CHAPTER II.
DISASTER OF THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.
I very readily make known to the universe that I have a landed estate which would yield me forty crowns a year, were it not for the tax laid on it.
There came forth several edicts from certain persons, who, having nothing better to do, govern the state at their fireside. The preamble of these edicts was, "that the legislative and executive was born, jure divino, the co-proprietor of my land"; and that I owe it at least the half of what I possess. The enormity of this legislative and executive power made me bless myself. What would it be if that power which presides over "the essential order of society," were to take the whole of my little estate? The one is still more divine than the other.
The comptroller-general knows that I used to pay in all but twelve livres; that even this was a heavy burden on me, and that I should have sunk under it, if God had not given me the talent of making wicker baskets, which helped to carry me through my trials. But how should I, on a sudden, be able to give the king twenty crowns?
The new ministers also said in their preamble that it was not fit to tax anything but the land, because everything arises from the land, even rain itself, and consequently that nothing was properly liable to taxation but the fruits of the land.
During the last war one of their collectors came to my house, and demanded of me, for my quota, three measures of corn and a sack of beans, the whole worth twenty crowns, to maintain the war—of which I never knew the reason, having only heard it said that there was nothing to be got by it for our country, and a great deal to lose. As I had not at that time either corn, or beans, or money, the legislative and executive power had me dragged to prison; and the war went on as well as it could.
On my release from the dungeon, being nothing but skin and bone, whom should I meet but a jolly fresh-colored man in a coach and six? He had six footmen, to each of whom he gave for his wages more than the double of my revenue. His head steward, who, by the way, looked in as good plight as himself, had of him a salary of two thousand livres, and robbed him every year of twenty thousand more. His mistress had in six months stood him in forty thousand crowns. I had formerly known him when he was less well-to-do than myself. He owned, by way of comfort to me, that he enjoyed four hundred thousand livres a year.
"I suppose, then," said I, "that you pay out of this income two hundred thousand to the state, to help to support that advantageous war we are carrying on, since I, who have but just a hundred and twenty livres a year, am obliged to pay half of them."
"I?" said he, "I contribute to the wants of the state? You are surely jesting, my friend. I have inherited from an uncle his fortune of eight millions, which he got at Cadiz and at Surat; I have not a foot of land; my estate lies in government contracts and in the funds. I owe the state nothing. It is for you to give half of your substance—you who are a proprietor of land. Do you not see that if the minister of the revenue were to require anything of me in aid of our country, he would be a blockhead that could not calculate? for everything is the produce of the land. Money and the paper currency are nothing but pledges of exchange. . . If, after having laid the sole tax, the tax that is to supply the place of all others, on those commodities, the government were to ask money of me, do you not see that this would be a double load? that it would be asking the same thing twice over? My uncle sold at Cadiz to the amount of two millions of your corn, and of two millions of stuffs made of your wool; upon these two articles he gained 100 per cent. You must easily think that this profit came out of lands already taxed. What my uncle bought for ten pence of you, he sold again for above fifty livres at Mexico; and thus he made a shift to return to his own country with eight millions clear.
"You must be sensible, then, that it would be a horrid injustice to re-demand of him a few farthings on the ten pence he paid you. If twenty nephews like me, whose uncles had gained each eight millions at Buenos Ayres, at Lima, at Surat, or at Pondicherry, were, in the urgent necessities of the state, each to lend to it only two hundred thousand livres, that would produce four millions. But what horror would that be! Pay then thou, my friend, who enjoys quietly the neat and clear revenue of forty crowns; serve thy country well, and come now and then to dine with my servants in livery."
This plausible discourse made me reflect a good deal, but I cannot say it much comforted me.