This is a short view of the progress of public credit. The principles upon which it is built are so few, that were I to confine myself to a bare deduction of them, little new or interesting could be said. I shall therefore steer another course: I shall collect the sentiments of some eminent politicians, who have either writ upon, or acted in the administration of this branch of government; and by applying principles as we go along, I shall be enabled to point out the extraneous circumstances which are so apt to involve this subject in obscurity. Had we not before our eyes the numberless examples of this kind, it would hardly be possible to conceive how so great a confusion, and so many calamities, could have followed upon the operations of public credit.
CHAP. III.
Of Anticipations, or borrowing Money upon Assignments to Taxes for the Discharge of Principal and Interest.
I have already observed, that by the cessation of the constant wars, in which all Europe was engaged during the feudal government of the barons, nations began to enjoy some sort of tranquillity. Upon this the military services became insensibly converted into taxes; and as Princes extended their jurisdictions over the cities, which had been formerly more under the protection of the bishops who resided in them, taxes were augmented. These impositions were very inconsiderable, with respect to what they brought into the King’s coffers. The policy in raising them was bad; the frauds in collecting them were great.
These considerations engaged Princes to begin by contracting debts, and to pay afterwards by temporary assignments to the taxes imposed.
From this again ensued the most terrible extortions on the side of the tax-gatherers, so often complained of by those who have writ on the affairs of France, as we shall see in the following chapter.
Philip le bel, King of France, was the first who, in 1301, admitted, with great policy, the inhabitants of cities to have a seat in the states of the kingdom. He formed them into a distinct body, and called them tiers etat, or the third estate, after the clergy and the nobility. His view was to facilitate thereby the jurisdiction he wanted to establish over those cities, and to engage them to consent to the imposition of taxes for carrying on his wars in Flanders, and for opposing the ambitious views of Boniface VIII. Accordingly, the people began to pay willingly, when once they found that they had a vote in what concerned them.
I take it for granted, that every tax, about that time, was imposed for a particular purpose, and assigned either to creditors, or to people who advanced money upon it: because we are told that the first imposition granted by the states to a King of France as a permanent branch of revenue, was an excise upon spirituous liquors granted to Philip de Valois, in the year 1345; at which time, however, according to Mr. d’Eon’s Memoires pour servir à l’Histoire generale des Finances, there were not less than twenty two different taxes known in France, which he enumerates as follows:
Tailles, complaintes, charges, redevances, coutumes, peages, travers, passages, centiemes, cinquantiemes, ôtes, chevaucheês, subventions, exactions, chevaleries, aides, mariages, toultes, impositions, prisons, servitudes, and nouvellettes.
That all these impositions must have been mere trifles, I gather from a circumstance in the Political History of France, mentioned by the author just cited, which being itself exceedingly curious and tending greatly to confirm many things which I have advanced concerning the small circulation in former times, I shall here briefly mention it.