Voltaire's Romances Part 39

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--I have heard much talk of population. If our inhabitants were doubled, so that we numbered forty millions of people instead of twenty, what would be the consequence?

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--It would be this: that, one with another, each would have, instead of forty, but twenty crowns to live upon; or that the land should produce double the crops it now does; or that there should be double the national industry, or of gain from foreign countries; or that half of the people should be sent to America; or that one half of the nation should eat the other.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--Let us then remain satisfied with our twenty millions of inhabitants, and with our hundred and twenty livres a head, distributed as it shall please the Lord. Yet this situation is a sad one, and your iron age is hard indeed.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--There is no nation that is better off; and there are many that are worse. Do you believe that there is in the North wherewithal to afford to each inhabitant the value of an hundred and twenty of our livres a year? If they had had the equivalent of this, the Huns, the Vandals, and the Franks would not have deserted their country, in quest of establishments elsewhere, which they conquered, fire and sword in hand.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--If I were to listen to you, you would persuade me presently that I am happy with my hundred and twenty livres.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--If you would but think yourself happy, you would then be so.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--A man cannot imagine what actually is not, unless he be mad.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--I have already told you, that in order to be more at your ease, and more happy than you are, you should take a wife; to which I tack, however, this clause, that she has, as well as you, one hundred and twenty livres a year; that is to say, four acres at ten crowns an acre. The ancient Romans had each but one. If your children are industrious, they can each earn as much by their working for others.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--So that they may get money, without others losing it.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--Such is the law of all nations: there is no living but on these terms.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--And must my wife and I give each of us the half of our produce to the legislative and executive power, and the new ministers of state rob us of the price of our hard labor, and of the substance of our poor children, before they are able to get their livelihood? Pray, tell me, how much money will these new ministers of ours bring into the king's coffers, by this _jure divino_ system?

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--You pay twenty crowns on four acres, which bring you in forty. A rich man, who possesses four hundred acres will, by the new tariff, pay two thousand crowns; and the whole fourscore millions of acres will yield to the king, twelve hundred millions of livres a year, or four hundred millions of crowns.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--That appears to me impracticable and impossible.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--And very much you are in the right to think so: and this impossibility is a geometrical demonstration that there is a fundamental defect in the calculation of our new ministers.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--Is not there also demonstrably a prodigious injustice in taking from me the half of my corn, of my hemp, of the wool of my sheep, etc., and, at the same time, to require no aid from those who shall have gained ten, twenty, or thirty thousand livres a year, by my hemp, of which they will have made linen,--by my wool, of which they will have made cloth,--by my corn, which they will have sold at so much more than it cost them?

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--The injustice of this administration is as evident as its calculation is erroneous. It is right to favor industry; but opulent industry ought to contribute to support the state. This industry will have certainly taken from you a part of your one hundred and twenty livres, and appropriated that part to itself, in selling you your s.h.i.+rts and your coat twenty times dearer than they would have cost you, if you had made them yourself. The manufacturer who shall have enriched himself, at your expense, will, I allow, have also paid wages to his workmen, who had nothing of themselves, but he will, every year, have sunk, and put by a sum that will, at length, have produced to him thirty thousand livres a year. This fortune then he will have acquired at your expense. Nor can you ever sell him the produce of your land dear enough to reimburse you for what he will have got by you; for were you to attempt such an advance of your price, he would procure what he wanted cheaper from other countries. A proof of which is, that he remains constantly possessor of his thirty thousand livres a year, and you of your one hundred and twenty livres, that often diminish, instead of increasing.

It is then necessary and equitable, that the refined industry of the trader should pay more than the gross industry of the farmer. The same is to be said of the collectors of the revenue. Your tax had previously been but twelve livres, before our great ministers were pleased to take from you twenty crowns. On these twelve livres, the collector retained tenpence, or ten _sols_ for himself. If in your province there were five hundred thousand souls, he will have gained two hundred and fifty thousand livres a year. Suppose he spends fifty thousand, it is clear, that at the end of ten years he will be two millions in pocket. It is then but just that he should contribute his proportion, otherwise, every thing would be perverted, and go to ruin.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--I am very glad you have taxed the officer of the revenue. It is some relief to my imagination. But since he has so well increased his superfluity, what shall I do to augment my small modic.u.m?

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--I have already told you, by marrying, by laboring, by trying to procure from your land some sheaves of corn in addition to what it previously produced.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--Well! granted then that I shall have been duly industrious; that all my countrymen will have been so too; and that the legislative and executive power shall have received a good round tax; how much will the nation have gained at the end of the year?

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--Nothing at all; unless it shall have carried on a profitable foreign trade. But life will have been more agreeable in it.

Every one will, respectively, in proportion, have had more clothes, more linen, more movables than he had before. There will have been in the nation a more abundant circulation. The wages would have been, in process of time, augmented, nearly in proportion to the number of the sheaves of corn, of the tods of wool, of the ox-hides, of the sheep and goats, that will have been added, of the cl.u.s.ters of grapes that will have been squeezed in the wine-press. More of the value of commodities will have been paid to the king in money, and the king will have returned more value to those he will have employed under his orders; but there will not be half a crown the more in the kingdom.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.---What will then remain to the government at the end of the year?

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--Once more, nothing. This is the case of government in general. It never lays by anything. It will have got its living, that is to say, its food, raiment, lodging, movables. The subject will have done so too. Where a government ama.s.ses treasure, it will have squeezed from the circulation so much money as it will have ama.s.sed. It will have made so many wretched, as it will have put by forty crowns in its coffers.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--At this rate, then, Henry IV. was but a mean-spirited wretch, a miser, a plunderer, for I have been told that he had chested up in the Bastile, above fifty millions of livres according to our present currency.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--He was a man as good, and as prudent, as he was brave. He was preparing to make a just war, and by ama.s.sing in his coffers twenty-two millions of the currency of that time, besides which he had twenty more to receive, which he left in circulation, he spared the people above a hundred millions that it would have cost, if he had not taken those useful measures. He made himself morally sure of success against an enemy who had not taken the like precaution. The probabilities were prodigiously in his favor. His twenty-two millions, in bank, proved that there was then in this kingdom, twenty-two millions of surplusage of the territorial produce, so that no one was a sufferer.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--My father then told me the truth, when he said that the subject was in proportion more rich under the administration of the Duke of Sully than under that of our new ministers, who had laid on the _single_ tax, the _sole_ tax, and who, out of my forty crowns, have taken away twenty. Pray, tell me, is there another nation in the world that enjoys this precious advantage of the _sole tax_?

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--Not one opulent nation. The English, who are not much giving to laughing, could not, however, help bursting out, when they heard that men of intelligence, among us, had proposed this kind of administration. The Chinese exact a tax from all the foreign trading s.h.i.+ps that resort to Canton. The Dutch pay, at Nangazaqui, when they are received in j.a.pan, under pretext that they are not Christians. The Laplanders, and the Samoieds, are indeed subjected to a sole tax in sables or marten-skins. The republic of St. Marino pays nothing more than t.i.thes for the maintenance of that state in its splendor.

There is, in Europe, a nation celebrated for its equity and its valor, that pays no tax. This is Switzerland. But thus it has happened. The people have put themselves in the place of the Dukes of Austria and of Zeringue. The small cantons are democratical, and very poor. Each inhabitant pays but a trifling sum toward the support of this little republic. In the rich cantons, the people are charged, for the state, with those duties which the Archdukes of Austria and the lords of the land used to exact. The protestant cantons are, in proportion, twice as rich as the catholic, because the state, in the first, possesses the lands of the monks. Those who were formerly subjects to the Archdukes of Austria, to the Duke of Zeringue, and to the monks, are now the subjects of their own country. They pay to that country the same t.i.thes, the same fines of alienation, that they paid to their former masters; and as the subjects, in general, have very little trade, their merchandise is liable to no charges, except some small staple duties. The men make a trade of their courage, in their dealings with foreign powers, and sell themselves for a certain term of years, which brings some money into their country at our expense: and this example is as singular a one in the civilized world, as is the sole tax now laid on by our new legislators.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--So, sir, the Swiss are not plundered, _jure divino_, of one-half of their goods; and he that has four cows in Switzerland is not obliged to give two of them to the state?

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--Undoubtedly, not. In one canton, upon thirteen tons of wine, they pay one, and drink the other twelve. In another canton, they pay the twelfth, and drink the remaining eleven.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--Why am not I a Swiss? That cursed tax, that single and singularly iniquitous tax, that has reduced me to beggary!

But then again, three or four hundred taxes, of which it is impossible for me to retain or p.r.o.nounce the bare names, are they more just and more tolerable? Was there ever a legislator, who, in founding a state, wished to create counselors to the king, inspectors of coal-meters, gaugers of wine, measurers of wood, searchers of hog-tongues, comptrollers of salt b.u.t.ter? or to maintain an army of rascals, twice as numerous as that of Alexander, commanded by sixty generals, who lay the country under contribution, who gain, every day, signal victories, who take prisoners, and who sometimes sacrifice them in the air, or on a boarded stage, as the ancient Scythians did, according to what my vicar told me?

Now, was such a legislation, against which so many outcries were raised, and which caused the shedding of so many tears, much better than the newly imposed one, which at one stroke, cleanly and quietly takes away half of my subsistence? I am afraid, that on a fair liquidation, it will be found that under the ancient system of the revenue, they used to take, at times and in detail, three-quarters of it.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--_Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra. Est modus in retus. Caveas fine quidnimie._

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--I have learned a little of history, and something of geometry; but I do not understand a word of Latin.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--The sense is, pretty nearly, as follows. _There is wrong on both sides. Keep to a medium in every thing. Nothing too much._

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--I say, nothing too much; that is really my situation; but the worst of it is, I have not enough.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--I allow that you must perish of want, and I too, and the state too, if the new administration should continue only two years longer; but it is to be hoped heaven will have mercy on us.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--We pa.s.s our lives in hope, and die hoping to the last. Adieu, sir, you have enlightened me, but my heart is grieved.

THE GEOMETRICIAN.--This is, indeed, often the fruit of knowledge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Palace of the barefooted Carmelites.--"What would you please to have, my son?"--"A morsel of bread, my reverend father. The new edicts have stripped me of everything."--"Son, know that we ourselves beg charity; we do not bestow it."]

IV.

AN ADVENTURE WITH A CARMELITE.

When I had thanked the academician of the Academy of Sciences, for having set me right, I went away quite out of heart, praising providence, but muttering between my teeth these doleful words: "_What!

to have no more than forty crowns a year to live on, nor more than twenty-two years to live!_ Alas! may our life be yet shorter, since it is to be so miserable!"

As I was saying this, I found myself just opposite a very superb house.

Already was I feeling myself pressed by hunger. I had not so much as the hundred and twentieth part of the sum that by right belongs to each individual. But as soon as I was told that this was the palace of my reverend fathers, the bare-footed Carmelites, I conceived great hopes, and said to myself, since these saints are humble enough to go bare-footed, they will be charitable enough to give me a dinner.

I rang. A Carmelite came to the door.

"What would you please to have, my son?"