0

Vergennes' illness, and Calonne not being fully pre-
pared with the statement of his formidable and separate
measures of reform. Fixed for the 14th February,
the death of Vergennes on the previous day again de-
ferred it. His loss was severely felt by Calonne and
by the court.

On the 22nd of February Louis opened the assembly
by a short speech, after which the controller-general,
seated and with his hat on, read a lengthened state-
ment of the distresses of the treasury, and of the
measures by which he proposed to remove them.
Calonne began by declaring that the views he was
about to develop were those personally of the king,
who desired to extend the commerce of the nation
abroad and secure its prosperity at home. The minister
then represented the destitute state in which he had
received the finances three years ago, and recounted
all he had done to restore them. Money had grown
abundant, credit was re-established, and the interest
on the debt was regularly paid. The incongruous
conclusion of so promising an exordium was the con-
fession to large arrears and an annual deficit of up-
wards of an hundred millions. The minister then passed
to the remedies which he proposed. The first was
the equalisation of taxation, the abolition of barriers
to internal trade, the lowering of duties, the cessation
of the corvée and of the gabelle, the diminution of the
taille, and the substitution, for the tax of the vingtième,
of a territorial subvention, which was to be paid by all
lands, ecclesiastical as well as lay, in kind.
As a
political guarantee for truly carrying out such financial
reforms, Turgot's scheme of parish meetings, district
assemblies, and provincial estates, was to be put in
execution. The primary assemblies were to be elected
by proprietors of lands of all classes; 600 livres of
revenue entitling to one vote.*

*Discours de Calonne. Procès Verbal des Notables.

CHAP.

XXXVII.

CHAP. XXXVII.

Calonne here proposed, and the king sanctioned, a very large measure of political and financial reform, without either of them being able to mark out or limit its scope. Want of sagacity and common foresight was apparent in the assembling of so peculiar a body, and the asking them to sanction changes especially unpalatable and hostile to them. Moreover, a great many of these changes were not at all required by the great necessity of the crisis, but were foisted into the minister's scheme by theorists, right for the most part in their doctrines, but most foolish from the way and the manner in which they propounded them. Calonne, without well knowing it, was the tool of the Economists. What he proposed was no other than to take the burden of taxation from the peasant, the artisan, and the commercial classes, in order to throw it on the proprietor of land; yet it was precisely the landed proprietors whom he called together to sanction the measure. He abrogated the vingtième, he lowered the customs, being the duties on imports and exports, to the amount of thirty millions. He, moreover, abolished the corvée and diminished the gabelle, obliging the landed proprietor to make good the deficiency. He spoke, indeed, of the new territorial subvention as not amounting to more than half a dime, but it was quite evident that the new tax would be swelled to meet all the deficiencies of the revenue, for which Calonne's additional project of a stamp duty and letting of the domains could not suffice.

To hope that a body of large landed proprietors would sanction such innovations was of almost insane miscalculation. Class interests were as much offended as material ones. The nobles saw their privileges set aside by the elections to the Paris assemblies, and probably by the provincial ones. The committees, or bureaux, into which the notables divided for deliberation, protested against the scheme; that in which Mon

sieur, the king's brother, presided, insisting that the distinction of the three orders should be observed in the assemblies. The upper clergy were still more loud in reprehension. For the first time they were to be subjected to the territorial subvention, and the weight of the other taxes and duties abrogated were to be flung upon them conjointly with the nobles. Other changes equally unpalatable were at the same time foreseen. It was also proposed to take away the penalties and disabilities weighing upon Protestants. Calonne's scheme of reconciling the clergy to such changes, whilst compelling them to pay their debts by the sale of lay-rents and feudal rights, incensed them still more, the committees generally declaring it a breach of the rights of property. Calonne, in fact, had called for consultation and decision a meeting of his enemies, from which he sedulously excluded his friends. There were not half a dozen of the middle or commercial classes amongst the notables. Had he summoned these in numbers, and appealed to them and to the people against the privileged orders, he might have prevailed; but the king would not have permitted it.*

The discussion relative to the territorial impost in the committees occupied the first week in March. All agreed to repudiate it; but to save appearances, they limited their objections chiefly to its being raised in kind, which would cost more, they said, than the amount of the tax. Calonne took advantage of this to compliment himself, through the organ of Monsieur, on the assembly's objecting more to the form than to the substance of the ministerial plan. Whereupon the notables took fire, and protested. Whilst accepting the abolition of the corvée and other measures, they declared the impost inexecutable in the form proposed, and at the same time said, that they were unable to substitute any other mode or tax until accounts

VOL. IV.

*Procès Verbal de l'Assemblée des Notables.

сс

СНАР.

XXXVII.

СНАР. XXXVII.

of receipt and expenditure were laid before them. Calonne made a half attempt to satisfy these demands by a statement read to a certain number of members assembled in the apartment of Monsieur. In this he owned to a deficit of 114 millions. The minister's annual accounts were, however, so jumbled up together that the notables declared them to be unintelligible and insufficient.

Calonne then perceived that he had nothing to hope from the notables, and tried to arouse the popular voice to support him. He published a memoir in which he developed his different schemes of reform, and prefaced them by some remarks which reflected upon the notables, and represented them as what they were, a privileged class opposed to any legislation in favour of the non-privileged. This document made little impression on the public, which favoured the notables in their attacks upon crown and government, forgetting that, whilst the crown pressed for equal taxation and other new reforms, the notables evaded and opposed them. But if the public were indifferent to Calonne's explications, the notables were not so. They felt the danger of the obloquy of failure being thrown upon them, and every bureau hastened to draw up a protest and petition to the king against the minister. one stood up for him save the Count d'Artois, and he stood alone in his committee. The Duke of Orleans was the most violent. And he had the naïveté to complain that Calonne's abolition of internal customs deprived him of 400,000 livres revenue. He thus confessed himself an interested retrograde. The most powerful protest was that drawn up by the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux.

No

The king was stricken by this unanimous denunciation of Calonne by the notables. Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, conveyed to the monarch a daily report of what passed in the committee. Whilst pondering upon

all this, Louis was aroused by a quarrel between
Calonne and Necker, the latter denying and asking to
be allowed to prove his denegation of the minister's
assertion, that the treasury was left unprovided when
he had resigned. The king bade the ex-minister be
silent. But he at the same time consulted Joly de
Fleury, Necker's successor in the Control, as to who
was right, Calonne or his adversary. Fleury decided
for Necker, and wrote his opponent a severe letter, of
which the Chancellor Miromenil placed a copy before
the king. Calonne, challenged by the monarch, remon-
strated on being made the tool of a conspiracy, in
which ministers joined. He at the same time offered
to resign if Miromenil were not dismissed.
The king
for the moment admitted the justice of Calonne's re-
monstrance, and consented to the dismissal of Miromenil,
who was immediately replaced by Lamoignon. Thus
feeling his ascendency over Louis, and at the same time
driven to desperation by the prospect of failure, and by
the enmity he encountered, Calonne proposed to over-
throw the other ministers, and to punish the notables,
for the arrest of whom he is said to have had three-and-
thirty lettres de cachet prepared. The next dismissal
he demanded was that of Breteuil, which the king
was willing enough to grant. But Marie Antoinette
came to the support of the threatened functionary, and
so wrought upon her husband that the letter of dis-
missal, intended for Breteuil, was addressed to Calonne
himself on the 8th of the month of April.*

Although the monarch had dismissed Calonne, he still thought his plans, at least the greater part of them, feasible. Who could be got to execute them? Louis had filled the office of foreign affairs on the death of Vergennes with the Count de Montmorin, who had been his menin. Montmorin now proposed the recall of Necker. Louis could not bring himself to stoop to one * Monthion, Particularités.