Taxes And Death

January 8, 1991

An unarguable cliché continually going the rounds is that two events are inevitable – death and taxes. The cliché is a truism, of course. However, what is provoking my thoughts in these comments on the cliché is, what kind of taxes, what kind of death? Thus, a brief comment on one Revolution and more extended observations on another: the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

In hindsight, eventual freedom for the American colonies seems inevitable, but the struggle for independence would have lasted many more years, perhaps generations, had it not been for French assistance. In 1781, when Washington’s army on land and the French fleet in Chesapeake Bay bottled up Cornwallis at Yorktown, American independence was assured. We did not forget. When the A.E.F. reached France in World War I, the debt was recognized dramatically when General John J. (Black Jack) Pershing, placed a wreath at the tomb of Lafayette with the words, “Lafayette, we are here.”

Less well-known, but also substantial, was the assistance of Dutch shipping, bringing arms and supplies to the struggling Colonists. The late Barbara Tuchman writes this part of our history with knowledge, eloquence, and appreciation in her book, THE FIRST SALUTE.

But in no small degree, the aid France gave to us was a substantive addition to the complex of conditions that sparked the French Revolution. In his instructive history, CITIZENS, A CHRONICLE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, Simon Schama illuminates these circumstances.

Huge debt, the consequence of wars, along with bureaucratic indolence and corruption, had placed France in a precarious financial position when Louis XVI was crowned in 1775. The War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War with England (1756-1763), which we call the French and Indian War, had caused huge financial drains on France, not to mention the profligacy of the King and his court.

Thus, when the French decided to help the American Colonies win freedom from England, the government of Louis XVI was already immersed in overwhelming debt. Yet in 1781 alone, France expended 227 million livres on the American campaign. The French government borrowed most of the money by way of external and internal loans. By the year 1788, interest on France’s debts was consuming fifty percent of all current revenues.

The financial crisis was deepened by a taxation system, the Farmers General, a syndicate of politically-powerful men. ... As Schama describes, “Every six years the Crown contracted with the syndicate to advance a specific sum for the right to collect indirect taxes” – salt, leather, ironware, soap, wine. Added to the revenue were customs duties from one zone to another. The profit of the Farmers General was a secret. Farmers General had quasi-governmental powers, had an armed force of twenty-one thousand, with the right to enter households and establishments to search and seize property of persons they suspected of avoiding taxes. When the Revolution came, “these blood-suckers” were called to account. In 1794, a group of the Farmers General went to the guillotine.

Conditions had become more desperate as drought reduced the grain crop, cattle disease struck, and greedy profiteers raised the price of bread to unconscionable levels. Angry resentment, hunger, poverty, bankruptcy, ignited the Revolution. The ideals and slogan, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity came later.

Historical analogies break down readily, but there are sobering references. France did not play a crucial role in the American Revolution just because they wanted the Colonies to be a free nation. That was true of Lafayette, but not of the French Crown and its ministers. England and France had been at war for centuries, off and on. France thirsted for revenge and the recovery of possessions lost to England in the Seven Years (French and Indian) War. The governing principle was “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But that principle, applied, was a strong factor in the bankruptcy of the French nation.

In our U.S.A., our national debt has reached proportions that economists, some of them at least, are predicting disastrous consequences. Much talent and treasure has been spent financing nations and movements which are, or seem to be, enemies of our enemies. We supported the rebels (Contras) in Nicaragua because they claimed to be anti-communist or anti-Sandinista. We support the government in El Salvador because THEIR rebels were proclaimed to be pro-communist. Now in Arabian deserts, we have posted 350,000 of our army, air and naval forces. War with Iraq seems imminent. What the cost in American and other lives will be is unknown, but it will be a deep and lasting sorrow. Financially, guesses are that if war comes, $30 billion will be needed in 1991, and some estimates are one billion dollars a day. Given the huge deficit that already exists, could our whole nation become impoverished, bankrupt?

A revolution here as savage and murderous as the French Revolution appears highly unreal. Violence and revenge in the streets seems unlikely to be caused by a shortage of bread or even staggering inflation. Cumbersome as our systems of Federal, State, County and Municipal taxations are, a comparison with the Farmers General would be wide of the mark. Nevertheless, there will be a bill, sometime, for the immense obligations for which we have contracted. Who will pay? All of us. Perhaps enough integrity and common-sense will prevail, to the end that in spite of lobbies, special interest groups and political blocs, the burdens will be fairly shared. But not if, the adage of the French aristocracy, “apres moi le deluge” is the mood of that time of reckoning.