Chapter LIX: Louis Xvi.--M. De Calonne and the Assembly of Notables (2)

This mysterious plan, which was to produce results as desirable as rare, and which M. de Calonne had hit upon to strengthen his shaky position, was the same which, in 1628, had occurred to Cardinal Richelieu, when he wanted to cover his responsibility in regard to the court of Rome. In view of the stress at the treasury, of growing discontent, of vanished illusions, the comptroller-general meditated convoking the Assembly of Notables, the feeble resource of the old French kingship before the days of pure monarchy, an expedient more insufficient and more dangerous than the most far-seeing divined after the lessons of the philosophers and the continuous abasement of the kingly Majesty.

The convocation of the Notables was the means upon which M. de Calonne relied; the object was the sanctioning of a financial system new in practice but old in theory. When the comptroller-general proposed to the king to abolish privileges, and assess the impost equally, renouncing the twentieths, diminishing the gabel, suppressing custom-houses in the interior and establishing provincial assemblies, Louis XVI. recognized an echo of his illustrious ministers. “This is sheer Necker!” he exclaimed. “In the condition in which things are, Sir, it is the best that can be done,” replied M. de Calonne. He had explained his reasons to the king in an intelligent and able note.

“Such a plan,” said the comptroller-general, after having unfolded his projects, “demands undoubtedly the most solemn examination and the most authentic sanction. It must be presented in the form most calculated. to place it beyond reach of any retardation and to acquire for it unassailable strength by uniting all the suffrages of the nation. Now, there is nothing but an assembly of notables that can fulfil this aim. It is the only means of preventing all parliamentary resistance, imposing silence on the clergy, and so clinching public opinion that no special interest dare raise a voice against the overwhelming evidence of the general interest. Assemblies of notables were held in 1558, in 1583, in 1596, in 1617, and in 1626; none was convoked for objects so important as those in question now, and never were circumstances’ more favorable to success; as the situation requires strong measures, so it permits of the employment of strong means.”

The king hesitated, from instinctive repugnance and the traditions of absolutism, at anything that resembled an appeal to the people. He was won, however, by the precedent of Henry IV. and by the frank honesty of the project. The secret was strictly kept. The general peace was threatened afresh by the restless ambition of Joseph II. and by the constant encroachments of the Empress Catherine. The Great Frederick was now dead. After being for a long while the selfish disturber of Europe, he had ended by becoming its moderator, and his powerful influence was habitually exerted on behalf of peace. The future was veiled and charged with clouds. M. de Vergennes, still possessing Louis XVI.’s confidence, regarded with dread the bold reforms proposed by M. de Calonne; he had yielded to the comptroller-general’s representations, but he made all haste to secure for France some support in Europe; he concluded with England the treaty of commerce promised at the moment of signing the peace. There was a lively debate upon it in the English Parliament. Mr. Fox, then in opposition, violently attacked the provisions of the treaty; Mr. Pitt, quite young as yet, but already established in that foremost rank among orators and statesmen which he was to occupy to his last hour, maintained the great principles of European policy. “It is a very false maxim,” said he, “to assert that France and England are not to cease to be hostile because they have been so heretofore. My mind revolts at so monstrous a principle, which is an outrage upon the constitution of societies as well as upon the two nations. Situated as we are in respect of France, it is expedient, it is a matter of urgency for the welfare of the two countries, to terminate this constant enmity which has been falsely said to be the basis of the true sentiments felt by the two nations towards each other. This treaty tends to augment the means of making war and to retard its coming.”

Generous and sound maxims, only too often destined to be strikingly belied by human passions! When he supported in the House of Commons, in 1786, an alliance with monarchical France, Mr. Pitt did not foresee the terrible struggle he--would one day maintain, in the name of England and of Europe, against revolutionary, anarchical, or absolutist France.

The treaty had just been signed (September 26, 1786). M. de Vergennes was not long to survive his latest work: he died on the 13th of February, 1787, just before the opening of the Assembly of Notables, as if he would fain escape the struggle and the crisis he dreaded. Capable and far-sighted in his foreign policy, ever conciliatory and sometimes daring, M. de Vergennes, timid and weak as he was in home affairs, was nevertheless esteemed: he had often served as a connect ing link between the different elements of the government. The king gave his place to M. de Montmorin, an honest but insignificant man, without influence in France as well as in Europe.

On the 29th of December, 1786, at the close of the despatch-council, the king at last broke the silence he had so long kept even as regarded the queen herself. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I shall convoke for the 29th of January an assembly composed of persons of different conditions and the best qualified in the state, in order to communicate to them my views for the relief of my people, the ordering of the finances, and the reformation of several abuses.” Louis XVI.’s hesitations had disappeared: he was full of hope. “I have not slept a wink all night,” he wrote on the morning of the 30th of December to M. de Calonne, “but it was for joy.”

The sentiments of the public were very diverse: the court was in consternation. “What penalty would King Louis XIV. have inflicted upon a minister who spoke of convoking an assembly of notables?” asked old Marshal Richelieu, ever witty, frivolous, and corrupt. “The king sends in his resignation,” said the young Viscount de Segur. At Paris curiosity was the prevalent feeling; but the jokes were bitter. “The comptroller-general has raised a new troop of comedians; the first performance will take place on Monday the 20th instant,” said a sham play-bill: “they will give us the principal piece _False Confidences,_ followed by _Forced Consent_ and an allegorical ballot, composed by M. de Calonne, entitled _The Tub of the Danaids_.”

The convocation of the notables was better received in the provinces: it was the first time for a hundred and sixty years that the nation had been called upon to take a part, even nominally, in the government of its affairs; it already began to feel powerful and proud. A note had been sent to the _Journal de Paris_ to announce the convocation of the Assembly. “The nation,” it said, “will see with transport that the king deigns to draw near to her.” The day of excessive humiliation was no more, even in forms; M. de Calonne modified the expression thus: “The nation will see with transport that the king draws near to her.”

Indisposition on the part of the comptroller-general had retarded the preparatory labors; the session opened on the 22d of February, 1787. The Assembly numbered one hundred and forty-four members, all nominated by the king: to wit, seven princes of the blood; fourteen archbishops and bishops; thirty-six dukes and peers, marshals of France and noblemen; twelve councillors of state and masters of requests; thirty-eight magistrates of sovereign courts; twelve deputies of states-districts, the only ones allowed to present to the king memorials of grievances; and twenty-five municipal officers of the large towns. In this Assembly, intended to sanction the abolition of privileges, a few municipal officers alone represented the third estate and the classes intended to profit by the abolition. The old Marquis of Mirabeau said facetiously: “This Calonne assembles a troop of Guillots, which he calls the nation, to present them with the cow by the horns, and say to them, ‘Gentlemen, we take all the milk and what not, we devour all the meat and what not, and we are going to try and get that what not out of the rich, whose money has no connection with the poor, and we give you notice that the rich means you. Now, give us your opinion as to the manner of proceeding.’”

The king’s speech was short and unimportant. Though honestly impressed with reminiscences of Henry IV., he could not manage, like him, to say to the notables he had just convoked, “I have had you assemble to take your counsels, to trust in them, to follow them, in short, to place myself under tutelage in your hands,--a feeling which is scarcely natural to kings, graybeards, and conquerors; but the violent love I bear my subjects, the extreme desire I have to add the title of liberator and restorer of this realm to that of king, make me find everything easy and honorable.” M. de Calonne had reserved to himself the duty of explaining the great projects he had suggested to the king. “Gentle men,” said he in his exordium, “the orders I am under at present do me the more honor in that the views of which the king has charged me to set before you the sum and the motives have been entirely adopted by him personally.” Henry IV. might have said to the notables assembled by his successor, as he had said regarding his predecessors: “You were summoned hither not long ago to approve of the king’s wishes.”

The state was prosperous, at any rate in appearance; the comptroller-general assumed the credit for it. “The economy of a minister of finance,” he said, “may exist under two forms so different that one might say they were two sorts of economy: one, which strikes the eye by its external strictness, which proclaims itself by startling and harshly uttered refusals, which flaunts its severity in the smallest matters in order to discourage the throng of applicants. It has an imposing appearance which really proves nothing, but which does a great deal as regards opinion; it has the double advantage of keeping importunate cupidity at arm’s length and of quieting anxious ignorance. The other, which considers duty rather than force of character, can do more, whilst showing less strictness and reserve, as regards whatever is of any importance; it affects no austerity as regards that which is of none; it lets the talk be of what it grants, and does not talk about what it saves. Because it is seen to be accessible to requests, people will not believe that it refuses the majority of them; because it has not the useful and vulgar character of inflexibility, people refuse it that of wise discretion, and often, whilst by assiduous application to all the details of an immense department, it preserves the finances from the most fatal abuses and the most ruinously unskilful handling, it seems to calumniate itself by an easy-going appearance which the desire to injure transforms very soon into lavishness.”

So much easy grace and adroitness succeeding the austere stiffness of M. Necker had been powerless to relieve the disorder of the finances; it was great and of ancient date. “A deficit has been existing in France for centuries,” the comptroller-general asserted. It at last touched the figure of a hundred millions a year. “What is left for filling up so frightful a void and for reaching the desired level?” exclaimed M. de Calonne: “abuses! Yes, gentlemen, it is in abuses themselves that there is to be found a mine of wealth which the state has a right to reclaim and which must serve to restore order. Abuses have for their defenders interests, influence, fortune, and some antiquated prejudices which time seems to have respected. But of what force is such a vain confederation against the public welfare and the necessity of the state? Let others recall this maxim of our monarchy: ‘As willeth the king, so willeth the law;’ his Majesty’s maxim is: ‘As willeth the happiness of the people, so willeth the king.’”

Audaciously certain of the success of his project, M. de Calonne had not taken the trouble to disguise the vast consequences of it; he had not thought any the more about pre-securing a majority in the assembly. The members were divided into seven committees presided over by the princes; each committee disposed of one single vote; the comptroller-general had not taken exception to the selections designated by his adversaries. “I have made it a point of conscience,” he said, “to give suitable nominations according to the morality, and talent, and importance of individuals.” He had burned his ships, and without a care for the defective composition of the assembly, he set forth, one after the other, projects calculated to alarm the privileged orders. “More will be paid,” he said in the preamble printed at the head of his notes and circulated in profusion over the whole of France, “undoubtedly more will be paid, but by whom? . . . By those only who do not pay enough; they will pay what they ought, according to a just proportionment, and nobody will be aggrieved. Privileges will be sacrificed! Yes! Justice wills it, necessity requires it! Would it be better to surcharge the non-privileged, the people?”

The struggle was about to begin, with all the ardor of personal interest; the principle of provincial assemblies had been favorably received by the notables; the committees (_bureaux_) had even granted to the third estate a representation therein equal to that of the two upper orders, on condition that the presidents of the delegates should be chosen from the nobility or the clergy. The recognition of a civil status for Protestants did not seem likely to encounter any difficulty. For more than twenty years past the parliaments, especially the parliament of Toulouse, had established the ruling of the inadmissibility of any one who disputed the legitimacy of children issue of Protestant marriages. In 1778, the parliament of Paris had deliberated as to presenting to the king a resolution in favor of authentic verification of non-Catholic marriages, births, and deaths; after a long interval, on, the 2d of February, 1787, this resolution had been formally, promulgated.

It was M. de Lafayette who had the honor of supporting in the assembly of notables the royal project announced by M. de Calonne and advised by the Parliament. In the ministry, MM. de Castries and De Breteuil had supported the equitable measure so long demanded by Protestants. M. de Rulhieres had drawn up for the king a note, entitled: _Historic Evidences as to the Causes of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,_ and M. de Malesherbes had himself presented to Louis XVI. a scheme for a law. “It is absolutely necessary,” said he, “that I should render the Protestants some kind offices; my great-uncle De Baville did them so much injury!” The Assembly of notables appealed to the king’s benevolence on behalf of “that considerable portion of his subjects which groans under a regimen of proscription equally opposed to the general interests of religion, to good morals, to population, to national industry, and to all the principles of morality and policy.” “In the splendid reign of Louis XIV.,” M. de Calonne had said, “the state was impoverished by victories, and the kingdom dispeopled through intolerance.” “Are assemblies of non- Catholics dangerous?” asked M. Turgot. “Yes, as long as they are forbidden; no, when they are authorized.”

The preliminary discussions had been calm, the great question was coming on; in theory, the notables were forced to admit the principle of equal assessment of the impost; in practice, they were, for the most part, resolved to restrict its application. They carried the war into the enemy’s camp, and asked to examine the financial accounts. The king gave notice to the committees that his desire was to have the deliberations directed not to the basis of the question but to the form of collection of taxes. The Archbishop of Narbonne (Dillon) raised his voice against the king’s exclusive right to decide upon imposts. “Your Royal Highness will allow me to tell you,” was the reply made to the Count of Artois, president of his committee, by an attorney-general of the parliament of Aix, M. de Castillon, “that there exists no authority which can pass a territorial impost such as that proposed, nor this assembly, august as it may be, nor the parliaments, nor the several states, nor the king himself; the States-general alone would have that power.”

Thus was proposed, in the very midst of the Assembly intended to keep it out, that great question of the convocation of the States-general which had been so long uppermost in all minds. “It is the States-general you demand!” said the Count of Artois to M. de La Fayette. “Yes, my lord,” replied the latter, “and something better still if possible!” The comptroller-general continued to elude inquiry into the state of the treasury. M. Necker, offended by the statements of his successor, who questioned the truthfulness of the Report, addressed explanatory notes to the several committees of the Assembly. He had already, in 1784, published an important work in explanation and support of his financial system; the success of the book had been immense; in spite of the prohibition issued, at first, against the sale, but soon tacitly withdrawn, the three volumes had sold, it was said, to the extent of eighty thousand copies. In 1787, the late director-general asked leave to appear before the Assembly of notables to refute the statements of M. de Calonne; permission was refused. “I am satisfied with your services,” the king sent word to him, “and I command you to keep silence.” A pamphlet, without any title, was however sent to the notables. “I served the king for five years,” said M. Necker, “with a zeal which knew no limits the duties I had taken upon myself were the only object of my solicitude. The interests of the state had become my passion and occupied all my faculties of heart and mind. Forced to retire through a combination of singular circumstances, I devoted my powers to the composition of a laborious work, the utility of which appears, to me to have been recognized. I heard it said that a portion of those ideas about administration which had been so dear to me formed the basis of the projects which were to be submitted to the Assembly of notables. I rendered homage to the beneficent views of his Majesty. Content with the contributions I had offered to the common weal, I was living happily and in peace, when all at once I found myself attacked or rather assailed in the most unjust and the strangest manner. M. de Calonne, finding it advisable to trace to a very remote period the causes of the present condition of the finances, was not afraid, in pursuance of this end, to have recourse to means with which he will, probably, sooner or later reproach himself; he declared in a speech, now circulated throughout Europe, that the Report to his Majesty, in 1781, was so extraordinarily erroneous, that, instead of the surplus published in that Report, there was, at that very time, an enormous deficit.”

At the moment when M. Necker was publishing, as regarded the statements of M. de Calonne, an able rectification which did not go to the bottom of things any more than the Report had previously gone, the comptroller-general was succumbing beneath his enemies’ attacks and his own errors. Justly irritated at the perfidious manoeuvres practised against him by the keeper of the seals in secretly heading at the Assembly of notables the opposition of the magistracy, Calonne had demanded and obtained from the king the recall of M. Miromesnil. He was immediately superseded by M. de Lamoignon, president of the parliament of Paris and a relative of M. de Malesherbes. The comptroller-general had the imprudence to push his demands further; he required the dismissal of M. de Breteuil. “I consent,” said Louis XVI. after some hesitation; “but leave me time to forewarn the queen, she is much attached to M. de Breteuil.” When the king quitted Marie Antoinette, the situation had changed face; the disgrace of M. de Calonne was resolved upon.

The queen had represented the dissatisfaction and opposition of the notables, which “proceeded solely,” she said, “from the mistrust inspired by the comptroller-general;” she had dwelt upon the merits and resources of the Archbishop of Toulouse. “I don’t like priests who haven’t the virtues of their cloth,” Louis XVI. had answered dryly. He called to the ministry M. Fourqueux, councillor of state, an old man, highly esteemed, but incapable of sustaining the crushing weight of affairs. The king himself presented M. de Calonne’s last projects to the Assembly of notables; the rumor ran that the comptroller-general was about to re-enter the cabinet. Louis XVI. was informed of the illicit manoeuvres which M. de Calonne had authorized in operations on ‘Change: he exiled him to his estate in Berry, and a few days afterwards to Lorraine. M. Necker had just published without permission his reply to the attacks of M. de Calonne the king was put out at it. “The eye of the public annoys those who manage affairs with carelessness,” M. Necker had but lately said in his work on financial administration, “but those who are animated by a different spirit would be glad to multiply lights from every quarter.” “I do not want to turn my kingdom into a republic screeching over state affairs as the city of Geneva is, and as happened during the administration of M. Necker,” said Louis XVI. He, banished his late minister to a distance of twenty leagues from Paris. Madame Necker was ill, and the execution of the king’s order was delayed for a few days.

Meanwhile the notables were in possession of the financial accounts, but the satisfaction caused them by the disgrace of M. de Calonne was of short duration; they were awaiting a new comptroller-general, calculated to enlighten them as to the position of affairs. M. de Montmorin and M. de Lamoignon were urgent for the recall of M. Necker. The king’s ill feeling against his late minister still continued. “As long as M. Necker exists,” said M. de Montmorin, “it is impossible that there should be any other minister of finance, because the public will always be annoyed to see that post occupied by any but by him.” “I did not know M. Necker personally,” adds M. de Montmorin in his notes left to Marmontel; “I had nothing but doubts to oppose to what the king told me about his character, his haughtiness, and his domineering spirit.” Louis XVI. yielded, however. “Well!” he said, snappishly, “if it must be, recall him.” M. de Breteuil was present. “Your Majesty,” said he, “has but just banished M. Necker he has scarcely arrived at Montargis; to recall him now would have a deplorable effect.” He once more mentioned the name of Leonie de Brienne, and the king again yielded. Ambitious, intriguing, debauched, unbelieving, the new minister, like his predecessor, was agreeable, brilliant, capable even, and accustomed in his diocese to important affairs. He was received without disfavor by public opinion. The notables and the chief of the council of finance undertook in concert the disentanglement of the accounts submitted to them.

In this labyrinth of contradictory figures and statements, the deficit alone came out clearly. M. de Brienne promised important economies, the Assembly voted a loan: they were not willing to accept the responsibility of the important reforms demanded by the king. The speeches were long and vague, the objections endless. All the schemes of imposts were censured one after the other. “We leave it to the king’s wisdom,” said the notables at last; “he shall himself decide what taxes will offer the least inconveniences, if the requirements of the state make it necessary to impose new sacrifices upon the people.” “The notables have seen with dismay the depth of the evil caused by an administration whereof your parliament had more than once foreseen the consequence,” said the premier president of the parliament of Paris. “The different plans proposed to your Majesty deserve careful deliberation. The most respectful silence is at this moment our only course.”

The notables had themselves recognized their own impotence and given in their resignation. A formal closing session took place on the 25th of May, 1787. The keeper of the seals, enumerating the results of the labors of the Assembly, enregistered the royal promises as accomplished facts: “All will be set right without any shock, without any ruin of fortunes, without any alteration in the principles of government, without any of those breaches of faith which should never be so much as mentioned in the presence of the monarch of France.

“The resolved or projected reform of various abuses, and the permanent good for which the way is being paved by new laws concerted with you, gentlemen, are about to co-operate successfully for the present relief of the people.

“Forced labor is proscribed, the gabel (or salt-tax) is revised (_juyee_), the obstacles which hamper home trade are destroyed, and agriculture, encouraged by the free exportation of grain, will become day by day more flourishing.

“The king has solemnly promised that disorder shall not appear again in his finances, and his Majesty is about to take the most effective measures for fulfilling this sacred engagement, of which you are the depositaries.

“The administration of the state will approach nearer and nearer to the government and vigilance of a private family, and a more equitable assessment, which personal interest will incessantly watch over, will lighten the burden of impositions.”

Only the provincial administrations were constituted; the hopes which had been conceived of the Assembly of notables remained more vague than before its convocation: it had failed, like all the attempts at reform made in succession by Louis XVI.’s advisers, whether earnest or frivolous, whether proved patriots or ambitious intriguers. It had, however, revealed to the whole country the deplorable disorder of the finances; it had taught the third estate and even the populace how deep was the repugnance among the privileged classes towards reforms which touched their interests. Whilst spreading, as a letter written to America by M. de La Fayette put it, “the salutary habit of thinking about public affairs,” it had at the same time betrayed the impotence of the government, and the feebleness of its means of action. It was a stride, and an immense stride, towards the Revolution.