ssaires and collectors of the tailles, officers of the salt-tax,
process-servers, voituriers-buralistes, overseers of the corvees, clerks
of the excise, of the registry, and of dues reserved, all these men
belonging to the tax-service. Each of these will, aided by his
fiscal knowledge and petty authority, so overwhelm the ignorant and
inexperienced tax payer that he does not recognize that he is being
cheated." [1435] A rude species of centralization with no control over
it, with no publicity, without uniformity, thus installs over the whole
country an army of petty pashas who, as judges, decide causes in which
they are themselves contestants, ruling by delegation, and, to sanction
their theft or their insolence, always having on their lips the name of
the king, who is obliged to let them do as they please.--In short, the
machine, through its complexity, irregularity, and dimensions, escapes
from his grasp. A Frederick II. who rises at four o'clock in the
morning, a Napoleon who dictates half the night in his bath, and who
works eighteen hours a day, would scarcely suffice for its needs. Such
a regime cannot operate without constant strain, without indefatigable
energy, without infallible discernment, without military rigidity,
without superior genius; on these conditions alone can one convert
twenty-five millions of men into automatons and substitute his own will,
lucid throughout, coherent throughout and everywhere present, for the
wills of those he abolishes. Louis XV lets "the good machine" work by
itself, while he settles down into apathy. "They would have it so,
they thought it all for the best,"[1436] is his manner of speaking when
ministerial measures prove unsuccessful. "If I were a lieutenant of
the police," he would say again, "I would prohibit cabs." In vain is
he aware of the machine being dislocated, for he can do nothing and he
causes nothing to be done. In the event of misfortune he has a private
reserve, his purse apart. "The king," said Mme. de Pompadour, "would
sign away a million without thinking of it, but he would scarcely bestow
a hundred louis out of his own little treasury."--Louis XVI strives for
some time to remove some of the wheels, to introduce better ones and to
reduce the friction of the rest; but the pieces are too rusty, and too
weighty. He cannot adjust them, or harmonize them and keep them in their
places; his hand falls by his side wearied and powerless. He is content
to practice econo