The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte

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СКАЧАТЬ of the royal ax, and the immense change in the culture of society, the old feudal root lasts and still vegetates. We remark it first in the distribution of property.1204 A fifth of the soil belongs to the crown and the communes, a fifth to the Third-Estate, a fifth to the rural population, a fifth to the nobles and a fifth to the clergy. Accordingly, if we deduct the public lands, the privileged classes own one-half of the kingdom. This large portion, moreover, is at the same time the richest, for it comprises almost all the large and imposing buildings, the palaces, castles, convents, and cathedrals, and almost all the valuable movable property, such as furniture, plate, objects of art, the accumulated masterpieces of centuries.—We can judge of it by an estimate of the portion belonging to the clergy. Its possessions, capitalized, amount to nearly 4,000,000,000 francs.1205 Income from this amounts to 80 or 100 millions. To this must be added the dime (or tithes), 123 millions per annum, in all 200 millions, a sum which must be doubled to show its equivalent at the present day. We must also add the chance contributions and the usual church collections.1206 To fully realize the breadth of this golden stream let us look at some of its affluents. 399 monks at Prémontré estimate their revenue at more than 1,000,000 livres, and their capital at 45,000,000. The Provincial of the Dominicans of Toulouse admits, for his two hundred and thirty-six monks, "more than 200,000 livres net revenue, not including the convent and its enclosure; also, in the colonies, real estate, Negroes and other effects, valued at several millions." The Benedictines of Cluny, numbering 298, enjoy an income of 1,800,000 livres. Those of Saint-Maur, numbering 1672, estimate the movable property of their churches and houses at 24,000,000, and their net revenue at 8 millions, "without including that which accrues to Messieurs the abbots and priors commendatory," which means as much and perhaps more. Dom Rocourt, abbot of Clairvaux, has from 300,000 to 400,000 livres income; the Cardinal de Rohan, archbishop of Strasbourg, more than 1,000,000.1207 In Franche-Comté, Alsace and Roussillon the clergy own one-half of the territory, in Hainaut and Artois, three-quarters, in Cambrésis fourteen hundred plow-areas out of seventeen hundred.1208 Almost the whole of Le Velay belongs to the Bishop of Puy, the abbot of La Chaise-Dieu, the noble chapter of Brionde, and to the seigniors of Polignac. The canons of St. Claude, in the Jura, are the proprietors of 12,000 serfs or 'mainmorts.'1209 Through fortunes of the first class we can imagine those of the second. As along with the noble it comprises the ennobled. As the magistrates for two centuries, and the financiers for one century had acquired or purchased nobility, it is clear that here are to be found almost all the great fortunes of France, old or new, transmitted by inheritance, obtained through court favors, or acquired in business. When a class reaches the summit it is recruited out of those who are mounting or clambering up. Here, too, there is colossal wealth. It has been calculated that the possessions of the princes of the royal family, the Comtés of Artois and of Provence, the Ducs d'Orléans and de Penthiévre then covered one-seventh of the territory.1210 The princes of the blood have together a revenue of from 24 to 25 millions; the Duc d'Orléans alone has a rental of 11,500,000.1211—These are the vestiges of the feudal régime. Similar vestiges are found in England, in Austria, in Germany and in Russia. Proprietorship, indeed, survives a long time survives the circumstances on which it is founded. Sovereignty had constituted property; divorced from sovereignty it has remained in the hands formerly sovereign. In the bishop, the abbot and the count, the king respected the proprietor while overthrowing the rival, and, in the existing proprietor a hundred traits still indicate the annihilated or modified sovereign.

III. Their Immunities.

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Such is the total or partial exemption from taxation. The tax-collectors halt in their presence because the king well knows that feudal property has the same origin as his own; if royalty is one privilege seigniory is another; the king himself is simply the most privileged among the privileged. The most absolute, the most infatuated with his rights, Louis XIV, entertained scruples when extreme necessity compelled him to enforce on everybody the tax of the tenth.1212 Treaties, precedents, immemorial custom, reminiscences of ancient rights again restrain the fiscal hand. The clearer the resemblance of the proprietor to the ancient independent sovereign the greater his immunity.—In some places a recent treaty guarantees him by his position as a stranger, by his almost royal extraction. "In Alsace foreign princes in possession, with the Teutonic order and the order of Malta, enjoy exemption from all real and personal contributions." "In Lorraine the chapter of Remiremont has the privilege of assessing itself in all state impositions."1213 Elsewhere he is protected by the maintenance of the provincial Assemblies, and through the incorporation of the nobility with the soil: in Languedoc and in Brittany the commoners alone paid the taille1214—Everywhere else his quality preserved him from it, him, his chateau and the chateau's dependencies; the taille reaches him only through his farmers. And better still, it is sufficient that he himself should work, or his steward, to communicate to the land his original independence. As soon as he touches the soil, either personally or through his agent, he exempts four plowing-areas (quatre charrues), three hundred arpents,1215 which in other hands would pay 2,000 francs tax. Besides this he is exempt on "the woods, the meadows, the vines, the ponds and the enclosed land belonging to the chateau, of whatever extent it may be." Consequently, in Limousin and elsewhere, in regions principally devoted to pasturage or to vineyards, he takes care to manage himself, or to have managed, a certain portion of his domain; in this way he exempts it from the tax collector.1216 There is yet more. In Alsace, through an express covenant he does not pay a cent of tax. Thus, after the assaults of four hundred and fifty years, taxation, the first of fiscal instrumentalities, the most burdensome of all, leaves feudal property almost intact.1217—For the last century, two new tools, the capitation-tax and the vingtièmes, appear more effective, and yet are but little more so.—First of all, through a masterstroke of ecclesiastical diplomacy, the clergy diverts or weakens the blow. As it is an organization, holding assemblies, it is able to negotiate with the king and buy itself off. To avoid being taxed by others it taxes itself. It makes it appear that its payments are not compulsory contributions, but a "free gift." It obtains then in exchange a mass of concessions, is able to diminish this gift, sometimes not to make it, in any event to reduce it to sixteen millions every five years, that is to say to a little more than three millions per annum. In 1788 it is only 1,800,000 livres, and in 1789 it is refused altogether.1218 And still better: as it borrows to provide for this tax, and as the décimes which it raises on its property do not suffice to reduce the capital and meet the interest on its debt, it has the adroitness to secure, besides, a grant from the king. Out of the royal treasury, each year, it receives 2,500,000 livres, so that, instead of paying, it receives. In 1787 it receives in this way 1,500,000 livres. As for the nobles, they, being unable to combine together, to have representatives, and to act in a public way, operate instead in a private way. They contact ministers, intendants, sub-delegates, farmer-generals, and all others clothed with authority, their quality securing attentions, consideration and favors. In the first place, this quality exempts themselves, their dependents, and the dependents of their dependents, from drafting in the militia, from lodging soldiers, from (la corvée) laboring on the highways. Next, the capitation being fixed according СКАЧАТЬ