CALONNE, Charles Alexandre de (1734-1802), a French statesman, was born at Douai in 1734. He was descended from a good family and entered the profession of the law, in which he rapidly attained success. He became in succession advocate to the general council of Artois, procureur to the parliament of Douai, and finally master of requests, a dignity which gave him the right of sitting in the general council. He seems to have been a man of great business capacity, gay and careless in temperament, and thoroughly unscrupulous in political action. In the terrible crisis of affairs preceding the French Revolution, when minister after minister tried in vain to replenish the exhausted royal treasury and was dismissed for want of success, Galonné was summoned to take the general control of affairs. He assumed office in 1783, and at first everything seemed to prosper. Money flowed in readily, and the gaiety of the minister gave courage to the court. But his prosperity was hollow and rested on no secure foundation. Calonne had levied taxes until it was impossible to extract more from the impoverished people. He had borrowed till his credit was entirely gone, and he at last found himself compelled to disclose to the king the true state of affairs, and to lay before him what in his opinion was the only measure that could restore France. The first step in this proposed plan was the convocation of the notables, and the writs summoning them were issued in December 1786. On the 22d February of the following year Calonne disclosed to the notables his anxiously expected scheme for reconstituting the finances. The main provisions of this plan were the redistribution of the taxes, so that the whole might not fall on the unprivileged classes, the imposition of a land tax on the revenues of ...