided this function to the Magistrates, lawyers, and graduates, while they reserved to themselves the administration, and as it was exercised by means of royal letters instead of the public procla¬ mations of earlier times, everything was done in the secrecy of the King’s cabinet. 1 ' It may be worth while to observe that it was in this second period that the Gov- PUBLICITY OF JUDICIAL PROCEDURE. 151 [259] Finally there came a third period, which we shall call the Age of Printing, in which the printing-press has multiplied the benefits of writing and obviated its inconveniences. Learning has been diffused by printing; the written laws are to-day known to every one, and every one may apply them to his own affairs. The legal profession has lost that superiority which general ignorance once gave to it. The Judges may themselves be judged by an intelligent public, and such criticism is far more severe and far more just when it is made quietly and deliberately by reading the printed page, than when opinion is at the mercy of a tumultuous assembly. [260] The art of printing has then given to writing the same publicity which in earlier times invested the spoken word in the presence of the assembled Nation. But it has required several centuries for the dis¬ covery of that art to produce its full effect. It has taken a long time for the whole Nation to acquire the taste and the habit of informing itself by reading, and for the education of persons skillful in the art of expressing themselves, who can lend their services to the public and take the place of those who, endowed with natural eloquence, were able to gain the ears of our fathers in the Chanip rfe Mars , or in the early Courts. [261] But that moment has arrived, Sire. Your subjects already enjoy its benefits in the regular system of justice, where the custom of interesting and instructing the public by printed memoirs has been established; and Y'our Majesty may ordain that those of your subjects who have complaints to make against the administration may enjoy the same privilege and the same advantage. [262] It would seem that recourse to your Ministers against an Intendant or a provincial Commandant might be as public as the appeal to a superior from an inferior court. And since a citizen is ernment first found it possible to do without the Estates. Up to that time the Kings had been absolutely obliged to assemble the people to make known their commands. The Ministers straightway found means of making these assemblies more and more infrequent, since they desired to remove, as far as possible, all critics of their admin¬ istration, and they soon found it so convenient to labor in seclusion that they sought to thicken the veil in which they had enveloped themselves. It was therefore the age of Writing which gave birth to that secrecy of administration in France which has made such progress from the period of the suppression of the Estates-General up to the present time; and if its growth has been fostered during the age of Printing, it is because the recourse to printed complaints against the administration has so far been forbidden. !5 2 TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS. permitted to appeal publicly to Your Majesty by means of printed memoirs, against the decisions rendered in your name by the Superior Courts,—tribunals long held in veneration, and composed of a large number of Magistrates, whose decisions are only reached after long discussion and by a plurality of votes—why may not that citizen pro¬ test with the same publicity against other acts of authority also done in your name, but which are the work of a single man, and w'hich are conceived in secret and with no preliminary discussion? [263] The difference, it is said, is that every one knows that Your Majesty never holds your courts of justice in person, whereas one can never know whether the acts of authorty which emanate from your cabinet are your own work or not. The Ministers long ago adopted a policy which is calculated always to shield their persons; the name of \ our Majesty, with which they clothe their acts, and a signature which resembles yours and which may not be questioned without failing in the respect due to Your Majesty, have sufficed to put into one and the same class the acts which represent Your Majesty’s personal desires anu those of which you know nothing. The consequence is that your oppressed subjects always fear that they may seem wanting in respect vhen they complain of injustice, and are never sure that in invoking the supreme power they may not be offending against it. These are tiie resuits, Sire, of keeping secret the responsible official,—one of the evils of the general system which we have described to Your Majesty. [264] France enjoys the happiness of having a ruler whose first v *s.i is for enlightenment, and who desires to enable all his subjects to invoke his personal justice against all abuses of authority. But when \ our Majesty has been convinced by the representations of others, and by your own experience, that this recourse is impossible on account of the almost infinite number of petitions to which it gives rise, and that the only means of providing that the voice of the people shall pene¬ trate to the King is to permit every citizen to call on the public as a witness (as he may already do in the tribunals of established justice),— even then, our opponents believe that they can still confront our zeal ■with an insuperable obstacle and impose silence upon us by pronouncing the revered name of Your Majesty. They would leave a thousand cases of injustice forever unpunished and shielded from all protest, so that it would be impossible ever to expose them to you, all for the sake of the imaginary fear that an occasion might sometime arise in which an order which emanated from Your Majesty himself should be CRITICISM OF GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS SHOULD BE PERMITTED. 153 treated with too little respect: as if there could be any doubt of the extreme circumspection which will always be exercised by those who address petitions to you, as well as by those who, in virtue of their position, are commissioned to draw up and sign these petitions. [265] However, Sire, since this fear, chimerical as it is, has been given expression, since our opponents take advantage of the personal respect due to Your Majesty, it is impossible for us to insist farther; we must leave this matter in the hands of Your Majesty. We have reminded you of the example of those early Kings who did not feel their authority endangered by the liberty of their subjects to implore their aid in the presence of the assembled Nation. It is for you to judge, Sire, whether your power will be weakened by imitating Charles the Great, that proud Ruler, who laid such great stress upon the preroga¬ tives of the crown. If you will follow his example, you may still reign over a nation which shall be in its entirety your Council, and you will find its resources far greater than he did, because you live in a far more enlightened century. [266] Deign to reflect, Sire, that on the day when you accord to your subjects this precious liberty, it may be truly said that an alliance has been concluded between the King and the Nation against the Ministers and the Magistrates; against the Ministers, if ever there are any so perverse as to desire to conceal the truth from you, against the Magistrates, if ever there are any so ambitious as to claim the exclusive privilege of telling you the truth. These, Sire, are the very humble and very respectful protests pre¬ sented to Your Majesty by Your most humble, most obedient, most faithful and most loving Servants and Subjects who hold your Cour des aides . In the Cour des aides , Paris, May 6 , 1775. *