March 9.
Tue defeat of M, Briand's ibinet is not less than a national calamity. We do not mean to suggest in saying that, that M. Briand is necessarily more upright, able or patriotic than any other potential Premier. But the circumstances of the time urgently required that jas he had been put into office to perform a certain piece of work he should be kept in ofice until it was done. While France has made a recovery since the war even more extraordinary than that after 1870 and is today perhaps the most prosperous country in Europe, bad finance and reluctance on the part of successive Ministries to tell unpleasant truths have piled up national indebtedness to an enormous extent, the climax being reached when it was disclosed that the Government's overdraft on the Bank of Frs, 4,000,000,000 mor the amount legally allowed. confess that how many Ministries have been defeated in the attempt to persuade the Chamber to face this problem on national rather than party lines: certainly not less than three. On February 11 M. Briand declared: "They say' Jabroad that we are incapable of fiscal effort. Let us at once show our financial determination in any capacity." In other words, the question was one of national honour. But the Chamber was unable to see it in other light than that of party politics, So M. Briand follows his predecessors.
The particular proposal on: which he fell was to put a stamp duty of 1.20 per cent. on all money payments, This was described as the corner-stone of the Government's financial projects and from the outset it was hotly resisted by the Chamber. 'There is nothing so unpopular' in France as direct taxation, On February 11 the Premier, who had been doing nothing since Christmas but force the Finance Bill through Parliament, announced that it would be split! into two parts: the first would deal with funds necessary to balance the budget, rather over five and a half milliards; the second would comprise measures for the amortization of debt and general financial reform. And he added that the first part must be adopted by both Chamber before March 1. On February 16 the Chamber of Deputies after an all-night sitting voted the bulk of the taxes demanded by the Government, though not apparently the tax on payments which its Finance Committee had rejected. The Bill then went to the Senate, where no serious difficulty was anticipated or encountered. The taxation voted by the Finance Committee! of the Upper Chamber with Frs. 200,000,000 to accrue, from the sale of old stocks, made up all the money needed to balance! the Budget except Frs. 400,000,- 000 which the Minister of Finance would have to ask of the Chamber. The tax on payments was put back and the Senate began to discuss the jon February 24. It was passed by this body on February 28 and returned to the Chamber of Deputies; whose Finance Committee immediately out out again tinued to waste time intolerably over all sorts of trifle, The end was as known, Considering the intense -patriotism of the French people, the behaviour of the Chamber' of Deputies, knowing the intensely serious nature of the issue before them, is psychologically, most interesting, The unpopularity of direct taxation, already mentioned, is one factor, Yet the plain truth is that the limits of indirect taxation are very nearly reached and-if the huge sums needed to put the national finances in order are to be found, there is no way but that of direct taxation. Then comes the awkward fact that the French people have no confidence in their Governments—a__phenomenon, however, not limited to France but common in republican countries. "C'est un sale gouvernement" is almost a byword. In very few countries, if any, is it considered a crime to evade the tax-collector: in France it almost amounts to a virtue: -whatever he does with the money, be sure it will be nothing proportionate to the loss it means to the payer: if he does not put it in' his own pocket, some one else higher up Will probably do so, Yet he a great national issue, involving national honour, a ques= tion whether France is.to be regarded by the world at large as a country which does not pay her debts. "And it is not to be forgotten that apart from her ;]internal debt she owes Great Britain £623,000,000, on which she has not yet even paid me terest. Questions of national honour arouse all the patriotism in the French nature and if the case were fairly put to them, tone cannot doubt the result, especially as there is great business prosperity all through the country, Part of the trouble in recent weeks has been the utterly unworkable balance of the parties in the Chamber. One cannot help thinking that.the first step to solving the problem lies in dissolution, as advocated by one Deputy, and a new election,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.