The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0004/00040.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 18KB | 302 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00040}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter VII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{napoleon
france
works
hundred
millions
state
public
canal
government
taxes}
$Date{1906}
$Log{}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter VII

Napoleon As Statesman And Lawgiver - Finances - Industries - Public Works

     "Now we must rebuild, and, moreover, we must rebuild solidly," said
Napoleon to his brother Lucien the day after the coup d'etat which had
overthrown the Directory and made him the temporary Dictator of France.

     The first necessity was a new constitution.  In ten years three
constitutions had been framed and adopted, and now the third had, like its
predecessors, been declared worthless.  At Napoleon's side was a man who had
the draft of a constitution ready in his pocket.  It had been promised him
that, if he would aid in the 18th Brumaire, this instrument should be adopted.
This man was the Abbe Sieyes.  He had been a prominent member of the
Constituent Assembly, but, curiously enough, his fame there had been founded
more on his silence and the air of mystery in which he enveloped himself than
on anything he had done.  The superstitious veneration which he had won, saved
him even during the Terror, and he was accustomed to say laconically, when
asked what he did in that period.  "I lived."

     It was he who, when Napoleon was still in Egypt, had seen the necessity
of a military dictatorship, and had urged the Directory to order Napoleon home
to help him reorganize the government - an order which was never received.

     Soon after the 18th Brumaire.  Sieyes presented his constitution.  No
more bungling and bizarre instrument for conducting the affairs of a nation
was ever devised.  Warned by the experience of the past ten years, he
abandoned the ideas of 1789, and declared that the power must come from above,
the confidence from below.  His system of voting took the suffrage from the
people; his legislative body was composed of three sections, each of which was
practically powerless.  All the force of the government was centered in a
senate of aged men.  The Grand Elector, as the figurehead which crowned the
edifice was called, did nothing but live at Versailles and draw a princely
salary.

     Napoleon saw at once the weak points of the structure, but he saw how it
could be re-arranged to serve a dictator.  He demanded that the Senate be
stripped of its power, and that the Grand Elector be replaced by a First
Consul, to whom the executive force should be confided.  Sieyes consented, and
Napoleon was named First Consul.

     The whole machinery of the government was now centered in one man. "The
state, it was I," said Napoleon at St. Helena.  The new constitution was
founded on principles the very opposite of those for which the Revolution had
been made, but it was the only hope there was of dragging France from the
slough of anarchy and despair into which she had fallen.

     Napoleon undertook the work of reconstruction which awaited him, with
courage, energy, and amazing audacity.  He was forced to deal at once with all
departments of the nation's life - with the finances, the industries, the
emigres, the Church, public education, the codification of the laws.

     The first question was one of money.  The country was literally bankrupt
in 1799.  The treasury was empty, and the government practised all sorts of
makeshifts to get money to pay those bills which could not be put off.  One
day, having to send out a special courier, it was obliged to give him the
receipts of the opera to pay his expenses.  And, again, it was in such a tight
pinch that it was on the point of sending the gold coin in the Cabinet of
Medals to the mint to be melted.  Loans could not be negotiated; government
paper was worthless; stocks were down to the lowest.  One of the worst
features of the situation was the condition of the taxes.  The assessments
were as arbitrary as before the Revolution, and they were collected with
greater difficulty.

     To select an honest, capable, and well-known financier was Napoleon's
first act.  The choice he made was wise - a Monsieur Gaudin, afterward the
Duke de Gaete, a quiet man, who had the confidence of the people.  Under his
management credit was restored, the government was able to make the loans
necessary, and the department of finance was reorganized in a thorough
fashion.  Napoleon's gratitude to Monsieur Gaudin was lasting. Once when asked
to change him for a more brilliant man, he said:

     "I fully acknowledge all your protege is worth; but it might easily
happen that, with all his intelligence, he would give me nothing but fresh
water, whilst with my good Gaudin I can always rely on having good crown
pieces."

     The famous Bank of France dates from this time.  It was founded under
Napoleon's personal direction, and he never ceased to watch over it jealously.

     Most important of all the financial measures was the reorganization of
the system of taxation.  The First Consul insisted that the taxes must meet
the whole expense of the nation, save war, which must pay for itself; and he
so ordered affairs that never, after his administration was fairly begun, was
a deficit known or a loan made.  This was done, too, without the people
feeling the burden of taxation.  Indeed, that burden was so much lighter under
his administration that it had been under the old regime, that peasant and
workman, in most cases, probably did not know they were being taxed.

     "Before 1789," says Taine, "out of one hundred francs of net revenue, the
workman gave fourteen to his seignor, fourteen to the clergy, fifty- three to
the state, and kept only eighteen or nineteen for himself.  Since 1800, from
one hundred francs income he pays nothing to the seignor or the Church, and he
pays to the state, the department, and the commune but twenty-one francs,
leaving seventy-nine in his pocket." And such was the method and care with
which this system was administered, that the state received more than twice as
much as it had before.  The enormous sums which the police and tax-collectors
had appropriated now went to the state.  Here is but one example of numbers
which show how minutely Napoleon guarded this part of the finances.  It is
found in a letter to Fouche, the chief of police:

          "What happens at Bordeaux happens at Turin, at Spa, at Marseilles,
     etc.  The police commissioners derive immense profits from the
     gaming-tables.  My intention is that the towns shall reap the benefit
     of the tables.  I shall employ the two hundred thousand francs paid by
     the tables of Bordeaux in building a bridge or a canal. . . ."

     A great improvement was that the taxes became fixed and regular. Napoleon
wished that each man should know what he had to pay out each year.  "True
civil liberty depends on the safety of property," he told his Council of
State.  "There is none in a country where the rate of taxation is changed
every year.  A man who has three thousand francs income does not know how much
he will have to live on the next year.  His whole substance may be swallowed
up by the taxes."

     Nearly the whole revenue came from indirect taxes applied to a great
number of articles.  In case of a war which did not pay its way, Napoleon
proposed to raise each of these a few centimes.  The nation would surely
prefer this, to paying it to the Russians or Austrians.  When possible the
taxes were reduced.  "Better leave the money in the hands of the citizens than
lock it up in a cellar, as they do in Prussia."

     He was cautious that extra taxes should not come on the very poor, if it
could be avoided.  A suggestion to charge the vegetable and fish sellers for
their stalls came before him.  "The public square, like water, ought to be
free.  It is quite enough that we t