A Memoir- the Testament

by Jean Meslier

  53. THE COMMUNION OF THE FIRST CHRISTIANS WAS DESTROYED AMONG THEM.

  It was, by all appearances, to this communal way of living, as the best and most suitable way for men, that the Christian Religion wanted to induce its followers. This is apparent, not only from the way it obliged them all to see the rest as brothers and equals, but also in what was practiced among them, in the beginning. For it is noted in their books that, at this time, they had all things in common among them, and that there were no poor among them; the whole multitude of those who believed, says their History[668], were of one heart and one mind, none of them considered anything they had as belonging to themselves in particular, but they placed all things in common, and there were no poor among them, because all those who had lands, inheritances, or houses, sold them and brought the sum to the Apostles, who had them distributed to each according to their needs, this is why they took one of the principal points or articles of their faith and religion, that of the communion of the saints, i.e., the community of goods, which was, among the saints, which was among the saints, wishing by this to say and have it understood that they were all saints and that all the goods were common among them; but this supposed holy communion or common union of all goods didn’t last long among them; for, once greed slipped into their hearts, it soon broke this common union of goods and quickly brought division between them, as it was before. Nevertheless, to avoid the appearance of having destroyed this Article of the symbol of their Faith and Religion, which was the principal and only one they should have inviolably kept, what did they do? They decided, that is, the first and most important of them, after being perfectly divided, to always retain the same Article of their Faith, and to attach this word communion to an imaginary communion of spiritual goods, which are truly also nothing but imaginary goods, especially in the reception and devout eating of a few little images of dough, cooked between two irons, which their Priests pretend to consecrate in their Masses, which they themselves eat initially, after which they distribute them to everyone who is devoted enough to show up and get their own share. This is how far they have abusively and ridiculously reduced this Article of their Faith on the communion of goods and the common ownership of property, which they should have always kept inviolably among them, as things started. Such that there would be nearly no property, owned in common among them, if it weren’t for those who are called Monks: for, as for Parishes or lay and secular Communities, if they still have a few goods in common, it’s not much, it’s nothing worth mentioning, since it amounts to basically nothing with respect to each individual.

  But the Monks, more wise and prudent in this than the others, have always been careful to keep all their property in common and to enjoy it all in common. This is also why they always seem to flourish, why they never lack for anything, and they never feel the needs or hardships of poverty, which make most of the rest of humanity so miserable in life. Their monasteries are as splendidly built and as beautifully decorated and furnished as the mansions of Lords and the palaces of Kings, their gardens and flower beds are like earthly Paradises, and like gardens of delights, and their granaries, like their farmyards, are always furnished with the best of everything, i.e., the best wines, the best grains, and the best poultry. In short, their houses are like reservoirs of all goods and amenities, which all the individuals have the good fortune to enjoy in common. And it can be said that they would be the happiest of mortals if, with all the goods and all the commodities they enjoy, they also had the liberty to enjoy, according to their inclination and desire, the pleasures of marriage, and if they were not also the slaves of the stupidest and most ridiculous superstitions of their Religion. It is sure that, if they ceased to own their goods in common and if they divided them up for private enjoyment of them, as each thought best, they would soon be like anyone else, exposed and reduced to all the miseries and discomforts of life, which manifestly shows that it’s for their good rule and their good way of living in common and enjoying the goods they own in common, that they keep themselves so firmly in the flourishing state they enjoy. It’s by this way of life that they pleasantly and advantageously acquire all the comforts of life, and that’s also how they happily manage to escape all the pains and all the misery of poverty.

  It would certainly be the same with all the parishes, if the people who compose them truly wanted to come to an understanding and live peacefully together and in common, to work usefully in common, and to enjoy precisely in common all the fruits of their labors and the goods they have in their possession, each in their own territory. If they wished it they might, in this case, and even with much greater ease than the Monks, erect pleasant and solid palaces and houses to comfortably house everyone, both themselves and all their herds; if they wished, they might make pleasant and useful gardens and orchards, where they could have all sorts of beautiful and good fruits in abundance; they might carefully cultivate and plant plots of land everywhere to harvest all sorts of grains; finally, they might, if they wanted, by this way of living in common, procure an abundance of all goods everywhere, and thereby find shelter from all the miseries and discomforts of poverty, which would enable them to live happy and contented, instead of enjoying, as they now do, separately from each other, of the goods of the earth and the comforts of life, the majority of them expose themselves and take on all sorts of ills and misery, since it’s impossible for there not to be an infinity of miserable wretches, as long as the goods of the earth are so badly shared and so ill-governed among men. It is, therefore, clearly an abuse, a great abuse even, for men to possess independently of each other, as they do, the goods and conveniences of life, and to enjoy them independently of each other, as they do, since thereby they are deprived of so many great blessings, and this exposes them to such severe evils and such great misery.

  54. THE SIXTH ABUSE: ON THE TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT OF THE KINGS AND RULERS ON EARTH.

  Finally, another abuse which makes the majority of people miserable and unhappy in life is the near-universal tyranny of the Mighty, the tyranny of the Kings and Princes, who rule almost the whole Earth, with an absolute power over all other men. For, all these Kings and Princes are now nothing other than true tyrants, since they tyrannize and don’t cease to miserably tyrannize over the poor folk, who are subjected to them by an infinity of onerous laws and obligations, which they impose on them and by which these poor people find themselves oppressed every day. Montaigne[669] says that “in his Gorgias Plato defines a tyrant as he who has license in a city to do whatever he likes there”, and according to this definition all present sovereigns can be called tyrants, since they all assume the license of doing as they please, not only in certain towns or cities, as Plato says, but in Provinces and whole Kingdoms, and they even push this license to such a degree of pride and insolence that the only justification they offer for their behavior, their laws, and their commands, is their own will and pleasure, since, they say, for any reason of their conduct, their laws and their prescriptions, they do allege no other, that their will and pleasure, because They say “Such is our pleasure, like the one that said: Sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas.

  The Prophet Samuel was right to criticize the people of Israel, i.e., the Jewish people, for its blindness and folly, when they asked him to give them a King to rule them. The Prophet protested against this request of theirs, and to persuade them against such an insane idea and such a horrible plan, he gravely warned them of the unbearable hardness of the yoke which this King would impose on them, in these words[670]:

  Realize that your Kings will take your sons and daughters, to put them to work in all kinds of exercises and practices, some to drive their chariots, others in war, risking death every day, others by their side, to serve them continually in all sorts of things, others to work in various arts and crafts, and others to work on their land, like slaves who have been bought. They will take your daughters to employ them in various works, just like maids, who are forced to work from fear of punishment. They will
take your inheritance and your flocks, and give them to their favorites, their eunuchs, and other servants, and finally, all your children, along with yourselves, will all be subject, not only to a King but also to his servants. Then, you will remember the prediction that I have made today, and feeling regret for your mistake, you will groan and bitterly beg in the bitterness of your heart for God's help, to deliver you from such severe hardship, but He will not listen to you, and He will let you suffer the just penalty for your carelessness and ingratitude.

  The people had no ears for the salutary warnings of this Prophet; on the contrary, they persisted more than ever in this demand, which obliged Samuel to give them their King, but this was completely against his inclination. For this Prophet, who clearly loved justice, had no love for Royalty, since he was convinced[671] that Aristocracy was the happiest of all governments, as Josephus himself says.

  Never was any Prophecy, if there be any, more truly fulfilled than the one then given by this Prophet, for, unfortunately for so many poor wretches, its fulfilment has been seen in all Kingdoms and in all Ages ever since, and even now the People miserably see its fulfilment, especially in our France, and in our own time, where Kings and Queens make themselves nearly into little Gods, the absolute masters of all things: their flatterers persuade them that they are absolutely the absolute masters of bodies and property. That’s also why we see that they never spare lives or property, but sacrifice them all for their glory, their ambition, their greed or their vengeance, according to the way they are animated and driven by their passions.

  What they do not do to get all their subjects’ gold and silver; on the one hand they impose, on various false and vain pretenses of necessity, heavy taxes on land, taxes for the military, subsidies and other such taxes in all the Parishes and their dependencies; they increase them, they double, they triple them as they please, on various vain and false pretenses of necessity. New taxes, new decrees, and new orders or new commandments are issued almost every day by the Kings or their first officers, to force the people to give them everything they want, and satisfy all their demands, and if they do not obey immediately, if they’re unable to satisfy them completely or immediately produce all the exorbitant sums demanded of them in these taxes, then Archers are immediately sent to the countryside to harshly force them to pay or do what was ordered, Garrisons of soldiers, or other scum, are sent to them, whom they are obliged to feed, pay every day at their own cost and expense, until they are completely satisfied. Often, too, for fear of disobedience, constraints are sent ahead of time, before the due date, so it’s always force on top of force and fees on top of fees for the poor people; they are pursued, pressured, beaten, and plundered in every way. They can complain and protest their poverty and misery, but this is discounted, nobody listens to this, or if they are heard, it’s only like with King Rehoboam, to overburden them rather than relieve them. As is well known, when this King saw the complaints of his people about the imposts and taxes that his father, King Solomon, had put on them, asking for their reduction, he gave them this proud and insolent reply: “My pinky is bigger than my father’s back; if my father put imposts and taxes on you, I will impose heavier ones; my father had you whipped with rods, and I will whip you with scorpions.” That is the answer he gave[672]: minimus digitus meus grossior est dorso patris mei… Pater meus coecidit vos flagellis, ego autem coedam vos scorpionibus. The complaints of the poor in our own day would be no more favorably received than they were in those days: for the maxim followed by the sovereign Princes and their first Ministers is to exhaust the peoples and render them derelict and poor[673], in order to make them more submissive and unable to take any action against their authority. It is a guiding maxim of theirs to allow the Financiers and Receivers of the Land-tax to enrich themselves at the expense of the masses, in order to get their own share afterwards, and to use them like sponges, which are pressed only after they are allowed to fill. It is a maxim of theirs to abase the Powerful men of their Kingdom and make them incapable of harming them, and it’s a maxim of theirs to sow quarrels and division among their principal Officers and even among the masses, to keep them from conspiring against them. In this they are wildly successful, by burdening, as they do, their peoples with heavy taxes: for, by this means they enrich themselves, as much as they like, by exhausting their subjects, by this means they sow strife and divisions among them: for, as long as those of each Parish are in a state of discord, hatred, and contestation among themselves, about the particular distribution that they are obliged to carry out among themselves of said taxes, each of them complaining of having too much and having a higher rate than their neighbor who is wealthier than himself, and who seems to have a lower obligation than he does: as long, I say, as they are in a state of discord and disputation on this subject, as long as they are fighting and insulting and cursing each other, they will be unable to go after their King or his Ministers, even though these are the only true cause of their troubles and their quarrels and fighting, they don’t dare to mutter openly against their King, or against his Ministers, they wouldn’t dare to attack them, they don’t even have the mind or courage to join together as one to shake of, with a common accord, the tyrannical yoke of a single man who commands them with such harshness, who causes them such suffering, and they would rather butcher each other to satisfy their individual hatred and animosity.

  The Kings, then, seeking to enrich themselves and to make themselves the absolute Masters of everything, means that the poor have to do whatever they require, and give them whatever they ask for, and this under the threat of all sorts of harsh constraints, the seizure and execution of their property, imprisonment, and all other sorts of violence, making people groan under such harsh slavery. And, what makes such an odious and detestable yoke and government even harsher, is the strictness with which they find themselves mistreated every day, by a thousand harsh and stern extortioners of their King’s money, who are normally proud and arrogant men, which causes the poor people to suffer affronts, thefts, treachery, extortion, and all other sorts of injustice and mistreatment; for there is no officer so petty, no extortioner so lowly, no official so minor, no archer or guard of salt or tobacco so low-ranking but who, on the pretext of being in the King’s pay, or of receiving and heaping up his moneys, doesn’t think he’s in the right to act arrogantly, that he’s entitled to insult, mistreat, trample on, and tyrannize over the poor. On the other side of things, these Kings impose heavy taxes on all kinds of merchandise, to get a profit from everything that is bought and sold; they put them on wine and meat, on eau-de-vie and beer and oils; they put them on wool, on fabric and lace; they put them on pepper and salt, on paper and tobacco and all sorts of foods; they make a profit form the import and export duties, from the rights of control and introduction, they profit from marriages, baptisms, and burials; they profit from amortizations, easements, woods and forests, and waterways, they might as well impose fees for the wind and clouds. “Let Ergastus alone” joked La Bruyère[674] in his Characters, “and he will demand a duty from all who drink from the river or who walk on terra firma, he can convert even reeds, rushes, and nettles into gold.” If one would traffic on the land of their domination, and come and go freely to buy and sell, or to transport merchandise, one must have, as it says in the Book of Revelation, the mark of the beast, i.e., the mark of the tax-man and the permission of the King; one must have the certificates of his men, receipts, transit bills, letters of recommendation, notices, passports, and other such permission slips, which are truly what we should call the mark of the beast, i.e., the mark of the Tyrant’s permission, without which, if one unhappily gets caught, or seized by the Guards or Officers of said Royal Beast, one runs the risk of ruin or destruction, for such people are immediately put under arrest, captured, their goods are confiscated, along with the horses, carriages, and the merchants or conductors of said merchandise are also condemned to heavy fines, to prisons, to galleys, and sometimes even shameful deaths, as it is so strictly
forbidden is it to trade, to come and go with merchandise without having, as I said, the letter or the mark of the beast[675]: Et datum est illi ut … ne quis posset emere aut vendere nisi qui habet caracterem Bestiae, aut nomen Bestiae aut numerus nominis ejus.

  55. ON THE TYRANNY OF THE KINGS OF FRANCE, WHO MADE THEIR PEOPLE MISERABLE AND UNHAPPY.

  And if these Kings get it into their minds to extend the borders of their Kingdoms or their Empire, and wish to make war on their neighbors, to invade their States or Provinces on whatever empty pretexts they can conjure up, this always comes at the expense of the lives and property of the poor. For they seize as many people as they like, to form their armies, willy-nilly, wherever their officers can catch them; they get silver and provisions to feed and maintain their troops, which nevertheless doesn’t keep the rural poor from being exposed daily to insults, outrages, and violence from their insolent soldiers, who take pleasure in foraging and plundering whatever they can find, and when their armies are able to penetrate into the enemy’s lands, they do nothing short of ravaging and bringing desolation to entire provinces, bringing fire and blood everywhere they go: these are the usual effects of the cruelty of the Princes and Kings of the earth, and in particular, those of our recent Kings of France; for none have pushed absolute authority as far as they have, none have so impoverished their peoples, so enslaved them, and made them so miserable as they have, and none have shed so much blood, had so many people killed, or made so many widows and orphans weep, or had so many cities and provinces ravaged and ruined, as the late King Louis XIV, called the Great, but not, truly, due to any great and praiseworthy deeds, for he did nothing worthy of the name, but more truly because of the great injustice, theft, usurpation, desolation, and the ravages and human carnage he brought about on all sides, both on sea and on land.