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    The Man of Forty Crowns
    The Man of Forty Crowns
    The Man of Forty Crowns
    Ebook58 pages58 minutes

    The Man of Forty Crowns

    By . Voltaire

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    The causes of our poverty; a poverty which we hide under varnished ceilings, or with the help of our dealers in fashion. We are poor with taste. There are some officers of revenue, there are contractors or jobbers, there are merchants, very rich; their children, their sons-in-law, are also very rich, but the nation in general is unfortunately not so.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInteractive Media
    Release dateJul 13, 2016
    ISBN9781911495437
    Author

    . Voltaire

    Imprisoned in the Bastille at the age of twenty-three for a criminal libel against the Regent of France, François-Marie Arouet was freed in 1718 with a new name, Voltaire, and the completed manuscript of his first play, Oedipe, which became a huge hit on the Paris stage in the same year. For the rest of his long and dangerously eventful life, this cadaverous genius shone with uninterrupted brilliance as one of the most famous men in the world. Revered, and occasionally reviled, in the royal courts of Europe, his literary outpourings and fearless campaigning against the medieval injustices of church and state in the midst of the ‘Enlightenment’ did much to trigger the French Revolution and to formulate the present notions of democracy. But above all, Voltaire was an observer of the human condition, and his masterpiece Candide stands out as an astonishing testament to his unequalled insight into the way we were and probably always will be.

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      Book preview

      The Man of Forty Crowns - . Voltaire

      Voltaire

      Voltaire

      The Man of Forty Crowns

      New Edition

      URBAN ROMANTICS

      LONDON ∙ NEW YORK ∙ TORONTO ∙ SAO PAULO ∙ MOSCOW

      PARIS ∙ MADRID ∙ BERLIN ∙ ROME ∙ MEXICO CITY ∙ MUMBAI ∙ SEOUL ∙ DOHA

      TOKYO ∙ SYDNEY ∙ CAPE TOWN ∙ AUCKLAND ∙ BEIJING

      New Edition

      Published by Urban Romantics

      www.urban-romantics.com

      sales@urban-romantics.com

      This Edition

      First published in 2016

      Copyright © 2016 Urban Romantics

      All Rights Reserved.

      ISBN: 9781911495437

      Contents

      THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS

      THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS

      I.

      NATIONAL POVERTY.

      An old man, who is forever pitying the present times, and extolling the past, was saying to me: Friend, France is not so rich as it was under Henry the IVth.

      And why?

      Because the lands are not so well cultivated; because hands are wanting for the cultivation; and because the day-laborer having raised the price of his work, many land owners let their inheritances he fallow.

      Whence comes this scarcity of hands?

      "From this, that whoever finds in himself anything of a spirit of industry, takes up the trades of embroiderer, chaser, watchmaker, silk weaver, attorney, or divine. It is also because the revocation of the Edict of Nantes has left a great void in the kingdom; because nuns and beggars of all kinds have greatly multiplied; because the people in general avoid as much as possible the hard labor of cultivation, for which we are born by God’s destination, and which we have rendered ignominious by our own opinions; so very wise are we!

      "Another cause of our poverty lies in our new wants. We pay our neighbors four millions of livres on one article, and five or six upon another, such, for example, as a stinking powder for stuffing up our noses brought from America. Our coffee, tea, chocolate, cochineal, indigo, spices, cost us above sixty millions a year. All these were unknown to us in the reign of Henry the IVth, except the spices, of which, however, the consumption was not so great as it is now. We burn a hundred times more wax-lights than were burnt then; and get more than the half of the wax from foreign countries, because we neglect our own hives. We see a hundred times more diamonds in the ears, round the necks, and on the hands of our city ladies of Paris, and other great towns, than were worn by all the ladies of Henry the IVth’s court, the Queen included. Almost all the superfluities are necessarily paid for with ready specie.

      "Observe especially that we pay to foreigners above fifteen millions of annuities on the Hôtel-de-Ville; and that Henry the IVth, on his accession, having found two millions of debt in all on this imaginary Hôtel, very wisely paid off a part, to ease the state of this burden.

      "Consider that our civil wars were the occasion of the treasures of Mexico being poured into the kingdom, when Don Philip el Discreto took it into his head to buy France, and that since that time, our foreign wars have eased us of a good half of our money.

      These are partly the causes of our poverty; a poverty which we hide under varnished ceilings, or with the help of our dealers in fashion. We are poor with taste. There are some officers of revenue, there are contractors or jobbers, there are merchants, very rich; their children, their sons-in-law, are also very rich, but the nation in general is unfortunately not so.

      This old man’s discourse, well or ill grounded, made a deep impression on me; for the curate of my parish, who had always had a friendship for me, had taught me a little of geometry and of history: and I begin to reflect a little, which is very rare in my province. I do not know whether he was right or not in every thing, but being very poor, I could very easily believe that I had a great many companions of my misery.

      II.

      DISASTER OF THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.

      I very readily make known to the universe that I have a landed estate which would yield me forty crowns a year, were it not for the tax laid on it.

      There came forth several edicts from certain persons, who, having nothing better to do, govern the state at their fire-side, the preamble of these edicts was, that the legislative and executive was born, jure divino, the co-proprietor of my land; and that I owe it at least the half of what I possess. The enormity of this legislative and executive power made me bless myself. What would it be if that power which presides over the essential order of society, were to take the

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