书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
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第1038章

[4] Rocquain, "L'état de la France au 18 Brumaire" (report by Fourcroy, pp. 138, 166)": A sack of wheat worth 18 francs at Nantes costs an equal sum for its cartage to Brest. I have seen carters plodding along, seven or eight in a line, each with six or eight strong horses dragging their vehicles and alternately helping each other, their horses hauling their carts out of ruts into which they had got stuck . . . In many places, I was grieved to see carts and wagons leaving the high-road and traversing, in spaces from 100 to 200yards wide, the plowed ground, when each made his own road . . . . The carters sometimes make only three or four leagues from morning to night." - Hence, a dearth of provisions at Brest. "We are assured that the people have long been on half-rations, or even quarter rations." -And yet, " There is now in the river, at Nantes, from four to five hundred boats loaded with grain; they have been there for months, and their number increases daily. Their cargoes are deteriorating and becoming damaged."[5] Ibid., preface and summary, p.41 (on the dikes and works of protection against inundations at Dol in Brittany, at Fréjus, in Camargue, in Lower Rhine, in Nord, in Pas-de-Calais, at Ostende and Blankenberg, at Rochefort, at La Rochelle, etc.). At Blankenberg, a gale sufficed to carry away the dike and let in the sea. "The dread of some disaster which would ruin a large portion of the departments of the Lys and of the Escaut kept the inhabitants constantly in a state of frightful anxiety."[6] Hence the additional centimes to the tax on doors and windows, the number of which indicates approximately the value of the rent. Hence also the additional centimes to the personal tax, which is proportionate to the rent, this being considered as the most exact indication of domestic expenditure.

[7] Hence the communal "additional centimes" to the tax on business licenses.

[8] Hence the " additional centimes" to the land tax.

[9] Today, in 1999, we may in Denmark observe how the contemporary oligarchy of non-violent Jacobins, have transformed the local authorities into tools of the central government which through an all permeating administration, has replaced the authority of the father and the solidarity of the family with a communal care and supervision.(SR.).

[10] Syndicates of this kind are instituted by the law of June 25, 1865, "between proprietors interested in the execution and maintenance of public works: 1st, Protection against the sea, inundations, torrents, and navigable or non-navigable rivers; 2d, Works in deepening, repairing, and regulating canals and non-navigable water-courses, and ditches for draining and irrigation; 3d, Works for the drainage of marshes; 4th, Locks and other provisions necessary in working salt marshes; 5th, Drainage of wet and unhealthy ground." -"Proprietors interested in the execution of the above-mentioned works may unite in an authorized syndical company, either on the demand of one or of several among them, or on the initiative of the prefect." -(Instead of authorized, we must read forced, and we then find that the association may be imposed on all interested parties, on the demand of one alone, or even without any one's demand.) - Like the Annecy building, these syndicates enable one to reach the fundamental element of local society. Cf. the law of September 26, 1807 (on the drainage of marshes), and the law of April 21, 1810 (on mines and the two owners of the mine, one of the surface and the other of the subsoil, both likewise partners, and no less forcibly so through physical solidarity.)[11] See "The Revolution," vol. I., passim. (Ed. Laff. I. pp. 315-445).

[12] Two kinds of police must be distinguished one from the other. The first is general and belongs to the State: its business is to repress and prevent, outside and inside, all aggression against private and public property. The second is municipal, and belongs to the local society: its business is to see to the proper use of the public roads, and other matters, which, like water, air, and light, are enjoyed in common; it undertakes, also, to forestall the risks and dangers of imprudence, negligence, and filth, which any aggregation of men never fails to engender. The provinces of these two police forces join and penetrate each other at many points; hence, each of the two is the auxiliary, and, if need be, the substitute of the other.

[13] Rocquain, "l'état de la France au 18 Brumaire," passim.

[14] Raynouard, "Histoire du droit municipal,"II., 356, and Dareste, "Histoire de l'administration en France," I., 209, 222. (Creation of the posts of municipal mayor and assessors by the king, in 1692, for a money consideration.) "These offices were obtained by individuals, along with hereditary title, now attached to communities, that is to say, bought in by these," which put in their possession the right of election. - The king frequently took back these offices which he had sold, and sold them over again. In 1771, especially, he takes them back, and, it seems, to keep them forever; but he always reserves the right of alienating them for money. For example (Augustin Thierry, "Documens sur l'histoire du tiers état," III., 319), an act of the royal council, dated October 1, 1772, accepts 70,000 francs from the town of Amiens for the repurchase of the installment of its magistracies, and defining these magistracies, as well as the mode of election according to which the future incumbents shall be appointed.

Provence frequently bought back its municipal liberties in the same fashion, and, for a hundred years, expended for this purpose 12,500,000 livres. In 1772, the king once more established the venality of the municipal offices: but, on the Parliament of Aix remonstrating, in 1774, he returned their old rights and franchises to the communities. - Cf. Guyot, "Répertoire de jurisprudence" (1784), articles, Echevins, Capitouls, Conseillers.