Note (XLI.)—Page [90], line 38.
All public functionaries, even the agents of farmers of the revenue, were paid by exemptions from taxes—a privilege granted by the order of 1681. A letter from an Intendant to the minister in 1782 states, ‘Among the privileged orders the most numerous class is that of clerks in the Excise of salt, the public domain, the post-office, and other royal monopolies of all kinds. There are few parishes which do not include one; in many, two or three may be found.’
The object of this letter is to dissuade the minister from proposing an extension of exemption from taxation to the clerks and servants of these privileged agents; which extension, says the Intendant, is unceasingly backed by the Farmers-General, that they may thus get rid of the necessity of paying salaries.
Note (XLII.)—Page [91], line 1.
The sale of public employments, which were called offices, was not quite unknown elsewhere. In Germany some of the petty princes had introduced the practice to a small extent and in insignificant departments of administration. Nowhere but in France was the system followed out on a grand scale.
Note (XLIII.)—Page [95], line 17.
We must not be surprised, strange as it may appear and is, to find, under the old monarchy, public functionaries—many of them belonging to the public service, properly so called—pleading before the Parliaments to ascertain the limits of their own powers. The explanation of this is to be found in the fact that all these questions were questions of private property as well as of public administration. What is here viewed as an encroachment of the judicial power was a mere consequence of the error which the Government had committed in attaching public functions to certain offices. These offices being bought and sold, and their holders’ income being regulated by the work done and paid for, it was impossible to change the functions of an office without impairing some right for which money had been paid to a predecessor in the office.
To quote an instance out of a thousand:—At Mans the Lieutenant-General of Police carries on a prolonged suit with the Bureau de Finance of the town, to prove, that being charged with the duty of street-watching, he has a right to execute all legal instruments relative to the paving of the streets, and to the fees for such instruments.