《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第十二章·何以十八世纪法国农民处境反不如十三世纪》第6节
Turgot had already said of another province, a short time before, ‘This office of collector drives to despair, and generally to ruin, those on whom it is imposed; by this means all the wealthier families of a village are successively reduced to poverty.’ This unhappy officer was, however, armed with the most arbitrary powers; he was almost as much a tyrant as a martyr. Whilst he was discharging functions by which he ruined himself, he had it in his power to ruin everybody else. ‘Preference for his relations,’ to recur to the language of the Provincial Assembly, ‘or for his friends and neighbours, hatred and revenge against his enemies, the want of a patron, the fear of affronting a man of property who had work to give, were at issue with every feeling of justice.’ Personal fear often hardened the heart of the collector; there were parishes in which he never went out but escorted by constables and bailiffs. ‘When he comes without the constable,’ said an Intendant to a Minister, in 1764, ‘the persons liable to the tax will not pay.’ ‘In the district of Villefranche alone,’ says the Provincial Assembly of Guienne, ‘there were one hundred and six officers constantly out to serve writs and levy distraints.’ To evade this violent and arbitrary taxation the French peasantry, in the midst of the eighteenth century, acted like the Jews in the Middle Ages. They were ostensibly paupers, even when by chance they were not so in reality. They were afraid to be well off; and not without reason, as may be seen from a document which I select, not from Guienne, but a hundred leagues off. The Agricultural Society of Maine announced in its Report of 1761, that it proposed to distribute cattle by way of prizes and encouragements. ‘This plan was stopped,’ it adds, ‘on account of the dangerous consequences to be apprehended by a low jealousy of the winners of these prizes, which, by means of the arbitrary assessment of the public taxes, would occasion them annoyance in the following year.’ Under this system of taxation each tax-payer had, in fact, a direct and permanent interest to act as a spy on his neighbours, and to denounce to the collector the progress of their fortunes. The whole population was thus trained to delation and to hatred. Were not such things rather to be expected in the domains of a rajah of Hindostan?
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段里解剖了一个看似技术却极端残酷的行政装置：军役税的征收者（collector）。这个角色不是职业官吏，而是由村民轮充。杜尔哥的引语点明了后果——它把所有殷实之家依次拖入贫困。这既是破产的机制，也是腐败的机制。这位征收者既是受害者又是暴君，他在履行职守的过程中毁掉自己，同时也握有毁灭他人的任意权力。省议会的证词把这种权力的滥用捋得十分透彻：亲…