The greater part of the general subsidies voted by the three Orders in the course of the fourteenth century were, in point of fact, so levied. Almost all the taxes established at that time were indirect, that is, they were paid indiscriminately by all classes of consumers. Sometimes the tax was direct; but then it was assessed, not on property, but on income. The nobles, the priests, and the burgesses were bound to pay over to the King, for a year, a tenth, for instance, of all their incomes. This remark as to the charges voted by the Estates of the Realm applies equally to those which were imposed at the same period by the different Provincial Estates within their own territories.[44]
It is true that already, at that time, the direct tax known by the name of the taille was never levied on the noble classes. The obligation of gratuitous military service was the ground of their exemption; but the taille was at that time partially in force as a general impost, belonging rather to the seignorial jurisdictions than to the kingdom.
When the King first undertook to levy taxes by his own authority, he perceived that he must select a tax which did not appear to fall directly on the nobles; for that class, formidable and dangerous to the monarchy itself, would never have submitted to an innovation so prejudicial to their own interests. The tax selected by the Crown was, therefore, a tax from which the nobles were exempt, and that tax was the taille.
Thus to all the private inequalities of condition which already existed, another and more general inequality was added, which augmented and perpetuated all the rest. From that time this tax spread and ramified in proportion as the demands of the public Treasury increased with the functions of the central authority; it was soon decupled, and all the new taxes assumed the character of the taille. Every year, therefore, inequality of taxation separated the classes of society and isolated the individuals of whom they consisted more deeply than before. Since the object of taxation was not to include those most able to pay taxes, but those least able to defend themselves from paying, the monstrous consequence was brought about that the rich were exempted and the poor burdened. It is related that Cardinal Mazarin, being in want of money, hit upon the expedient of levying a tax upon the principal houses in Paris, but that having encountered some opposition from the parties concerned, he contented himself with adding the five millions he required to the general brevet of the taille. He meant to tax the wealthiest of the King’s subjects; he did tax the most indigent; but to the Treasury the result was the same.
The produce of taxes thus unjustly allotted had limits; but the demands of the Crown had none. Yet the Kings of France would neither convoke the States-General to obtain subsidies, nor would they provoke the nobility to demand that measure by imposing taxes on them without it.
Hence arose that prodigious and mischievous fecundity of financial expedients, which so peculiarly characterised the administration of the public resources during the last three centuries of the old French monarchy.
It is necessary to study the details of the administrative and financial history of that period, to form a conception of the violent and unwarrantable proceedings which the want of money may prescribe even to a mild Government, but without publicity and without control, when once time has sanctioned its power and delivered it from the dread of revolution—that last safeguard of nations.
Every page in these annals tells of possessions of the Crown first sold and then resumed as unsaleable; of contracts violated and of vested interests ignored; of sacrifices wrung at every crisis from the public creditor, and of incessant repudiations of public engagements.[45]
Privileges granted in perpetuity were perpetually resumed. If we could bestow our compassion on the disappointments of a foolish vanity, the fate of those luckless persons might deserve it who purchased letters of nobility, but who were exposed during the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to buy over and over again the empty honours or the unjust privileges which they had already paid for several times. Thus Louis XIV. annulled all the titles of nobility acquired in the preceding ninety-two years, though most of them had been conferred by himself; but they could only be retained upon furnishing a fresh subsidy, all these titles having been obtained by surprise, said the edict. The same example was duly followed by Louis XV. eighty years later.
The militia-man was forbidden to procure a substitute, for fear, it was said, of raising the price of recruits to the State.