At the urging of Finance Minister Calonne, Louis XVI called an Assemblee des Notables - an assembly of the most illustrious members of the realm - to recommend solutions to the nation’s fiscal crisis. The national debt and annual deficits had soared uncontrollably and all but emptied the French treasury. Calonne proposed huge cuts in government spending - first, by limiting royal access to state funds, and second, by enacting sweeping tax reforms. Instead of taxing the poorest of the French, with the least to contribute, Calonne recommended taxing the wealthiest classes - hitherto exempt from taxes. He asked for a property tax of 2 percent to 5 percent on all lands and a stamp tax on legal documents, wills, ships’ papers, bills of sale, insurance, university degrees, wine containers, newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, playing cards, and dice. He proposed eliminating taxes on peasants, which, he said, added little to the treasury and, in fact, drove workers off the land into misery, reduced annual crops, and contributed to food shortages and famine. He asked for an end to the hated gabelle, or salt tax, which made it too costly for the poor to preserve their meat, and the corvee, which forced peasants to work on public roads one day a week without pay. By paying peasants to work on the roads and leaving the money they earned from field labor in their pockets, Calonne said the government would raise productivity, increase crops, end famine, and reduce homelessness and poverty.
