But if manufacturers are less skillful than foreigners, so much the worse for us. In the name of privilege we are condemned once more.
If people learn to refine sugar in India or weave cotton in the United States, it is the raw sugar and cotton in the form of fiber that will be transported in order to use our naval forces and we, the consumers, will pay for the pointless transportation of the residues.
Let us hope that, for the same reason and in order to supply lumberjacks with the initial and essential element of their work, we will bring in firs from Russia with their branches and bark. Let us hope that gold from Mexico will be imported in mineral form. Let us hope that, in order to have leather from Buenos Aires, herds of cattle will be transported.
It will never come to that, people will say. And yet it would be rational. But this so-called rationality borders on absurdity.
Many people, I am convinced, have adopted the doctrines of the protectionist regime in good faith (and certainly what is happening is scarcely likely to change their minds). This does not surprise me in the least; what does surprise me is that, when doctrines have been adopted with regard to one point, they are not adopted with regard to everything, since error also has its own logic. As for me, in spite of all my efforts, I have not been able to find a single objection that can be made to the regime of absolute exclusion that cannot be applied equally to the practical system of the petitioners.
[print edition page 10]
[vol. 1, p. 243. “Le Fisc et la vigne.” January 1841. n.p.]
The production and sale of wines and spirits must of necessity be affected by the treaties and laws on finance that are currently the subject of deliberations in the chambers.
We will endeavor to set out:
1 The new obstacles that the draft law dated 30 December 1840 is threatening to impose on the wine-producing industry;
2 Those obstacles implicit in the formal rationale that accompanies this draft ;
3 The results to be expected from the treaty signed with Holland;
4 The means by which the wine-producing industry might succeed in freeing itself.
§1. The legislation on wines and spirits is a clear departure from the principle of equality of duties.
At the same time it places all the classes of citizen whose industry it regulates in a separate, heavily taxed category, it creates among these very classes
[print edition page 11]
inequalities of a second order: all are placed outside common law; each is held at varying degrees of distance.
It appears that the minister of finance has taken not the slightest notice of the radical inequality we have just pointed out, but on the other hand he has shown himself to be extremely shocked by the secondary inequalities created by the law: he considers as privileged the classes that have not yet suffered from all of the rigors it imposes on other classes. He is devoted to removing these nice differences not by relaxing them but by making them worse.
However, in pursuit of equality thus understood, the minister remains faithful to the traditions of the creator of the institution. It is said that Bonaparte originally established tariffs that were so moderate that the receipts did not cover the costs of collection. His minister of finance drew to his attention the fact that the law annoyed the nation without providing the treasury with funds. “You are an idiot, M. Maret,” replied Napoléon. “Since the nation is complaining about a few impositions, what would it have done if I had added heavy taxes to them? Let us first accustom them to the exercise; later we can adjust the tariff.” M. Maret realized that the great captain was no less an able financier.
The lesson has not been lost, and we will have the opportunity of seeing that the disciples are preparing the reign of equality with a prudence worthy of the master.
The principles on which the legislation on wines and spirits is based are clearly and energetically expressed in three articles flowing from the law dated 28 April 1816:
Art. 1. Each time wine, cider, etc., is taken away or put somewhere else, a circulation duty will be paid. . . .
Art. 20. In towns and villages with a total population of two thousand people and more2 . . . the treasury will levy an entry duty . . . , etc. . . .
Art. 47. When the wine, cider, etc., is sold retail, a duty of 15 percent of the said sales price will be levied. . . .
In this way, each movement of wine, each entry, and each retail sale lead to the payment of a duty.
Side by side with these rigorous and, one might say, strange principles, the law establishes a few exceptions.
[print edition page 12]
With regard to circulation duty:
Art. 3. The following will not be subject to the duty levied under Art. 1:
1 Those wines and spirits that an owner has transported from his press or a public press to his cellars or storehouses;
2 Those that a sharecropper, farmer, or holder of a long-term lease for rent hands over to the owner or receives from him by virtue of official leases or customary use;
3 The wine, cider, or perry3 that is dispatched by an owner or farmer from the cellars or storehouses in which his harvest has been deposited, and provided that it is the produce of the said harvest, whatever place it is sent to and the standing of the person to whom it is sent.
Art. 4. The same exemption will be granted to traders, wholesalers, brokers, middlemen, agents, distillers, and retail traders, for the wines and spirits they have had moved from one to another of their cellars situated within the confines of the same département.
Art. 5. The transport of wines and spirits that are removed for dispatch abroad or to the French colonies will equally be exempt from circulation duty.
The entry duty did not allow any exceptions.
With regard to retail duty:
Art. 85. Owners who wish to sell the wines and spirits they produce at retail will be granted a discount of 25 percent on the duties they will have to pay. . . .
Art. 86. However, they will be subject to all the obligations imposed on professional retailers. Notwithstanding this, inspections by agents will not take place within their domiciles provided that the premises on which their wines and spirits will be sold at retail are separate from these.
Thus, to summarize these exceptions:
Exemption from circulation duty for the wines of their harvest that owners send from their own property to their own property elsewhere throughout the entire territory of France;
Exemption
