A Law Concerning "Compensation Granted to Former Owners of Land Confiscated And Sold To the Benefit of the State Under the Laws of the Emigres, the Convicted, and the Deported.”
Title I. The allocation and nature of compensation
Article I. Thirty million annuity, with a capital of one billion, are allocated to the compensatory interest payable by the State to the French whose property situated in France, or who were part of the territory of France at January 1, 1792 have been confiscated and disposed of (t) in implementation of the laws on immigrants, deported convicts by the revolutionaries. This compensation is final, and in any case, it will not be allocated any amount in excess of that which is given in this article.
Article II. In the case of land sold pursuant to the laws which ordered the search and seizure according to preliminary indication of the income of 1790, or the established income of 1790, the indemnity will be composed in an annuity inscription three per cent on the general ledger of the public debt, the capital of which will be equal to eighteen times the revenue as verified by the processes of appraisal. For the lands which were sold under the laws prior to the 12th Prairial, which prescribed only a simple estimate, the indemnity shall consist of an annuity inscription three per cent on the general ledger of the public debt, The capital of which shall be equal to the selling price reduced in cash on the auction day according to the table of depreciation of assignats, shall draw up, in accordance with the law of 5 Messidor Year 5, in the department where the property sold was situated. When the result of the liquidations has been known, the sums remaining free from the thirty million annuities determined by Article I will be used to repair the inequalities which might have resulted from the bases fixed by the present article, according to the mode to be settled by law.
Article III. When, in execution of article 20 of the law of the 9th Floreal, year 3, the ascendants of emigrants will have acquired, at the price of the declared estimate, the portions of their lands Allocated to the State by the division of succession, the amount of compensation shall be equal to the real value of the sums which have been paid: accordingly, the scale of depreciation of the departments for assignats and mandates, regarding the price for other items received in payment, shall be applied to each of the sums paid on the date of payment. The indemnity will be delivered to the ascendant if there is, and in his default of presence or life, to those of his heirs who, by the family arrangements, have borne the loss. When the state receives from a male heir or other heir the instituted price from the legitimates which legitimate confiscated persons were entitled to claim in land, the amount reduced by the sum paid for the price of this portion shall be restored to those who were entitled to it or who represented them.
Article IV. Where the former owners have taken possession of the confiscated property on their heads after having acquired them directly from the State (a) or by intermediaries, compensation shall be fixed on the actual value paid to the State in accordance with the Rules laid down in Article 3. When, by the same means, they have bought them from third parties, the indemnity shall be equal to the actual values which they will have paid, without in any case exceeding that determined by Article 2. In the absence of justification, they will receive an amount equal to the actual values forming the price paid to the State. In both cases above, the descendant ancestors or wife of the former owner shall be deemed to be interposed persons.Where the heirs of the former owner shall have returned directly to the possession of the property confiscated from him, the indemnity to which they would be entitled shall be fixed in the same manner.
Article V. The three per cent annuities allocated to the indemnity shall be entered in the public debt-book, and delivered to each of the former owners, or to his representatives by fifth, and from year to year, the first fifth to be entered on the 22, 1825. The registration of each fifth shall bear the interest of the day to which it shall have been due, at any time whén the winding-up has been terminated. However, liquidations giving entitlement to enrollments of less than two hundred and fifty francs of annuity shall not be subject to the time limits prescribed above. The registration will take place in full and with pleasure from 22 June 1825.
Article VI. For the execution of the above provisions, the Minister of Finance shall be entitled to a credit of thirty million francs of the pension three per cent., To be entered, namely:
Six million, June 22, 1825:
Six million, June 22, 1826
Six million, June 22, 1827:
Six millions, on June 22, 1828,
And six millions, June 22, 1829, with enjoyment, for the registered annuities, with enjoyment, for the annuities listed, day or their registration is allowed.
TITLE II. From the admission the indemnity and its liquidation.
Article VII. The former owner will be entitled to claim the indemnity and in his default, the French who were called by law or by his will to represent him at the time of his death without being able to oppose them any incapacity resulting from revolutionary laws. Their renunciations may be opposed to them only by the heirs who, in their default, would have accepted the succession. There shall be no right of succession in respect of the indemnities claimed in the cases of this Article and of Article 3.
Article VIII. In order to obtain compensation, the former owners or their representatives shall provide before the prefect of the department where the land sold is situated. The Prefect shall forward the application to the Director of the Department, who shall draw up the compensation slip, in accordance with previous precedents. These shall be verified by the Committee on the Restitution of Property.
Article IX. The slip shall be communicated to the claimants, afterwards sent by the prefect to the Minister of Finance, together with the documents produced, together with his reasoned opinion, which shall relate both to the rights and qualifications of the claimants and to the waivers of the statement and the observations or Claims it would have received. The Minister of Finance shall verify, firstly, if no bonds or debts have been paid to the discharge of the dispossessed owner, secondly if he has not been accounted for in accordance with the law of December 5, 1814, Amounts from the balance of the sale of his assets: thirdly if no compensation has been paid for the sums due by him in the same way; fourth, if some of the goods sold on him do not come from commitments or other alienations of the royal estate, which would not have been maintained by the laws of the 14th Ventose an 28th April 1816, only to pay one quarter of the value of the said property: in which case one quarter of the indemnity due for the same property shall be drawn up a statement of the deductions to be made in which the sums paid for the relief of women and children, the wages of servants and other payments of the same kind made in assignat and execution of the laws of April 8th, 1792, and March, 1793. Whatever may be the total of these deductions, it may not diminish the allocation of the thirty millions of annuities fixed by Article 1.
Article X. The slip of indemnity and statement of deductions shall be forwarded by the Minister of Finance to the Committee on the Restitution of Property.
Article XI. The Committee will proceed first to the recognition of the qualities and rights of the claimants. In the event that it considers the justification irregular or insufficient, it will return them before the courts to have their position assessed, contradictorily with the king's procurer. If the claimants raise objections to their respective rights, the commission will also remit them to appeal to the courts to have the public prosecution heard on their claims. It shall be dealt with in the same way as in summary matters, unless there be any state of affairs.
Article XII. When the justification of the qualities has been recognized sufficient, or when it has been decided by the courts, the Committee will order that copies of the slips drawn up in the departments and of the prelate be given to the deductions proposed by the Minister of Finance; It shall proceed to the liquidation, having taken note of their observations.
Article XIII. When the liquidation takes place, the Committee shall give notice of its decision to the beneficiaries and forward it to the Minister of Finance, who shall cause the annuity to be registered for the amount of the indemnity paid, in the prescribed terms and time.
Article XIV. The beneficiaries may lodge an appeal against the liquidation of the Committee before the King in his capacity as the State, and within the time limits set for contentious cases. The same power is reserved for the Minister of Finance.
Title III. The Deported and the Condemned
Article XV. The foregoing provisions shall apply to property confiscated and alienated to the detriment of individuals who have been deported or convicted in a revolutionary manner. The amount of the bearer vouchers given in reimbursement to the deportees and the families of the condemned persons in accordance with the decrees of the 21 Prairial and 22 Fructidor year 3 shall be deducted from the indemnity reduced in cash at the time of the day on which the remission was made to them.
Title IV. Property for hospitals and other charitable institutions, and free of charge.
Article XVI. The former owners of the property given to the hospitals and other charitable establishments, either in replacement of their alienated property, or in payment of the sums due by the state, shall be entitled to the indemnity hereinbefore settled. This indemnity will be equal to the amount of the preliminary estimate made before the transfer.
Article XVII. In respect of property which has only been temporarily assigned to hospitals and other charitable institutions, and which, under the terms of Article 5 of the Act of December 5, 1814, must be restored when these establishments have received an increase The former owners or their representatives may request the remittance of such property, immediately upon the transfer to the holding hospice of an annuity registration three per cent, the capital of which shall be equal to the amount of the estimate Due as compensation. In respect of property finally and gratuitously granted by the State, either to other public establishments or to private persons, the indemnity due to the former owners shall be paid in accordance with Article 16 above. In the absence of an estimate of the said assets prior to the assignment of the said assets, they shall be estimated by both parties and by experts, valued at 1790.
Title V. The rights of creditors in respect of the indemnity.
Article XVIII. The objections which would be made to the issue of annuity registration by the creditors of former owners holding pre-confiscation securities not liquidated and not paid by the State, shall have effect only in respect of the capital of their claims. The former owners or their representatives shall be entitled to discharge themselves from the causes of such oppositions, by transferring to the said creditors, on the amount of the annuity liquidation, three per cent, a nominal capital equal to the debt demanded. The rank of privileges and mortgages which they had over the confiscated immovables, and the order or distribution, if any, shall be made, whatever the judge of the situation of the said property, before the court of the domicile.
Title VI. Deadlines for Admission.
Article XIX. The demands for obtaining indemnities must be made, on pain of forfeiture, within the following periods, namely, within a year, by the inhabitants of the kingdom: In eighteen months by those who are in the other States in Europe: In two years, by those who are outside of europe. These periods run from the date of promulgation of this law.
Article XX. There shall be opened in each prefecture a special register in which shall be recorded, at their date, the claims which shall have been addressed to the Prefect, and the result of each of the liquidations, completed. Regularly certified extracts from this register will be issued to all persons who have interest in claiming it.
Title VII. General Provisions.
Article XXI. In the fiscal year to which these projects relate, annual accounts of all liquidations made in accordance with the provisions of this Act shall be distributed to the Chambers, together with the bill of accounts.
Article XXII. For five years from the date of promulgation of this law, all acts of conveyance of property confiscated on the emigre, the deportees and the convicted revolutionists, and passed between the present owner of the said property and the former owner or his Heirs, shall be registered for a fixed fee of three francs.
Article XXIII. The foreign person or person of foreign nationality can not be opposed in relation to the renunciation of the present law, to widowed or descendant French women of emigrants, deportees or convicted persons who have married foreigners before April 1st 1814, nor to their children born of fathers having enjoyed the quality of being French.
Article XXIV. Article 1 of the Law of 5 December 1814 shall continue to be in full effect. Consequently, none of the provisions of this Law shall in any case prejudice the rights acquired before the publication of the Constitutional Charter and maintained by the said article, either to the state or to third parties or to give rise to any recourse against them.
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A summation of the law from the GM's mediocre French translation - feel free to send me translated passaged if you wish if you think you can make it clearer [
https://books.google.nl/booksid=xUg...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false pages 83ish-102ish]
Ever since the consolidation of the public debt under the Directory, it was represented by a hundred-bond franc at five per cent interest. But in 1824 the quotation of these bonds rose to par and above par; and investors were thus eager to pay more then 100 francs for an annual dividend of five francs. The real money return was less then 5 percent. The state therefore offered an alternative; they would either agree to the repurchase of their bonds at a hundred francs, or if they wanted to continue to hold the bonds, they would be given three per cent bonds at a reduced quotation of seventy-five francs for a bond of a hundred francs face value or an actual dividend rate of four percent. Considering large number of these bonds in circulation, the budgetary savings on this transaction through lower interest costs would amount about 30 million francs. This saving came to just about the amount needed to pay three per cent on a billion-franc bond issue, and it would be such a bond issue which Villèle proposed to distribute to the emigres in compensation. [Political problem here; this makes the old bondholders, mainly Parisian bourgeois, pay to the emigres the debts owed them by the Revolution and the Monarchy. They may not have cared much for this, but the problem was that their annual dividends were going to be reduced one-fifth. The first bond conversion was historically defeated the year before.
Villèle thus separates the indemnity from the payment in legislation, although for game-related reasons, we shall presume that the payment will succeed if this bill does, as if it does not, the government will have to find more difficult means of amassing such an incredible amount. In fact, Villèle's eventual resolution was an obscenely complex series of technical measures, of optional bond conversions, amortization funds, etc. We need not dip into it. One might simply content themselves with this estimate, that the indemnity was to cost France 30,000,000 of governmental dividends at three per cent, representing bonds worth a face value of 870,000,000 francs.