PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 29 



PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 



By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D. C. L., 



OOBRESPONDANT DE L'iNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC. 



II. THE PLACE OF TAXATION IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY. 



PART IV. 



TAXATION in France. No chapter in history is more re- 

 plete with interest and instruction than that which exhibits 

 the system for exacting contributions for the support of the 

 state which characterized the fiscal policy and administration of 

 France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 

 which is now acknowledged to have been mainly instrumental 

 in bringing on the memorable revolution in the closing years of 

 the latter century. 



Feudalism in France, previous to 1789, had come to find its 

 expression almost exclusively, in the claims on the part of the 

 various and multiplied representatives of authority nobility and 

 clergy to regulate taxation, in respect to both imposition and 

 exemption. 



The kingdom was divided into departments, with an officer 

 called an " intendant," or " farmer-general " (fermier general) 

 at the head of each, into whose hands the whole power of the 

 crown in respect to revenue matters was delegated. Each depart- 

 ment was then sub- divided, and at the head of each of these sub- 

 divisions a deputy was appointed by the intendant. The rolls 

 or lists of the various crown taxes, for polls, service, incomes, 

 " proportions," and the like, were distributed by the intendants to 

 their deputies, who had the power to exempt, change, add to, or 

 diminish the list at their pleasure. 



It must be obvious, that the friends of the intendant and of 

 all his deputies, and the friends of their friends, might be favored 

 at the expense of the helpless masses ; and that great noblemen 

 in favor at the court, to whom the intendant himself would 

 naturally look for protection, would especially find little difficulty 

 in transferring most or all of the burden of tribute rightfully 

 due from them to the state, to others who had no such influence. 

 The result was that taxation in France at the period mentioned 

 had become in the highest degree arbitrary, and a scarcely dis- 

 guised form of plunder ; and the methods of assessment were 

 so crude and defective that it is probable that the state never 

 received fifty per cent of the amount collected, and in many 

 cases no more than forty or thirty per cent. The expenditures 

 of the revenues received were, moreover, characterized by so 

 little system as to render it difficult to exercise any efficient check 



