Chapter 1: 3.iv

Loménie’s Edicts.

Thus, then, have the Notables returned home; carrying to all
quarters of France, such notions of deficit, decrepitude,
distraction; and that States-General will cure it, or will not
cure it but kill it. Each Notable, we may fancy, is as a funeral
torch; disclosing hideous abysses, better left hid! The
unquietest humour possesses all men; ferments, seeks issue, in
pamphleteering, caricaturing, projecting, declaiming; vain
jangling of thought, word and deed.

It is Spiritual Bankruptcy, long tolerated; verging now towards
Economical Bankruptcy, and become intolerable. For from the
lowest dumb rank, the inevitable misery, as was predicted, has
spread upwards. In every man is some obscure feeling that his
position, oppressive or else oppressed, is a false one: all men,
in one or the other acrid dialect, as assaulters or as defenders,
must give vent to the unrest that is in them. Of such stuff
national well-being, and the glory of rulers, is not made. O
Loménie, what a wild-heaving, waste-looking, hungry and angry
world hast thou, after lifelong effort, got promoted to take
charge of!

Loménie’s first Edicts are mere soothing ones: creation of
Provincial Assemblies, “for apportioning the imposts,” when we
get any; suppression of _Corvées_ or statute-labour; alleviation
of _Gabelle_. Soothing measures, recommended by the Notables;
long clamoured for by all liberal men. Oil cast on the waters has
been known to produce a good effect. Before venturing with great
essential measures, Loménie will see this singular “swell of the
public mind” abate somewhat.

Most proper, surely. But what if it were not a swell of the
abating kind? There are swells that come of upper tempest and
wind-gust. But again there are swells that come of subterranean
pent wind, some say; and even of inward decomposition, of decay
that has become self-combustion:—as when, according to
Neptuno-Plutonic Geology, the World is all decayed down into due
attritus of this sort; and shall now be _exploded_, and new-made!
These latter abate not by oil.—The fool says in his heart, How
shall not tomorrow be as yesterday; as all days,—which were once
tomorrows? The wise man, looking on this France, moral,
intellectual, economical, sees, “in short, all the symptoms he
has ever met with in history,”—unabatable by soothing Edicts.

Meanwhile, abate or not, cash must be had; and for that quite
another sort of Edicts, namely “bursal” or fiscal ones. How easy
were fiscal Edicts, did you know for certain that the Parlement
of Paris would what they call “register” them! Such right of
registering, properly of mere _writing down_, the Parlement has
got by old wont; and, though but a Law-Court, can remonstrate,
and higgle considerably about the same. Hence many quarrels;
desperate Maupeou devices, and victory and defeat;—a quarrel now
near forty years long. Hence fiscal Edicts, which otherwise were
easy enough, become such problems. For example, is there not
Calonne’s _Subvention Territoriale_, universal, unexempting
Land-tax; the sheet-anchor of Finance? Or, to show, so far as
possible, that one is not without original finance talent,
Loménie himself can devise an _Edit du Timbre_ or
Stamp-tax,—borrowed also, it is true; but then from America: may
it prove luckier in France than there!

France has her resources: nevertheless, it cannot be denied, the
aspect of that Parlement is questionable. Already among the
Notables, in that final symphony of dismissal, the Paris
President had an ominous tone. Adrien Duport, quitting magnetic
sleep, in this agitation of the world, threatens to rouse himself
into preternatural wakefulness. Shallower but also louder, there
is magnetic D’Espréménil, with his tropical heat (he was born at
Madras); with his dusky confused violence; holding of
Illumination, Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt,
Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent
things: of whom can come no good. The very Peerage is infected
with the leaven. Our Peers have, in too many cases, laid aside
their frogs, laces, bagwigs; and go about in English costume, or
ride rising in their stirrups,—in the most headlong manner;
nothing but insubordination, eleutheromania, confused unlimited
opposition in their heads. Questionable: not to be ventured upon,
if we had a Fortunatus’ Purse! But Loménie has waited all June,
casting on the waters what oil he had; and now, betide as it may,
the two Finance Edicts must out. On the 6th of July, he forwards
his proposed Stamp-tax and Land-tax to the Parlement of Paris;
and, as if putting his own leg foremost, not his borrowed
Calonne’s-leg, places the Stamp-tax first in order.

Alas, the Parlement will _not_ register: the Parlement demands
instead a “state of the expenditure,” a “state of the
contemplated reductions;” “states” enough; which his Majesty must
decline to furnish! Discussions arise; patriotic eloquence: the
Peers are summoned. Does the Nemean Lion begin to bristle? Here
surely is a duel, which France and the Universe may look upon:
with prayers; at lowest, with curiosity and bets. Paris stirs
with new animation. The outer courts of the Palais de Justice
roll with unusual crowds, coming and going; their huge outer hum
mingles with the clang of patriotic eloquence within, and gives
vigour to it. Poor Loménie gazes from the distance, little
comforted; has his invisible emissaries flying to and fro,
assiduous, without result.

So pass the sultry dog-days, in the most electric manner; and the
whole month of July. And still, in the Sanctuary of Justice,
sounds nothing but Harmodius-Aristogiton eloquence, environed
with the hum of crowding Paris; and no registering accomplished,
and no “states” furnished. ‘States?’ said a lively Parlementeer:
‘Messieurs, the states that should be furnished us, in my opinion
are the STATES-GENERAL.’ On which timely joke there follow
cachinnatory buzzes of approval. What a word to be spoken in the
Palais de Justice! Old D’Ormesson (the Ex-Controller’s uncle)
shakes his judicious head; far enough from laughing. But the
outer courts, and Paris and France, catch the glad sound, and
repeat it; shall repeat it, and re-echo and reverberate it, till
it grow a deafening peal. Clearly enough here is no registering
to be thought of.

The pious Proverb says, “There are remedies for all things but
death.” When a Parlement refuses registering, the remedy, by long
practice, has become familiar to the simplest: a Bed of Justice.
One complete month this Parlement has spent in mere idle
jargoning, and sound and fury; the _Timbre_ Edict not registered,
or like to be; the _Subvention_ not yet so much as spoken of. On
the 6th of August let the whole refractory Body roll out, in
wheeled vehicles, as far as the King’s Château of Versailles;
there shall the King, holding his Bed of Justice, _order_ them,
by his own royal lips, to register. They may remonstrate, in an
under tone; but they must obey, lest a worse unknown thing befall
them.

It is done: the Parlement has rolled out, on royal summons; has
heard the express royal order to register. Whereupon it has
rolled back again, amid the hushed expectancy of men. And now,
behold, on the morrow, this Parlement, seated once more in its
own Palais, with “crowds inundating the outer courts,” not only
does not register, but (O portent!) declares all that was done on
the prior day to be _null_, and the Bed of Justice as good as a
futility! In the history of France here verily is a new feature.
Nay better still, our heroic Parlement, getting suddenly
enlightened on several things, declares that, for its part, it is
incompetent to register Tax-edicts at all,—having done it by
mistake, during these late centuries; that for such act one
authority only is competent: the assembled Three Estates of the
Realm!

To such length can the universal spirit of a Nation penetrate the
most isolated Body-corporate: say rather, with such weapons,
homicidal and suicidal, in exasperated political duel, will
Bodies-corporate fight! But, in any case, is not this the real
death-grapple of war and internecine duel, Greek meeting Greek;
whereon men, had they even no interest in it, might look with
interest unspeakable? Crowds, as was said, inundate the outer
courts: inundation of young eleutheromaniac Noblemen in English
costume, uttering audacious speeches; of Procureurs,
Basoche-Clerks, who are idle in these days: of Loungers,
Newsmongers and other nondescript classes,—rolls tumultuous
there. “From three to four thousand persons,” waiting eagerly to
hear the _Arrêtés_ (Resolutions) you arrive at within; applauding
with bravos, with the clapping of from six to eight thousand
hands! Sweet also is the meed of patriotic eloquence, when your
D’Espréménil, your Fréteau, or Sabatier, issuing from his
Demosthenic Olympus, the thunder being hushed for the day, is
welcomed, in the outer courts, with a shout from four thousand
throats; is borne home shoulder-high “with benedictions,” and
strikes the stars with his sublime head.