The Turgot Collection

CHAPTER 13

Six Projects of Edicts

Together with Explanatory Preambles
Enacting Sundry Reforms

EDICT OF THE KING

Which Suppresses the Corvée and Decrees
the Construction of Highways for a Money Price

ouis, etc., The utility of roads designed to facilitate the transport of commodities has been recognized during all time. Our predecessors have regarded their construction and repair as one of the most worthy objects of their vigilance.

Never have these important works been prosecuted with greater ardor than under the reign of the late king, our venerated lord and grandfather. Many provinces are reaping the fruits of these activities in the rapid increase in the value of their lands.

The protection we owe to agriculture, the true foundation of plenty and public prosperity, and the favor we will to accord to commerce as a further encouragement to agriculture, cause us to seek to bind more and more by facile communications all parts of our realm, both among themselves and with outside districts.

Desiring to secure these advantages to our people by the means least burdensome to them, we have investigated carefully the means which have been employed heretofore for making and repairing public roads.

We have noted with pain that, with the exception of a small number of provinces, works of this kind have been executed, for the most part, by means of corvées required of our subjects, and even from the poorest part, while they have been paid no wages for the time they were so employed. We have been unable to escape being struck by the discomforts inherent in the nature of that contribution.

To draft the cultivator forcibly to these labors is always to do him a real wrong, even when he is paid for his day’s work. One would seek in vain to select, for demanding forced labor, a time when the peasants were unoccupied; the work of cultivation is so diversified and so incessant that no time is without its employment. Such times, when they do exist, differ in contiguous places, and frequently in the same place, owing to the varying nature of the soil, or different kinds of cultivation. The most attentive administrators cannot know all these variations. Besides, the necessity of assembling under foremen a sufficient number of laborers demands that the summary writs be general in the same district. Error on the part of the administrator may cause to the cultivators a loss of days for which no salary could repay them.

To take the time of the laborer, even for pay, is equivalent to a tax. To take this time without paying for it is a double tax; and that tax is out of all proportion when it falls on a simple day laborer who has nothing for his subsistence but the labor of his hands.

The man who works under compulsion and without recompense works idly and without interest; he does, at the same time, less work, and his work is poorly done. The peasants (corvoyeurs), obliged to travel frequently ten miles or more to report to the foreman, and as much more to return to their homes, lose a great part of the time demanded from them, without any labor return for it. The multiplied complaints, the embarrassment of tracing out the work, of distributing it, of executing it with a lot of men gathered haphazard, most of them as devoid of intelligence as they are of initiative, consume a further part of the remaining time. In this way the work which is done costs the people and the state, in day’s labor of men and vehicles, twice and often three times what it would cost if done for a money consideration.

The little work wrought so dearly is always poorly done. The art of making stone ballasts, although simple, has, nevertheless, principles and rules which determine the manner of laying out the embankments, of choosing and laying out curbs, of placing the stones according to their bulk and durability, and in accordance with the nature of their composition by which they are rendered more or less susceptible of resisting the weight of vehicles and atmospheric influences. On the attentive observation of these rules depend the solidity and durability of the roads; and that sort of attention cannot be looked for, nor can it be demanded, from the men who are drafted to the corvée, who have, all of them, a different business, and who work on the roads only a few days in each year. In work paid for in money, all the details which pertain to the perfection of the work are specified to entrepreneurs. The laborers whom they choose, instruct and oversee, make the construction of roads their regular business, and they know it; the work is well done, because if it is done poorly the contractor knows he will be obliged to reconstruct it at his own expense. The work done by the corvée remains poorly done, because it would be too harsh to demand from the wretched peasant a double task, to repair the imperfections committed through ignorance. As a result, the roads are less solid and more difficult to repair.

There is a further cause which makes the work of repair done by the corvée very much more costly.

In places where these labors are based on a money consideration, the entrepreneur charged with keeping a part of the road in repair, watches closely for the slightest disintegrations; he repairs them at small cost at the moment they are forming and before they are greatly increased; consequently the road is always in good condition and never requires costly repairs. The roads, on the contrary, which are kept in repair by the corvées, are never repaired until their grievous condition is forced upon the attention of the persons charged with keeping the roads in repair.

As a result of this, it happens that on these roads, made in the first place, as is usual, of embankments of large stones, and very crude from the beginning, the vehicles always follow the same track and wear ruts which frequently cut entirely through the ballast.

The impossibility of issuing writs of corvée at all times brings it about in most of the provinces that the repairs needed for maintenance are made twice a year, before and after the winter season, and that between these times the roads come to be in wretched disorder. It is necessary to secure new stone entirely for the work of repair; hence, aside from the inconvenience of making each time a ballast as unsatisfactory as a new one must ever be, there is involved an annual expense in days’ labor of men and of carts, approaching very near the first cost of construction.

Any industry which requires such intelligence is impossible of being carried on by means of the corvée. It is on this account that in making roads by that method we are obliged to confine ourselves to embankments constructed of ill-assorted stones, without being able to substitute a ballast of paving stones when the nature of the stones demands it or when their scarcity and the distance from which they must be brought render the construction by paving incomparably cheaper than that of general stone ballasts, which consume a very great quantity of stone. That difference in price, frequently greatly to the disadvantage of stone ballasts, is an increase in the actual expense and in the burden resting upon the people which results from the custom of the corvée.

There must be added a multitude of accidents: the loss of animals which, arriving at the place of work already exhausted by long travel, succumb to the labor demanded of them; the loss even of men, heads of unfortunate families, maimed, consumed by the maladies which the intemperance of the season occasions, or by the work itself; a loss most sad when those who perish succumb to a hazardous demand, and who have been compensated by no salary whatever.

There must be added further the expenses, the law costs, the fines and penalties of all kinds which are made necessary by resistance to a law too harsh to be executed without complaint; perhaps the secret vexations which the greatest vigilance of those who are charged with the execution of our orders cannot entirely avoid in an administration so extensive and so complex as that of the corvée, and where distributive justice goes astray in a multitude of details; where authority subdivided, so to speak, to infinity is shared among so great a number of hands, and entrusted in its final analysis to subalterns whom it is almost impossible to choose with careful discretion and very difficult to oversee.

We believe it impossible to appreciate all the corvée costs the people.

By substituting for this system, so burdensome in its effects and so disastrous in the means employed, the custom of constructing highways for a sum of money, we will have the advantage of knowing precisely what will result to our people; the advantage of drying up at once so prolific a source of vexations and rebellion; the advantage of having no longer to punish nor to command to that end, and of economizing the exercise of authority, which it is so disastrous to squander. These different motives are sufficient to move us to prefer to the use of the corvée the more pleasant and less costly means of making roads at a definite money cost. But a still more powerful and decisive motive fixes our determination: it is the injustice which is inseparable from the use of the corvée.

The weight of that charge does not fall, nor can it ever fall, anywhere else than upon the poorest part of our subjects, upon those who have no property other than their hands and their industry, upon the peasants and on the farmers. The landowners, almost all of whom are privilégiés, being exempt, contribute but very little.

Nevertheless it is to the landowners that the public roads are useful, by the value which increased channels of communication give to the products of their lands. It is not the actual farmers nor the day laborers who work for them that are profited. The successors of the present farmers will pay to the proprietors that increase of value in increase of rents. The class of day laborers will gain, perhaps, some day an increase of wages proportionate to the increased price of commodities; they will profit by participating in the general increase of public welfare; but the class of landowners alone will receive a prompt and immediate increase of wealth, and that new wealth will not be scattered among the people except in so far as the people will purchase it through increased labor.

It is then the class of proprietors of land which receives the fruit of the construction of roads; it is that class which ought alone to make the necessary advances, since they finally secure the benefits.

How can it be just to compel those to pay it who have nothing? to force them to give their time without wages? to take from them their only resource against misery and starvation in order to set them to work for the profit of those citizens who are richer than they are?

A wholly opposite error has often led the administration to sacrifice the rights of proprietors, in the misdirected desire to relieve the poorer part of the subjects, in compelling them by prohibitive laws to give up the commodities in their possession for less than their actual value. Thus injustice was worked, on the one hand, against the landowners in order to procure bread at a low price for the wage-workers; and on the other, in favor of the landowners, these unfortunates were robbed of the legitimate fruit of their toil and sweat. It was feared that the cost of subsistence would be too high for them to obtain it by their wages; and the government, demanding from them for nothing a labor, which would have been paid for if those who profited by it had borne the expense, took away from them the medium of competition best calculated to make their wages reach their proper level.

It has injured equally the property and liberty of different classes of our subjects; it has impoverished now one and now the other in order unjustly to favor each in turn. It is thus that one is misled when he forgets that justice only can maintain the equilibrium between all rights and all interests. This will be throughout the basis of our administration; and it is in order to render justice to the most numerous part of our subjects, whose especial need for protection will always command our most particular attention, that we have made haste to bring to an end the corvées in all parts of our realm.

We have not, however, wished to yield to the promptings of our heart without first having examined and appreciated the motives of our predecessors, by which they have been led to introduce and to suffer to subsist a custom, the embarrassments of which are so evident.

It may have been thought that, since the method of the corvée made it possible to work at once on all routes in all parts of the kingdom, communication would be more quickly opened, and that the state would enjoy more promptly the wealth due to the activity of trade and to the increase in the value of the articles produced.

Experience has not been slow to dispel that illusion. It was quickly seen that some of the sparsely populated provinces were precisely those where the construction of highways, owing to the nature of the country and of the soil, required immense labors which one could not flatter himself he might accomplish with a small number of hands without keeping them at it for more than a century, perhaps.

It was seen that, even in the more populous provinces, it was impossible, without crushing the people and ruining the fields, to draft peasants a sufficient number of days to complete within a short time any considerable part of the road.

It was proved that the peasants could not give their time advantageously without being directed by intelligent employees, whom it was necessary to pay; that to furnish the necessary utensils, to keep them in repair, to meet the cost of shops and store-houses, involved expenses proportionate to the number of men annually employed.

It was discovered that, on a fixed length of roadway built by corvée, many indispensable pieces of work had to be done, such as bridges, rock escarpments and walls of earth, which could be accomplished only by skilled workmen and for a price in money; that consequently it was fruitless to hasten the construction of works of corvée, if the impossibility of accelerating in like proportion the skilled work left the roads broken and useless to the public.

We are convinced, in short, that the quantity of the work accomplished annually by corvée has a necessary relation to the quantity of skilled work which the disposition of the fund for bridges and culverts permits to be done each year, and that it is impossible and useless to pass beyond this proportion; that one flatters himself in vain that all the roads may be made at once, and that the pretended advantage of the corvée is reduced to the possibility of beginning a large number of roads at the same time, without actually accomplishing any more work than could be done by the method of constructing them by contract, by which one part is not undertaken until another is finished and thrown open to the enjoyment of the public.

The present condition of the roads in most of our provinces, and what remains to be built after all these years during which the corvées have been vigorously enforced, prove how false it is that that system can hasten the construction of highways.

Some, also, are dismayed at the expense involved in the construction of roads by contract. It is not believed that the treasury of the State, drained by many wars and the extravagance of former reigns, and charged with an enormous debt, will be able to provide for that expense. Some fear to impose further taxes on the people, already too heavily burdened; and it is deemed preferable to demand from them gratuitous labor, imagining that it is better to demand from the country people, during certain days, the hands they have rather than the money they have not.

Those who reason thus forget that they must not demand from those who have nothing but their hands either what they have not or the hands which are their sole means of support for themselves and their families.

They forget that the charge for building roads, doubled and tripled by the sluggishness, the loss of time and the imperfection inherent in corvée labor, is incomparably more heavy upon the unfortunates who have nothing but their hands, than would be a charge, incomparably less, imposed in money upon the proprietors who are able to pay; who, by the increase of their revenue, would immediately reap the fruits of that outlay, and whose contribution, becoming to them a source of wealth, would at the same time relieve those men who, having nothing but their hands, can live only as those hands are employed and paid. They forget that the corvée is itself a tax, a tax most heavy, most unequally apportioned, far more disastrous than that which they dread to have established.

The facility with which roads have been made by contract in some of the states-districts, and the relief experienced by the people in certain généralités of assembly districts, where the administrators substituted for the corvée a contribution in money, have demonstrated clearly enough how preferable that contribution is to the inconvenience which accompanies the use of the corvée.

Another very obvious reason has doubtless greatly influenced the decision which has been made to adopt the method of the corvée for the construction of highways, and that is the fear that the recurring needs of the Royal treasury would impel the administrators to divert from their destination the amounts imposed for the making of roads to some more urgent item of expense, especially in time of war; that the sums, once diverted, would remain so, and that the people might one day be forced, at the same time, both to pay the tax designed originally for the roads and to provide in some other manner, perhaps even by the corvée, for their construction.

The administrators themselves have feared this; they have wished to be so placed that it would be impossible to commit an infidelity of whose danger all too many examples have made them sensible.

We commend the motives of their fear, and we appreciate the force of that consideration; but it in no way changes the nature of things; it does not make it just to demand a tax from the poor to enrich the wealthy, and to compel those to sustain the construction of highways who have no interest in them.

All concede that in the time of war the first of all needs is the defense of the state; it is necessary then, it is just, to suspend all expenses which are not of absolute necessity; the outlay for the roads should be reduced to repair merely. The tax designed to provide for that expense should be reduced in proportion to relieve the people charged with extraordinary taxes occasioned by the war.

In time of peace, the interest the sovereign has in causing commerce and tillage to flourish, and the necessity of roads to secure that end, ought to allay the fear that the works will be abandoned or that new sums proportionate to the needs will not be provided by the re-establishment of the tax suspended on the occasion of the war. Nor need there be any fear that so simple a method would be abandoned in favor of a re-establishment of the corvées, if the latter had once been abolished because they were recognized to be unjust.

On our part, the exposition we have made of the motives which have led us to suppress the corvée guarantees to our subjects that they will not be re-established during our reign; and perhaps the memory which our people will cherish of this testimony of our love will give to our example, in the eyes of our successors, an importance which will prevent them from reimposing on their subjects a burden which we have abolished.

Further, we will take all measures in our power that the sums arising from the tax levied for the construction of highways cannot be diverted to other uses.

In this mind, we have wished that that tax should never be regarded as an ordinary tax and of fixed amount, and that it can never be turned into our royal treasury. We will that it be regulated each year in our Council, for each généralité, and that it shall never exceed the sum which it will be necessary to employ in that year for the construction and repair of causeways or other works which have hitherto been made by corvée, while we reserve the right to construct bridges and other works of skill by the same funds which have been so used until the present, and which are imposed in our kingdom for that end. Our intention is that the whole sum arising from the contribution in each généralité may be used there, and that no sum may be imposed the following year except in consequence of a new edict decreed in our Council.

In order that our subjects may be informed of the objects for which the said contribution will be employed, we have deemed it proper to ordain that a writ shall be prepared in our Council, in the ordinary form, showing all the contracts for works which it will be necessary to undertake in the year; that that writ shall be deposited, both in the office of our Bureaux of Finance which are charged with the execution of the edicts of the king, and in those of our Courts of parlement, Chambers of Accounts and Courts of Aides, and that each of our subjects may have free access.

We have willed that in case the sums be not used in the year, the sums remaining for use be deducted from the levy of the following year, without being confused, under any pretext whatever, with the mass of our finances and turned into the royal treasury. We have believed it necessary also to order, by the present edict, the accounting of the sums arising from that contribution, both by our Chambers of Accounts and by our Bureaux of Finance, and of engaging the fidelity those tribunals owe us to permit at no time any use of those sums foreign to the object for which we have destined them.

By the reckoning we have made of the roads to be built and repaired in our different provinces, we believe we are able to assure our subjects that the expense of that object will in no year exceed the sum of ten millions or all the assembly districts.

That tax, having for its object an expense useful to all proprietors, we will that all proprietors, privileged and non-privileged, concur in it as is customary in all local charges; and for that reason, we intend that even the lands of our domain may not be exempt, either in our hands or in the hands of others, by whatsoever title they may be held.

The same spirit of justice which moves us to suppress the corvée and to charge the expense of making roads to the proprietors who have an interest in it, determines us to provide for the legitimate indemnity of proprietors of heritages, who are deprived of some part of their property, whether by the laying out of roads or by the extraction of material which must be used. If the necessity of public service obliges them to surrender some part of their goods, it is just that they should suffer no damage, and that they should receive the price of that part of their property which they are obliged to surrender.

For these reasons, etc., by advice of our Council, etc., we have, by the present edict, perpetual and irrevocable, decreed, enacted and ordained, etc., as follows:

Article I. There will no longer be demanded from our subjects any labor, either gratuitous or forced, under the name of corvée, or under any other name whatever, for the construction of roads or for any other public work, except in case that the defense of the country in time of war demands extraordinary labors; in such case it will be provided by virtue of our orders addressed to governors, commandants, or other administrators of our provinces. We forbid, in every other circumstance, all those who are charged with the execution of our orders, to command or require it, reserving to ourselves the right to pay those who are compelled by circumstances, in such cases, to be taken away from their ordinary work.

Article II. Works hitherto accomplished by corvées, such as the building and repair of roads, and other works necessary to communication between the provinces and cities, will be carried out in the future by means of a contribution from all proprietors of landed property or real estate subject to twentieths, and the apportionment will be made in proportion to their payments according to the regular tax lists.

Article III. With regard to the construction of bridges and other works of skill, provision will be made from the same funds which have been used for this purpose heretofore.

Article IV. We will that the proprietors of land and of structures which it will be necessary to cross or demolish in the building of roads, as well as those who may be injured by the extraction of material from their property, may receive the value of the said lands, heritages or injuries; and they will be paid by the funds arising from the tax decreed by article II herein.

Article V. The amount of tax in each généralité shall be regulated each year by the cost of construction, repair and damages which we will ordain in the said généralité in that year; to this end there shall be each year a separate writ decreed by our Council which shall include all the said expenses.

Article VI. Estimates and specifications shall be prepared, contracts for the said work and bills for their repair shall be drawn up in the form which will be prescribed; and the writ ordained by us in our Council, mentioned in the preceding article, shall include the amount of the said contracts and bills; reserving to ourselves and to our Council, as in the past, the control of routes, estimates, contracts, and all the clauses, appurtenances and provisions which they may include.

Article VII. A report shall be made to us in our Council each year, of the employment of the sums arising from the tax ordained; and in case the sum shall not be entirely consumed, mention shall be made of this fact in the writ of the following year, and the sum which has not been employed shall be deducted from the tax of the said following year. On the contrary, in case some unforeseen cause requires an expense which had not been included in any of the contracts, an account shall be made of it, and if that expense is approved by us, it will be included in the writ ordained for the following year.

Article VIII. As soon as the said edict shall be promulgated by us, four copies of it for each généralité will be deposited, one in the office of our Court of parlement, the second in that of our Chamber of Accounts, the third in our Court of Aids, and the fourth in our Bureaux of Finance of the généralité, with the intent that all persons of whatever quality or condition they may be, may have access to it without cost or inconvenience; and the said writs will serve as a basis for the reports made to the Chamber of Accounts by our Treasurers, as will be explained in Articles X and XI.

Article IX. The recovery of the sums arising from the said tax, ordained by article II of the present edict, will be made in the same manner as that of the twentieths.

Article X. The sums collected shall be remitted to the ordinary receivers of taxes, who shall withhold from the receipts, month by month, a deduction of four deniers per livre of these taxes, which shall be turned into the hands of the commission of treasurers established by us for the control of bridges and culverts in each généralité, and that commission shall deliver the said amounts to the contractors of these works, in the form which will be prescribed by us. The said sums may not under any pretext whatever be diverted to any other use or even turned into our royal treasury.

Article XI. The said treasurers will not be discharged finally of the said sums except on the delivery of the receipts of the contractors. We make express inhibition and prohibition to the commission of the said treasurers against paying out the said sums for any other purpose whatever, on penalty of being compelled to recover the entire sum which they would have paid according to the dispositions of the present article. We enjoin upon our Chamber of Accounts and our Bureaux of Finance, each according to its duty, to hold exactly to these instructions.

Thus we give by commandment, etc.

EDICT OF THE KING

Decreeing the Suppression of Craft-Guilds

Louis, etc. We owe it to our subjects to assure them the full and complete enjoyment of their rights; we owe that protection especially to that class of men who, possessing nothing but their labor and industry, above all others have the need and right of employing to the limit of their capacity their sole resources for subsistence.

We have viewed with pain the multiplied blows which have been struck at this natural and common right of ancient institutions, blows which neither time, nor opinion, nor even the acts emanating from the authority, which seems to have sanctioned them, have been able to make legitimate.

In nearly all the cities of our realm, the exercise of various arts and trades is concentrated in the hands of a small number of maîtres incorporated in a guild, who may, to the exclusion of all other citizens, make or sell the particular objects of commerce of which they enjoy the exclusive privilege; consequently, those of our subjects who, by inclination or by necessity, desire to exercise the arts and trades, may do so only by acquiring the mastership (maîtrise), to which they are ineligible until they have passed an apprenticeship as long and arduous as it is superfluous, and after they have satisfied claims and multiplied exactions by which a part of the money they so greatly need to establish their trade or to open their shop, or even for their subsistence, they find consumed in sheer waste.

Those who are so unfortunate as to be unable to meet these expenses are reduced to a precarious existence under the domination of maîtres, condemned to waste their lives in indigence, or to carry on outside their country an industry they might have made useful to the State.

Citizens of all classes are deprived of the right to choose what laborers they would employ, and of advantages competition would give them in the low price and excellence of labor. Often one cannot execute the simplest work without having recourse to many workmen of different guilds, without enduring the delays, the infidelities, the exactions which necessitate or favor the pretensions of the various guilds, and the caprices of their arbitrary and injurious regime.

Thus the effect of these institutions, on the part of the state, is an appreciable diminution of trade and of industrial labor; with respect to a numerous part of our subjects, a loss of wages and means of subsistence; on the part of the inhabitants of the cities in general, complete subjection to exclusive privileges, the effect of which is exactly analogous to that of an effective monopoly, a monopoly of which those who control it against the public are themselves the victims whenever they in their turn have need of the commodities or trade controlled by another guild.

These abuses crept in by degrees. They were originally brought about by the interests of private individuals who established them against public interests. It was only after a long interval of time that authority, possibly deceived, possibly seduced by the appearance of utility, gave to them a sort of sanction.

The source of evil is in the privilege accorded to artisans of the same trade of assembling and combining into a single body.

It appears that when the cities began to be freed from feudal servitude and to be formed into communities, the facility of classifying the citizens according to their profession introduced that custom which was unknown until that time. The different professions thus came to be regarded as the private societies of which the general community was composed. The religious fraternities, by drawing more closely the bonds which united them with persons of the same professions, gave them more frequent occasion of assembling and of occupying themselves in the associations, with the interests common to that particular guild; an interest which they pursued with continuous activity, to the prejudice of those of society in general.

The corporations once formed promulgated their rules, and, under different pretexts, came to be authorized by the police.

The foundation of these rules is from the first to exclude from the exercise of a trade any one who is not a member of the guild; their general purpose is to restrict as far as possible the number of masters, and to render the acquisition of a mastership a difficulty almost insurmountable to any except the children of the existing masters. It is to this end that they have contrived the multiplicity of expenses and formalities of admittance, the difficulties connected with the arbitrary judgment of trial-pieces, especially the costly and needlessly protracted apprenticeships, and the prolonged servitude of the journeyman: institutions which have the further object of giving the masters gratuitously, during many years, the enjoyment of the fruits of the labors of the aspirants.

The guilds devote themselves especially to excluding from their territory foreign commodities and labor; they lay great stress on the pretended advantage of excluding from commerce such commodities as are supposed to be poorly made. The pretext led them to demand for themselves regulations of a new kind, tending to prescribe the quality of raw materials, their use and their manufacture; these regulations, whose execution was entrusted to officers of the guilds, gave to them an authority which became a means, not only of more effectually excluding aliens when suspected of infraction, but in addition of subjecting the masters of the guilds to the domination of leaders, and of compelling them, under fear of being prosecuted as suspected offenders, never to separate their interests from those of the association, and thus making them accomplices in all the maneuvers inspired by the spirit of monopoly animating the leading members of the guilds.

Among these arrangements, unreasonable and carried out to an infinite number of minute rules, but always dictated by the greatest interests of the masters of each guild, is the one which excludes entirely all others than the sons of masters or those who marry the daughters of the masters. They reject, besides, those whom they call foreigners, that is to say, those who are born in another city. In a large number of the guilds, to be married is sufficient to exclude one from apprenticeship, and consequently, from a mastership.

The spirit of monopoly which has prompted the contrivance of these regulations, has been able even to exclude women from trades most appropriate to their sex, such as that of embroidery which they may not exercise even for their own account.

We will not pursue further the enumeration of the bizarre arrangements, tyrannical and contrary to humanity and good manners, which fill these obscure codes, conceived by greed, adopted without examination in times of ignorance, and which only need to be known to become the object of public indignation.

These guilds, however, came to be authorized in all the cities, together with all their statutes and privileges, sometimes by the letters of our predecessors, obtained under different pretexts or by means of money which they paid for their confirmation from reign to reign, frequently by the writs of our courts, sometimes by the simple decisions of police or even by custom alone.

At length the custom prevailed of regarding the restrictions put upon industry as common law. The government was accustomed to make a financial resource of the taxes imposed on the guilds and of the multiplication of their privileges.

Henry III. gave, by his edict of December 3d, 1581, to that institution the scope and form of a general law. He established the arts and trades in corporations and guilds in all the cities and villages of the kingdom; he subjected all artisans to the maîtrise and to the trade corporations. The edict of April 5th, 1587, enlarged yet more these arrangements by subjecting all merchants to the same laws as the artisans. The edict of March, 1673, purely fiscal, by ordaining the execution of the two preceding edicts, added to the guilds already existing, other corporations unknown before that time.

The Department of Finance sought more and more to extend the resources which it found in the existence of the societies. Independently of the taxes and establishment of the guilds and of new maîtrises, there was created in the guilds a class of offices under different names, and those holding the offices were obliged to purchase them by means of loans which they were compelled to contract, and on which they paid the interest with the product of the profits on the duties which were alienated to them.

It was doubtless the allurement of this means of finance which prolonged the delusion concerning the immense injury which the existence of guilds causes to industry, and concerning the blows which it struck to natural right. That delusion has been carried among some persons to the point of contending that the right of labor is a royal right, one that the Prince could sell and that the subjects ought to purchase. We hasten to place beside this another maxim:

God, by giving to men needs and making them dependent upon the resource of labor, has made the right of labor the property of all men, and that property is primary, the most sacred and most imprescriptible of all.

We regard it as one of the first obligations of our justice, and as an act in every way worthy of our beneficence, to emancipate our subjects from all the restraints which have been laid upon that inalienable right of humanity. Wherefore, we will to abolish the arbitrary institutions which do not permit the indigent to live by their labor; which exclude the sex whose weakness implies greatest needs and fewest resources, and which seem, by condemning it to inevitable misery, to encourage seduction and debauch; which stifle emulation and industry and make useless the talents of those whom circumstances exclude from admission into the guild; which deprive the state and art of all the advantages which foreigners might furnish; which retard the progress of the arts by the difficulties which inventors find multiplied by the guilds, who thus dispute the right to exploit discoveries which they themselves have not made; which, by means of the inordinate expenses artisans are compelled to incur in order to acquire the liberty of labor, by the exactions of all kinds they must endure, by the multiplied penalties for so-called offenses, by expense and extravagance of every sort, by the endless litigations which arise between the different associations because of their respective claims concerning the scope of their exclusive privileges, surcharge industry with an enormous tax, grievous to the subjects and with no corresponding advantage to the state; which, in short, by the facility they afford to members of the guilds to combine among themselves and to compel the poorer members to submit to the rule of the wealthy, become an instrument of monopoly and give rise to schemes whose effect is to increase beyond all natural proportion the price of commodities which are most necessary for the subsistence of the people.

We shall not be deterred in this act of justice by the fear that a multitude of artisans will take advantage of the liberty bestowed upon all and embark in trades of which they are ignorant, and that the public will be inundated with poorly wrought articles. Liberty has not produced such evil effects in places where it has been established for a long time. Laborers in the suburbs and in other privileged places do not work less effectively than those in the interior of Paris. The whole world knows, besides, how illusory is the police of the craft-guilds, so far as concerns the perfection of work done, and that, all the members of the guilds being moved by the esprit de corps to stand by one another, any individual who complains finds himself nearly always condemned, and is harried by prosecution in court after court until he finds the course of justice more intolerable than the object of his complaint.

Those who understand the development of trade know that all important enterprises, whether of traffic or of industry, require the concurrence of two industrial classes, entrepreneurs who advance the raw material and the necessary implements of trade, and simple laborers who work for the account of the first for wages agreed upon. Herein lies the real distinction between entrepreneurs or masters and laborers or journeymen; it is based in the nature of things and does not depend on the arbitrary institution of corporations. Surely, those who embark their capital in a business have the greatest interest to entrust their material only to good workmen; and there is no ground for fear that they will take the risk of employing poor workmen who can only mutilate their merchandise and drive away their purchasers. And it must be presumed, as well, that entrepreneurs will not put their fortunes into a business about which they do not know enough to be able to choose good workmen and to oversee their labor. We have no fear then, that the suppression of apprenticeships, of journeymen and master pieces, will expose the public to unacceptable service.

Nor do we fear that the sudden influx of a multitude of new workmen will ruin the older ones, and give a disastrous shock to business.

In places where business is freest, the number of merchants and laborers of all kinds is limited always, and necessarily in proportion to the need, that is to say, to consumption. It will not pass that proportion in places where liberty is restored. No new entrepreneur will risk his fortune by sacrificing his capital in a venture where success is doubtful, and where he has reason to fear the competition of all the masters at present established in the enjoyment of the advantage of a settled business and patronage.

The masters who today compose the guilds, by losing the exclusive privilege they have as sellers, will profit as buyers by the suppression of the exclusive privilege of all other guilds. The artisans will profit by the advantage of not being dependent, in the fabrication of their articles, upon the masters of many other corporations, each of which claims the privilege of furnishing some indispensable part. The merchants will gain the privilege of selling all the assortments accessory to their chief trade. All will profit especially by being independent of the leaders and officials of their guild, and in having no longer to pay the fees of frequent visits, in having release from a multitude of contributions for wasteful or prejudicial expenses, costs of ceremonies, banquets, conventions, law suits, all as frivolous in their object as they are ruinous by their multiplicity.

In suppressing the guilds for the general advantage of our subjects, we owe it to their legitimate creditors who have entered into contracts with them in the period of their authorized existence to provide for the security of their credits.

The debts of the guilds are of two classes; the one arise from loans made by the guilds, the amounts of which have been turned into our royal treasury for the acquisition of the offices created and now abolished; the other arise from loans they were authorized to make in order to meet their own expenses of all kinds.

The taxes alienated to these offices, and the fees the guilds have been authorized to collect, have been devoted hitherto to the payment of the interest on the debts of the first class, and even in part to the repayment of the capital. The amount of the same profits will continue to accumulate in our accounts, and the same fees will be collected in our name, to be devoted to the payment of interest and capital of these debts until they are wholly discharged. The part of their revenue which has been used by the guilds for their private expenses, being now released, will serve to augment the sinking fund which we design for the repayment of the capitals concerned.

With regard to the debts of the second class, by the reckoning we have secured of the condition of the guilds in our good city of Paris, we are assured that the amounts they have in bank, or which are due to them, and the chattels they hold and which their suppression will make subject to sale, will be sufficient to discharge what remains to be paid of those debts; and if they are not sufficient, we will provide the balance.

We believe we thus render all justice due the guilds; for we think we ought not repay to their members the taxes required of them from reign to reign, for the right of confirmation or enjoyment. The object of those taxes, which frequently did not come into the treasury of our predecessors, has been attained by the enjoyment the guilds had of their privileges during the reign under which the taxes were paid.

The privilege had to be renewed in each reign. We have restored to our people the sums our predecessors were accustomed to collect for their enjoyment; but we have not renounced the right, inalienable from our sovereignty, of summoning for examination the privileges too readily granted by our predecessors, and of refusing them confirmation if we judge them prejudicial to the welfare of the state and contrary to the rights of our other subjects.

It is for this reason that we have determined not to confirm them, and to revoke expressly the privileges accorded by our predecessors to guilds of merchants and artisans, and to pronounce that revocation general throughout our kingdom, because we owe the same justice to all our subjects.

But that same justice requires that at the moment when the suppression shall be effected provision be made for the payment of their debts, and since the explanations we have requested of the condition of those in the different cities of our provinces have not yet been furnished, we have decided to suspend, by a separate article, the application of our present edict to the guilds of the provincial cities until we shall have taken the necessary measures to provide for the discharge of their debts.

We regret that we are forced to except, for the present, from the liberty we are giving to all kinds of business and industry, the guilds of barbers, wig-makers, and bath-keepers, which institutions differ from other bodies of the same kind, in that the masterships of these callings were created by virtue of offices, the revenue from which has been received in our casual revenue, with the privilege extended to the officials of retaining their ownership by the payment of 1 per cent. We are compelled to defer the emancipation of this kind of industry until we may make arrangements for the extinction of those offices, and we will do this as soon as the condition of our finances will permit.

Certain vocations are susceptible of abuse and affect the confidence of the public, or the general police of the state, or even the safety and life of men: these trades require a surveillance and special precaution on the part of the public authority. These vocations are pharmacy, gold-smithing, and printing. The rules to which these have been subject are parts of the general system of craft-guilds, and without doubt, in that respect, they ought to be revised; but the special features of that reform, the arrangements which it will be best to preserve or to change are objects so important as to demand careful examination and reflection. And while we reserve the right to make known later our intentions in the matter of the rules to be fixed for the practice of these trades, we believe that, for the present, they should not be changed from their existing state.

In assuring to business and industry entire liberty and the full competition it should enjoy, we will take such measures as the preservation of public order may require, in order that those who follow the different crafts, arts and trades may be known and established, at the same time, under the protection and the discipline of the police.

To this end, the merchants and artisans, their names, residence and employment will be exactly recorded. They will be grouped, not on the basis of their vocations, but according to the quarter where they have their domicile. And the officials of the guilds abolished will be replaced advantageously by syndics established in each quarter or arrondissement, to guard public order, to report to the magistrates charged with the police, and to transmit their orders.

All the guilds have numerous law suits: all litigation which the corporations have among themselves will be quashed because of the reform of the exclusive rights they claimed. If, on the dissolution of corporations and guilds, it is found that some cases have been begun and prosecuted in their name which present objects of permanent interest, we will provide that these be carried to a final judgment, for the preservation of whatever rights pertain thereunto.

We will provide further that that class of suits at law, which are frequently raised between artisans and those who employ them, concerning the perfection or the price of labor, may be ended by whatever means are most simple and least costly.

For these causes, etc., etc.,

Article I. It shall be free to all persons, of whatever quality and condition they may be, even all foreigners who may not yet have obtained letters of naturalization from us, to embrace and to exercise in all our kingdom, and especially in our good city of Paris, such kind of business and such profession of arts and trades as may seem good to them, even combining many: to this end we have abolished and suppressed, we will to abolish and suppress all corporations and guilds of merchants and artisans, as well as masterships and craft-guilds. We abrogate all privileges, statutes and regulations given to the said corporations and guilds, by reason of which none of our subjects may be annoyed in the prosecution of his business and his trade, for any cause or under any pretext whatsoever.

Article II. And it will be required, nevertheless, that all those who desire to pursue the said profession or business shall make preliminary declaration before the Lieutenant-General of Police, which will be inscribed in a record provided for that purpose, and will contain their names, surnames and domiciles, the kind of trade or business they purpose to undertake, and in case of change of residence or of business, or of retiring from business or labor, the said merchants or artisans will be required in like manner to make their declaration to the said recorder, free from all expense, on penalty against those who pursue their callings without having made the said declaration, of seizure and confiscation of their articles and merchandises, and a fine of 50 livres.

We exempt, however, from that obligation the present masters of corporations and guilds, who will not be required to make the said declarations except in case of change of domicile, of business, of new combination of trades, or retirement from business and labor.

We exempt further those who are now, or who may wish to become, wholesale merchants, our intention being not to subject such to any rules or formalities to which wholesale dealers have not been subject hitherto.

Article III. The declaration and inscription in the police records, ordained in the preceding article, concerns only those merchants and artisans who labor for their own account and sell to the public. With regard to the common laborers, who are not answerable directly to the public, but to entrepreneurs or masters, for whose account they work, the said entrepreneurs or masters will be required, on every requisition, to submit to the Lieutenant-General of Police a statement containing the name, domicile and kind of work of each of them.

Article IV. We do not intend, further, to include in the dispositions effected by articles I. and II. the vocations of pharmacy, gold-smithing, printing and book-selling, with regard to which there will be no innovation until we may enact for their control whatever pertains thereunto.

Article V. We exempt in like manner from the provisions of the said articles I. and II. of the present edict the guilds of master barbiers-perruquiers-étuvistes in the places where their business is exercised until otherwise ordained by us.

Article VI. We will that the present masters of the guilds of butchers, bakers and others whose trade has to do with the daily subsistence of our subjects may not abandon their business within one year after the declaration which they will be required to make before the Lieutenant-General of Police that they intend to withdraw from their business and trade, on penalty of 500 livres fine, and heavier punishment if it befall.

Article VII. Merchants and artisans who are obliged to keep a record of the names of those persons from whom they buy certain commodities, such as silver-smiths, haberdashers, second-hand dealers and others, will be required to abide faithfully by those records, and to submit them to the officials of police on the first requisition.

Article VIII. Any drugs, the use of which may be dangerous, shall not be sold except by apothecaries or by merchants who shall obtain special written permission from the Lieutenant-General of Police, and besides, shall be required to inscribe in a record, signed by the Lieutenant-General of Police, the names, rank and residence of the persons to whom they may wish to sell them, under penalty of 1000 livres fine, even of extraordinary prosecution, according to the requirements of the case.

Article IX. Such arts and trades as may occasion in their operation dangers or exceptional inconvenience, either to the public or to private individuals, will continue to be subject to police regulations, made or to be made, in order to preclude those dangers and inconveniences.

Article X. Arrondissements will be formed in the different quarters of the cities of our kingdom, and especially in our good city of Paris, in each of which a syndic and two assistants will be appointed by the Lieutenant-General of Police, for the first year only, and after the registration and then upon the execution of the present edict; afterward, the said syndics and assistants shall be chosen annually by ballot by the merchants and artisans of the said arrondissement, in an assembly held for that purpose in the house of and in the presence of a commissioner appointed by the Lieutenant-General of Police; which commissioner shall draw up an official report free of expense; then the said syndics and assistants shall take oath before the Lieutenant-General of Police, to exercise supervision over the traders and artisans of their arrondissement without distinction of condition or business, to report to the said Lieutenant-General of Police, to receive and to transmit his orders, and those who are appointed syndics and assistants may not refuse to discharge the functions appointed them, nor by reason of the same may they demand or receive from the said merchants or artisans any sum, either as a present, by virtue of their honors, or as an exaction: we expressly forbid this on penalty of the law on malversation of public moneys.

Article XI. Law suits which arise because of bad workmanship or defects in finished goods will be brought before the Lord Lieutenant-General of Police, to whom we delegate exclusive jurisdiction, in order that, on the agreement of experts commissioned for that purpose by him, immediate judgment may be had, without cost, and in final resort, except in case the demand for indemnity exceds the sum of 100 livres; in which case the matter will be tried in the ordinary form.

Article XII. In like manner there will be brought before the Lord Lieutenant-General of Police, for immediate judgment, without cost and in last resort, up to the amount of 100 livres, the law suits which may arise over the execution of engagements of time, apprentice contracts and agreements made by the masters and the laborers working for them, relative to that labor; and in case the sum at issue exceeds the value of 100 livres, they will be tried in the ordinary form.

Article XIII. We expressly forbid wardens or officials in charge of corporations or guilds to make hereafter any visits, inspections, seizures; to institute any action in the name of the said guilds; to convoke, or to assist to convoke any assembly under any pretext whatever, even under the pretext of acts of fraternities, which custom we abolish; and in general, to discharge any function in the capacity of wardens, and especially to demand or to receive any sum from members of their guilds, under any pretext whatever, on penalty of the law respecting malversation of public moneys, excepting, however, such sums as may be due to us for the taxes of the members of the said corporations and guilds, and the collection of these sums, both for the current year and what remains to be collected for preceding years, shall be made and continued in the usual form until payment is complete.

Article XIV. We forbid in like manner all masters, journeymen, laborers and apprentices of the said corporations and guilds to form any association or assembly among themselves under any pretext whatever. Wherefore, we have abolished and suppressed, do abolish and suppress, all fraternities which may have been established either by the masters of corporations and guilds or by journeymen and laborers in the arts and trades, even though set up by the statutes of the said corporations and guilds or by all other private claims, or even by letters-patent from us or our predecessors.

Article XV. With regard to the chapels erected on account of the said fraternities, endowments of the same and property included in the endowments; we will that provision for their employment be made by the bishops of the dioceses, in whatever manner they may deem most useful as well as to acquit the endowments; and letters patent will be drawn up, addressed to our court of parlement, in accordance with the decrees of the bishops.

Article XVI. The edict of the month of November, 1563, establishing consular jurisdiction in our good city of Paris, and the declaration of March 18, 1728, will be executed, as to the election of Consular Magistrates, in all that is not contrary to the present edict. Wherefore, we will that the presiding Consular Magistrates of the said city may be required to summon and assemble, three days before the expiration of their year, merchants to the number of sixty, citizens of the said city, provided that not more than five from each of the three guilds not suppressed may be summoned, apothecaries, gold-smiths and printer-booksellers, and not more than twenty-five appointed from among those who follow the vocations and business of dry goods, groceries, haberdashery, furs, hosiery, and wine selling, whether they conduct these trades singly or combine with them other branches of trade or of arts and commerce, amongst whom will be admitted by preference the wardens, syndics and assistants of the three guilds not suppressed and also those who are exercising, or who may exercise the functions of syndics or assistants of merchants or artisans in the various arrondissements of the said city; and with regard to those whom it may be necessary to add in order to fill out the number of sixty, they may be summoned up to the number of twenty by the said magistrates and consuls, from merchants and business men or other prominent bourgeois who are versed in business affairs; these sixty, together with the five Consular Magistrates presiding, and no others, thirty-two of them choosing, shall proceed, in the form and according to the provisions decreed by the said edict and the said declaration, to elect new magistrates and consuls; these shall take the oath of office in the great hall of our parlement in the accustomed manner.

Article XVII. All law suits now pending, in whatever court, between the said corporations and guilds, arising out of their claims or privileges or any other pretense whatever, shall be terminated by virtue of the present edict.

We forbid all gardes-jurés who have power of attorney, and all other agents whatever of the said corporations and guilds, to take any action by reason of the said suits, on pain of nullity and of answering in their person and private name for all costs which may be incurred. And with regard to suits resulting from seizures of chattels and merchandises, or whatever may have been given in place of them, we will that they in like manner be and remain terminated, and that the said chattels and merchandises be returned to those from whom they were seized, by virtue of a plain receipt which they shall give to the persons who happen to be in charge of the goods or acting as depositaries; reserving the provision for costs incurred until the day appointed for payment shall be set by the Lieutenant-General of Police, whom we appoint to this end, at which time the restitutions, damages, interests and costs which may be due to private individuals shall be taken from the sums belonging to the said guilds, if they are sufficient to cover the said amounts; if they are not, other provision will be made by us.

Article XVIII. With regard to the law suits of the said corporations and guilds which involve landed property, sites, payments on arrears of profits and other objects of like nature, we reserve to ourselves the right to provide the means of securing prompt investigation and trial by the courts where they are now on the docket.

Article XIX. We will that, within the space of three months, all wardens, syndics, and magistrates, both those who are now presiding and those who are about to relinquish their offices, as well as those who have not yet made their reports of their administration, be required to submit them, namely, in our good city of Paris, to the Lieutenant-General of Police, and in the provinces to commissioners whom we shall appoint for that purpose, in order that writs and revisions may be executed in the ordinary form, and constraints issued for the payment of the balance as shall be enacted by us, in order that all sums arising may be used to discharge the debts of the said guilds.

Article XX. To the end of providing for the payment of the debts of the said guilds of the city of Paris and for securing the claims of their creditors, there will be placed, without delay, in the hands of the Lieutenant-General of Police, schedules of the said debts, of payments made, of what remains to be paid, of means on hand for their payment, both fixed real estate and property and chattels and accounts which may happen to belong to them. All those who claim to be creditors of the said guilds will be required in like manner, within three months from the day of publication of the present edict, to submit to the Lieutenant-General of Police the titles of their credits, or certified copies of the same, in order that provision for their payment may be assured in whatever sums may belong to them.

Article XXI. The product of duties imposed by the kings, our predecessors, on different materials and merchandises, the collection and control of which have been granted to some of the corporations and guilds of the city of Paris, as well as the profits which have been assigned to them through the purchase of offices created at various times, and which have been included in the list of charges upon our finances, will continue to be exclusively devoted to the payment of arrears and to the payment of the capital of the loans made by the said guilds. We will that any sum in excess, arising from these products, above what will be necessary to discharge the arrears, as well as the entire saving resulting either from the diminution in the cost of collection or from the extinction of the expenses of the guilds which were taken out of these products, or from the diminution of interest charges because of successive reimbursements, be used as a sinking fund for the entire extinction of the capital of the said loans; and to this end a particular bank will be designated by us, under the inspection of the Lieutenant-General of Police, into which will be turned annually the amount of the said profits as the product of the said administrations, to be used only for the payment of arrearages and the repayment of capital.

Article XXII. Proceedings will be brought before the Lieutenant-General of Police for the sale of the land and other real estate as well as of the chattels of the said corporations and guilds, the product of which shall be used in the discharge of their debts, as has been enacted by article XX. herein. And in case the product of the said sale exceeds, for any corporation or guild, the amount of its debts, both to us and to private individuals, the said excess shall be divided in equal portions among the present masters of the said corporation or guild.

Article XXIII. With regard to the debts of corporations or guilds established in our provincial cities, we enact that, in the said space of three months, those who claim to be creditors of the said corporations or guilds be required to put into the hands of our Lieutenant-General of Police the titles of their said credits, or summarized schedules of the same, in order that the amount of the said debts may be determined by us and provision be made for their payment; and until we have taken the necessary measures to accomplish that end, we suspend in our provincial cities the suppression ordained by the present edict.

Article XXIV. We have made void and do make void by the present edict, all edicts, declarations, letters-patent, writs, statutes and regulations contrary to this present edict.

So given and commanded, etc., etc.

DECLARATION OF THE KING

Which Repeals Certain Rules Concerning Which the Letters-Patent of November 2, 1774, had Treated, Suppressing All Taxes Established in Paris on Wheat, Méteils, Rye, Flour, Peas, Beans, Lentils and Rice, and Moderating Those on Other Grain Products

Louis, etc., One of the first duties we felt we owed to the felicity of our peoples was to assure their daily subsistence by recalling, by the decree of our Council of September 13, 1774, and the letters-patent expediting the same of November 2 following, to its true principles legislation concerning the trade in grain. We desire that these principles be exposed clearly and in detail, in order to make known to our people that the surest means of procuring abundance is to maintain free circulation, so that the commodities may pass from places of abundance and supply to those of want and demand; to protect and to encourage the trade so that the doors will more surely be open to the places where there is the greatest consumption and a more certain market.

We have had the satisfaction of seeing the measures we have taken justified by experience, even in the midst of popular prejudice, of the inquietudes and annoyances arising from these prejudices, and of devastations committed by an ignorant or deluded populace. After an unusually poor harvest, the inadequacy of which was attested by the amount of new grain which provisioned the markets, even before the following harvest was garnered, and despite the disarrangement and cessation of trade which the renewal of old rules that are contrary to liberty wrought in the speculations of dealers, and the interruption of the trade in grain which resulted from these regulations during many years, the commodity, nevertheless, was not lacking; the afflicted provinces were relieved by the resources of those which were better supplied; a considerable quantity of grain was imported into the realm; and the price, though higher than we could have desired, was not so excessive, however, as we have often seen it under the prohibitive regime, even in years when the harvest was generally much better than that of the year 1774.

At least, a better harvest restored abundance. We may not hasten too quickly to turn to advantage these days of tranquility and complete the removal of all obstacles which may yet retard the activity and progress of commerce, in order that, if crop failure afflicts our provinces anew, our people may find resources prepared in advance against famine, and that they may not be exposed longer to the excessive variations in the value of grains which destroy all semblance of proportion between the level of wages and the cost of subsistence.

Great cities, and especially capitals, naturally attract abundance by the wealth and number of consumers. Our good city of Paris seems in particular to be destined to become the entrepôt of a most extensive trade.

The rivers Seine, Yonne, Marne, Oise and Loire, by the canals of Briare and Orleans, establish ready communication between this city and the most fertile provinces of our kingdom; they offer a natural passage by means of which the wealth of all the provinces should circulate freely and be distributed among them; the vast extent of the consumption of Paris includes necessarily a great part of commodities of all kinds, if nothing arrests them in their course; it would even have at its disposal all the commodities which a free commerce would be impelled to secure for it and turn into it from all contiguous provinces.

Nevertheless, we admit with regret that the provisionment with grain of our said city, far from being abundant and ready as it would be in a state of free circulation, has been for many centuries an object of sore care for the government and of solicitude for the police, and that these attentions have tended only to repress the commerce entirely.

In giving our letters-patent of November 2, 1774, we proposed to ourselves to seek out, by the most rigid examination of the separate police regulations of our said city of Paris, the causes which set themselves in opposition to the facility of its provisionment, as we announced by article 5 of the said letters-patent our intention to ordain concerning those rules by a new law.

We have had before us accordingly the ordinances, decrees and regulations of police pertaining to the trade in grain and the provisionment of Paris.

We discover that in calamitous times of trouble and civil war, in the centuries when commerce had no existence, and its principles could not be known, the kings, our predecessors, Charles VI, Charles IX, and Henry III, promulgated some ordinances covering that matter; that, without the concurrence of royal authority, many police rules have been added to form a body of legislation equivalent to a prohibition of bringing grain into Paris; that custom and precedent have maintained it, and sometimes confirmed it; that, even when government began to bring to bear on that object a more enlightened attention, vigorous claims were made for the conservation of that police; that it has been preserved as if it had been the safeguard of the facility of subsistence.

That officials, created at different times in connection with the market and port, were charged with the oversight of its execution, and were nevertheless authorized to collect taxes which further injured the sale of grain.

That, finally, for some few years, a tax has been laid on that trade for the construction of a market and warehouse.

Thus, in combining the different effects of the police designed to assure the necessities of life in Paris, it results that not only do the taxes of various nature increase the price of grain and flour, but that these regulations prevent their abundance, and that all parts of this legislation are so mutually contradictory and so opposed to their object, that the one indispensable thing required to reform them is to expose, by the simplest statement, these regulations and their effects.

An ordinance of February, 1415, renewed by a decree of August 19, 1661, forbids any one to store or to remove the sacks of grain or flour arriving by land, to unload, to store in granaries or magasins, or even under awnings, the same commodities arriving by water; as a result, according to these regulations, they have to remain exposed to the atmosphere, to the rain and the damp, which destroys them. The same decree of 1661 forbids accumulating any store of grain, and allowing it to be stopped in the places where purchased, or at the ports of lading, or on the roads by which it should arrive.

These combined restrictions prevent Paris from having any means of keeping a supply of grain and flour within its borders or of having any supply in its environs.

The same ordinance of 1415 imposes on the merchants who bring grain to Paris the obligation to sell before the third market day, on penalty of being compelled to sell at the lower price of the preceding markets; and the decree of August 19, 1661, and the Ordinance of Police of March 31, 1635, after having taken away from all merchants the privilege of making any purchase in Paris, forbid in like manner all bakers from purchasing more than two hogsheads of wheat at a single bargain.

Thus the same police, by its contradictory dispositions, forces the sale and forbids the purchase.

By conforming strictly to that police, the capital could never have provision for more than eleven days’ consumption; for the interval between three markets is only eleven days, and, on one hand, the merchants, assured of not having free disposition of their commodity after that interval, and of being forced, perhaps, to sell at a loss, would bring into Paris only the grain necessary for eleven days’ subsistence; while on the other hand, the city could have no provisions in its private dépôts, since they are prohibited there; nor even in the bake-shops, since they are forbidden to buy more than two hogsheads of grain.

If that police be observed, every time that high or low water, or ice and snow interrupted navigation or land travel for more than eleven days, the inhabitants of Paris would wholly lack subsistence in the most fruitful years, and in the midst of the abundance which the rest of the kingdom enjoys.

A decree of Parlement on August 23, 1565, forbade grain merchants, on penalty of corporal punishment, to export from the city, either by land or by water, going either up or down the river, the grain they had brought into it; two ordinances of police, of 1622 and 1632, added to the rigor of that decree by forbidding the purchase and the removal of any grain for a greater distance than ten leagues from Paris, on penalty of confiscation and arbitrary fine.

These dispositions tend to banish trade in grain from the city of Paris, where the négociant is deprived of liberty and almost of the property right in his commodity, and especially of the allurement, so essential to trade, of being able to take it where there is hope of receiving profit; that police informs him that he can neither enter the city nor pass within the arrondissement of ten leagues, and that space becomes an insurmountable point of separation between all the provinces which might have profited by the advantages of navigation, for their mutual succor; in this way Bourgogne and Champagne, having an over-supply of grain, cannot relieve Normandy afflicted by famine, for the sole reason that the Seine traverses Paris and its arrondissement: in the same way scarcely any relief could be brought from Normandy to Paris and beyond, by ascending the Seine, until, by our edict of June, 1775, suppressing the offices of privileged merchants and carriers of grain, and abolishing the right of banalité of the city of Rouen, we removed the obstacles which intercepted the grain trade in that city.

The police ordinance of 1635, cited above, and confirmed by an edict of 1772, forbade merchants who had begun the sale of a cargo of wheat to increase the price; and by an obvious injustice, the merchant subject to hasards which might have diminished the price at the commencement of his sale could not profit by those which, before the end of that sale, might have made the price more advantageous.

The same rules enjoin further, that all traders who bring grain to Paris shall conduct the sale there in person or by some member of the family, and not by brokers (facteurs); it ignored the fact that the laborer can not then abandon the tasks of cultivation, or the trader the care of his business, to follow a part of his merchandise; that neither of them can leave without expense; and that these expenses, having to be defrayed out of their trade, would uselessly augment the price of grains.

The prohibition laid on wagoners (voituriers), by the edict of 1661, from selling grain along the road, and even from untying the sacks, on penalty of confiscation, is without object in regard to the trade, which should not be throttled by being bound up with such details; it is inhuman toward those of our subjects who may happen to have immediate and pressing needs; it is still more inconvenient and repulsive to the dealer whom it exposes to anxiety and to unjust punishment, perhaps, if some accident obliges him to touch the sacks of grain which he is conveying.

Finally, the obligation imposed by the same decree of 1661 on those who carry on the grain trade for Paris, to submit their invoices to notaries, to present them to the officials of grain, and to register them in a public record, is a formality contrary to all the customs and interests of commerce, which demands above all else good faith, secrecy and celerity of transaction; and that law has no other object than to occasion expenses which increase the cost of sales.

It is by such rules that it was deemed most fit in other times, and almost to our day, to provide the subsistence of our good city of Paris. The négociants, whose function is that of necessary agents of circulation and who carry abundance unfailingly wherever they find liberty, security and markets, have been treated as enemies who must be harassed on the way and loaded with chains when they arrive; the grain they bring to the city cannot be taken out: but they can neither keep it nor protect it from the ravages of climate and corruption; they are forced to hasty sales; they are stopped from making purchases; the merchant must sell his grain by the third market day or lose control of it; the purchaser can provide for his wants only slowly and in small quantities. Diminution in prices brings a loss to the trader; their increase can profit him nothing; the grain merchants, dismayed by the rigors of the police, are moreover exposed to public hatred; the trade is oppressed, slandered on all sides, and driven from the city; a district twenty leagues in diameter divides the provinces of greatest abundance from each other and from our city; and yet all precautions were forbidden in the interior of the city and the outskirts; they seem even to have conspired against future harvests, by requiring that the laborer quit his work to follow his grain and sell it himself.

That disastrous police produced in former times the effects which might be expected; periods of excessive and protracted scarcity rapidly succeeded years of abundance; these were prolonged without actual famine; they led to violent and dangerous remedies, which only prolonged them because commerce, destroyed by these rules, could offer no help.

Such at least are the effects which our city of Paris experienced in 1660, 1661, 1662, 1663; in the years 1692, 1693, 1694; in the years 1698 and 1699; then in the year 1709, and later in the years 1740 and 1741, sad times when the price of grain, though moderate in the provinces, was nevertheless excessive in Paris; when the excess of price was determined, not by the effective quantities of goods, but by the greed of a small number of merchants to whom the sale of grain was granted, under a regime which permitted neither trade, nor circulation, nor competition. Only the disregard of these exasperating restrictions, based on the laws of necessity, has been able to make less uncertain the provisionment of our good city of Paris; they were a ceaseless menace of famine and high prices; it was necessary to tolerate resources against frost and floods; to have magasins in the district of ten leagues, and even in the interior; to permit the merchants to preserve their grain against climatic conditions, to allow them time to make their sales, and the privilege of employing agents: it is only by the non-execution of the laws that Paris has been able to provide its subsistence.

But the non-execution of such laws is not sufficient to reassure the trade, which their existence continually menaces; it has not recovered its functions; the government, being unable to rely on it, believes it necessary to proceed by itself to secure the provisionment of the capital. It has found that that precaution, reputed necessary, involves the greatest possible inconvenience; that the commerce conducted under its orders admits neither the extent and celerity, nor the economy of the ordinary commerce; that its authorized agents, in all the markets where they appear, bring alarm and sudden rise in prices; that they by reason of their very functions commit many abuses; that operations of that kind completing the discouragement and absolute ruin of ordinary trade, enormously increase the expenses, and by consequence the burdens of our subjects who supply the funds; and finally, that they do not accomplish their object.

It is especially in recent times that the multiplied inconveniences of the laws have been conspicuously apparent. The declaration of May 25, 1763, seemed to open the way to agricultural prosperity and facility of subsistence, by ordaining that the circulation of grain should be entirely free in all parts of the kingdom; but a multitude of particular and local obstacles thwarted the general intent of the law and embarrassed all communication; they were not yet recalled or removed.

The edict of July, 1764, was in force for only a very short time, when its provisions were changed: that legislation, yet incomplete, needed careful attention; and yet the poor harvests caused every proposed innovation to be regarded with timidity, until the decree of the Council of December 23, 1770, and the letters-patent of September 16, 1771, recalling the prohibitive régime of past centuries, refastened the shackles from which the grain trade was barely disentangled, and surcharged it with numerous and complex formalities which made it impossible.

At that time the inequality of harvests ceased to be the measure of the value of grains; their true price existed nowhere; they were given an excessive value in some places, and moderate and even low valuation in places immediately contiguous. Wheat and rye were lacking in our most frequented ports, and they could be brought from other ports where abundance reigned, only when directed by the Admiralty office. The appearance of some local famine, always at hand, burdens the government with solicitude, with excessive expenses and with compulsory operations which give the people much disquiet and too little real relief; and in the spaces of time when many successive harvests have been sufficiently good, the general price of grain has been higher than in 1775, after the poor harvest of 1774.

The examination of these facts, which are well known to the public, convinces us that only a commerce emancipated from all annoyance and all fear will suffice for all needs, prevent the inequalities in price and the sudden and startling variations which so often come without any actual cause; that it alone, in case of misfortune, will be able to remedy the actual famines in a way that all government expenditures can never succeed in doing.

Determined to give, on all occasions, proofs to our people of our love for them, and to make what sacrifices their welfare and the facility of their subsistence may demand of us, we will to choose in preference and to make known to them those things of which the utility is most certain and most direct; we purpose to establish abundance within their walls, by repealing the rules which banish it, by freeing grain from the taxes which increase the price and which vex the trade; finally, by delivering it from the troublesome functions of certain offices created to oversee the execution of these rules, and which it is in our mind to suppress, along with other offices of the same kind, by our edict of this month.

We are determined to exempt from all taxes and to grant the enjoyment of absolute immunity to wheat, méteils,1 rye, flour, peas, beans, lentils and rice, destined for consumption by the people of our said city; but, while exercising our beneficence in the present extinction of taxes, we would not forget that it is in our justice to provide for indemnities due by reason of the suppressions which we purpose to ordain.

One part of the duties which are collected on grain has been conceded to the prévôt of merchants and aldermen of our good city of Paris, by the declaration of November 25, 1762, for the establishment of a new market and warehouse. The revenue is assigned to the payment of present charges, the acquittal of which will be provided for by us until January 1, 1783, at which time the payment of the claim for market and warehouse should cease, by the terms of the same declaration.

Another part of the same taxes was devoted to the offices of measurers and carriers of grain, established in connection with the market and ports by the edict of the month of June, 1730, and which are included in the general suppression ordained by our edict of this month.

The order effectually to establish the indemnities assured to these offices by our edict requires that we reserve, to be collected to our profit, a part of the taxes, attributed to the same offices, on oats, grain and grain products other than wheat, méteils, rye, flour, peas, beans, lentils and rice, and less useful to the subsistence of our people than the kinds we specifically emancipate.

We will, however, to distinguish and to abolish only that portion of the taxes which represents the wages of porters actually employed in the service of the markets; we will continue to collect that part reserved to the officials, as an interest in their finance.

We have no doubt that commerce delivered from all encumbrances and encouraged by our laws will provide for all the needs of our good city of Paris. Therefore a constant abundance and just prices for the necessities of life ought to be the consequence and effect of the reform of a vexatious police, of the protection we accord to trade, of the freedom of communication, and finally, of the absolute immunity from all taxes which increase the price; and the good we shall accomplish for our subjects will be the most grateful recompense for the pains we take in their behalf. For these causes, etc.

Article I. We will that it may be free to all persons, of whatever quality and condition they may be, to bring in and to hold in storage or magasin, both in our good city of Paris and in the circumscribing district of ten leagues and elsewhere, grain and flour, and to sell them in such places as shall seem good to them, even away from boats and markets.

Article II. It shall be likewise free to all persons, even to bakers of our good city of Paris, to buy grain and flour at all hours, in such quantities and in such places, both within the said city and elsewhere, as they judge fit.

Article III. Those who have grain and flour, whether in the markets and ports, or in granaries or magasins in the said city of Paris, shall not be constrained to sell them at the third market day, or at any other fixed time.

Article IV. Those who have grain to sell in our said city may also increase as well as lower the price, in conformity with the course of trade, without being compelled, under the pretext of uncovering a pile or cargo of grain, and commencing the sale from one or both, to continue the sale at the same price.

Article V. It shall be equally free to all those who have grain or flour in the said city of Paris to sell them in person or by brokers or agents.

Article VI. Those who carry on trade in grain in our city of Paris, or for it, may not be in any case constrained to submit any declarations, bills of lading or invoices before notaries, or to record them in any public record.

Article VII. It shall be free to all persons to remove, both from the city of Paris and from its circumscribing district of ten leagues, the grain and flour they may have brought in, or which they may have purchased therein, without needing, for that end, any permission.

Article VIII. We have abolished and suppressed, do abolish and suppress the taxes on wheat, méteils, rye, flour, peas, beans, lentils and rice, which we have included in the suppression ordained, by our edict of the present month, of different offices created in connection with the ports and markets; all of which taxes on the commodities most necessary to life, we do give and restore to the inhabitants of our good city of Paris. We forbid, under severe penalty, all persons, under pretext of the same, to make any such collection, beginning from the day of publication of our present declaration.

Article IX. We have in like manner abolished and suppressed, do abolish and suppress the tax for market and warehouse levied on wheat, méteils, rye, flour, peas, beans, lentils and rice, together with the 8 sous per livre assessed on account of the same tax; and, in consequence of the provisions enacted by the present article and by the preceding article, the said grain and flour are exempt from all taxes whatsoever in our good city of Paris. We will, furthermore, that the collection of the said tax for market and warehouse, on all other commodities and merchandises which are subject to it, and which are not specifically freed by our present declaration, shall continue to be made for the benefit of the prévôt of merchants and aldermen of our good city of Paris, until January 1, 1783, when the said collection should cease, in accordance with the letters-patent of November 25, 1762, by which it was established.

Article X. We have reserved and do reserve (as is herein set forth), to be collected to our profit, the taxes attributed to the offices of measurers and carriers of grain, levied on oats, malt, grains and grain products other than wheat, méteils, rye, peas, beans, lentils and rice. We will that the said collection be made at the barriers by the agents and clerks of the Farmer General of our taxes, who shall be held to strict account, in conformity with the provisions of article III of the edict of the present month, enacting the suppression of guilds of officials to whom the taxes have been assigned.

Article XI. We ordain that, under the taxes reserved and designated by the preceding article, a separation be made of that part answering to the wages of labor, which the said officials may have received in connection with the grain in the markets and ports; and that from the day of publication of our present declaration, the said portion shall cease to be collected; and the other part of the same taxes, which we have intended to reserve, shall be collected on the basis of, and in conformity with, the tariff attached under the counter-seal of our present declaration.

Article XII. Provision will be made by us for the indemnity due the said prévôt of merchants and aldermen of our good city of Paris, by reason of the extinction ordained, by article IX herein, of the market and warehouse tax on grain and flour announced in the said article, and from funds which shall be designated by us for that purpose.

Article XIII. Furthermore, our letters-patent, given concerning the commerce in grain on November 2, 1744, shall be executed for our good city of Paris, and for the circumscribing arrondissement of ten leagues. We annul all ordinances, edicts, declarations, letters-patent, decrees and regulations contrary to the same.

So given by commandment, etc.

EDICT OF THE KING

Enacting the Suppression of the Exchange of Poissy, and the Conversion and Modification of Duties

Louis, etc. It not infrequently happens, in the necessities of the State, that it is sought to adorn the taxes, which must needs be imposed, by some pretext of public utility. That subterfuge, to which the kings our predecessors sometimes believed it necessary to descend, has rendered the taxes, the birth of which it marked, more onerous. One of its results was that the taxes endured long after the need which had been their real cause, by reason of the apparent utility by which they were disguised, or that they were renewed under the same pretext, which favored various private interests.

Thus in January, 1690, to sustain the war begun in the preceding year, sixty offices of jurés-vendeurs of cattle were created, to which was granted 1 sou per livre of the value of the cattle consumed in Paris, on condition that they pay foreign merchants the cash for the animals they brought in: this appeared likely to encourage the trade and to procure abundance by preventing the delays to which the drovers were exposed so long as they dealt directly with the butchers.

The first trial gave rise to innumerable complaints on the part of both foreign merchants and the butchers, who represented that the creation of jurés-vendeurs of cattle was a grievous burden on their trade instead of an advantage to it; that there was no need of any intermediary between the men who supplied the animals and those who retailed to the public; that Paris had been provisioned before without any one appointed to advance payments to the vendors of animals; and that the tax of 1 sou per livre necessarily raised the price of meat and lessened the demand. These representations were regarded; and, by a declaration of March 11th of the same year, the king, Louis XIV, “wishing,” said he, “to treat with consideration the said foreign merchants and the butchers of the said city of Paris, and to procure an abundance of cattle for it,” suppressed the sixty offices of jurés-vendeurs. However, at the end of seventeen years, in 1707, in the course of an unfortunate war, after having exhausted all other resources, recourse was again had to the arguments which produced the edict of 1690: it was alleged that certain individuals were exacting from the butchers usurious charges, and one hundred offices of Treasury-Counsellors of the Bourse of the markets of Sceaux and of Poissy were created, with the view of having a bureau in daily oversight of the market, to advance to foreign merchants the price of the animals sold by them to butchers and other solvent merchants; and these officials were authorized to collect 1 sou per livre of the value of all animals sold, even of those for which they had not advanced the price. This institution, so strongly suggestive of the times of calamity, was suppressed again when peace was assured.

The trade in cattle, freed from fees and kindred shackles, recovered its natural course and continued for thirty years without interruption. During that period Paris was abundantly provisioned, and the raising of cattle flourished in many of our provinces.

But the expenses of a new war urged the government, at the end of 1743, to make use of the same financial resource which was supported by the same pretext. It was supposed to be necessary to lower the price of animals by putting the foreign merchants in position to supply the greatest possible number. It was held that the most plausible means of accomplishing this was to pay them in cash, and that this advantage would not be too dear at a deduction of 1 sou per livre. But although that deduction was established for all sales of animals, the bank was exempted, as in 1707, from advancing the price to those who sold to butchers not of recognized solvency; the period of credit to others was limited to two weeks. These rules restricted the usefulness of the bank, practically, to collecting a fee of 1 sou per livre.

That fee was farmed: it has continued from that time to be a part of the revenue of the State. One-fourth sou per livre was added by the edict of 1747, and continued in force by lettres-patent of March 16, 1755, and of March 3, 1767.

In bringing these edicts and letters-patent to our attention, we have been unable to escape the conviction that their provisions were directly opposed to the effects it was hoped and promised would be accomplished by them.

The duty of 6 per cent, which raised the price of each animal more than fifteen livres, did not fail to raise the price of meat instead of lowering it, and to cut down the profits of the breeders who raised and fattened the stock; it discouraged that industry and annihilated the abundance, not only of meat in the shops, but still more of the herds which the pastures might have supported, had there been adequate profit in raising the greatest possible number.

On the other hand, if it seems advantageous that the majority of the foreign merchants should receive in cash the price of the cattle brought in by them, it is no less contrary to every principle of justice that the wealthy butchers who are able to pay their bills in cash for themselves, should, notwithstanding that, be compelled to pay interest on an advance they do not need; and that the butchers who happen to be in less easy circumstances and to whom credit is refused on the ground that they are not regarded as unquestionably solvent, be also compelled to pay the interest on an advance which is not made for them at all.

The edict which created the exchange fixed fifteen days as the limit of time for the butchers to acquit themselves of their obligations to the bank of Poissy, and gave to the farmers of that exchange the right of corporal constraint in the third week; the result is that the effective advance of amounts loaned is never equal to one-twelfth of the amount of the sales; it should be much less than that, inasmuch as the bankers, having the right to refuse credit to butchers of questionable solvency, are far from making advances for all the sales.

Nevertheless, the interest has to be paid just as if the whole amount of the sale had been advanced, and in like manner if the sale is made on the first day of the year, interest must be paid as if it was for the full year. The tax that is paid ought, then, to be regarded less as the price of advances made to butchers as a genuine tax on cattle and on butcher’s meat.

We would desire that the condition of our finances permitted us to sacrifice entirely that branch of revenue; but since that is impossible, and we cannot tolerate it in its present form, we have preferred to replace it by an increase of duty collected on entry into Paris, both on live animals and on meat destined for consumption. The simplicity of that method of collection, which involves no new expense, places us in position to relieve our subjects, at the present time, from about two-thirds of the burden laid on them to provide the fees of the Exchange of Poissy.

Besides, we are convinced that the greatest advantage our subjects will derive from the change will result from the greater freedom which the suppression of the Exchange of Poissy will bring to the trade in cattle. It is from that liberty, from the competition it will beget, and the encouragement it will give to production, that there may be attained the reestablishment of abundance of herds and moderation in the price of so large a part of the subsistence of our subjects.

For these causes, etc., we have, by the present edict, enacted and ordained as follows:

Article I. We will that, beginning from the first day of Lent of the present year, the fee of 1 sou per livre of the value of animals designed for the provisionment of Paris, established by edict of 1744, and the additional one-fourth sou per livre of the said fee, established by the edict of September, 1747, both continued by letters-patent of March 16, 1755, and March 3, 1767, and collected by virtue of the same at the markets of Sceaux and Poissy, be and remain suppressed.

Article II. In order to make good in part the diminution which will be effected in our revenues by the suppression of fees enacted by the preceding article, in the future, there will be collected, beginning from the first day of Lent next following, at the gates and entries of our good city of Paris, in addition to, and in increase of, the duties which are now established, the extra fees herein announced:

	Livres	Sous	Deniers
For each bullock	5	1	1
cow	3	10
calf	11	10	45
sheep	6
pound of dressed beef, veal and mutton	5	12	75

Article III. The supplemental duties established by the preceding article being entirely destined to replace that part of our revenue, which came from the duty of 1 sou per livre and the one-fourth sou per livre of the same, established on the sale of animals in the markets of Sceaux and Poissy, and which we have suppressed by the preceding article; the said supplemental duties cannot be subject to, nor give place to, any duty of first or second twentieths, old or new sous per livre, fees of officials, gratuitous gift, fee of service, and sous per livre of the same in favor of the General Hospital of the city of Paris, of any titulaires of offices, of any administration, or of the highest bidder of our fermes.

Article IV. The duty on each pound of veal will be lowered to a total of six and sixteen twenty-fifths deniers, and reduced to the same basis as that per pound of beef, veal or mutton, reserving the right of indemnity to whatever amount may pertain thereto.

Article V. We have suppressed, and in like manner do suppress, beginning from the same day, the Caisse or Bourse of the markets of Sceaux and Poissy, established and prorogued by the edicts and declarations of 1743, 1755, and 1767; we cancel the former lease to Bouchinet and his sureties; and we release him from the engagements under it, reserving to ourselves to provide whatever indemnity the highest bidder of our fermes-générales may claim because of the one-fourth sou per livre included in his lease.

Article VI. We authorize the said Bouchinet and his sureties to recover, within the accustomed period, the sums they may happen to have advanced before the said first day of Lent: we will that they cease to make new advances, and we confirm them in the right of prosecution and privilege which they have enjoyed heretofore for the recovery of their funds.

Article VII. We permit butchers and foreign merchants who bring in animals to them, to make among themselves such agreements as they judge fit, and to stipulate such credit as shall seem good to them.

Article VIII. We permit, also, among those who have managed for us the said Caisse or Bourse of Poissy, and to all others of our subjects, to loan, on conditions which shall be mutually and voluntarily accepted, their money to butchers who believe they have need of it in the conduct of their business.

Thus do we give and command, etc.

LETTERS-PATENT

Of February 6, 1776, Enacting a Change and Modification of Taxes on Suet

Louis, etc. Having rendered an account in our Council of the different police regulations, decisions and writs interfering in the matter of trade in suet in our good city of Paris, and also of the taxes of different nature which are collected on that commodity, and of the form of their collection, we have discovered that the imaginary precautions, taken during a period of two centuries, to procure the abundance and cheapness of a substance so essential to meet the needs of our people, have had necessarily effects directly opposite to what was intended; that, by the old rules of 1567 and 1577, maintained by later decisions, and particularly by a writ of August 19, 1758, no permission was granted either to the butchers who collect and render the suet to handle it themselves and to sell it freely, or to the chandlers who made use of it, to supply themselves with whatever quantity they deemed necessary for their work; that the suet had to be set out for sale on fixed days, and divided among the master chandlers, who could pay only a uniform price on penalty of fine; that what it became necessary to import in order to supply what was lacking in our kingdom, was subject to the same rules and a like division, and that as a result, no private individual could be permitted to speculate in this useful branch of trade; that the whole guild of chandlers could not do so, even if they were free, because of the heavy duties laid upon the importation of that material, until they had persuaded the late king, our very honored lord and grandfather, to moderate them by the writ of his Council of November 28, 1768. We have been unable to discover in that police, so contrary to all the principles of trade, anything other than a consequent abuse resulting from the vicious constitution of corporations and guilds which we are determined to suppress. Our purpose being that for the future the business of butcher and chandler, as well as all others, shall be freely followed, the method of exposing for public sale and division among the master chandlers can no longer continue; and, the taxes to which it has been subject being no longer suffered to be collected in the manner hitherto followed, it is necessary to substitute a method simpler and more advantageous to the people. Wherefore, we have provided this by a writ issued this day in our Council, in our presence, and we have ordained that for its execution all necessary letters shall be drawn up. For these causes, etc., We have decreed as follows:

Article I. Trade in suet shall be free for the future in our good city of Paris, and the obligation of exposing it for sale for division among the chandlers, shall remain abrogated, beginning from the publication of the writ of this date and these presents, notwithstanding all decisions of police and writs in confirmation of the same, which we will to be regarded as null and void; wherefore, all butchers shall be free to sell, as well as all chandlers to purchase the said commodity, in such times or places, and in such quantity as shall seem good to them.

Article II. The tax of a sou per pound levied on the sale of suet in the interior of Paris, shall be suppressed and shall cease to be collected beginning from the same day.

Article III. In order to supply the amount of the said tax, it will be replaced by a tax on the animals which produce the suet, in proportion to the average quantity taken from them; which tax, moderate in itself, will be collected only at the entries and barriers of Paris, at the rate of 2 livres 12 sous 2 25deniers per bullock, 1 livre 5 sous 5 15deniers per cow, and 5 sous 2 deniers per head of mutton.

Article IV. The said tax of entrance established by the preceding Article shall not be subject to any additional fees in favor of the city of Paris, of the General Hospital, or of our Farmers-General, since the tax is only by way of replacement and the tax which it replaces was not subject to any additional fees.

Article V. The main tax of 100 sous per quintal, on the entrance of foreign suet into Paris, will be reduced to 1 livre 10 sous 9 35deniers, so that, with the fees of domain, barrage, poids-le-roi, and sou per livre of the same, which amounts to 11 sous 2 25deniers, it will make the sum of 2 livres 10 sous per quintal, or 6 deniers per pound of suet or of tallow.

Article VI. All additional taxes of first and second twentieths, 4 sous per livre of the first twentieth, gare, gratuity, twentieth of gratuity, and 8 sous per livre of the same, established on the entry of foreign suet, shall be and remain suppressed, we reserving, if it so happen, the right to make whatever indemnity may pertain thereto.

Article VII. The taxes established by articles III. and V. herein shall be administered and collected by the contractor (adjudicataire) of our fermes-générales, for our account; therefore, the managers for us who are in charge, under the name of ouache, of the recovery of the combined taxes will be absolved from making any account, as well of the product of taxes on the sale of suet in the interior of Paris, as of that which is secured from the suburbs, and also of the principal tax d’entrée on foreign suet; and this is in effect from the day the adjudicataire of our taxes shall begin to administer the taxes established by way of replacement.

Article VIII. We abrogate all ordinances, writs, and regulations contrary to the provisions of the preceding articles.

EDICT OF THE KING

Enacting the Suppression of Offices Connected with the Ports, Quays, Stalls and Markets of Paris

Louis, etc. The resolution we have made to direct our attention to everything which may procure the welfare of our subjects, has caused us to examine the different edicts by which the kings, our predecessors, successively created, suppressed and restored different offices, of which the greater part remain in existence, in connection with the port, quays, stalls and markets of our good city of Paris, and the concessions of various sorts which were alienated to these offices.

We have discovered, by the conditions of the period in which they were created, that they owe their origin to the extraordinary needs of the state in times of calamity, and we are assured that in times more fortunate it has always been proposed to suppress them as burdensome to the people and useless to the police regulations, which had served as the pretext for their creation.

It was in accordance with these motives that the suppression of all offices of that kind which were created since 1688 was decreed by the edicts of May, 1715, and September, 1719, and all these offices remained abolished and suppressed without making any change in public order and police, after the said years 1715 and 1719, until the years 1727 and 1730, when the late king, our honored lord and grandfather, decided to restore them, and did so by the edicts of January and June of the said years.

By article II of the edict of 1730, it was specifically ordained that the former incumbents of the offices which had been suppressed might acquire the offices newly created upon the payment of sums fixed by the roles decreed by the Council: namely, one-seventh in money and six-sevenths in liquidation of the former offices, in arrears of the same liquidations, and in supplemental contracts with the city; and with regard to those who had not been incumbents formerly, they were permitted to acquire the offices in like manner upon payment of one-sixth in money and five-sixths in contracts.

The taxes alienated to these offices having been compared, in 1759, with other taxes of the same kind re-established by the edict of December, 1743, and farmed out, it was discovered that there was a great disproportion between the products of these taxes and the finances of the offices. The late king, by his edict of September, 1759, ordained that the offices should be suppressed; that the taxes should be collected to his profit and that the product should be destined to the repayment of so much of the finances of the holders of the offices as was comprised in the sums loaned by them.

That edict announced to the people freedom from many branches of burdensome restrictions, and to the state the recovery of part of its revenue.

New requirements prevented its execution: the edict of March, 1760, permitted the holders of the offices suppressed to continue for a time the exercise of their functions and to enjoy their privileges; it ratified their suppression, however, by postponing the collection which would effect their reimbursement, the time of which was fixed at January 1, 1771, and to be completed in 1782. Circumstances continuing to be contrary to these provisions, it became necessary to provide by the declaration of December 5, 1768, that the beginning of repayment should be deferred until January 1, 1777, and be finished in 1788.

The edict of 1760 and the declaration of 1768, although permitting a temporary enjoyment of their privileges by the incumbents, did not revoke the suppression decreed by the edict of September, 1759. That disposition remains in full force and ought to be put into execution at the moment when the holders of the offices may receive the indemnity which they have a right to claim by virtue of their warrants (titres).

That indemnity, fixed for them by article II of the edict of June, 1730, consists for part of them of one-seventh of their finances in money and six-sevenths in mortgage-contracts on the product of the same taxes; for the other part of them, it consists of one-sixth in money and five-sixths in contracts. Therefore, since the holders of the offices are assured of that indemnity the suppression ordained by the edict of 1760 ought to be in force.

The creditors of the guilds of officials should receive their payment in preference to the officials themselves, because the offices are encumbered and their profits mortgaged.

It is in accordance with our justice to preserve their rights and to assure the capital and interest of the credits which are due to them according to the profits of the taxes alienated to the said offices, until the execution of the arrangements ordained by the declaration of September 5, 1768.

Such an operation is equally advantageous to the officials, to their creditors, and to the people.

Most of the guilds complain that the products they enjoy at present are diminished to the point of being insufficient to acquit them of the charges with which they are burdened. Thus the incumbents of offices lose their value, and their creditors see the security of their credits diminishing and becoming inadequate.

On the part of our subjects, to whom we desire to give, on every occasion, tokens of our affection, their interest requires that the taxes heretofore alienated to these guilds be henceforth reunited in our hand and administered under our order, in order that, during the time that the state of our finances will not permit us to cease collecting them altogether, we may have, at least, the best opportunity to make them less annoying by effecting in them such modifications and reductions as would be impossible if the existence of offices, continued in actual exercise, furnished pretexts to the incumbents to disarrange by demanding indemnities, the plans we purpose to adopt for the greatest advantage of our people.

For these causes, etc., we have, by our present edict, enacted and ordained as follows:

Article I. Article I of the edict of the month of September, 1759, will be executed; accordingly, all offices created by the edicts of January, 1727, and June, 1730, connected with the ports, quays, stalls and markets of our good city of Paris, will continue suppressed, beginning from the day of publication of the present edict. We prohibit those who may be found holders of them, their clerks and officers, from continuing to exercise their functions in the future.

Article II. We except, however, the offices of supervisors, gaugers and measurers, jurés-vendeurs and comptrollers of wines and liquors, commission brokers of wines, and others such as have been combined in the domain and patrimony of our good city of Paris, by the declaration of August 16, 1733, and by the edicts of June, 1741, and August, 1744, of which offices the taxes will continue to be collected to the profit of the said city.

Article III. The taxes heretofore attributed to the guilds of officials, the suppression of which we specifically ordain, as well as the taxes combined in our fermes, will continue to be collected to our profit by the highest bidder for our taxes fermes) beginning from the day of publication of the present edict and continuing until otherwise ordered by us, with the exception at all times of the taxes united in the domain and patrimony of our city of Paris, mentioned in the preceding article, which it will continue to enjoy as in the past.

Article IV. The proprietors of offices suppressed by the present edict will be reimbursed regularly from funds set apart for the purpose by us, pursuant to the liquidation provided by the edict of March, 1760, and in the same manner as the finances of the said offices were paid into our casual revenue. Wherefore, those of the said proprietors who acquired the offices by paying one-sixth of the sums in money, will be repaid the said sixth in money, and those who acquired the offices by paying one-seventh only in money, will receive similarly only the said seventh. And with regard to the balance of the finance of the said offices furnished in collaterals, mortgages at 4 per cent, will be delivered to each of the said proprietors, the arrears of which, special effects under the product of the taxes heretofore attributed to them, will commence to run from the day they cease to exercise the functions of the said offices and to collect the taxes, and shall continue until they are wholly repaid.

Article V. Arrears of profits, due by the guilds of officials suppressed by the present edict, will be paid on the same basis as the said profits would be liquidated by the edict of March, 1760, and as the proprietors of the said privileged profits and mortgages on the product of taxes restored to our hand in consequence of the said suppression, will be paid.

Article VI. The balance of the product of these taxes, as well as the funds we shall designate from our finances, shall be used to reimburse the capital sums; namely, by preference, to reimburse the profits now due by the said guild of officials, and subsequently the capital sums of the mortgages we shall give them to complete the finance of offices. We will that the interest on the sums repaid be employed progressively to augment the sinking funds until the profits of the offices are wholly reimbursed, and that the product of the said taxes or the said interests be not diverted to any other use.

Article VII. We reserve the right to suppress, to simplify or to modify the said taxes reunited in our hand which may seem to us too burdensome to our people, either by reason of their nature or because of the formalities required for their collection. And if it happens that the product be diminished, the balance will be provided for by us by assigning some other branch of our revenues to the payment of arrears and the reimbursement of the capital due to the said officials and their creditors.

Article VIII. We annul all edicts, ordinances, declarations, decrees and regulations in all that may be contrary to the provisions of the present edict.

So given by commandment, etc.

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Published in February, 1776, and registered at a Lit-de-Justice on the 12th day of March of the same year.

1 Mixed grains.