Taxation cartoon – Jean-Jacques Grandville, 1833

CARTOON ON “IMPÔTS SUCCEURS”: SUCKING TAXES “Le peuple livré aux impôts suceurs dans la grande fosse du budget. Spectacle gratis…

CARTOON ON “IMPÔTS SUCCEURS”: SUCKING TAXES

“Le peuple livré aux impôts suceurs dans la grande fosse du budget. Spectacle gratis donné par la pouvoir aux salariés de toute espèce.” (The people delivered to the sucking taxes in the great pit of the budget. A free spectacle given by the authorities to workers of all kinds.) Etching made in 1833 by Jean-Jacques Grandville. Coloured by a later hand.

To denounce the increases in taxes and levies imposed on the people by the government, caricaturist Grandville devised a cartoon based on a dream of publisher and agitator Charles Philipon. This dream takes place in a walled pit, a sort of square arena. The “impôts suceurs” (sucking taxes) are terrifying monsters.

Each embodies a type of tax: there is the monster of the salt tax; one of the city tax with, in its many legs, the names of products subject to this tax: wine, tobacco, oil, coal; the monster of the personnel sinks its teeth into the body of a soulless citizen; another man tries to escape the monster of the lottery tax; and the monster of the furniture tax holds onto someone and is about to devour him.

Some are already drained and lying on the ground. In the foreground, a woman kneels, accompanied by her two children, before the customs monster wearing a cap and begs him to spare her. To the left in the front is the well-filled chest of “general income”. At the entrance to the pit on the left, three monsters wait to enter the arena: they are the monsters of the doors, windows, and patents.

Patronizingly, the spectacle is observed. They are the “officials, prefects, sub-prefects, directors and general receivers, city agents, royal prosecutors, deputies, constables, gendarmes, investigating judges, court presidents, decorated individuals, ministerial journalists, successful poets, inspectors-general, university inspectors, tobacco vendors, lottery vendors, seal vendors (…)”. They are on a terrace above surrounding the pit. They seem pitiful and indifferent.

In the back is a box with three arches where members of the government sit. In France it is the time July Monarchy (1830-1848). From left to right: Marshal Soult, Minister d’Argout, Madier de Montjau, King Louis-Philippe, Minister Barthe, President Thiers, and battalion chief Viennet.

With this cartoon, the artist has created a sharp contrast between the elegant company in the gallery above and the repulsive spectacle below, where deformed beings devour the people.

The people are heavily taxed and serve as food for a cruel gang. It is an incitement to revolt; the people should not tolerate this!

Price: Euro 575,-