An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

In his opening address Calonne gave the Notables an idea of the sad financial condition of the country. The government was running behind some forty million dollars a year. He could not continue to borrow, and economy, however strict, would not suffice to cover the deficit. "What, then," he asked, "remains to fill this frightful void and enable us to raise the revenue to the desired level? The Abuses! Yes, gentlemen, the abuses offer a source of wealth which the state should appropriate, and which should serve to reëstablish order in the finances.... The abuses which must now be destroyed for the welfare of the people are the most important and the best guarded of all, the very ones which have the deepest roots and the most spreading branches. For example, those which weigh on the laboring classes, the pecuniary privileges, exceptions to the law which should be common to all, and many an unjust exemption which can only relieve certain taxpayers by embittering the condition of others; the general want of uniformity in the assessment of the taxes and the enormous difference which exists between the contributions of different provinces and of the subjects of the same sovereign; the severity and arbitrariness in the collection of the taille; the apprehensions, embarrassment, almost dishonor, associated with the trade in breadstuffs; the interior custom-houses and barriers which make the various parts of the kingdom like foreign countries to one another ...,"—all these evils, which public-spirited citizens had long deprecated, Calonne proposed to do away with forthwith.

Calonne and the Notables dismissed.

The Notables, however, had no confidence in Calonne, and refused to ratify his programme of reform. The king then dismissed him and soon sent them home, too (May, 1787). Louis XVI then attempted to carry through some of the more pressing financial reforms in the usual way by sending them to the parlements to be registered.

The parlement of Paris refuses to register new taxes and calls for the Estates General.

219. The parlement of Paris resolved, as usual, to make the king's ministry trouble and gain popularity for itself. This time it resorted to a truly extraordinary measure. It not only refused to register two new taxes which the king desired, but asserted that "Only the nation assembled in the Estates General can give the consent necessary to the establishment of a permanent tax." "Only the nation," the parlement continued, "after it has learned the true state of the finances can destroy the great abuses and open up important resources." This declaration was followed in a few days by the humble request that the king assemble the Estates General of his kingdom.

The refusal of the parlement to register the new taxes led to one of the old struggles between it and the king's ministers. A compromise was arranged in the autumn of 1787; the parlement agreed to register a great loan, and the king pledged himself to assemble the Estates General within five years. In the early months of 1788 many pamphlets appeared, criticising the system of taxation and the unjust privileges and exemptions enjoyed by a few of the citizens to the detriment of the great mass of the nation.

The parlement of Paris protests against the 'reform' of the judicial system.

Suddenly the parlement of Paris learned that the king's ministers were planning to put an end to its troublesome habit of opposing their measures. The ministers proposed to remodel the whole judicial system and take from the courts the right to register new decrees and consequently the right to protest. This the parlement loudly proclaimed was in reality a blow at the nation itself. The ministers were attacking the court simply because it had acknowledged its lack of power to grant new taxes and had requested the king to assemble the representatives of the nation. The ministers, it claimed, were bent upon establishing an out-and-out despotism in which there should no longer be any check whatever on the arbitrary power of the king.

Protests from the provinces.

Some of the provinces became very apprehensive when they learned that the king proposed to take from the local parlements the right to examine edicts before registering them. Might not the tyrannically inclined ministers proceed to make new laws for the whole realm and ignore the special privileges which the king had pledged himself to maintain when Brittany, Dauphiny, Bearn, and other important provinces were originally added to France? The cause of the parlements became in this way the cause of the people.