Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V. Walter Scott
persons directly or indirectly interested in the question of their security, amounting to nine or ten millions. "Against this Colossus," continued the maréchal, "whose height the eye cannot measure, some impotent efforts would affect to direct themselves; but the wisdom of the King has foreseen this danger, even for the sake of those imprudent persons who might have exposed themselves to it." He proceeded, in a very eloquent strain, to eulogize the conduct of the emigrants, to express respect for their persons, compassion for their misfortunes, honour for their fidelity, and proceeded to observe, that the existence of these old proprietors, as having claims on the estates which had been acquired by others, placed them in a situation which ought not to exist. He therefore proposed that the nation should satisfy the claims of these unfortunate gentlemen, if not in full, at least upon such terms of composition as had been applied to other national obligations. Upon this footing, he calculated that an annuity of twelve millions of livres yearly, would pay off the claims of the various emigrants of all descriptions. He next drew a picture of the distressed veteran soldiers; pensioners of the state who had been reduced to distress by the discontinuance of their pensions, bought with their blood in a thousand battles. Three millions more of livres he computed as necessary to discharge this sacred obligation.79
There was wisdom, manliness, and generosity in the plan of Maréchal Macdonald; and, could it have been carried into decisive execution, it would have greatly appeased the fears and jealousies of the proprietors of national domains, and shown an impartiality betwixt the claims of the emigrants and those of the army, which ought to have conciliated both. Unhappily, funds were awanting, and the royal government, so far from being able to incur a new expense of fifteen millions yearly, was not in a condition to discharge the various demands upon them, without continuing the oppressive tax of Les droits réunis.
It is, indeed, on the subject of finance and taxation, that almost all revolutions among civilized nations have been found to hinge; and there is scarce any judging how long actual oppression may be endured, so long as it spares the purse of individuals, or how early a heavy tax, even for the most necessary objects, will excite insurrection. Without the heavy taxation of the Spaniards, the Dutch would scarcely have rebelled against them; it was imposts which fired the blood of the Swiss against the Austrians; without the stamp-act the American Revolution might have been long postponed; and but for the disorder of the French finances, Louis XVI. need never have summoned together the National Assembly. France was now again agitated by one of those fever fits, which arise from the sensitiveness of the subject's purse.
A report on the state of the public finances, by the Abbé de Montesquieu, had given a singular instance of Buonaparte's deceptive policy. Annual expositions of national receipt and expenditure had been periodically published since he assumed the reins of government, which were, to outward appearance, unchallengeably accurate; and as they seemed to balance each other, afforded the fair prospect that, the revenues of the state being realized, the expenses could not fall into arrear. But in reality, a number of extraordinary expenses were withheld from the view of the public, while, on the other hand, the produce of the taxes was over-estimated. Thus the two budgets of 1812, and 1813, upon close examination, exhibited a deficit of upwards of 312 millions of livres,80 or thirteen millions sterling. Buonaparte was not ignorant of this fact, but concealed it from the eyes of the nation, in hopes of replacing it, as in his more successful days, by foreign tribute, and, in the meantime, supplied himself by the anticipation of other funds; as an unfaithful book-keeper makes up a plausible balance to meet the eye of his master, and covers his peculations by his dexterity in the use of ciphers. Upon the whole, the debts of France appeared to have increased in the course of thirteen years to the extent of 1,645,469,000 francs, or more than sixty-eight millions and a half of sterling money.
These financial involvements accorded ill with the accomplishment of an unfortunate and hasty promise of Monsieur,81 that the severe and pressing taxes called les droits réunis should be abolished, which had been made when he first entered France, and while, betwixt hope and despair, he essayed every inducement for the purpose of drawing adherents to the royal cause. On the other hand, the King, upon ascending the throne, had engaged himself, with perhaps too much latitude, to pay all the engagements which the state had contracted under the preceding government. To redeem both these pledges was impossible, for without continuing this very obnoxious and oppressive tax, the crown could not have the means of discharging the national debt. A plan was in vain proposed by Jalabert to replace this oppressive excise by a duty on wines; the motion was referred to a committee of the Chamber of Representatives, but the substitution seems to have been found impossible. Louis naturally made the promise of his brother give way to his own more deliberate engagement. But it is not the less true, that by continuing to levy les droits réunis, many, not otherwise disinclined to the royal government than as it affected their purses, were enabled to charge the King with breach of faith towards his subjects, and would listen to no defence upon a topic on which few people are disposed to hear reason against their own interest.
There remained yet another subject of alarm and dread, to excite the minds not only of those who were desirous of revolution, or, according to the Roman phrase, cupidi novarum rerum; but of others, who, devotedly attached to the welfare of France, desired to see her enjoy, under the sway of a legitimate monarch, the exercise of national liberty. They had the misfortune to see that liberty attacked in the point where it is most sensitive, namely, by imposing restraints upon the public press.
Buonaparte had made it part of his system to keep this powerful engine in his own iron hand, well aware that his system of despotism could not have subsisted for six months, if his actions had been exposed to the censure of the public, and his statements to contradiction and to argument. The Bourbons having unloosed the chain by which the liberty of the press was confined, the spirit of literary and political controversy rushed out with such demoniacal violence, as astonished and terrified those who had released it from confinement. The quantity of furious abuse poured out against the Bourbons, might have authorised the authors to use the words of Caliban —
"You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is – I know how to curse."82
Eager to repress the spirit which displayed itself so unequivocally, a motion was made on the 4th of July, 1814,83 for establishing a censorship upon pamphlets under a certain length, and placing all journals and newspapers under the direction of government.
This important subject was discussed with great manliness and talent in the Assembly; but it is one of the many political maxims which the British receive as theorems, that, without absolute freedom of the public press (to be exercised always on the peril of such as misuse it,) there can neither be enlightened patriotism nor liberal discussion; and that, although the forms of a free constitution may be preserved where this liberty is restricted, they will soon fail to have the necessary beneficial effects in protecting the rights of the community and the safety of individuals. The liberty of the press affords a channel through which the injured may challenge his oppressor at the bar of the nation; it is the means by which public men may, in case of misconduct, be arraigned before their own and succeeding ages; it is the only mode in which bold and undisguised truth can press its way into the cabinets of monarchs; and it is the privilege, by means of which he, who vainly lifts his voice against the corruptions or prejudices of his own time, may leave his counsels upon record as a legacy to impartial posterity. The cruelty which would deafen the ear and extinguish the sight of an individual, resembles, in some similar degree, his guilt, who, by restricting the freedom of the press, would reduce a nation to the deafness of prejudice, and the blindness of ignorance. The downfall of this species of freedom, as it is the first symptom of the decay of national liberty, has been in all ages followed by its total destruction, and it may be justly pronounced that they cannot exist separately; or, as the elegiac poet has said of his hero and the country to which he belonged —
"Ille tibi superesse negat; tu non potes illi."
We must own, at the same time, that as no good comes to us unmixed
Moniteur, Dec. 7 and 10; Montgaillard, tom. viii., p. 84; Annual Register, vol. lvi., p. 63.
Moniteur, July 13; Montgaillard, tom. viii., p. 52.
"No conqueror, no war, no conscription, no consolidated taxes!" —
Tempest, act i., scene ii.
Moniteur, July 6; Annual Register, vol. lxvi., p. 56.