A Memoir- the Testament

by Jean Meslier

  58. NO KING IS PERMITTED TO TYRANNIZE OVER THE PEOPLE, OR TO AUTHORIZE ANY TAX ON THEM WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE ESTATES.

  “There are neither Kings nor Lords on the earth,” says the Seigneur de Comines, “who have any power beyond their own Domain, to levy a tax on his subjects, without concessions and the consent of those who will have to pay it, except through tyranny and violence. A reply might be given,” he says, “that there are times when the formalities of the Assembly would take too long;” “To begin and undertake a war should is not something that should be done so hastily, and there is plenty of time when a war is called for.” Pertinax, having won the Empire, took an extreme concern about the Public, easing off the yoke of taxation which tyranny had placed on all the Provinces of the Empire, on the gates, the bridges, and the passages of cities and rivers, thereby allowing trade to flourish again, and re-establishing everywhere the ancient liberty of the Republic. He decreed that all the disused lands must be cultivated, even those belonging to the Princes, and to give his people a desire to work the land, in addition to leaving it in the perpetual possession of those who would work on them, he granted them a further ten years of exemptions and freedom from all sorts of taxes and charges.

  The Emperor Marcus Aurelius[703] made a great show of his kindness when all the money had been used up by a long and tiresome war that he’d waged against the Germans, he indicated that he wished for no further extraordinary tax upon any province of the Empire, but, finding himself pressed for money, he put up for sale and auction, at Trajan’s forum, the imperial ornaments, the beautiful golden vases, the silver and crystal, the gems and rich tables, which he found among his furnishings or in Hadrian’s office, and raised such a sum from this, that he was able to maintain the expenditures required by this considerable movement, and later he even offered, to those who had bought them, to return their money if they wanted to return their purchases, and as for those who didn’t want to, he didn’t force anyone to bring anything back. Such a deed will never be found in the histories of our recent Kings; they were far from capable of such fine deeds. A Turkish Emperor, on the point of death, confided that a recent tax he had ordered should be suppressed. This being true, what should a Christian Prince do who has, as d’Argenton says, no authority based on reason to impose anything on his subjects, without the leave and permission of his people?

  59. WHAT THE FLATTERERS OF KINGS AND RULERS HAVE TO SAY ON THIS SUBJECT.

  But the flatterers of the Kings tell them in our day that they have the right to be the most absolute on all the earth; that they are the sole masters of all that is in their Kingdoms; that they alone can make alliances with foreign Rulers and States; that they alone have the power to declare war and make peace; that they alone have power to raise and impose taxes as they please, and that, finally, they alone can make laws and issue edicts and ordinances, as they like; this is also why they always finish with these absolute words: “for this is our pleasure”: sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas.

  The same flatterers try to persuade them that there would be a danger and an excess in all these reforms, as advised by their wise mentors; they confuse them with their own interests. “If you allow the people to live too well, they will no longer work, they will become proud and disobedient, and will always be ready to revolt; only poverty and weakness can keep them pliable; and thus, by trying to relieve the people,” say the kings’ flatterers, “you will degrade the royal power, and thus you will be doing them an irreparable harm, for they need to be kept low for their own sake.” To all this wise Mentor[704] answered:

  What? Can you conquer a people without starving them to death? What inhumanity is this? What a brutal policy! How many nations do we see who are well-treated, and faithful to their Princes! The cause of Rebellion is the ambition and anxiety of the Powerful people in a State, when they are given too much free rein, and their possessions are allowed to go on without restriction, it’s the multitude of the large and the small, who live in softness, in luxury, and idleness; it’s the over-abundance of men dedicated to war, who have neglected all the useful occupations, finally, it’s the despair of mistreated peoples, it's the harshness, the arrogance of the Kings and their indolence, which keeps them from watching over all the Members of the State, to prevent disturbances. That is what causes revolts, not leaving the laborers to eat bread in peace, which they have earned by the sweat of their brow.

  When the population is burdened with unbearable extortions, in the Princes’ greed or pride, who raise money from them through inhumane means and taxes, there is always danger of mutiny. Count the 45 Greek Emperors, who represent half of those who ended their lives in a violent manner, the due punishment for their proud tyranny. Eleven of these Emperors or the Princes of their blood had their eyes gouged out, and six had their noses cut off! “It seems that Seneca borrowed something from the tyranny of the Emperors of his time. But I am certain,” said Montaigne[705], “that it was a forced decision when he condemned the cause of these generous murderers of Caesar.” “The Savages[706],” he says, “don’t offend me half as much by roasting and eating the bodies of the dead, as those who persecute and torment the living, thus it can be said that they are worse than those who eat them after they die.”

  The masses, as we read in Telemachus, are made miserable by the ambition of the Kings, by their magnificence and their recklessness; for the masses tend to suffer only by the fault of the Kings, who should constantly watch to keep them from suffering. Delirant Reges plectuntur achivi. A king is only there to take care of his people, like a shepherd his flock, or a father his family; he is not made to imperiously command men, as he is to rule them wisely. Finally, Cardinal Richelieu himself, although a flatterer and idolater of the grandeur of his King, Louis XIII, he couldn’t help but acknowledge, or state in his Reflections Politiques, that a king becomes massively culpable to his state if he didn’t aim, in all his deeds, more at the common good than the satisfaction of certain Individuals. “Good Emperors,” he says, “have always preferred the State over their fathers and children, and it should be so much in the foreground for them, that they are obligated to have no consideration for their will, when they want something that would do it any harm. A King,” he says, “does not deserve to wear the crown if he allows the oppression of his subjects to go unpunished, since God only conferred the tools of justice to him to keep it obedient and free from offenses. It is for Individuals to look after their own interests, while the King is charges with seeing to the public good. The oppression of the poor,” he adds, “is a crime that rises to Heaven, to petition God for vengeance; he has,” he says, “this advantage above the rich, and in exchange for the goods of Fortune, which God avows to him and receives individuals as so many parts of His body, such that, regarding all violence as if it wounded His own Divinity, he does not allow it to go unpunished. He gives,” he continues, “so much power to the Kings to defend themselves, and, not having granted the same to the people, He makes Himself their protector, and strictly obliges the Kings, who have the honor to be the living images of His power and His Lieutenants on Earth, not to let Him down.” As he says elsewhere: “This is why the good of the State is the goal that God Himself has set before all Kings, when He set a crown on their heads, so that nothing should be more important for them, and this is the center towards which all their actions should gravitate”, “because the Kings,” as it says in Telemachus, are only Kings to take care of their people, like Shepherds take care of their flocks, or good fathers take care of their children, and they are not made to command men imperiously, but to rule them wisely.

  However, although most of the princes and kings of the Earth are now only proud and haughty tyrants, and that most of the masses are only poor and miserable slaves under the tyrannical yoke of their rule, still, we see that nobody who dares to contradict them, or even who dares to openly condemn or criticize their conduct; on the contrary, we see thousands of cowards and vile flatterers who, to pay court and
get ahead, try to please them in all things, hiding their flaws and vices, and even trying to portray their vices as virtues, or for what little talent and virtues they have, they pretend as if they are rare and eminent virtues, heroic virtues, and loudly point out whatever minor benefits they sometimes bring to a few individuals. This is why one so often sees such excessive outpourings and vain praise in their favor. The Judges and Magistrates who are in place to maintain law and order everywhere, who are in place to suppress vice and to strictly punish the guilty, would never dare do anything against the vices or injustice of the Kings: they pursue and severely punish petty criminals, they have petty thieves and petty murderers and hanged and beaten; but they would never dare say a word against the major and powerful thieves, these great and powerful murderers and firebrands who ravage the whole Earth, who spread and spill fire and blood everywhere, and cause the deaths of thousands and millions of men.

  And what is especially remarkable in this is that those who, by their profession of piety and Religion, who in their supposed position as a Minister of God and, in their supposed position as a father or spiritual shepherd of the people, as especially applies to our Holy Fathers the Popes, our Lords the Bishops, our Gentlemen the Doctors, and, generally speaking, all the Priests and Preachers of the Gospel who boast of infallibility in their faith and doctrine, who should therefore be incorruptible in their morals, and who should sacrifice themselves for the truth and for justice in favor of the people, these very people, I insist, who should be the most zealous defenders of justice and truth, and who should be the firmest and most loyal protectors of the people against the unjust vexations and attacks of by the Princes and Kings of the Earth, are often the very same people who do the most to flatter and spinelessly betray the duties of their Ministry, so that we can even now say, as truthfully as ever, the same thing that several ancient self-proclaimed Prophets said of the Kings and Priests, or of the false Prophets of their day. “The princes and Kings,” they said, “are among the people like ravening Wolves and roaring Lions in search of prey, they are always ready to shed blood and take men’s lives, and the Priests, as well as the false Prophets, who have an understanding with them, flatter them in their vices and wickedness, they publish their crimes, violence, and injustice, and make them believe that God has spoken, even though He has said nothing to them[707].” Principes ejus in medio illius quasi lupi rapientes praedam ad effundendum sanguinem et ad perdendas animas. Prophetae autem ejus liniebant eos absque temperamento videntes vana et divinantes eis mendacium, dicentes: Haec dicit Dominus Deus, cum Dominus non sit locutus. At present, this is clearly evident among the Princes and Kings of the Earth: for the Kings are truly like ravening Wolves and like roaring lions in search of prey: they are always ready to burden the people with taxes on land and other items, always ready to establish new ones and to increase the old ones, and also ever-ready to light the fires of war, and therefore, always ready to spill blood and take men’s lives away; they are always ready to ravage cities and the countryside; and the Priests, who are the Ministers of Religion, cheer them on in their evil aims, just like the false Prophets mentioned above. They consent to their evil intentions, and approve all their unjust and violent conduct, those who so vehemently declaim, shout, and thunder from their seats against the slightest vices and faults of the people, are dumb as dogs with respect to the abominable defects and dissoluteness of the Kings and Princes of the Earth; they even teach that they are all established by God, that they must obey them and submissive to them in all things, consequent to which they say and persuade the poor ignorant masses that those who resist them are opposing the order of God, and deserve eternal damnation[708]: qui potestati resistit, Dei ordinationi resistit, qui autem resistunt ipsi sibi damnationem acquirunt. And, as if it were of great import for the welfare and salvation of the people for them to always have tyrants to tell them what to do, they hold daily public prayers for their preservation and for the prosperity of their weapons, so that, when the fate of a war did not favor them, and their armies were routed by those of their enemies, or when their cities were taken and plundered, they immediately blame this on the sins of the people, they make them think that God is angry against them, and that they must try to soften and to appease His wrath by works of penance and a true conversion of their hearts to God. This is why one then hears mournful strains of Domine non secundum peccata nostra faciat nobis, neque etc. Domine ne memineris iniquitatum nostrarum, along with Domine adjuva nos et libera nos. But when the opposite happens, when they win signal victories over their enemies, when they drive away their armies, when they take their cities, when they ravage their fields and take immense booty, they consider all these victories, as clear signs of God’s protection and blessing: the Magistrates and the People everywhere set off fireworks and hold joyous public festivals, and crowd into ceremonies in their Temples or Churches, while the Priests chant beautiful Te Deums, or magnificent songs of joy and praise, in thanksgiving to their God, as if to thank Him all the more worthily for the triumphant carnage, the triumphant ravages, and the triumphant desolation they wreak on the planet, and thus, they are all so blind as to see such great, such dire, and such detestable evils as great causes of joy and rejoicing; it can truly be said that they are insane in their joy and rejoicing, as it says in one of their supposed holy, and sacred books[709]: et in magno viventes inscientiae bello tot et tanta mala pacem apellant… cum laetantur insaniunt.

  And, as these same Priests and Churchmen, cowardly flatterers of the rich and powerful, know that tyrants are not themselves secure, and that they are always subject to fear what they deserve to receive every day, to do their pleasure and bring them a greater measure of assurance as to their own lives, they publicly teach that it is not permissible for an individual to kill a tyrant, and they have even declared and defined in their council of Constantius[710]: that it was heresy to believe that it is permissible for any individual to kill a tyrant. Which clearly shows that the Christian religion allows and approves, and that it even authorizes the tyranny of the Princes and Kings in the world, as well as all the other abuses I’ve spoken about. And, since all these abuses and the tyranny of Princes and Kings on Earth are completely opposed to justice and natural equity, and since they are completely opposed to the good government of the Peoples, and since they are, as I’ve said, the source, origin and cause of all the vices, all the ills, all the miseries, and all the wickedness of men, it is clear that the Christian Religion thereby allows, approves, and authorizes the misrule of men, in which, therefore, it is obvious that it foments, maintains, and even authorizes the vices and disorders of men, where it should instead openly condemn such things, and it should try to prevent and completely eradicate them. Which it certainly wouldn’t fail to do if it actually were as pure and holy as it boasts it is.

  Hence, I form this clear and conclusive argument: a religion that teaches errors, which allows abuses that are contrary to justice and natural equity, and contrary to good human government, and injurious to the public good, which approves of and authorizes, and even allows the tyranny, or the tyrannical government of the Kings and Princes of the Earth, who make the masses groan under the tyrannical yoke of their rule, cannot be a true religion. This proposal is clear and evident, and beyond dispute. Now, the Christian religion teaches all these errors it allows and approves, and even authorizes all the abuses I’ve discussed, and finally, it authorizes the tyranny and the tyrannical government of the kings and princes of the Earth, as I’ve shown, and as daily experience clearly shows; therefore, the Christian religion can cannot be truly based on the authority of God, and consequently, it is false, as false as any other religion could be. I won’t pause to refute here several other abuses, such as the invocation of the dead, the religious and devout worship of the images and relics of the so-called dead saints, the pilgrimages, the jubilees, the indulgences, the blessings they give to the masses, or the one they make of all sorts of things and similar superstitions, for all these vanities
and all this nonsense are adequately refuted, both by what I’ve already said, and by all that I’ll say in what follows[711].