The Tax Collector. The Tax Collector.
I.
NATIONAL POVERTY.
An old man, who is forever pitying the present times, and extolling the past, was saying to me: "Friend, France is not so rich as it was under Henry the IVth."
"And why?"
"Because the lands are not so well cultivated; because hands are wanting for the cultivation; and because the day-laborer having raised the price of his work, many land owners let their inheritances he fallow."
"Whence comes this scarcity of hands?"
"From this, that whoever finds in himself anything of a spirit of industry, takes up the trades of embroiderer, chaser, watchmaker, silk weaver, attorney, or divine. It is also because the revocation of the Edict of Nantes has left a great void in the kingdom; because nuns and beggars of all kinds have greatly multiplied; because the people in general avoid as much as possible the hard labor of cultivation, for which we are born by God's destination, and which we have rendered ignominious by our own opinions; so very wise are we!
"Another cause of our poverty lies in our new wants. We pay our neighbors four millions of livres on one article, and five or six upon another, such, for example, as a stinking powder for stuffing up our noses brought from America. Our coffee, tea, chocolate, cochineal, indigo, spices, cost us above sixty millions a year. All these were unknown to us in the reign of Henry the IVth, except the spices, of which, however, the consumption was not so great as it is now. We burn a hundred times more wax-lights than were burnt then; and get more than the half of the wax from foreign countries, because we neglect our own hives. We see a hundred times more diamonds in the ears, round the necks, and on the hands of our city ladies of Paris, and other great towns, than were worn by all the ladies of Henry the IVth's court, the Queen included. Almost all the superfluities are necessarily paid for with ready specie.
"Observe especially that we pay to foreigners above fifteen millions of annuities on the HÔtel-de-Ville; and that Henry the IVth, on his accession, having found two millions of debt in all on this imaginary HÔtel, very wisely paid off a part, to ease the state of this burden.
"Consider that our civil wars were the occasion of the treasures of Mexico being poured into the kingdom, when Don Philip el Discreto took it into his head to buy France, and that since that time, our foreign wars have eased us of a good half of our money.
"These are partly the causes of our poverty; a poverty which we hide under varnished ceilings, or with the help of our dealers in fashion. We are poor with taste. There are some officers of revenue, there are contractors or jobbers, there are merchants, very rich; their children, their sons-in-law, are also very rich, but the nation in general is unfortunately not so."
This old man's discourse, well or ill grounded, made a deep impression on me; for the curate of my parish, who had always had a friendship for me, had taught me a little of geometry and of history: and I begin to reflect a little, which is very rare in my province. I do not know whether he was right or not in every thing, but being very poor, I could very easily believe that I had a great many companions of my misery.
II.
DISASTER OF THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.
I very readily make known to the universe that I have a landed estate which would yield me forty crowns a year, were it not for the tax laid on it.
There came forth several edicts from certain persons, who, having nothing better to do, govern the state at their fire-side, the preamble of these edicts was, "that the legislative and executive was born, jure divino, the co-proprietor of my land;" and that I owe it at least the half of what I possess. The enormity of this legislative and executive power made me bless myself. What would it be if that power which presides over "the essential order of society," were to take the whole of my little estate? The one is still more divine than the other.
The comptroller general knows that I used to pay, in all, but twelve livres; that even this was a heavy burden on me, and that I should have sunk under it, if God had not given me the talent of making wicker baskets, which helped to carry me through my trials. But how should I, on a sudden, be able to give the king twenty crowns?
The new ministers also said in their preamble, that it was not fit to tax anything but the land, because every thing arises from the land, even rain itself, and consequently that nothing was properly liable to taxation, but the fruits of the land.
During the last war, one of their collectors came to my house, and demanded of me, for my quota, three measures of corn, and a sack of beans, the whole worth twenty crowns, to maintain the war—of which I never knew the reason, having only heard it said, that there was nothing to be got by it for our country, and a great deal to lose. As I had not at that time either corn, or beans, or money, the legislative and executive power had me dragged to prison; and the war went on as well as it could.
On my release from the dungeon, being nothing but skin and bone, whom should I meet but a jolly fresh colored man in a coach and six? He had six footmen, to each of whom he gave for his wages more than the double of my revenue. His head-steward, who, by the way, looked in as good plight as himself, had of him a salary of two thousand livres, and robbed him every year of twenty thousand more. His mistress had in six months stood him in forty thousand crowns. I had formerly known him when he was less well to pass than myself. He owned, by way of comfort to me, that he enjoyed four hundred thousand livres a year.
"I suppose, then," said I, "that you pay out of this income two hundred thousand to the state, to help to support that advantageous war we are carrying on; since I, who have but just a hundred and twenty livres a year, am obliged to pay half of them."
"I," said he, "I contribute to the wants of the state? You are surely jesting, my friend. I have inherited from an uncle his fortune of eight millions, which he got at Cadiz and at Surat; I have not a foot of land; my estate lies in government contracts, and in the funds. I owe the state nothing. It is for you to give half of your substance,—you who are a proprietor of land. Do you not see, that if the minister of the revenue were to require anything of me in aid of our country, he would be a blockhead, that could not calculate? for every thing is the produce of the land. Money and the paper currency are nothing but pledges of exchange. If, after having laid the sole tax, the tax that is to supply the place of all others, on those commodities, the government were to ask money of me; do you not see, that this would be a double load? that it would be asking the same thing twice over? My uncle sold at Cadiz to the amount of two millions of your corn, and of two millions of stuffs made of your wool; upon these two articles he gained cent. per cent. You must easily think that this profit came out of lands already taxed. What my uncle bought for tenpence of you, he sold again for above fifty livres at Mexico; and thus he made a shift to return to his own country with eight millions clear.
"You must be sensible, then, that it would be a horrid injustice to re-demand of him a few farthings on the tenpence he paid you. If twenty nephews like me, whose uncles had gained each eight millions at Buenos Ayres, at Lima, at Surat, or at Pondicherry, were, in the urgent necessities of the state, each to lend to it only two hundred thousand livres, that would produce four millions. But what horror would that be! Pay then thou, my friend, who enjoyest quietly the neat and clear revenue of forty crowns; serve thy country well, and come now and then to dine with my servants in livery."
This plausible discourse made me reflect a good deal, but I cannot say it much comforted me.
III.
CONVERSATION WITH A GEOMETRICIAN.
It sometimes happens that a man has no answer to make, and yet is not persuaded. He is overthrown without the feeling of being convinced. He feels at the bottom of his heart a scruple, a repugnance, which hinders him from believing what has been proved to him. A geometrician demonstrates to you, that between a circle and a tangent, you may thread a number of curves, and yet cannot get one straight line to pass. Your eyes, your reason, tell you the contrary. The geometrician gravely answers you, that it is an infinitesimal of the second order. You stare in stupid silence, and quit the field all astonished, without having any clear idea, without comprehending anything, and without having any reply to make.
Consult but a geometrician of more candor, and he explains the mystery to you.
"We suppose," says he, "what cannot be in nature, lines which have length without breadth. Naturally and philosophically speaking, it is impossible for one real line to penetrate another. No curve, nor no right line can pass between two real lines that touch one another. These theorems that puzzle you are but sports of the imagination, ideal chimeras. Whereas true geometry is the art of measuring things actually existent."
I was perfectly well satisfied with the confession of the sensible mathematician, and, with all my misfortune, could not help laughing on learning that there was a quackery even in that science, which is called the sublime science. My geometrician was a kind of philosophical patriot, who had deigned to chat with me sometimes in my cottage. I said to him:
"Sir, you have tried to enlighten the cockneys of Paris, on a point of the greatest concern to mankind, that of the duration of human life. It is to you alone that the ministry owes its knowledge of the due rate of annuities for lives, according to different ages. You have proposed to furnish the houses in town with what water they may want, and to deliver us at length from the shame and ridicule of hearing water cried about the streets, and of seeing women inclosed within an oblong hoop, carrying two pails of water, both together of about thirty pounds weight, up to a fourth story. Be so good, in the name of friendship, to tell me, how many two-handed bipeds there may be in France?"
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—It is assumed, that there may be about twenty millions, and I am willing to adopt this calculation as the most probable, till it can be verified, which it would be very easy to do, and which, however, has not hitherto been done, because one does not always think of every thing.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—How many acres, think you, the whole territory of France contains?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—One hundred and thirty millions, of which almost the half is in roads, in towns, villages, moors, heaths, marshes, sands, barren lands, useless convents, gardens of more pleasure than profit, uncultivated grounds, and bad grounds ill cultivated. We might reduce all the land which yields good returns to seventy-five millions of square acres; but let us state them at fourscore millions. One cannot do too much for one's country.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—How much may you think each acre brings in yearly, one year with another, in corn, seeds of all kinds, wine, fish-ponds, wood, metals, cattle, fruit, wool, silk, oil, milk, clear of all charges, without reckoning the tax?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Why, if they produce each twenty-five livres, (about twenty English shillings), it is a great deal; but not to discourage our countrymen, let us put them at thirty livres. There are acres which produce constantly regenerating value, and which are estimated at three hundred livres: there are others which only produce three livres. The mean proportion between three and three hundred is thirty; for you must allow that three is to thirty as thirty is to three hundred. If, indeed, there were comparatively many acres at thirty livres, and very few at three hundred, our account would not hold good; but, once more, I would not be over punctilious.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Well, sir; how much will these fourscore millions of acres yield of revenue, estimated in money?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—The account is ready made; they will produce two thousand four hundred millions of livres of the present currency.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—I have read that Solomon possessed, of his own property, twenty-five thousand millions of livres, in ready money; and certainly there are not two thousand four hundred millions of specie circulating in France, which, I am told, is much greater and much richer than Solomon's country.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—There lies the mystery. There may be about nine hundred millions circulating throughout the kingdom; and this money, passing from hand to hand, is sufficient to pay for all the produce of the land, and of industry. The same crown may pass ten times from the pocket of the cultivator, into that of the ale-housekeeper, and of the tax-gatherer.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—I apprehend you. But you told me that we are, in all, about twenty millions of inhabitants, men, women, old and young. How much, pray, do you allow for each?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—One hundred and twenty livres, or forty crowns.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—You have just guessed my revenue. I have four acres, which, reckoning the fallow years with those of produce, bring me in one hundred and twenty livres; which is little enough, God knows.
But if every individual were to have his contingent, would that be no more than five louis d'ors a year?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Certainly not, according to our calculation, which I have a little amplified. Such is the state of human nature. Our life and our fortune have narrow limits. In Paris, they do not, one with another, live above twenty-two or twenty-three years, and, one with another, have not, at the most, above a hundred and twenty livres a year to spend. So that your food, your raiment, your lodging, your movables, are all represented by the sum of one hundred and twenty livres.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Alas! What have I done to you, that you thus abridge me of my fortune and life? Can it then be true, that I have but three and twenty years to live, unless I rob my fellow-creatures of their share?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—This is incontestable in the good city of Paris. But from these twenty-three years you must deduct ten, at the least, for your childhood, as childhood is not an enjoyment of life; it is a preparation; it is the porch of the edifice; it is the tree that has not yet given fruits; it is the dawn of a day. Then again, from the thirteen years which remain to you, deduct the time of sleep, and that of tiresomeness of life, and that will be at least a moiety. You will then have six years and a half left to pass in vexation, in pain, in some pleasures, and in hopes.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Merciful heaven! At this rate, your account does not allow us above three years of tolerable existence.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—-That is no fault of mine. Nature cares very little for individuals. There are insects which do not live above one day, but of which the species is perpetual. Nature resembles those great princes, who reckon as nothing the loss of four hundred thousand men, so they but accomplish their august designs.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Forty Crowns and three years of life! What resource can you imagine against two such curses?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—As to life, it would be requisite to render the air of Paris more pure—that men should eat less and take more exercise—that mothers should suckle their own children—that people should be no longer so ill-advised as to dread inoculation. This is what I have already said; and as to fortune, why, even marry and rear a family.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—How! Can the way to live more at ease be to associate to my own bad circumstances those of others?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Five or six bad circumstances put together form a tolerable establishment. Get a good wife, and we will say only two sons and two daughters; this will make seven hundred and twenty livres for your little family, that is to say, if distributive justice were to take place, and that each individual had an hundred and twenty livres a year. Your children, in their infancy, stand you in almost nothing; when grown up they will ease and help you. Their mutual aid will save you a good part of your expenses, and you may live very happy, like a philosopher. Always provided, however, that those worthy gentlemen who govern the state have not the barbarity to extort from each of you twenty crowns a year. But the misfortune is, we are no longer in the golden age, where the men, born all equals, had an equal part in the nutritive productions of uncultivated land. The case is now far from being so good a one, as that every two-handed biped possesses land to the value of an hundred and twenty livres a year.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—'Sdeath! You ruin us. You said but just now, that in a country of fourscore millions of inhabitants, each of them ought to enjoy an hundred and twenty livres a year, and now you take them away from us again!
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—I was computing according to the registers of the golden age, but we must reckon according to that of iron. There are many inhabitants who have but the value of ten crowns a year, others no more than four or five, and above six millions of men who have absolutely nothing.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Nothing? Why they would perish of hunger in three days' time.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Not in the least. The others, who possess their portions, set them to work, and share with them. It is from this arrangement that the pay comes for the divine, the confectioner, the apothecary, the preacher, the actor, the attorney, and the hackney-coachman. You thought yourself very ill off, to have no more than a hundred and twenty livres a year, reduced to a hundred and eight by your tax of twelve livres. But consider the soldiers who devote their blood to their country at the rate of fourpence a day. They have not above sixty-three livres a year for their livelihood, and yet they make a comfortable shift, by a number of them joining their little stock and living in common.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—So then an ex-Jesuit has more than five times the pay of a soldier. And yet the soldiers have done more service to the state under the eyes of the king at Fontenoy, at Laufelt, at the siege of Fribourg, than the reverend Father Le Valette ever did in his life.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Nothing can be truer: nay, every one of these turned-adrift Jesuits, having now become free, has more to spend than what he cost his convent. There are even some among them who have gained a good deal of money by scribbling pamphlets against the parliaments, as for example, the reverend father Patouillet, and the reverend father Monote. In short, in this world every one sets his wits to work for a livelihood. One is at the head of a manufactory of stuffs; another of porcelain; another undertakes the opera; another the Ecclesiastical Gazette; another a tragedy in familiar life, or a novel or romance in the English style; this maintains the stationer, the ink-maker, the bookseller, the hawker, who might else be reduced to beggary. There is nothing, then, but the restitution of the hundred and twenty livres to those who have nothing, that makes the state flourish.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—A pretty way of flourishing, truly!
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—And yet there is no other. In every country it is the rich that enable the poor to live. This is the sole source of the industry of commerce. The more industrious a nation itself is, the more it gains from foreign countries. Could we, on our foreign trade, get ten millions a year by the balance in our favor, there would, in twenty years, be two hundred millions more in the nation. This would afford ten livres a head more, on the supposition of an equitable distribution; that is to say, that the dealers would make each poor person earn ten livres the more, once paid, in the hopes of making still more considerable gains. But commerce, like the fertility of the earth, has its bounds, otherwise its progression would be ad infinitum. Nor, besides, is it clear, that the balance of our trade is constantly favorable to us; there are times in which we lose.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—I have heard much talk of population. If our inhabitants were doubled, so that we numbered forty millions of people instead of twenty, what would be the consequence?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—It would be this: that, one with another, each would have, instead of forty, but twenty crowns to live upon; or that the land should produce double the crops it now does; or that there should be double the national industry, or of gain from foreign countries; or that half of the people should be sent to America; or that one half of the nation should eat the other.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Let us then remain satisfied with our twenty millions of inhabitants, and with our hundred and twenty livres a head, distributed as it shall please the Lord. Yet this situation is a sad one, and your iron age is hard indeed.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—There is no nation that is better off; and there are many that are worse. Do you believe that there is in the North wherewithal to afford to each inhabitant the value of an hundred and twenty of our livres a year? If they had had the equivalent of this, the Huns, the Vandals, and the Franks would not have deserted their country, in quest of establishments elsewhere, which they conquered, fire and sword in hand.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—If I were to listen to you, you would persuade me presently that I am happy with my hundred and twenty livres.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—If you would but think yourself happy, you would then be so.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—A man cannot imagine what actually is not, unless he be mad.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—I have already told you, that in order to be more at your ease, and more happy than you are, you should take a wife; to which I tack, however, this clause, that she has, as well as you, one hundred and twenty livres a year; that is to say, four acres at ten crowns an acre. The ancient Romans had each but one. If your children are industrious, they can each earn as much by their working for others.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—So that they may get money, without others losing it.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Such is the law of all nations: there is no living but on these terms.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—And must my wife and I give each of us the half of our produce to the legislative and executive power, and the new ministers of state rob us of the price of our hard labor, and of the substance of our poor children, before they are able to get their livelihood? Pray, tell me, how much money will these new ministers of ours bring into the king's coffers, by this jure divino system?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—You pay twenty crowns on four acres, which bring you in forty. A rich man, who possesses four hundred acres will, by the new tariff, pay two thousand crowns; and the whole fourscore millions of acres will yield to the king, twelve hundred millions of livres a year, or four hundred millions of crowns.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—That appears to me impracticable and impossible.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—And very much you are in the right to think so: and this impossibility is a geometrical demonstration that there is a fundamental defect in the calculation of our new ministers.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Is not there also demonstrably a prodigious injustice in taking from me the half of my corn, of my hemp, of the wool of my sheep, etc., and, at the same time, to require no aid from those who shall have gained ten, twenty, or thirty thousand livres a year, by my hemp, of which they will have made linen,—by my wool, of which they will have made cloth,—by my corn, which they will have sold at so much more than it cost them?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—The injustice of this administration is as evident as its calculation is erroneous. It is right to favor industry; but opulent industry ought to contribute to support the state. This industry will have certainly taken from you a part of your one hundred and twenty livres, and appropriated that part to itself, in selling you your shirts and your coat twenty times dearer than they would have cost you, if you had made them yourself. The manufacturer who shall have enriched himself, at your expense, will, I allow, have also paid wages to his workmen, who had nothing of themselves, but he will, every year, have sunk, and put by a sum that will, at length, have produced to him thirty thousand livres a year. This fortune then he will have acquired at your expense. Nor can you ever sell him the produce of your land dear enough to reimburse you for what he will have got by you; for were you to attempt such an advance of your price, he would procure what he wanted cheaper from other countries. A proof of which is, that he remains constantly possessor of his thirty thousand livres a year, and you of your one hundred and twenty livres, that often diminish, instead of increasing.
It is then necessary and equitable, that the refined industry of the trader should pay more than the gross industry of the farmer. The same is to be said of the collectors of the revenue. Your tax had previously been but twelve livres, before our great ministers were pleased to take from you twenty crowns. On these twelve livres, the collector retained tenpence, or ten sols for himself. If in your province there were five hundred thousand souls, he will have gained two hundred and fifty thousand livres a year. Suppose he spends fifty thousand, it is clear, that at the end of ten years he will be two millions in pocket. It is then but just that he should contribute his proportion, otherwise, every thing would be perverted, and go to ruin.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—I am very glad you have taxed the officer of the revenue. It is some relief to my imagination. But since he has so well increased his superfluity, what shall I do to augment my small modicum?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—I have already told you, by marrying, by laboring, by trying to procure from your land some sheaves of corn in addition to what it previously produced.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Well! granted then that I shall have been duly industrious; that all my countrymen will have been so too; and that the legislative and executive power shall have received a good round tax; how much will the nation have gained at the end of the year?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Nothing at all; unless it shall have carried on a profitable foreign trade. But life will have been more agreeable in it. Every one will, respectively, in proportion, have had more clothes, more linen, more movables than he had before. There will have been in the nation a more abundant circulation. The wages would have been, in process of time, augmented, nearly in proportion to the number of the sheaves of corn, of the tods of wool, of the ox-hides, of the sheep and goats, that will have been added, of the clusters of grapes that will have been squeezed in the wine-press. More of the value of commodities will have been paid to the king in money, and the king will have returned more value to those he will have employed under his orders; but there will not be half a crown the more in the kingdom.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—-What will then remain to the government at the end of the year?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Once more, nothing. This is the case of government in general. It never lays by anything. It will have got its living, that is to say, its food, raiment, lodging, movables. The subject will have done so too. Where a government amasses treasure, it will have squeezed from the circulation so much money as it will have amassed. It will have made so many wretched, as it will have put by forty crowns in its coffers.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—At this rate, then, Henry IV. was but a mean-spirited wretch, a miser, a plunderer, for I have been told that he had chested up in the Bastile, above fifty millions of livres according to our present currency.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—He was a man as good, and as prudent, as he was brave. He was preparing to make a just war, and by amassing in his coffers twenty-two millions of the currency of that time, besides which he had twenty more to receive, which he left in circulation, he spared the people above a hundred millions that it would have cost, if he had not taken those useful measures. He made himself morally sure of success against an enemy who had not taken the like precaution. The probabilities were prodigiously in his favor. His twenty-two millions, in bank, proved that there was then in this kingdom, twenty-two millions of surplusage of the territorial produce, so that no one was a sufferer.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—My father then told me the truth, when he said that the subject was in proportion more rich under the administration of the Duke of Sully than under that of our new ministers, who had laid on the single tax, the sole tax, and who, out of my forty crowns, have taken away twenty. Pray, tell me, is there another nation in the world that enjoys this precious advantage of the sole tax?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Not one opulent nation. The English, who are not much giving to laughing, could not, however, help bursting out, when they heard that men of intelligence, among us, had proposed this kind of administration. The Chinese exact a tax from all the foreign trading ships that resort to Canton. The Dutch pay, at Nangazaqui, when they are received in Japan, under pretext that they are not Christians. The Laplanders, and the Samoieds, are indeed subjected to a sole tax in sables or marten-skins. The republic of St. Marino pays nothing more than tithes for the maintenance of that state in its splendor.
There is, in Europe, a nation celebrated for its equity and its valor, that pays no tax. This is Switzerland. But thus it has happened. The people have put themselves in the place of the Dukes of Austria and of Zeringue. The small cantons are democratical, and very poor. Each inhabitant pays but a trifling sum toward the support of this little republic. In the rich cantons, the people are charged, for the state, with those duties which the Archdukes of Austria and the lords of the land used to exact. The protestant cantons are, in proportion, twice as rich as the catholic, because the state, in the first, possesses the lands of the monks. Those who were formerly subjects to the Archdukes of Austria, to the Duke of Zeringue, and to the monks, are now the subjects of their own country. They pay to that country the same tithes, the same fines of alienation, that they paid to their former masters; and as the subjects, in general, have very little trade, their merchandise is liable to no charges, except some small staple duties. The men make a trade of their courage, in their dealings with foreign powers, and sell themselves for a certain term of years, which brings some money into their country at our expense: and this example is as singular a one in the civilized world, as is the sole tax now laid on by our new legislators.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—So, sir, the Swiss are not plundered, jure divino, of one-half of their goods; and he that has four cows in Switzerland is not obliged to give two of them to the state?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Undoubtedly, not. In one canton, upon thirteen tons of wine, they pay one, and drink the other twelve. In another canton, they pay the twelfth, and drink the remaining eleven.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Why am not I a Swiss? That cursed tax, that single and singularly iniquitous tax, that has reduced me to beggary! But then again, three or four hundred taxes, of which it is impossible for me to retain or pronounce the bare names, are they more just and more tolerable? Was there ever a legislator, who, in founding a state, wished to create counselors to the king, inspectors of coal-meters, gaugers of wine, measurers of wood, searchers of hog-tongues, comptrollers of salt butter? or to maintain an army of rascals, twice as numerous as that of Alexander, commanded by sixty generals, who lay the country under contribution, who gain, every day, signal victories, who take prisoners, and who sometimes sacrifice them in the air, or on a boarded stage, as the ancient Scythians did, according to what my vicar told me?
Now, was such a legislation, against which so many outcries were raised, and which caused the shedding of so many tears, much better than the newly imposed one, which at one stroke, cleanly and quietly takes away half of my subsistence? I am afraid, that on a fair liquidation, it will be found that under the ancient system of the revenue, they used to take, at times and in detail, three-quarters of it.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra. Est modus in retus. Caveas fine quidnimie.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—I have learned a little of history, and something of geometry; but I do not understand a word of Latin.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—The sense is, pretty nearly, as follows. There is wrong on both sides. Keep to a medium in every thing. Nothing too much.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—I say, nothing too much; that is really my situation; but the worst of it is, I have not enough.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—I allow that you must perish of want, and I too, and the state too, if the new administration should continue only two years longer; but it is to be hoped heaven will have mercy on us.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—We pass our lives in hope, and die hoping to the last. Adieu, sir, you have enlightened me, but my heart is grieved.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—This is, indeed, often the fruit of knowledge.
Palace of the barefooted Carmelites. Palace of the barefooted Carmelites.—"What would you please to have, my son?"—"A morsel of bread, my reverend father. The new edicts have stripped me of everything."—"Son, know that we ourselves beg charity; we do not bestow it."
IV.
AN ADVENTURE WITH A CARMELITE.
When I had thanked the academician of the Academy of Sciences, for having set me right, I went away quite out of heart, praising providence, but muttering between my teeth these doleful words: "What! to have no more than forty crowns a year to live on, nor more than twenty-two years to live! Alas! may our life be yet shorter, since it is to be so miserable!"
As I was saying this, I found myself just opposite a very superb house. Already was I feeling myself pressed by hunger. I had not so much as the hundred and twentieth part of the sum that by right belongs to each individual. But as soon as I was told that this was the palace of my reverend fathers, the bare-footed Carmelites, I conceived great hopes, and said to myself, since these saints are humble enough to go bare-footed, they will be charitable enough to give me a dinner.
I rang. A Carmelite came to the door.
"What would you please to have, my son?"
"A morsel of bread, my reverend father. The new edicts have stripped me of every thing."
Son, know that we ourselves beg charity; we do not bestow it."[1]
"What! while your holy institute forbids you to wear shoes, you have the house of a prince, and can you refuse to me a meal?"
"My son, it is true, we go without stockings and shoes; that is an expense the less; we feel no more cold in our feet than in our hands. As to our fine house, we built it very easily, as we have a hundred thousand livres a year of income from houses in the same street."
"So, then! you suffer me to die of hunger, while you have an income of a hundred thousand livres! I suppose you pay fifty thousand of these to the new government?"
"Heaven preserve us from paying a single farthing! It is only the produce of the land cultivated by laborious hands, callous with work, and moistened with tears, that owes taxes to the legislative and executive power. The alms which have been bestowed upon us, have enabled us to build those houses, by the rent of which we get a hundred thousand livres a year. But these alms, coming from the fruits of the earth, and having, consequently, already paid the tax, ought not to pay twice. They have sanctified the faithful believers, who have impoverished themselves to enrich us, and we continue to beg charity, and to lay under contribution the Fauxbourg of St. Germain, in order to sanctify a still greater number of the faithful believers."[2]
Having thus spoken, the Carmelite politely shut the door in my face.
I then passed along and stopped before the HÔtel of the Mousquetaires gris, and related to those gentlemen what had just happened to me. They gave me a good dinner and half a crown, (un ecu). One of them proposed to go directly and set fire to the convent; but a musqueteer, more discreet than he, remonstrated with him, insisting that the time for action had not yet arrived, and implored him to wait patiently a little longer.[3]
V.
AUDIENCE OF THE COMPTROLLER GENERAL.
I went, with my half-crown, to present a petition to the comptroller general, who was that day giving audience.
His anti-chamber was filled with people of all kinds. There were there especially some with more bluff faces, more prominent bellies, and more arrogant looks than my man of eight millions. I durst not draw near to them; I saw them, but they did not observe me.
A monk, a great man for tithes, had begun a suit at law against certain subjects of the state, whom he called his tenants. He had already a larger income than the half of his parishioners put together, and was moreover lord of the manor. His claim was, that whereas his vassals had, with infinite pains, converted their heaths into vineyards, they owed him a tithe of the wine, which, taking into the account the price of labor, of the vine-props, of the casks and cellarage, would carry off above a quarter of the produce.
"But," said he, "as the tithes are due, jure divino, I demand the quarter of the substance of my tenants, in the name of God."
The minister of the revenue said to him, "I see how charitable you are."
A farmer-general, extremely well-skilled in assessments, interposed, saying:
"Sir, that village can afford nothing to this monk; as I have, but the last year, made the parishioners pay thirty-two taxes on their wine, besides their over-consumption of the allowance for their own drinking. They are entirely ruined. I have seized and sold their cattle and movables, and yet they are still my debtors. I protest, then, against the claim of the reverend father."
"You are in the right," answered the minister of the revenue, "to be his rival; you both equally love your neighbor, and you both edify me."
A third, a monk and lord of the manor, whose tenants were in mortmain, was waiting for a decree of the council that should put him in possession of all the estate of a Paris cockney, who having, inadvertently, lived a year and a day in a house subject to this servitude, and inclosed within the hands of this priest, had died at the year's end. The monk was claiming all the estate of this cockney, and claiming it jure divino.
The minister found by this, that the heart of this monk was as just and as tender as those of the others.
A fourth, who was comptroller of the royal domains, presented a specious memorial, in which he justified himself for his having reduced twenty families to beggary. They had inherited from their uncles, their aunts, their brothers, or cousins; and were liable to pay the duties. The officers of the domain had generously proved to them, that they had not set the full value on their inheritances,—that they were much richer than they believed, and, consequently, having condemned them to a triple fine, ruined them in charges, and threw the heads of the families into jail, he had bought their best possessions without untying his purse-strings.
The comptroller general said to him, in a tone indeed rather bitter:
"Euge, controlleur bone et fidelis, quia supra pauca fuisti fidelis, fermier-general te constituam."
But to a master of the requests, who was standing at his side, he said in a low voice:
"We must make these blood-suckers, sacred and profane, disgorge. It is time to give some relief to the people, who, without our care, and our equity, would have nothing to live upon in this world at least, however they might fare in the other."
Some, of profound genius, presented projects to him. One of them had imagined a scheme to lay a tax on wit. "All the world," said he, "will be eager to pay, as no one cares to pass for a fool."
The minister declared to him, "I exempt you from the tax."
Another proposed to lay the only tax upon songs and laughing, in consideration that we were the merriest nation under the sun, and that a song was a relief and comfort for every thing. But the minister observed, that of late there were hardly any songs of pleasantry made; and he was afraid that, to escape the tax, we would become too serious.
The next that presented himself, was a trusty and loyal subject, who offered to raise for the king three times as much, by making the nation pay three times less. The minister advised him to learn arithmetic.
A fourth proved to the king in the way of friendship, that he could not raise above seventy-five millions, but that he was going to procure him two hundred and twenty-five. "You will oblige me in this," said the minister, "as soon as we shall have paid the public debts."
At length, who should appear but a deputy of the new author, who makes the legislative power co-proprietor of all our lands, jure divino, and who was giving the king twelve hundred millions of revenue. I knew the man again who had flung me into prison for not having paid my twenty crowns, and throwing myself at the feet of the comptroller general, I implored his justice; upon which, he burst out a laughing, and telling me, it was a trick that had been played me, he ordered the doers of this mischief in jest to pay me a hundred crowns damages, and exempted me from the land-tax for the rest of my life. I said to him, "God bless your honor!"
VI.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS MARRIES, BECOMES A FATHER, AND DESCANTS UPON THE MONKS.
The Man of Forty Crowns having improved his understanding, and having accumulated a moderate fortune, married a very pretty girl, who had an hundred crowns a year of her own. As soon as his son was born, he felt himself a man of some consequence in the state. He was famous for making the best baskets in the world, and his wife was an excellent seamstress. She was born in the neighborhood of a rich abbey of a hundred thousand livres a year. Her husband asked me one day, why those gentlemen, who were so few in number, had swallowed so many of the forty crown lots? "Are they more useful to their country than I am?" "No, dear neighbor." "Do they, like me, contribute at least to the population of it?" "No." "Do they cultivate the land? Do they defend the state when it is attacked?" "No, they pray to God for us." "Well, then, I will pray to God for us." "Well, then, I will pray to God for them, in return."
QUESTION.—How many of these useful gentry, men and women, may the convents in this kingdom contain?
ANSWER.—By the lists of the superintendents, taken toward the end of the last century, there were about ninety thousand.
QUESTION.—According to our ancient account, they ought not, at forty crowns a head, to possess above ten millions eight hundred thousand livres. Pray, how much have they actually?
ANSWER.—They have to the amount of fifty millions, including the masses, and alms to the mendicant monks, who really lay a considerable tax on the people. A begging friar of a convent in Paris, publicly bragged that his wallet was worth fourscore thousand livres a year.
QUESTION.—Let us now consider how much the repartition of fifty millions among ninety thousand shaven crowns gives to each? Let us see, is it not five hundred and fifty-five livres?
ANSWER.—Yes, and a considerable sum it is in a numerous society, where the expenses even diminish by the quantity of consumers; for ten persons may live together much cheaper than if each had his separate lodging and table.
QUESTION.—So that the ex-Jesuits, to whom there is now assigned a pension of four hundred livres, are then really losers by the bargain.
ANSWER.—I do not think so; for they are almost all of them retired among their friends, who assist them. Several of them say masses for money, which they did not do before; others get to be preceptors; some are maintained by female bigots; each has made a shift for himself: and, perhaps, at this time, there are few of them, who have tasted of the world, and of liberty, that would resume their former chains. The monkish life, whatever they may say, is not at all to be envied. It is a maxim well known, that the monks are a kind of people who assemble without knowing, live without loving, and die without regretting each other.
QUESTION.—You think, then, that it would be doing them a great service, to strip them of all their monks' habits?
ANSWER.—They would undoubtedly gain much by it, and the state still more. It would restore to the country a number of subjects, men and women, who have rashly sacrificed their liberty, at an age to which the laws do not allow a capacity of disposing of tenpence a year income. It would be taking these corpses out of their tombs, and afford a true resurrection. Their houses might become hospitals, or be turned into places for manufactures. Population would be increased. All the arts would be better cultivated. One might at least diminish the number of these voluntary victims by fixing the number of novices. The country would have subjects more useful, and less unhappy. Such is the opinion of all the magistrates, such the unanimous wish of the public, since its understanding is enlightened. The example of England, and other states, is an evident proof of the necessity of this reformation. What would England do at this time, if, instead of forty thousand seamen, it had forty thousand monks? The more they are multiplied, the greater need there is of a number of industrious subjects. There are undoubtedly buried in the cloisters many talents, which are lost to the state. To make a kingdom nourish, there should be the fewest priests and the most artisans possible. So far ought the ignorance and barbarism of our forefathers to be from being any rule for us, that they ought rather to be an admonition to us, to do what they would do, if they were in our place, with our improvements in knowledge.
QUESTION.—It is not then out of hatred to monks that you wish to abolish them, but out of love to your country? I think as you do. I would not have my son a monk. And if I thought I was to rear children for nothing better than a cloister, I would not wish to become a father.
ANSWER.—Where in fact, is that good father of a family that would not groan to see his son and daughter lost to society? This is seeking the safety of the soul. It may be so, but a soldier that seeks the safety of his body, when his duty is to fight, is punished. We are all soldiers of the state; we are in the pay of society; we become deserters when we quit it.
Why, then, has monkishness prevailed? Because, since the days of Constantine, the government has been everywhere absurd and detestable; because the Roman empire came to have more monks than soldiers; because there were a hundred thousand of them in Egypt alone; because they were exempt from labor and taxes; because the chiefs of those barbarous nations which destroyed the empire, having turned Christians, in order to govern Christians, exercised the most horrid tyranny; because, to avoid the fury of these tyrants, people threw themselves in crowds into cloisters, and so, to escape one servitude, put themselves into another; because the popes, by instituting so many different orders of sacred drones, contrived to have so many subjects to themselves in other states; because a peasant likes better to be called reverend father, and to give his benedictions, than to follow a plough's tail; because he does not know that the plough is nobler than a monk's habit; because he had rather live at the expense of fools than by a laborious occupation; in short, because he does not know that, in making a monk of himself, he is preparing for himself unhappy days, of which the sad groundwork will be nothing but a tedium vitÆ and repentance.
QUESTION.—I am satisfied. Let us have no monks, for the sake of their own happiness, as well as ours. But I am sorry to hear it said by the landlord of our village, who is father to four boys and three girls, that he does not know how to dispose of his daughters, unless he makes nuns of them.
ANSWER.—This too often repeated plea is at once inhuman, detrimental to the country, and destructive to society. Every time that it can be said of any condition of life whatever, that if all the world were to embrace it mankind would perish, it is proved that that condition is a worthless one, and that whoever embraces it does all the mischief to mankind that in him lies.
Now, it being a clear consequence that if all the youth of both sexes were to shut themselves up in cloisters the world would perish, monkery is, if it were but in that light alone, the enemy to human nature, independently of the horrid evils it has formerly caused.
QUESTION.—Might not as much be said of soldiers?
ANSWER. Certainly not; for if every subject carried arms in his turn, as formerly was the practice in all republics, and especially in that of Rome, the soldier is but the better farmer for it. The soldier, as a good subject ought to do, marries, and fights for his wife and children. Would it were the will of heaven that every laborer was a soldier and a married man! They would make excellent subjects. But a monk, merely in his quality of a monk, is good for nothing but to devour the substance of his countryman. There is no truth more generally acknowledged.
QUESTION.—But, sir, the daughters of poor gentlemen, who cannot portion them off in marriage, what are they to do?
ANSWER.—-Do! They should do, as has a thousand times been said, like the daughters in England, in Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, Holland, half Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Tartary, Turkey, Africa, and in almost all the rest of the globe. They will prove much better wives, much better mothers, when it shall have been the custom, as in Germany, to marry women without fortune. A woman, industrious and a good economist, will do more good in a house, than a daughter of a farmer of the revenue, who spends more in superfluities than she will have brought of income to her husband.
There is a necessity for houses of retreat for old age, for infirmity, for deformity. But by the most detestable of all abuses, these foundations are for well-made persons. Let a hump-backed old woman present herself to enter into a cloister, and she will be rejected with contempt, unless she will give an immense portion to the house. But what do I say? Every nun must bring her dower with her; she is else the refuse of the convent. Never was there a more intolerable abuse.
QUESTION.—Thank you, sir. I swear to you that no daughter of mine shall be a nun. They shall learn to spin, to sew, to make lace, to embroider, to render themselves useful. I look on the vows of convents to be crimes against one's country and one's self. Now, sir, I beg you will explain to me, how comes it that a certain writer, in contradiction to human kind, pretends that monks are useful to the population of a state, because their buildings are kept in better repair than those of the nobility, and their lands better cultivated?
ANSWER.—-He has a mind to divert himself; he knows but too well, that ten families who have each five thousand livres a year in land, are a hundred, nay, a thousand times more useful than a convent that enjoys fifty thousand livres a year, and which has always a secret hoard. He cries up the fine houses built by the monks, and it is precisely those fine houses that provoke the rest of the subjects; it is the very cause of complaint to all Europe. The vow of poverty condemns those palaces, as the vow of humility protests against pride, and as the vow of extinguishing one's race is in opposition to nature.
QUESTION.—Bless me! Who can this be that advances so strange a proposition?
ANSWER. It is the friend of mankind, [Monsieur le M. de Mirabeau, in his book entitled L'Ami des Hommes. It is against this marquis that the jest on the only tax is leveled; a tax proposed by him], or rather the friend of the monks.
QUESTION.—I begin to think it advisable to be very distrustful of books.
ANSWER.—The best way is to make use, with regard to them, of the same caution, as with men. Choose the most reasonable, examine them, and never yield unless to evidence.
VII.
ON TAXES PAID TO A FOREIGN POWER.
About a month ago, the Man of Forty Crowns came to me, holding both his sides, which seemed ready to burst with laughing. In short, he laughed so heartily that I could not help laughing also, without knowing at what. So true it is, that man is born an imitative animal, that instinct rules us, and that the great emotions of the soul are catching. Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflent, Humani vultus.
When he had had his laugh out, he told me that he had just come from meeting with a man who called himself the prothonotary of the Holy See, and that this personage was sending away a great sum of money to an Italian, three hundred leagues off, in the name and behalf of a Frenchman, on whom the king had bestowed a small fief or fee; because the said Frenchman could never enjoy this benefit of the king's conferring, if he did not give to this Italian the first year's income.
"The thing," said I, "is very true; but it is not quite such a laughing matter either. It costs France about four hundred thousand livres a year, in petty duties of this kind; and in the course of two centuries and a half, that this custom has lasted, we have already sent to Italy fourscore millions."
"Heavenly Father!" he exclaimed, "how many forty crowns would that make? Some Italian, then, subdued us, I suppose, two centuries and a half ago, and laid that tribute upon us!"
"In good faith," answered I, "he used to impose on us in former times, in a much more burthensome way. That is but a trifle in comparison to what, for a long time, he levied on our poor nations of Europe."
Then I related to him how those holy usurpations had taken place, and came to be established. He knows a little of history, and does not want for sense. He easily conceived that we had been slaves, and that we were still dragging a little bit of our chain that we could not get rid of. He spoke much and with energy, against this abuse; but with what respect for religion in general. With what reverence did he express himself for the bishops! How heartily did he wish them many forty crowns a year, that they might spend them in their dioceses in good works.
He also wished that all the country vicars might have a number of forty crowns, that they might live with decency.
"It is a sad thing," said he, "that a vicar should be obliged to dispute with his flock for two or three sheaves of corn, and that he should not be amply paid by the country. These eternal contests for imaginary rights, for the tithes, destroy the respect that is owing to them. The unhappy cultivator who shall have already paid to the collectors his tenth penny, and the twopence a livre, and the tax, and the capitation, and the purchase of his exemption from lodging soldiers,—after he shall have lodged soldiers,—for this unfortunate man, I say, to see the vicar take away in addition the tithe of his produce, he can no longer look on him as his pastor, but as one that flays him alive,—that tears from him the little skin that is left him. He feels but too sensible, that while they are, jure divino, robbing him of his tenth sheaf, they have the diabolical cruelty not to give him credit for all that it will have cost him to make that sheaf grow. What then remains to him for himself and family? Tears, want, discouragement, despair, and thus he dies of fatigue and misery. If the vicar were paid by the country, he would be a comfort to his parishioners, instead of being looked on by them as their enemy."
The worthy man melted as he uttered these words; he loved his country, and the public good was his idol. He would sometimes emphatically say, "What a nation would the French be if it pleased!" We went to see his son, whom the mother, a very neat and clean woman, was nursing. "Alas!" said the father, "here thou art, poor child, and hast nothing to pretend to but twenty-three years of life, and forty crowns a year."
VIII.
ON PROPORTIONS.
The produce of the extremes is equal to the produce of the means: but two sacks of corn stolen, are not, to those who stole them, as the loss of their lives is to the interest of the person from whom they were stolen.
The prior of ——, from whom two of his domestic servants in the country had stolen two measures of corn, has just had the two delinquents hanged. This execution has cost him more than all his harvest has been worth to him; and since that time he has not been able to get a servant.
If the laws had ordained that such as stole their master's corn should work in his grounds, during their lives in fetters, and with a bell at their neck fixed to a collar, the prior would have been a considerable gainer by it.
"Terror should be preventively employed against crimes;" very true: but work, on compulsion, and lasting shame, strike more terror than the gallows.
The rack. The rack.—"I was summoned to give evidence against a miller, who has been put to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, and who has been found innocent. I saw him faint away under redoubled tortures. I heard the crash of his bones. His outcries and screams of agony are not yet out of my ears; they haunt me. I shed tears for pity, and shudder with horror."
There was, some months ago at London, a malefactor who had been condemned to be transported to America to work there at the sugar works with the negroes. In England, any criminal, as in many other countries, may get a petition presented to the king, either to obtain a free pardon, or a mitigation of the sentence. This one presented a petition to be hanged, alleging that he mortally hated work, and that he had rather suffer strangling for a minute, than to make sugar all his lifetime.
Others may think otherwise, every one to his taste. But it has been already said, and cannot be too often repeated, that a man hanged is good for nothing, and that punishments ought to be useful.
Some years ago, in Turkey, two young men were condemned to be impaled, for having, (without taking off their caps,) stood to see the procession of the Lama pass by. The Emperor of China, who is a man of very good sense, said, that for his part, he should have condemned them to walk bareheaded, in every public procession, for three months afterwards.
"Proportion punishments to crimes," says the Marquis Beccaria; but those who made the laws were not geometricians.
I hate the laws of Draco, which punish equally crimes and faults, wickedness and folly. Let us,—especially in all litigations,—in all dissensions, in all quarrels,—distinguish the aggressor from the party offended, the oppressor from the oppressed. An offensive war is the procedure of a tyrant; he who defends himself is in the character of a just man.
As I was absorbed in these reflections, the Man of Forty Crowns came to me all in tears. I asked, with emotion, if his son, who was by right to live twenty-three years, was dead?
"No," said he, "the little one is very well, and so is my wife; but I was summoned to give evidence against a miller, who has been put to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, and who has been found innocent. I saw him faint away under redoubled tortures. I heard the crash of his bones. His outcries and screams of agony are not yet out of my ears; they haunt me. I shed tears for pity, and shudder with horror."
His tears drew mine. I trembled, too, like him; for I have naturally an extreme sensibility.
My memory then represented to me the dreadful fate of the Calas family! A virtuous mother in irons,—her children in tears, and forced to fly, her house given up to pillage,—a respectable father of a family broken with torture, agonizing on a wheel, and expiring in the flames; a son loaded with chains, and dragged before the judges, one of whom said to him:
"We have just now broken your father on the wheel; we will break you alive too."
I remembered the family of Sirven, who one of my friends met with among the mountains covered with ice, as they were flying from the persecution of a judge as ignorant as he was unjust. This judge (he told me) had condemned an innocent family to death on a supposition, without the least shadow of proof, that the father and mother, assisted by two of their daughters, had cut the throat of the third, and drowned her besides, for going to mass. I saw in judgments of this kind, at once an excess of stupidity, of injustice, and of barbarity.
The Man of Forty Crowns joined with me in pitying human nature. I had in my pocket the discourse of an attorney-general of Dauphiny, which turned upon very important matters. I read to him the following passages:
"Certainly those must have been truly great men, who, at first, dared to take upon themselves the office of governing their fellow creatures, and to set their shoulders to the burthen of the public welfare; who, for the sake of the good they meant to do to men, exposed themselves to their ingratitude, and for the public repose renounced their own; who made themselves, as one may say, middle-men between their fellow-creatures and Providence, to compose for them, by artifice, a happiness which Providence seems otherwise to have refused to them by any other means.
"What magistrate, was ever so careless of his responsibilities and duties to humanity as to entertain such ideas? Could he, in the solitude of his closet, without shuddering with horror and pity, cast his eyes on those papers, the unfortunate monuments of gilt or of innocence? Should he not think he hears a plaintive voice and groans issue from those fatal writings, and press him to decide the destiny of a subject, of a husband, of a father, or of a whole family? What judge can be so unmerciful (if he is charged with but one single process) as to pass in cold blood before the door of a prison? Is it I (must he say to himself) who detain in that execrable place my fellow-creature, perhaps my countryman, one of humankind, in short? Is it I that confine him every day,—that shut those execrable doors upon him? Perhaps despair will have seized him. He sends up to heaven my name loaded with his curses; and doubtless calls to witness against me that great Judge of the world, who observes us, and will judge us both."
"Here a dreadful sight presents itself on a sudden to my eyes: The judge, tired with interrogating bywords, has recourse to interrogation by tortures. Impatient in his inquiries and researches, and perhaps irritated at their inutility, he has brought to him torches, chains, levers, and all those instruments invented for producing pain. An executioner comes to interpose in the functions of the magistracy, and terminates by violence a judicial interrogation.
"Gentle philosophy! Thou who never seekest truth but with attention and patience, couldst thou expect, in an age that takes thy name, that such instruments would be employed to discover that truth?
"Can it be really true, that our laws approve this inconceivable method, and that custom consecrates it?
"Their laws imitate their prejudices; their public punishments are as cruel as their private vengeance; and the acts of their reason are scarce less unmerciful than those of their passions. What can be the cause of this strange contrariety? It is because our prejudices are ancient, and our morality new; it is because we are as penetrated with our opinions as we are inattentive to our ideas; it is because our passion for pleasures hinders us from reflecting on our wants, and that we are more eager to live than to direct ourselves right; it is, in a word, because our morals are gentle without being good; it is because we are polite, and are not so much as humane."
These fragments, which eloquence had dictated to humanity, filled the heart of my friend with a sweet consolation. He admired with tenderness.
"What!" said he, "are such masterpieces as these produced in a province? I had been told that Paris was all the world, or the only place in it."
"It is," said I, "the only place for producing comic operas; but there are at this time, in the provinces, magistrates who think, with the same virtue and express themselves with the same force. Formerly, the oracles of justice, like those of morality, were nothing but matter of mere ridicule. Dr. Balordo declaimed at the bar, and Harlequin in the pulpit. Philosophy has at length come, and has said, 'Do not speak in public, unless to set forth new and useful truths, with the eloquence of sentiment and of reason.'"
But, say the praters, if we have nothing new to say, what then? Why, hold your tongues, replies philosophy. All those vain discourses for parade, that contain nothing but phrases, are like the fire on the eve of St. John's, kindled on that day of the year in which there is the least want of it to heat one's self—it causes no pleasure, and not so much as the ashes of it remain.
Let all France read good books. But notwithstanding all the progress of the human understanding, there are few that read; and among those who sometimes seek instruction, the reading for the most part is very ill chosen. My neighbors, men and women, pass their time, after dinner, at playing an English game, which I have much difficulty to pronounce, since they call it whist. Many good citizens, many thick heads, who take themselves for good heads, tell you, with an air of importance, that books are good for nothing. But, Messieurs, the critics, do not you know that you are governed only by books? Do not you know that the statutes, the military code, and the gospel, are books on which you continually depend? Read; improve yourselves. It is reading alone that invigorates the understanding; conversation dissipates it; play contracts it.
Thus it was that the Man of Forty Crowns proceeded to form, as one may say, his head and his heart. He not only succeeded to the inheritance of his two fair cousins, but he came also to a fortune left by a very distant relation, who had been a sub-farmer of the military hospitals, where he had fattened himself on the strict abstinence to which he had put the wounded soldiers. This man never would marry, he never would own any of his relations. He lived in the height of debauchery, and died at Paris of a surfeit. He was, as any one may see, a very useful member of the state.
Our new philosopher was obliged to go to Paris to get possession of the inheritance of this relative. At first, the farmers of the domain disputed it with him. He had the good luck, however, to gain his cause, and the generosity to give to the poor of his neighborhood, who had not their contingent of forty crowns a year, a part of the spoils of the deceased son of fortune. After which he set himself about satisfying his passion for having a library.
He read every morning and made extracts. In the evening, he consulted the learned to know in what language the serpent had talked to our good mother; whether the soul is in the callous body, or in the pineal gland; whether St. Peter lived five and twenty years at Rome; what specific difference there is between a throne and a dominion; and why the negroes have a flat nose. He proposed to himself, besides, never to govern the state, nor to write any pamphlets against new dramatic pieces. He was called Mr. Andrew, which was his Christian name. Those who have known him, do justice to his modesty and to his qualities, both natural and acquired.
IX.
A GREAT QUARREL.
During the stay of Mr. Andrew at Paris, there happened a very important quarrel. The point was, to decide whether Marcus Antoninus was an honest man, and whether he was in hell, or in purgatory, or in limbo, waiting till the day of resurrection. All the men of sense took the part of Marcus Antoninus. They said: Antoninus has been always just, temperate, chaste, and beneficent. It is true, he has not so good a place in paradise as St. Anthony; for proportions ought to be observed, as has been before recommended. But certainly the soul of Antoninus is not roasting on a spit in hell. If he is in purgatory, he ought to be delivered out of it; there need only be masses said for him. Let the Jesuits, who have no longer anything to do, say three thousand masses for the repose of the soul of Marcus Antoninus. Putting each mass at fifteen pence, they will get two thousand two hundred and fifty livres by it. Besides, some respect is owing to a crowned head. He should not be lightly damned.
The party opposed to these good people pretended, on the contrary, that no compounding for salvation ought to be allowed to Marcus Antoninus; that he was a heretic; that the Carpocratians and the Alcgi were not so bad as he; that he had died without confession; that it was necessary to make an example; that it was right to damn him, if but to teach better manners to the emperors of China and Japan,—to those of Persia, Turkey, and Morocco,—to the kings of England, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia, to the stadtholder of Holland,—to the avoyers of the Canton of Berne, who no more go to confession than did the Emperor Marcus Antoninus; that, in short, there is an unspeakable pleasure in passing sentence against a dead sovereign, which one could not fulminate against him in his lifetime, for fear of losing one's ears.
This quarrel became as furious as was formerly that of the Ursulines and the Annonciades. In short, it was feared that it would come to a schism, as in the time of the hundred and one Mother Goose's tales, and of certain bills payable to the bearer in the other world. To be sure, a schism is something very terrible. The meaning of the word is a division in opinion, and till this fatal moment all men had been agreed to think the same thing.
Mr. Andrew, who was an excellent member of society, invited the chiefs of the two parties to sup with him. He is one of the best companions that we have. His humor is gentle and lively; his gaiety is not noisy; he is open, frank, and easy. He has not that sort of wit which seems to aim at stifling that of others. The authority which he conciliates to himself is due to nothing but his graceful manner, to his moderation, and to a round good-natured face, which is quite persuasive. He could have brought to sup cheerfully together a Corsican and a Genoese,—a representative of Geneva and a negative man, the mufti and an archbishop. He managed so dextrously, as to make the first stroke that the disputants of both parties aimed at each other fall to the ground, by turning off the discourse, and by telling a very diverting tale, which pleased equally the damning and the damned. In short, when they had got a little good-humored and elevated with wine, he made them sign an agreement, that the soul of Marcus Antoninus should remain in status quo—that is to say, nobody knows where,—till the day of final judgment.
The souls of the doctors of divinity returned quietly to their limbos after supper, and all was calm. This adjustment of the quarrel did great honor to the Man of Forty Crowns; and, since then, whenever any very peevish virulent dispute arose among men of letters, or among men not of letters, the advice given was, "Gentlemen, go and sup at Master Andrew's!"
X.
A RASCAL REPULSED.
The reputation which Mr. Andrew had acquired for pacifying quarrels,—by giving good suppers,—drew upon him last week a singular visit. A dark complexioned man, shabbily enough dressed, rather crook-backed, with his head leaning toward one shoulder, a haggard eye, and dirty hands, asked to be invited to a supper with his enemies.
"Who are your enemies?" said Mr. Andrew, "and who are you?"
"Alas, sir," said he, "I am forced to confess that I am taken for one of those wretches that compose libels to get bread, and who are forever crying out,—'Religion,—Religion,—Religion,' in order to come at some little benefice. I am accused of having caluminated some of the most truly religious subjects, the most sincere adorers of divinity, and the most honest men of the kingdom. It is true, sir, that in the heat of composition, there often fall from the pen of those of my trade, certain little inadvertencies or slips, which are taken for gross errors; and some liberties taken with the truth, which are termed impudent lies. Our zeal is looked upon in the light of a horrid mixture of villainy and fanaticism. It has been alleged, that while we are insnaring the easy faith of some silly old women, we are the scorn and execration of all the men of worth who can read.
"My enemies are the principal members of the most illustrious academies of Europe, writers much esteemed, and beneficent members of society. I have but just published a book under the title of Anti-philosophical. I had nothing but the best intentions, and yet no one would buy my book. Those to whom I made presents of it, threw it into the fire, telling me it was not only anti-reasonable, but anti-christian, and extremely anti-decent."
"Well, then!" said Mr. Andrew to him, "follow the example of those to whom you presented your libel, throw it into the fire, and let no more be said of it. It is unnecessary to ask you to sup with men of wit, who can never be your enemies, since they will never read you."
"Could not you, sir, at least," said the hypocrite to him, "reconcile me with the relations of the deceased Monsieur de Montesquieu, to whose memory I offered an indignity, that I might give honor and glory to the reverend father Rout."
"Zounds!" said Mr. Andrew, "the reverend father Rout has been dead this long time; go and sup with him."
XI.
THE GOOD SENSE OF MR. ANDREW.
But how greatly did the sense of Mr. Andrew improve in vigor from the time he procured a library! He lives with books as with men, and is careful in his choice of them. What a pleasure it is to gain instruction, to enlarge one's mind by studying the best works of the greatest authors.
He congratulates himself on being born at a time when human reason is tending toward perfection. "How unhappy should I have been," he used to say, "if the age I live in had been that in which they used to condemn to the galleys those who wrote against the categories of Aristotle."
Distress had weakened the springs of Mr. Andrew's soul; but good fortune restored their elasticity. There are many Andrews in the world to whom nothing is wanting but a turn of the wheel of fortune to make of them men of true merit. He is now well acquainted with all the affairs of Europe, and especially with the progress of the human understanding.
He recently remarked to me, that Reason travels by slow journeys from north to south, in company with her two intimate friends, Experience and Toleration. Agriculture and Commerce attend them. When Reason presented herself in Italy, the congregation of the Index sternly repulsed her. All she could do, was to secretly send some of her agents, who, in spite of her enemies, do some good. Let but some years more pass, and it is to be hoped that the country of the Scipios will no longer be that of harlequins in monks' habits.
She has sometimes met with cruel foes in France; but she has now so many friends in that kingdom, that she stands a good chance of at length becoming first minister there.
When she presented herself in Bavaria and Austria, she found two or three great wig-blocks that stared at her with stupid and astonished eyes. Their greeting was: "Madam, we never heard of you; we do not know you." Her answer to which was: "Gentlemen, in time you will come to know me, and to love me. I have been well received at Berlin, at Moscow, at Copenhagen, at Stockholm. It is long ago that I have been naturalized by Act of Parliament in England, through the labors of Locke, Gordon, Trenchard, Lord Shaftsbury, and a number of others of the same nation. You will, some day or other, confer on me the like grant. I am the daughter of Time. I expect every thing from my father."
When she passed over the frontiers of Spain and Portugal, she blessed God on observing that the fires of the Inquisition were less frequently kindled. She rejoiced on seeing the Jesuits expelled; but was afraid that, while the country had been cleared of the foxes, it was still left exposed to the ravages of wolves.
If she makes any fresh attempts to gain entrance into Italy it is thought she will begin by establishing herself at Venice; and that she will take up her abode in the kingdom of Naples, in spite of the liquefaction of the saint's blood in that country, which awakens in her mind mournful reflections on human credulity. It is pretended, that she has an infallible secret for untying the strings of a crown, which are entangled, nobody knows how, in those of a mitre.
XII.
The GOOD SUPPER AT MR. ANDREW'S.
We supped at Mr. Andrew's yesterday, together with a Doctor Sorbonne, with Monsieur Pinto, the celebrated Jew, with the Chaplain of the Protestant chapel of the Dutch Embassador, the secretary of the Prince Galitzin of the Greek church, a Calvinist Swiss Captain, two philosophers, and three Ladies of great wit.
The supper was a very long one; and yet, so polite it must be owned we are grown—so much is one afraid at supper to give any cause of offence to one's brethren, that there was no more disputing upon religion than as if not one of those at table had ever had any. It is not so with the Regent Coge, and the ex-Jesuit Patouillet, and with all the animals of that kind. Those pitiful creatures will say more stupidly abusive things in one pamphlet of two pages, than the best company in Paris can say agreeable and instructive ones in a supper of four hours. And what is stranger yet, they dare not tell a man to his face, what they have the impudence to print.
The conversation turned at first on a piece of pleasantry in the Persian Letters, in which it is repeated, after a number of grave personages, that the world is not only growing worse, but that it is becoming depopulated, so that if the proverb should have any truth in it, that "the more fools there are," "the more laughter," laughing is likely to be soon banished from the face of the earth.
The Doctor of Sorbonne assured us that, in fact, the world was almost reduced to nothing. He quoted the Father Petavius, who demonstrates that in less than three hundred years, the descendants of one of the sons of Noah (I forget whether it was Shem or Japhet), amounted to six hundred and twelve millions three hundred and fifty-eight thousand true believers within two hundred and eighty-five years after the universal deluge.
Mr. Andrew asked, why in the time of Philip de Bel, that is to say, about three hundred years after Hugh Capet, there were not six hundred and twenty-three thousand millions of princes of the royal family?
"It is," said the Doctor of Sorbonne, "because the stock of faith has greatly decreased."
A great deal was said about Thebes and its hundred gates, and of the million of soldiers that issued out of those gates with the twenty thousand chariots of war.
"Shut the book there," said Mr. Andrew. "Since I have taken to reading, I beg to suspect that the same genius that wrote Garagantua, used of yore to write all the histories."
"But, in short," said one of the company, "Thebes, Memphis, Babylon, Nineveh, Troy, Seleucia, were great cities once, and now no longer exist."
"Granted," answered the secretary of the Prince Galitzin; "but Moscow, Constantinople, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Lyons, (which is better than ever Troy was,) and all the towns of France, Germany, Spain, and the North, were then deserts."
The Swiss captain, a gentleman of great knowledge, owned to us, that when his ancestors took it into their heads to quit their mountains and their precipices, to go and take forcible possession, as was but reasonable, of a finer country, CÆsar, who saw with his own eyes the list of those emigrants, found that their number amounted to three hundred and sixty-eight thousand, inclusive of the old, the children, and the women. At this time, the single canton of Berne possesses as many inhabitants, which is not quite the half of Switzerland, and I can assure you, that the thirteen cantons have above seven hundred and twenty thousand souls, including the natives who are serving or carrying on business in other countries. From such data, gentlemen of learning make absurd calculations, and they base fallacious systems on no better footing.
The question next agitated was, whether the citizens of Rome, in the time of the CÆsars, were richer than the citizens of Paris, in the time of Monsieur Silhouette?
"Oh," says Mr. Andrew, "this is a point on which I have some call to speak. I was a long time the Man of Forty Crowns; but I conceive that the citizens of Rome had more. Those illustrious robbers on the highway pillaged the finest countries of Asia, of Africa, and of Europe. They lived splendidly on the produce of their rapines; but yet there were doubtless some beggars at Rome. I am persuaded that, among those conquerors of the world, there were some reduced to an income of forty Crowns a year, as I formerly was."
"Do you know," said a learned member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, "that it cost Lucullus for every supper he gave in the saloon of Apollo, thirty-nine thousand three hundred and twelve livres of our money; but that the celebrated epicurean Atticus did not expend above two hundred and thirty livres a month for his table."
"If that be true," said I, "he deserved to be president of the Miser-society, lately established in Italy. I have read, as you have done, in Florus, that incredible anecdote; but, perhaps Florus had never supped with Atticus, or else his text, like so many others, has been corrupted by copyists. No Florus shall ever make me believe that the friend of CÆsar and of Pompey, of Cicero and of Antony, all of whom were often entertained at his house, got off for something less than ten Louis d'ors a month. But thus exactly 'tis that history is written."
Madam Andrew, for her part, told the learned member of the Academy, that if he would keep her table for ten times as much, she would be greatly obliged to him.
I am persuaded, that this evening at Mr. Andrew's cost him as much as the monthly expense of Atticus. As for the ladies, they expressed a doubt whether the suppers of Rome were more agreeable than those of Paris. The conversation was very gay, though leaning a little to the learned. There was no talk of new fashions, nor of the ridiculous part of any one's character or conduct, nor of the scandalous history of the day.
The question upon luxury was discussed and searched to the bottom. It was mooted whether or not luxury had been the ruin of the Roman empire; and it was proved that the two empires of the east and west owed their destruction to nothing but to religious controversies, and to the monks; and, in fact, when Alaric took Rome, its whole attention was engrossed by theological disputes; when Mahomet took Constantinople, the monks defended much better the eternity of the light of Mount Thabor, which they saw on their navel,[1] than they defended the town against the Turks.
One of our men of learning made a very significant remark. It was that those two great empires were annihilated, but that the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid still exist.
From the age of Augustus, they made but one skip to the age of Louis the XIVth. A lady put the question, why it was that with a great deal of wit there was no longer produced scarcely any work of genius?
Mr. Andrew answered, that it was because such works had been produced in the last age. This idea was fine spun, and yet solidly true. It bore a thorough handling. After that, they fell with some harshness upon a Scotchman, who had taken it into his head to give rules to taste, and to criticise the most admirable passages of Racine, without understanding French. But there was one Denina still more severely treated. He had abused Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, without comprehending him, and had especially censured what is the most liked and approved in that work.
This recalled to my mind Boileau's making a parade of his affected contempt of Tasso. One of the company advanced that Tasso, with all his faults, was as superior to Homer, as Montesquieu, with his still greater imperfections, was above the farrago of Grotius. But there was presently a strong opposition made to these false criticisms, dictated by national hatred and prejudice. The Seignior Denina was treated as he deserved, and as pedants ought to be by men of wit.
It was especially remarked, with much sagacity, that the greatest part of the literary works of this age, as well as of the conversations, turned on the examination of the masterpieces of the last century; in which we are like disinherited children, who are taking an estimate of their father's estate. It was confessed that philosophy had made great progress, but that the language and style was somewhat corrupted.
It is the nature of all these conversations, to make transitions from one subject to another. All these objects of curiosity, of science, and of taste, soon vanished, to give way to the great scene which the Empress of Russia, and the King of Poland, were giving to the world. They had been just raising up and restoring the rights of oppressed humanity, and establishing liberty of conscience in a part of the globe of a much greater extent than the old Roman Empire. This service done to human kind, this example given to so many courts, was mentioned with the applause it deserved. Healths were drank to the philosophical empress, to the royal philosopher, and to the philosophical primate, with the wish of their having many imitators. Even the doctors of Sorbonne admired them; for there are some persons of good sense in that body, as there were formerly some men of wit among the Boeotians.
The Russian secretary astonished us with a recital of the great establishments they were forming in Russia. It was asked, why people were in general more fond of reading the history of Charles the XIIth, who passed his life in destroying, than that of Peter the Great, who consumed his in creating? On this we concluded, that weakness and a frivolous turn of mind are the causes of this preference; that Charles the XIIth was the Don Quixote, and Peter the Solon of the North; that superficial understandings prefer a wild extravagant heroism, to the great views of a legislator: that the particulars of the foundation of a town are less pleasing to them, than the rashness of a man, who, at the head of only his domestics, braves an army of ten thousand Turks; and that, in short, most readers love amusement better than instruction. Thence it is, that a hundred women read The Thousand and One Arabian Nights, for one that reads two chapters of Locke.
What was not talked of at this supper? of which I shall long retain the remembrance. It was also in course to say a word of the actors and actresses, that eternal subject of the table-talk of Versailles and of Paris. It was agreed, that a good declaimer was as rare as a good poet. For my part, I must own that Plato's banquet could not have given me more pleasure than that of Monsieur and Madame Andrew.
Our very pretty gentlemen, and our very fine ladies, would, doubtless, have found it dull, and been tired with it. They pretend to be the only good company: but neither Mr. Andrew nor I ever willingly sup with that kind of good company.
horse-shoe
The Priory entrance. The Priory entrance.
