THE NEW TAX ON FOOD IN FRANCE.
TEE long step taken by the French Chamber on Tuesday in a retrogade path has attracted less attention than it deserves. Everybody in this country is thinking of Russia and Ireland ; but events nevertheless occur in countries happier than those. We have always believed that finance would be the great trial of democracy, and that its errors would take ass unexpected form. The old theory, sanctioned by writers of the highest eminence, was that a democracy would be im- patient of taxation, indifferent or hostile to rights of property, and jealous in the extreme of accumulated wealth ; but it has not been supported by experience. In France, Germany, and America, the people, under a rIgime of universal suffrage, have imposed taxes for national purposes of unprecedented severity ; and in two of those countries they have selected only taxes which they themselves have to pay, while in the third they have not only done this, but have repealed a highly profitable Income-tax. Property is at least as safe in all those countries as in Great Britain, and - although there is jealousy of great wealth in France, it has not appeared in Germany to any appreciable extent—the motive-power of Socialism being a different one—while in America, aggregations of wealth beyond European precedent excite a certain admiration. In Ireland, indeed, the democracy appears inclined to plunder; but in Ireland we can hardly judge democracy, because it has never yet held legal power or felt the consequences of its own crimes or errors. It is the blundering of Demos in finance, rather than his criminality, which modern history teaches us to dread,—a blundering due at least as much to ignorance as to selfishness. The German peasantry do not know the results of the protective duties which they permit Prince Bismarck to impose ; the American freeholders meant no harm in legalising the silver "dollar of our fathers and we may hope the French peasantry are stupid, rather than purely selfish, in forcing on the vote of Tuesday, and imposing a second protective duty on corn. That is, however, a test vote, and a most disheartening one. In France, as in the United Kingdom, the heavy fall in the price of cereals and of meat has greatly benefited the body of the community, has in the cities distinctly reduced the disposition to turbulence, and has assisted the whole people in that marvellous thrift which has enabled France to support her grave financial misfortunes. In a country where the people live on bread, and spare every halfpenny they can save, a fall of 30 per cent, in the price of flour is like a great increase of income ; it makes every hut and lodging-room feel easy. In England, this advantage is so keenly felt that all Protectionist oratory breaks on that rock,—the necessity, if Protection is to be adopted, of first protecting corn ; but in France there is a different set of circumstances. The Govern- ment is, as a whole, decidedly for Free-trade ; the financial powers, so influential in France, are on the same side, and the majority of Deputies, who are for the most part profes- sionals, are probably equally convinced. A grand section of the electors, however, are not. It is said that five millions of the electors of France own portions of the soil, and among them, all who grow cereals, and grow more than they eat, fret under the fall in prices like English farmers. They will consent to anything which raises their cash receipts, even though, the food they eat exceeding the food they sell, they do not really profit by the increase ; and they compel their repre- sentatives to vote against their own inclination. The reluctance of the Government was BO great, that it was at one time believed they would resign ; the reluctance of the Deputies is so great, that all Republicans not sitting for agricultural districts revolted; and the figure of the tax was at last fixed by a kind of Dutch- auction ; but in the end, all the agricultural Deputies trembling for their seats struck up an alliance with the Right, and on Tuesday raised the corn-duty to 5 fr. per quintal—or 9s. 2d. a quarter—on imported corn. That is to say, every household
in France, a country maintained on bread, will pay from 20 to 25 per cent., according to the price, more for its staple food in order that a class may receive a bounty upon one of its indus- tries. The injustice, though not greater in France than any- where else, is especially patent because France has so many cultures which cannot be protected. Take the vine-grower, for example ; no country produces his wine, or could by any possibility underbid him in his home market ; and consequently he can never be protected. Yet, although he lives under pre- cisely the same conditions as his neighbour the wheat-grower, pays the same taxes, and is subject to the same law of equal division, he has to pay at least 20 per cent, on his food for the direct benefit of his neighbour and rival. The oppression is so patent, that it was proposed to avert it by granting to the wheat-grower a bounty equal to the tax, and thus enabling other cultivators to claim the same relief ; but the proposal would have burdened the Treasury instead of relieving it, and it was rejected. The new tax on food is therefore imposed, and as a protected interest is never satiated, it will, we imagine, be increased until the irritation of the rest of the population becomes too great to be endured. France, in faot, re-enters on the weary old round from which she had escaped.
It will be observed that we do not use the old argument about the distress to be caused by the dear loaf, because it is not that which in the present situation of affairs impresses our minds. A tax of even 20 per cent, on bread imposed for the benefit of a class is always unjust, must be severely felt in the cities, and among certain classes must make a positive difference in their supply of food ; but we admit that the actual price of corn is so low that the difference may not be unendurable. The increased duty will not of itself, unless the harvest fails, bring up bread to the prices of a dear year. The fluctuations of the market in any one year often cause more dearness than the new tax will, and corn might rise 16 fr. per quintal from the present lowest level without bread-riots beginning to make their appearance. The people of France, like those of England, have, we doubt not, a fixed standard of dearness in their minds, and until it is reached, they only half- notice what an advantage is being taken from them. If bread, moreover, gets dear, the tax will be abolished under pressure of Paris, a fact so certain, that special power is reserved to the Executive to suspend it by proclamation. It is not the distress in France that we dread, though it must be increased ; it is the evidence that the huge masses of electors who now govern the world have either not learned the first truths of finance, or are prepared, in their own selfish interest, to neglect them. That points to many weary contests, and much suffering, possibly long-continued, in the near future. The masses are probably no worse even in their selfishness than the classes, though poverty makes them inevitably more griping ; but if they have not learned the economical lesson, the whole work of teaching them has to be done over again, and with infinitely greater difficulty. It is not hard to teach arithmetic to a limited body of electors, and, as a matter of fact, our own Ten-pounders did learn the application of that science to taxation in a very wonderful way. They became able to understand Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone in their boldest proposals, and supported them with a decision much too speedily forgotten. It may be much more difficult to teach the householders, and certainly, if analogy can ever give reason for apprehension, there is not much ground for hope. The wheat-growers of France are not more foolish than the majority of Americans, or Canadians, or Australians, who are only Englishmen living under different skies. It seems as if the tendency were in democracy itself, as if men with nothing to spare, when possessed of all power could not, when the prices of their products were in question, be either just or wise. They cannot get rid of a notion that they are defrauded of their gains by foreign competition, and if they have the power, they stop it, forgetting, or not caring, that in stopping it they tax every consumer. If that is so, the outlook may well make economists tremble, and doubt whether after all their triumphs their foothold is yet safe, whether the new and irresistible governing power has learned, or can learn, the great lesson they teach. Certainly it has not learned it yet.
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