Consider, in effect, what both have gained.—In 1789, the State had a revenue of only 475 millions; afterwards, during the Revolution, it scarcely collected any of its revenues; it lived on the capital it stole, like a genuine brigand, or on the debts it contracted, like a dishonest and insolvent bankrupt. Under the Consulate and during the first years of the Empire, its revenue amounts to 750 to 800 millions, its subjects being no longer robbed of their capital, while it no longer runs in debt.—In 1789, the ordinary taxpayer paid a direct tax to his three former or late sovereigns, namely, to the King, the clergy and the seigniors, more than three-quarters of his net income. After 1800, he pays to the State less than one-quarter, the one sovereign alone who replaces the other three. We have seen how relief came to the old taxable subject, to the rural, to the small proprietor, to the man without any property, who lived on the labor of his own hands; the lightening of the direct tax restored to him from 14 to 43 free days, during which, instead of working for the exchequer, he worked for himself. If married, and the father of two children over 7 years of age, the alleviation of one direct tax alone, that of the salt-tax, again restores to him 12 days more, in all from one to two complete months each year during which he is no longer, as formerly, a man doing statute-work, but the free proprietor, the absolute master of his time and of his own hands.—At the same time, through the re-casting of other taxes and owing to the increasing price of labor, his physical privations decrease. He is no longer reduced to consuming only the refuse of his crop, the wheat of poor quality, the damaged rye, the badly-bolted flour mixed with bran, nor to drink water poured over the lees of his grapes, nor to sell his pigs before Christmas because the salt he needs is too dear.[3251] He salts his pork and eats it, and likewise butcher's meat; he enjoys his boiled beef and broth on Sunday; he drinks wine; his bread is more nutritious, not so black and healthier; he no longer lacks it and has no fear of lacking it. Formerly, he entertained a lugubrious phantom, the fatal image of famine which haunted him day and night for centuries, an almost periodical famine under the monarchy, a chronic famine and then severe and excruciating during the Revolution, a famine which, under the republic, had in three years destroyed over a million of lives.[3252] The immemorial specter recedes and vanishes; after two accidental and local recurrences, in 1812 and 1817, it never again appears in France.[3253]
V. Conscription or Professional soldiers.
Military service.—Under the Ancient Regime.—The militia
and regular troops.—Number of soldiers.—Quality of the
recruits.—Advantages of the institution.—Results of the
new system.—The obligation universal.—Comparison between
the burdens of citizens and subjects.—The Conscription
under Napoleon.—He lightens and then increases its weight.
—What it became after him.—The law of 1818.
One tax remains, and the last, that by which the State takes, no longer money, but the person himself, the entire man, soul and body, and for the best years of his life, namely military service. It is the Revolution which has rendered this so burdensome; formerly, it was light, for, in principle, it was voluntary. The militia, alone, was raised by force, and, in general, among the country people; the peasants furnished men for it by casting lots.[3254] But it was simply a supplement to the active army, a territorial and provincial reserve, a distinct, sedentary body of reinforcements and of inferior rank which, except in case of war, never marched; it turned out but nine days of the year, and, after 1778, never turned out again. In 1789, it comprised in all 72,260 men, and for eleven years their names, inscribed on the registers, alone constituted their presence in the ranks.[3255] There were no other conscripts under the monarchy; in this matter, its exactions were not great, ten times less than those of the Republic and of the Empire, since both the Republic and the Empire, using the same constraint, were to levy more than ten times the number of drafted men or conscripts.[3256]
Alongside of this militia body, the entire army properly so called, the "regular" troops were, under, the ancient Régime, all recruited by free enlistment, not only the twenty-five foreign regiments, Swiss, Irish, Germans, and Liégeois, but again the hundred and forty-five French regiments, 177 000 men.[3257] The enlistment, indeed, was not free enough; frequently, through the maneuvers of the recruiting-agent, it was tainted with inveigling and surprises, and sometimes with fraud or violence; but, owing to the remonstrances due to the prevailing philanthropic spirit, these abuses had diminished; the law of 1788 had suppressed the most serious of them and, even with its abuses, the institution had two great advantages.—The army, in the first place, served as an issue: through it the social body purged itself of its bad humors, of its overheated or vitiated blood. At this date, although the profession of soldier was one of the lowest and least esteemed, a barren career, without promotion and almost without escape, a recruit was obtainable for about one hundred francs bounty and a "tip"; add to this two or three days and nights of revel in the grog-shop, which indicates the kind and quality of the recruits; in fact, very few could be obtained except among men more or less disqualified for civil and domestic life, incapable of spontaneous discipline and of steady labor, adventurers and outcasts, half-savage or half-blackguard, some of them sons of respectable parents thrown into the army in an angry fit, and others again, regular vagabonds picked up in beggars' haunts, mostly stray workmen and loafers, in short, "the most debauched, the most hot-brained, the most turbulent people in an ardent, turbulent and somewhat debauched community."[3258] In this way, the anti-social class was utilized for the public good. Let the reader imagine an ill-kept domain overrun by a lot of stray curs that might prove dangerous: they are enticed and caught; a collar, with a chain attached to it, is put on their necks and they become good watch-dogs.—In the second place, this institution preserved to the subject the first and most precious of all liberties, the full possession and the unrestricted management of one's own person, the complete mastery of body and being. This was assured to him, guaranteed to him against the encroachments of the State. It was better guaranteed than by the wisest constitution, for the institution was a recognized custom accepted by everybody. In other words, it was a tacit, immemorial convention,[3259] between the subject and the State, proclaiming that, if the State had a right to draw on purses it had no right to draft persons: in reality and in fact, the King, in his principal function, was merely a contractor like any other; he undertook natural defense and public security the same as others undertook cleaning the streets or the maintenance of a dike. It was his business to hire military workmen as they hired their civil workmen, by mutual agreement, at an understood price and at current market rates. Accordingly, the sub-contractors with whom he treated, the colonel and captains of each regiment, were subject as he was to the law of supply and demand; he allowed them so much for each recruit,[3260] to replace those dropped out, and they agreed to keep their companies full. They were obliged to procure men at their own risk and at their own expense, while the recruiting-agent whom they dispatched with a bag of money among the taverns, enlisted artillerymen, horsemen or foot-soldiers, after bargaining with them, the same as one would hire men to sweep or pave the street and to clean the sewers.
Against this practice and this principle comes the theory of the Contrat-Social. It declares that the people are sovereign. Now, in this divided Europe, where a conflict between rival States is always imminent, sovereigns are military men; they are such by birth, education, and profession, and by necessity; the title carries along with it and involves the function. Consequently, the subject, in assuming their rights, imposes upon himself their duties; in his quota (of responsibility) he, in his turn, is sovereign; but, in his turn and in his person, he is a soldier.[3261] Henceforth, if he is born an elector, he is born a conscript; he has contracted an obligation of a new species and of infinite reach; the State, which formerly had a claim only on his possessions, now has one on his entire body; never does a creditor let his claims rest and the State always finds reasons or pretexts to enforce its claims. Under the threats or trials of invasion the people, at first, had consented to pay this one; they regarded it as accidental and temporary. After victory and when peace came, its government continues to enforce the claim; it becomes settled and permanent. After the treaties of Luneville and Amiens, Napoleon maintains it in France; after the treaties of Paris and Vienna, the Prussian government is to maintain it in Prussia. One war after another and the institution becomes worse and worse; like a contagion, it has spread from State to State. At the present time, it has overspread the whole of continental Europe and here it reigns along with its natural companion which always precedes or follows it, its twin-brother, universal suffrage. Each more or less conspicuously "trotted out" and dragging the other along, more or less incomplete and disguised, both being the blind and formidable leaders or regulators of future history, one thrusting a ballot into the hands of every adult, and the other putting a soldier's knapsack on every adult's back:
* with what promises of massacre and bankruptcy for the twentieth century,
* with what exasperation of international rancor and distrust,
* with what waste of human labor,