Between 1614 and 1789, the Estates General, representative of the elites of France, was never called by the absolutist French monarchy. When it was finally called in 1789, due to the pending bankruptcy of the state, the results were revolutionary. In England, on the other hand, Parliament was repeatedly called (excepting Charles I's personal rule in the 1630s). From 1688 Parliament met on a yearly basis. In Nicholas Henshall's essay “The Myth of Absolutism” this difference is de-emphasized. Henshall describes a system where kings rule with the co-operation of the nobles, with court factions branching out into networks of patronage and clientage binding local elites and the monarchy together. According to Henshall, the legislative system did not distinguish the systems of government in France and England, as in both legislation was a joint effort on the part of monarch and and the elites. Henshall argues that the whole concept of “Absolutism” is meaningless, as the prerogatives of royalty were accepted in both limited and non-limited monarchies, and in both the elites were respected partners of the monarchy. While this view does have merit, Henshall has over-emphasized the similarities between England and France. The existence of Parliament in England and its legislative initiative had a profound impact on relationship between monarch and elites and on the functioning of the state. Specifically, during the 18th century the financial well-being of England and France, dependent on taxes and increasingly on public debt, was strongly affected by the fact England had a Parliament representing the propertied class and that France did not.
When discussing the legislative systems in England and France Henshall does explain the essential difference between them. The English Parliament (the Commons and the Lords) created the laws, which were then approved by the king. The king had the right of veto, but after 1688 it was rarely used. According to Christopher Hill, “William vetoed five Bills before 1696, but they all subsequently became law; after that date he used the veto no more. Anne's solitary veto in 1708 is the last in English history.” Of course, many of the bills passed by Parliament were initiated by the monarch's ministers. But not all laws passed by Parliament were to the monarch's liking, even when the veto was not used. For example, in 1698 Parliament resolved that the all forces in the standing army beyond 7000 men were to be disbanded, and though strongly opposed to the measure William complied. In France, on the other hand, Henshall notes that the “French monarch had the exclusive right of initiating laws.” The legal institutions known as parlements only had the role of promulgating the laws (which they could use to delay the application of the law), though they had the right of sending a remonstrance to the king. The English Parliament, representative of the elites, had the right to initiate legislation, and the king could initiate legislation via his ministers, whereas in France only the king could initiate legislation.
A significant area affected by this difference was the raising of taxes. According to John Brewer, “... by the first quarter of the eighteenth century Englishmen were paying 17.6 livres per capita in annual taxes, while the equivalent figure in France was 8.1 livres” a difference which grew by the 1780s to 46 livres in England vs. 17 in France. How did this difference come about? After 1688, confronted with the price of William's wars against France, Parliament chose a land tax over the government's plan to impose a general excise, choosing a tax which affected the landed wealth represented in Parliament rather than one that affected the general public. According to Brewer, the reason for this choice was that the land tax allowed the Commons to exert control over the collection of taxes, unlike a general excise which would involve a large bureaucracy above and beyond that necessary for existing excises. Not only did the Commons control the king's revenue by the necessity of having it approved every year by the Parliament, but Parliament also controlled the monarch's ability to raise money via extraordinary means. At this point in time Parliament took the initiative in choosing the type of taxes the English would pay, and took control of at least some of the process of taxation. Members of Parliament could request papers and accounts from treasury departments when deciding about financial legislation, and this information was presented even for routine legislation such as the annual bill of supply. Parliament reached an accommodation with the need for a centralized state, balancing between the state's needs and the dangers to their control.
The French government on the other hand had systemic problems with taxes in the eighteenth century. Henshall cites Machault's Twentieth tax as an example of how taxes would be negotiated with institutions such as the parlement of Paris. Even so, Machault dissolved the Languedoc Estates for their opposition to the tax. Colin Jones notes that “the secrecy in which the royal finances were immired meant that the government was unable to demonstrate the fiscal prudence of the measure.” Only in 1781 did Necker publish an account of French royal finances that provided “more transparency ... than any previous ruler or minister had dreamt of.” The fact that the tax had to be negotiated with multiple bodies --- parlements, local Estates, the Assembly of the Clergy for taxes on the Church --- also demonstrates the problems faced by the government, the lack of a centralized national institution to negotiate with. According to James Riley, “the most important feature in French finances ... at every point in the eighteenth century is this: the French detested the tax.” The French government “could not overcome [its] subjects' aversion to paying taxes, and they could not overcome their subject's feelings that their liberties were at stake.”
In addition to taxes, the other source of revenue for the state was public debt, used to finance the increasingly expensive wars of the 18th century in both England and in France. Hilton Root argues that the existence of Parliament in England strongly affected the government's expense in raising loans. In England after 1697, the Bank of England had a monopoly on loans to the government, increasing the government's penalties if it defaulted on loans. In 1715, “a political agreement with Parliament established that a specific loan had to be secured by Parliament's vote of a specific tax designed to fund the loan's repayment. As a result of Parliament's backing interest rates on English government bonds fell from 10 percent in 1689 to 3 percent during the eighteenth century.” Root notes that private interest rates in England were about 4 or 5 percent, i.e. the government debt was seen as more secure than private debt. In contrast France paid interest rates twice as high as England, in the period after 1720 when they were actually lower than in the past. In England, where Parliament controlled the debt, it also had less of an interest in repudiating it, as many MPs and their constituents were government creditors. In France, where the debt was directly controlled by the monarch, the government had a motivation to default on its debt, balanced by the lack of trust this would engender in lenders. As Hilton explains, "creditors took into account the king's reputation for repudiating debts and therefore demanded higher interest rates than would otherwise have been needed to elicit loans. Actually, because he was above the law, the king had to pay more for loanable funds than did his wealthy subjects." Necker in 1781 cited the nature of England's government and the access to information about the government's finances as reasons for England's ability to raise immense sums of money.
In both England and France taxes and public loans were necessary ways to raise money to pay for the government's expenses; the king could no longer live on his own. But only in England was the legislative initiative possessed by Parliament. As a representative body of the propertied elites it was able to actively bring about their agreement to financially support the state, a crucial difference from the system in France. Negotiating rights with a variety of corporate groups, while simultaneously claiming unquestionable authority, the French government was unable to raise as much taxes as the English. Furthermore, France had to pay far higher interest rates on loans than did the English government. There were less restrictions on the French government's ability to default on loans, and information about the government's finances and ability to pay interest were considered a state secret, both raising the perceived risk to creditors. The difference between the legislative systems in England and France was thus an important factor in the financial well-being of the state. Paradoxically, the weaker status of the English government led to a stronger fiscal position.
Bibliography
Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power. New York: Knopf, 1989.
Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution (2nd edition). New York: W. W. Norton, 1980.
Jones, Colin. The Great Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Jones, J.R.. Country and Court. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978.
Riley, James C.. The Seven Years War And The Old Regime In France. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Root, Hilton L.. The Fountain of Privilege. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
No comments:
Post a Comment