To select an honest, capable, and well known financier was Napoleon’s first act. The choice he made was wise—a Monsieur Gaudin, afterward the Duke de Gaëte, a quiet man, who had the confidence of the people. Under his management credit was restored, the government was able to make the loans necessary, and the department of finance was reorganized in a thorough fashion. Napoleon’s gratitude to Monsieur Gaudin was lasting. Once when asked to change him for a more brilliant man, he said:
“I fully acknowledge all your protégé is worth; but it might easily happen that, with all his intelligence, he would give me nothing but fresh water, whilst with my good Gaudin I can always rely on having good crown pieces.”
The famous Bank of France dates from this time. It was founded under Napoleon’s personal direction, and he never ceased to watch over it jealously.
Most important of all the financial measures was the reorganization of the system of taxation. The First Consul insisted that the taxes must meet the whole expense of the nation, save war, which must pay for itself; and he so ordered affairs that never, after his administration was fairly begun, was a deficit known or a loan made. This was done, too, without the people feeling the burden of taxation. Indeed, that burden was so much lighter under his administration that it had been under the old régime, that peasant and workman, in most cases, probably did not know they were being taxed.
“BUONAPARTE.”
Fiesinger, engraver, after Guérin. Published “29 Vendémiaire, l’an VII.” (1799). It is of this portrait that Taine writes: “Look now at this portrait by Guérin, this lean body, these narrow shoulders in their uniform creased by his brusque motions, this neck enveloped in a high wrinkled cravat, these temples concealed by long hair falling straight over them, nothing to be seen but the face; these hard features made prominent by strong contrasts of light and shade; these cheeks as hollow as the interior angle of the eye; these prominent cheek-bones; this massive protruding chin; these curving, mobile, attentive lips; these great, clear eyes deeply set under the overarching eyebrows; this fixed, incomprehensible look, sharp as a sword; these two straight wrinkles which cross the forehead from the base of the nose like a furrow of continual anger and inflexible will.”
“Before 1789,” says Taine, “out of one hundred francs of net revenue, the workman gave fourteen to his seignor, fourteen to the clergy, fifty-three to the state, and kept only eighteen or nineteen for himself. Since 1800, from one hundred francs income he pays nothing to the seignor or the Church, and he pays to the state, the department, and the commune but twenty-one francs, leaving seventy-nine in his pocket.” And such was the method and care with which this system was administered, that the state received more than twice as much as it had before. The enormous sums which the police and tax-collectors had appropriated now went to the state. Here is but one example of numbers which show how minutely Napoleon guarded this part of the finances. It is found in a letter to Fouché, the chief of police:
“What happens at Bordeaux happens at Turin, at Spa, at Marseilles, etc. The police commissioners derive immense profits from the gaming-tables. My intention is that the towns shall reap the benefit of the tables. I shall employ the two hundred thousand francs paid by the tables of Bordeaux in building a bridge or a canal....”
A great improvement was that the taxes became fixed and regular. Napoleon wished that each man should know what he had to pay out each year. “True civil liberty depends on the safety of property,” he told his Council of State. “There is none in a country where the rate of taxation is changed every year. A man who has three thousand francs income does not know how much he will have to live on the next year. His whole substance may be swallowed up by the taxes.”