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the Apostle of the Gentiles. Paul, too, was intellectual, though doubtless he lacked the wide opportunities and training of Newman; he was a writer of power and distinction, though he cared little for the mere graces of style; he was warm-hearted and won the passionate attachment of his friends; he was sensitive and easily moved, and flashed out in a moment into anger or tears; he had the same understanding of men and ascendancy over them; he could make Felix tremble in his palace, could win the support of the captain on board ship, and touch the heart of the runaway slave in Rome; he had the same intense and ardent nature, the same utter devotion to the Christian religion; he had the same sense of a great mission entrusted to him. But here the contrast begins. Affectionate and sensitive as he was, there was a robust vigour and confidence about St Paul. He is a man of the world, he moves easily everywhere. He goes into synagogues, into kings' courts, into prisons, into market-places, among slaves and artisans and philosophers, among men and women, among Jews and Greeks; and wherever he goes, he is in the front of things. Above all, in doing his Christian work he is not afraid to claim a direct spiritual authority of his own. Though he is the least of all saints, though he owes everything to the love of Christ, yet he does not feel it presumptuous to claim that he, Paul, is called into liberty; he is not bound down to the past or to the opinion of the other Apostles; he dares to take the risk of making dissension in the infant Church, so confident is he of his call. And in this atmosphere of freedom he built up that glorious work for which all Christians thank God. But Newman never won his way into freedom; he grew to be distrustful of himself and of his powers, afraid of his call, afraid of being presumptuous and taking too much upon himself; he never accomplished his full work and the whole world has been the loser.

So, then, we take our leave of this great man, not without sadness, yet not without instruction. But if we cannot be blind to his mistake, let us also be sure that we imitate those virtues of zeal, industry, affection, and enthusiasm which he possessed in so signal a measure. J. F. MozLEY.

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Art. 5.-FRENCH TAXATION AND THE FRANC.

1. The Financial Crisis in France. By the Hon. George Peel. Macmillan, 1925.

2. The French Debt Problem. By Harold G. Moulton and Cleona Lewis, with the aid of the Council and Staff of the Institute of Economics at Washington. Allen & Unwin, 1926.

READERS of St Simon's memoirs may be reminded of the passage in which the Duke describes the efforts of the Regent in 1715 to induce him to accept the direction of the finances of France; and records in a few terse and powerful sentences his conviction that the alternative before the rulers of the country was either to crush it by the continued augmentation of all possible sources of taxation in the attempt to meet the immense obligations imposed by the prodigal reign of Louis XIV, or to take advantage of a new reign to repudiate the liabilities of the old one, a course which would bring ruin wholesale upon multitudes of families. He confessed that if he had accepted the charge he would have been too strongly tempted to choose total bankruptcy. As between two effroyables injustices this seemed to him the less cruel, and it would have the advantage of making much more difficult a repetition of the extravagant expenditure on wars, buildings, and luxury of all sorts which had brought the country to ruin at the end of the reign of the Grand Monarque. But he could not face what he calls the iniquity of either of these courses: 'C'était un paquet dont je ne voulais me charger devant Dieu ni devant les hommes !'

Except for the causes which produced it, the predicament described so forcibly by the Duc de St Simon closely resembles that in which any French Minister of Finance finds himself to-day; and the account of the financial condition of the country in 1715, with its standing debt since the death of Colbert raised to a gigantic height, a large floating debt, the Government without credit raising loans at ruinous cost, its promissory notes, billets d'état, circulating at a quarter of their face value and much revenue pledged for two years ahead, is not so unlike the position at the present time as to make

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comparison entirely fallacious. It does not do to press historical parallels too far, and financial disorder everywhere produces similar results; but it is interesting to note throughout two centuries of French history, under forms of Government presenting every sort of contrast, the constant recurrence of the same sort of incapacity in the management of public finance and taxation, the prevalence of hand-to-mouth methods, and the tendency to outrun revenue and resort to borrowing combined with economy and industry in the sphere of private life. The State is too often spendthrift and debt-ridden, the individuals composing it thrifty, solvent, and even wealthy. There are many distinguished names among French financial statesmen, but none of them since Colbert, save perhaps the first Napoleon and his Ministers, has ever had the same opportunity as fell to the lot of Peel and Gladstone of carrying out beneficial and lasting financial reforms. The abuses of the financial administration of the old monarchical régime are patent to all; they met their retribution in the liquidations, spoliations, and bankruptcies of the French Revolution; but they were due not to poverty but to misgovernment. The Consulate and the Empire re-established the finances of France and restored her credit; and the solidity and economy of Napoleon's financial administration are shown by the fact that after a quarter of a century of war the total State expenditure had risen only from 531 million francs in 1789 to 931 million francs in 1815, of which the annual debt charge only amounted to 81 millions.

Throughout the 19th century the growing wealth of France kept pace with the growth of public expenditure, which at its close was about six times as great as it had been in 1789; but no process of amelioration in the fiscal system bequeathed by the Constituent Assembly in 1790 and by the revolutionary and Napoleonic era, such as took place in England in the last century, is to be traced in France in all this long period. The attitude of the French population was always antagonistic to the efforts of enlightened financiers. If in the 18th century it was the opposition of interested and privileged classes which brought to nought the reforms of such statesmen as Turgot, in the 19th century it was the people themselves whose prejudice and ignorance stood in the way of

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governmental financiers; and modern governments in France, except in periods of revolution, have always followed rather than governed. The fact that France for many centuries was a monarchical and absolutist country has left deep traces on the French character. In England the Government has grown up from and with the people, in France the State is distrusted; the old saying, 'Notre ennemi est notre maître,' still holds good; the intrusion of the maître is abhorrent to the Frenchman, and the memory of the fiscal exactions of the fermiers généraux of the ancien régime still colours his attitude towards the fisc, which is so incomprehensible to the Englishman, however much he may resent and dislike oppressive or unjust taxation. The mentality of the peasant, his habit of clinging to his sous, his secrecy as to his private affairs, his hostility to anything approaching inquisition into them, his intense conservatism which in politics shows itself in his steady adherence to the anti-clerical, anti-monarchical Left, is due to historical causes and is still the mentality of France as a whole; and, in spite of the changes caused by the War, this mentality is still to be reckoned with as one of the difficulties which confront French statesmen and weaken financial statesmanship. But the compensating advantages must not be forgotten, the marvellous frugality and industry of the population which, combined with the possession of climate, soil, and natural resources, have created, and will no doubt continue to create, the seemingly inexhaustible wealth which has so often saved France from economic and financial disaster.

Mr George Peel's book which, in addition to being a trustworthy guide through all the mazes of his complicated subject, is written with a charm of style seldom to be found in works on finance, has been welcomed with something like enthusiasm by all those on both sides of the Channel who are trying to form a just estimate of the outcome of the present financial situation in France. It is not his fault if his brilliant survey, and other well-informed publications like Mr Moulton's carefully documented work on 'The French Debt Problem,' have not dispelled many erroneous notions on taxation in France which are still current in this country. It is,

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for instance, quite commonly held that France is in-
sufficiently taxed, and that her people cannot be induced
to make the sacrifices necessary to enable their Govern-
ment to balance the budgets. Mr Peel's book, and the
facts supplied by even a cursory study of the official
figures, make it possible to assert that the very opposite
is the case, and that France is suffering not only from
taxation which is not properly adjusted to the shoulders
which have to bear it, but also from over-taxation. The
difficulty of comparing the burden of taxation in this
country and in France is notorious. How can we com-
pare the figures of English and French Budgets? A
comparison based on the exchange value of the franc
must be fallacious when the difference between prices
based on exchange value and internal prices is con-
sidered. It is true that internal prices tend to rise as
the franc falls, but the process is never rapid enough to
equalise the price levels of international and imported
staple goods and of home products and services, and the
two levels can never be actually assimilated while the
exchange continues to fluctuate. It would certainly be
misleading to convert an income of 100,000 francs into
its exchange equivalent at 130 frs. to the £ at 7601.-it is
much more likely to be something between 1000l. and
13507., i.e. at some figure based on an exchange of 100
or 80 frs. to the £. The only possible method of calcula-
tion is that adopted by Mr Peel and Mr Moulton, to
compare the percentage of taxation to national income
in each case.
But national income can never be more
than a matter of approximate estimate, and all that can
be done is to accept the figures arrived at by competent
statisticians on lines which have stood the test of
criticism. Mr Peel, making use of such estimates,
quotes figures which confirm the statement made in the
'Economist' of Jan. 31, 1925, that France's burden of
taxation is rising to, if it had not equalled, that of
Great Britain.' Mr Moulton, p. 191, reaches a similar
conclusion in words which may here be quoted:

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"There is no truth whatever in the prevalent assumption abroad that the French people do not and will not pay taxes. The facts completely contradict this contention, which has been repeated so often that it has come to be almost universally believed. The French tax burden was relatively heavy

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