Produced by David Widger
Although, as we have just seen, matters were beginning to brighten alittle in Spain, they remained as dull and overcast as ever in France.The impossibility of obtaining peace, and the exhaustion of the realm,threw, the King into the most cruel anguish, and Desmarets into thesaddest embarrassment. The paper of all kinds with which trade wasinundated, and which had all more or less lost credit, made a chaos forwhich no remedy could be perceived. State-bills, bank-bills, receiver-general's-bills, title-bills, utensil-bills, were the ruin of privatepeople, who were forced by the King to take them in payment, and who losthalf, two-thirds, and sometimes more, by the transaction. Thisdepreciation enriched the money people, at the expense of the public; andthe circulation of money ceased, because there was no longer any money;because the King no longer paid anybody, but drew his revenues still; andbecause all the specie out of his control was locked up in the coffers ofthe possessors.
The capitation tax was doubled and trebled, at the will of the Intendantsof the Provinces; merchandise and all kinds of provision were taxed tothe amount of four times their value; new taxes of all kinds and upon allsorts of things were exacted; all this crushed nobles and roturiers,lords and clergy, and yet did not bring enough to the King, who drew theblood of all his subjects, squeezed out their very marrow, withoutdistinction, and who enriched an army of tax-gatherers and officials ofall kinds, in whose hands the best part of what was collected remained.
Desmarets, in whom the King had been forced to put all his confidence infinance matters, conceived the idea of establishing, in addition to somany taxes, that Royal Tithe upon all the property of each community andof each private person of the realm, that the Marechal de Vauban, on theone hand, and Boisguilbert on the other, had formerly proposed; but, as Ihave already described, as a simple and stile tax which would suffice forall, which would all enter the coffers of the King, and by means of whichevery other impost would be abolished.
We have seen what success this proposition met with; how the fancierstrembled at it; how the ministers blushed at it, with what anathemas itwas rejected, and to what extent these two excellent and skilful citizenswere disgraced. All this must be recollected here, since Desmarets, whohad not lost sight of this system (not as relief and remedy—unpardonablecrimes in the financial doctrine), now had recourse to it.
He imparted his project to three friends, Councillors of State, whoexamined it well, and worked hard to see how to overcome the obstacleswhich arose in the way of its execution. In the first place, it wasnecessary, in order to collect this tax, to draw from each person a clearstatement of his wealth, of his debts, and so on. It was necessary todemand sure proofs on these points so as not to be deceived. Here wasall the difficulty. Nothing was thought of the desolation this extraimpost must cause to a prodigious number of men, or of their despair uponfinding themselves obliged to disclose their family secrets; to hate alamp thrown, as it were, upon their most delicate parts; all thesethings, I say, went for nothing. Less than a month sufficed these humanecommissioners to render an account of this gentle project to the Cyclopswho had charged them with it. Desmarets thereupon proposed it to theKing, who, acc