Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/142

Rh 122 O L B E K T were taken by Colbert for his seizure, and he was tried before a specially prepared chamber of justice. Neverthe less the trial was protracted during three years, and the sentence passed was not death but banishment. The Government, however, carried out its plans. The superin tendent was safely disposed of in the state prison of Pigne- rol; just disgrace fell upon Councillor d Ormesson and the other judges who had averted the punishment Fouquet richly deserved; and many minor officials, convicted of peculation, were treated with great severity, some being banished, some sent to the galleys, some even hanged. The office of superintendent and many others dependent upon it being abolished the supreme control of the finances was vested in a royal council. The sovereign was its presi dent ; but Colbert, though for four years he only possessed the title of intendant, was its ruling spirit, great personal authority being conferred upon him by the king. The career on which Colbert now entered must not be judged without constant remembrance of the utter rottenness of the previous financial administration. His ruthlessness in this case, dangerous precedent as it was, was perhaps necessary ; individual interests could not be respected. Guilty officials having been severely punished, the fraudu lent creditors of the Government remained to be dealt with. Colbert s method was simple. Some of the public loans were totally repudiated, and from others a percentage was cut off, which varied, at first according to his own decision, and afterwards according to that of the council which he established to examine all claims against the state. Much more serious difficulties met his attempts to intro duce equality in the pressure of the taxes on the various classes. To diminish the number of the privileged was impossible, but false claims to exemption were firmly resisted, and the unjust direct taxation was lightened by .in increase of the indirect taxes, from which the privileged could not escape. The mode of collection was at the same time immensely improved. Order and economy being thus introduced into the working of the government, the country, according to Colbert s vast yet detailed plan, was to be enriched by commerce. Manufactures were fostered in every way he could devise. New industries were established, inventors protected, workmen invited from foreign countries, French workmen absolutely prohibited to emigrate. To maintain the character of French goods in foreign markets, as well as to afford a guarantee to the home consumer, the quality and measure of each article were fixed by law, breach of the regulations being punished by public exposure of the delinquent and destruction of the goods, and, on the third offence, by the pillory. But whatever advantage resulted from this rule was more than compensated by the disadvantages it entailed. The production of qualities which would have suited many purposes of consumption was prohibited, and the odious supervision which became necessary involved great waste of time and a stereotyped regularity which resisted all improvements. And other parts of Colbert s scheme deserve still less equivocal con demnation. By his firm maintenance of the corporation system, each industry remained in the hands of certain privileged bourgeois ; in this way, too, improvement was greatly discouraged ; while to the lower classes opportunities of advancement were closed. With regard to international commerce Colbert was equally unfortunate in not being in advance of his age ; the tariffs he published were protective to an extreme. The interests of internal commerce were, however, wisely consulted. Unable to abolish the duties on the passage of goods from province to province, he did what he could to induce the provinces to equalize them. The roads and canals were improved. The great canal of Lriiiguedoc was planned and constructed by lliquet under his patronage. To encourage trade with the Levant, Senegal, Guinea, and other places, privileges were granted to com panies; but, like the more important East India Company, all were unsuccessful. The chief cause of this failure, as well as of the failure of the colonies, on which he bestowed so much watchful care, was the narrowness and rigidity of the Government regulations. -The greatest and most lasting of Colbert s achievements was the establishment of the French marine. The royal navy owed all to him, for the king thought only of military exploits. For its use, Colbert reconstructed the works and arsenal of Toulon, founded the port and arsenal of Rochefort, and the naval schools of Rochefort, Dieppe, and Saint-Malo, and fortified, with some assistance from Vauban (who, however, belonged to the party of his rival Luvois), among other ports those of Calais, Dunkirk, Brest, and Havre. To supply it with recruits he invented his famous system of classes, by which each seaman, according to the class in which he was placed, gave six months service every three or four or five years. For three months after his term of service he was to receive half-pay ; pensions were promised ; and, in short, everything was done to make the navy popular. There was one department, however, that was supplied with men on a very different principle. Letters exist written by Colbert to the judges requiring them to sentence to the oar as many criminals as possible, including all those who had been condemned to death ; and the convict once chained to the bench, the expiration of his sentence was seldom allowed to bring him release. Mendicants also, against whom no crime had been proved, contraband dealers, those who had been engaged in insur rections, and others immeasurably superior to the criminal class, nay, innocent men Turkish, Russian, and negro slaves, and poor Iroquois Indians, whom the Canadians were ordered to entrap were pressed into that terrible service. By these means the benches of the galleys were filled, and Colbert took no thought of the long unrelieved agony borne by those who filled them. Nor was the mercantile marine forgotten. Encouragement was given to the building of ships in France by allowing a premium on those built at home, and imposing a duty on those brought from abroad ; and as French workmen were forbidden to emigrate, so French seamen were forbidden to serve foreigners on pain of death. Even ecclesiastical affairs, though with these he had no official concern, did not altogether escape Colbert s atten tion. He took a subordinate part in the struggle between the king and Rome as to the royal rights over vacant bishoprics ; and he seems to have sympathized with the proposal that was made to seize part of the wealth of the clergy. In his hatred of idleness, he ventured to suppress no less than seventeen fetes, and he had a project for lessening the number of those devoted to clerical and monastic life, by fixing the age for taking the vows some years later than was then customary. With heresy he was at first unwilling to interfere, for he was aware of the commercial value of the Huguenots ; but when the king, under the influence of Mme. de Maintenon, resolved to make all France Catholic, he followed his Majesty, and urged his subordinates to do all that they could to promote conversions. In art and literature Colbert took much interest. He possessed a remarkably fine private library, which he delighted to fill with valuable manuscripts from every part of Europe where France had placed a consul. He has the hono T of having founded the Academy of Sciences (now called the Institut de France), the Observatory, which he employed Perrault to build and brought Cassini from Italy to superintend, the Academies of Inscriptions and Medals, of Architecture, and of Music, the French Academy at