We need not lay much stress on the personal arguments here adduced; for Hailes may have been unduly influenced by the partisans of Necker or Breteuil, who were always at feud with Calonne. It is probable that Vergennes and Calonne were swayed by a deeper motive, namely, the desire to keep England quiet and friendly while they laid their schemes with a view to the ascendency of France in the Dutch affairs soon to be described, and thereafter to the combination of their efforts for the overthrow of British power in the East. Such an aim is consonant with the philosophic thoroughness of the character of Vergennes and the ambition of his showy colleague. Whether Pitt suspected some such design is uncertain; that Carmarthen did so can admit of no doubt.
Much, however, may be said for Hailes’s views. It is generally admitted that the prodigal Calonne sacrificed very much in order to stand well with the Queen’s party, and that his ardent desire was to put a good face on things at the time of the Assembly of the Notables early in 1787. There was every reason for his concern. The future of France depended on the docility of the Notables. If they were so far satisfied with the state of affairs as to pass the reforms desired by the King and Vergennes, the crisis which led up to the Revolution might have ended peacefully. Unjust taxation, constant deficits, and national bankruptcy were among the chief causes of the Revolution. Of course, Vergennes and Calonne could not foresee events; but they knew that the future was gloomy in the extreme unless the Notables induced the privileged classes to take up their fair share of the financial burdens. If Ministers were able to point to increased customs returns, the decline of smuggling, and the cementing of friendly relations with England, the Notables and the nobles at large might prove amenable to reason (for Anglomania was still the fashion); and all might yet go well. In these considerations probably lies the key to the conduct of the French Ministry in the later stages of the negotiation of 1786. With Vergennes the treaty was probably a matter of principle; to Calonne it was a device adopted in the course of that daring game of “neck or nothing,” on which he staked the destinies of France. Though he was the chief sinner, Government and people alike behaved with incredible levity. Alvensleben, reporting on the situation at Versailles in November 1787, said: “Everything here is a matter of ceremony, clothes, varnish, phrases, national boasting, tinsel, intrigues; and everything is finally decided by forms.”[506]
This scathing report was written after France had lost her one able statesman. Vergennes died shortly before the Notables assembled; and they, having to deal with an irresolute King and a political gamester, turned a deaf ear to counsels of Reform. Probably, too, they were influenced by the outcry against the commercial treaty, for it was general in all manufacturing centres, and did not pass away, as was the case in Great Britain. The Rouen Chamber of Commerce instituted an inquiry, the outcome of which was a report affirming the marked superiority of British textile goods to those of France, and the impossibility of competing with them on the basis of the 12 per cent. duty. An able writer, Dupont de Nemours, gave an effective answer to the report; but, as generally happens in such cases, the defence attracted less attention than the attack.[507] We must further remember that merchants who lived under an oppressive system of taxation had every possible reason for “crying poor.” Complaints against the commercial treaty were hurled at Arthur Young in every French manufacturing town which he visited in his tours of 1787 and 1788. Abbeville, Amiens, Lille, and Lyons declared against it in varying tones of anger or despair; the wine districts alone were loud in its praise.[508] Undoubtedly the French textile industries suffered severely for a time. The taste for English goods continued to depress home products, and that, too, despite the efforts of Marie Antoinette to set the fashion for the latter. In 1788 as many as 5,442 looms were idle in Lyons; but it is to be observed that this crisis was due either to the continued smuggling of English silk goods, to the preference for our fine cottons, or to the failure of the silk harvest in that year. The last cause was probably the most important.[509] The woollen and cotton trades alone could have been directly affected by the treaty. In them the conditions were undoubtedly bad in the years 1787, 1788. At Troyes 443 looms were not worked out of 2,600, and that proportion was usual throughout the east and north of France.
M. Levasseur, however, who has carefully investigated the causes of this crisis, attributes it largely to the utter prostration of public credit in France, and the issue of a coinage of doubtful value. The bad harvest of 1788, followed by a terribly cold winter, also intensified the distress. He concludes that, even so, the commercial treaty might ultimately have been advantageous to certain parts of the industrial economy of France; but it was applied suddenly in a time of political unsettlement and general distress.[510]
We must also remember that Calonne had for many months been squandering the resources of France. In accordance with his motto: “In order to establish public credit one must cultivate luxury,” he had raised loan upon loan in time of peace, and it has been estimated that in the forty-one months of his term of office (1783–87) he borrowed 650,000,000 francs (£26,000,000).[511] No fiscal experiment can have a fair chance under such conditions; and it is therefore a violation of the laws of evidence to assert that the Commercial Treaty of 1786 was the chief cause of the French Revolution.
Summing up the facts concerning this most interesting treaty, we may conclude that the honour of originating it undoubtedly belongs firstly to Vergennes, secondly to Shelburne, and only in the third place to Pitt. It is clear that the French statesman worked steadily for it during the negotiations of 1783, and used all available means to bring it about even while Pitt showed no responsive desire. As has been shown above, the young Prime Minister had good reasons for not taking the matter up seriously until the autumn of 1785. Indeed it would have been a tactical mistake to press on the commercial compact with France until he had put forth every effort to unite Ireland with Great Britain by intimate trade relations. When those endeavours were frustrated by ignorance and faction, he turned towards France, but slowly and suspiciously. Not until the negotiation was far advanced did he show much eagerness on the subject. But it is the mark of a great Minister to keep a firm grasp upon colleagues and subordinates at all important points; and Pitt saw the futility of Carmarthen’s prejudices no less than the possible danger of Eden’s Gallophile enthusiasm.
The hostile actions of the French agents in Holland, to which we must soon recur, made him cautious on matters purely political; and, while pushing on the commercial treaty, which Carmarthen looked on as a trap, he took care to subject the ardent fancies of Eden to cold douches like the following: “Though in the commercial business I think there are reasons for believing the French may be sincere, I cannot listen without suspicion to their professions of political friendship.”[512] As we shall see in the next chapters, Pitt generally treated with wholesome scepticism the alarmist news sent by Harris from The Hague. But the tidings from that quarter enabled Pitt to assess at their due value the philanthropic professions of the salons of Paris. Not that he was indifferent to the golden hopes of that age. After the treaty was signed he gave expression to his hopes in words pulsating with a noble enthusiasm; but, while it was under discussion, he showed the balance of mind and keenness in bargaining which characterize a great statesman. We may also remark here that Pitt sought earnestly to bring about a favourable commercial treaty with Spain and Russia, but failed. The Czarina showed her hostility by granting to France a treaty on the basis of the most favoured nation.[513]
Finally, we may hazard the conjecture that, if the finances of France had received from the Court of Versailles and Calonne a tithe of the fostering care which Pitt bestowed on those of Great Britain, both countries would have profited equally from the free commercial and social intercourse inaugurated by this memorable compact. As it was, France slid fast down the slope that led to the chasm of Revolution; and in the midst of that catastrophe Robespierre and his followers, who represented the prejudices of the northern manufacturing towns, spread abroad the spiteful falsehood that Pitt’s commercial policy had ever been aimed at the financial ruin of the French nation.
CHAPTER XV
THE DUTCH CRISIS (1786, 1787)
If we lose the Netherlands, France will acquire what she has always considered as the climax of her power.—Sir James Harris, 1st May, 1787.