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My duties, at Paris, were confined to a few objects; the receipt of our whale-oils, salted fish, and salted meats, on favorable terms; the admission of our rice on equal terms with that of Piedmont, Egypt, and the Levant; a mitigation of the monopolies of our tobacco by the farmers-general, and a free admission of our productions into their islands, were the principal commercial objects which required attention; and on these occasions, I was powerfully aided by all the influence and the energies of the Marquis de la Fayette, who proved himself equally zealous for the friendship and welfare of both nations; and, in justice, I must also say, that I found the government entirely disposed to befriend us on all occasions, and to yield us every indulgence, not absolutely injurious to themselves.
If also the rumors set agoing are true the farmers-general would not sell a considerable part to the Danes at a very high price, should they not have had somebody in their employ who understands and knows that article well, it appears to me that the thing is worth while. This is in everybody's mind, and everyone looks at it as he fancies.
Voltaire is therefore quite right when he lays upon the court the blame of allowing the influence which literature then exercised upon the people, to be withdrawn altogether from king and his ministers, and to be transferred to the hands of the Parisian ladies and farmers-general, &c.
"What would this chamber of justice do?" "Try the farmers-general and contractors, who, during ten years, have been robbing the state." "Well, but what would you do with them?" "Hang two or three, and that would make the rest disgorge." "I cannot commence my reign with executions, Monsieur Colbert." "On the contrary, sire, you had better, in order not to have to end with them."
There are magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat, and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents the profits of the maltote, the gains of farmers-general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
His scornful diatribes against the domestic police of great houses, and the essential inhumanity of the ordinary household relations, are both excellent and of permanent interest. There is the full breath of a new humaneness in them. They were the right way of attacking the decrepitude of feudal luxury and insolence, and its imitation among the great farmers-general.
She hopes that another consequence of them will be the abolition of the whole system of farmers-general of the revenue; and she explains to him both the advantages of such a measure, and at the same time the difficulties of carrying it out immediately after so costly a war, since it would involve the instant repayment of large sums to the farmers, with all the clearness of a practiced financier.
Thirdly, and lastly, by subjecting all those taxes to an administration under the immediate inspection and direction or government, the exorbitant profits of the farmers-general might be added to the revenue of the state. The opposition arising from the private interest of individuals, is likely to be as effectual for preventing the two last as the first-mentioned scheme of reformation.
Some provinces are allowed to compound for the gabelle, or salt tax; others are exempted from it altogether. Some provinces are exempted from the exclusive sale of tobacco, which the farmers-general enjoy through the greater part of the kingdom. The aides, which correspond to the excise in England, are very different in different provinces.
They give occasion, it is pretended, to much extortion in the officers of the farmers-general who collect the tax, which is in a great measure arbitrary and uncertain. In the greater part of the libels which have been written against the present system of finances in France, the abuses of the controle make a principal article.
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