Mémoire sur La Picardie, contenant les doléances de la generalité d'Amiens…

by Antoine Tartas de Romainville

Au Cap de Bonne Esperance: Société Philantropique [Amiens: Jean-Baptiste Caron], 1789

[6], 46; xj, [1]; 64 p. | 4to | pi1(=F1?) 2pi^2 A-E^4 F^4(F1=pi1?); A-C^2; a-h^4 | 246 x 193 mm

First and only edition of this provincially produced report that both expounds local injustices and exposes corruption of the ancien régime at the national level. The author himself was born into a noble, but destitute, family, and had to earn his own in the Bourgogne army regiment. In the preface, he stakes out his position for an increasingly restive populace: “All those who can serve to develop the oppressive administration’s disadvantages, under which we moan, should be placed in broad daylight by those who have succeeded in being well informed.” In this spirit, the authors—Romainville uses nous, underscoring a cooperative effort—have worked from “knowledge that few people have been able to obtain, having given much time to the accuracy of the research and the results that we have drawn from it.” ¶ More than an eloquent call to arms, the author builds his case meticulously with financial data. He briefly delves into the history of Picardy before laying out the unfairly disproportionate contribution Picardy and Amiens make to the national purse. He shares a litany of fees and other expectations that “form a new tax, which is out of proportion with all existing revenue, perpetuating the entire province in a state of poverty and distress, negatively affecting all products of the soil, all those of commerce, the arts, and industry, demanding from the government the most serious attention and the most prompt relief” (p. 3). ¶ But the work is hardly provincial in scope. Romainville includes, for example, a two-page table listing some the largest annuities paid by the government, including substantial amounts to Jacques Necker and much of the country’s nobility. He describes elements of the national administration that have facilitated the injustices; compares the values of households throughout the country and across municipal tiers; and examines taxation nationally, noting especially the abuses of the ferme générale system and the tobacco tax in particular. ¶ Macqueron calls for 118 p., though ours has a combined 128 p. The contents listed on the title page correspond to our sequences of xj and 64 p., consistent with the Lille copy, which also reports 64 p. The 46 p. between these and the title page, however, represent a belated second part likely printed in a smaller edition. At the foot of the final page, the author notes that time did not allow them to finish this part—intended to be the first—and notes that they will only print as many copies as are requested. “So those who wish to have it are asked to register [faire inscrire] by April 15 with the bookseller from whom they purchased the present work”—just two months before the Storming of the Bastille. ¶ Rare. We find copies at the National Library of France, and the municipal libraries of Amiens and Lille.

CONDITION: Modern blue paper wrappers. First leaf is blank. ¶ A bit dusty at the edges, and with some negligible scattered foxing, so really a nice copy.

REFERENCES: Catalogue de l’histoire de France (1863), v. 8, #1328 (p. 74); Mémoires de la Société des antiquaries de Picardie v. 15 (Henri Macqueron, Bibliographie du Département de la Somme v. 1; Amiens, 1904), #597 (p. 38-39); Ferdinand Pouy, Recherches historiques sur l’imprimerie et la librairie a Amiens (Amiens, 1861), #259 (p. 155) ¶ Bulletin de la Société des antiquaries de Picardie (Paris: Picard, 1904), v. 21, p. 524 (on the author)

Item #297