The Ancient Regime

xtor

of different domai

Levies of the tithe

to the p

advances made during the current year for seed, wages, and food for men and animals; and, in the last place, the compensation due him for the risks he takes and his losses. Here is a first lien which must be satisfied beforehand, taking precedence of all others, superior to that of the seignior, to that of the tithe-owner (décimateur), to even that of the king, for it is an indebtedness due to the soil.5201 After this is paid back, then, and only then, that which remains, the net product, can be touched. Now, in the then state of agriculture, the tithe-owner and the king appropriate one-half of this net product, when the estate is large, and the whole, if the estate is a small one5202. A certain large farm in Picardy, worth to its owner 3,600 livres, pays 1,800

the sheep and goats they raise. They purchase nothing save the tools necessary to make the fabrics of which these provide the material. On another metayer-farm, on the confines of la Marche and Berry, forty-six laborers cost a smaller sum, each one consuming only the value of twenty-five francs per annum. We can judge by this of the exorbitant share appropriated to themselves by the Church and State, since, at so small a cost of cultivation, the proprietor finds in his pocket, at the end of the year, six or eight sous per arpent out of which, if

are authentic and almost up to the latest hour. We have only to take up the official statements of the provincial assemblies held in 1787, to learn by off

al Cond

provinces on th

lle, and other taxe

tion to income.-The

age, the proprietor of twenty arpents of land which he himself works, and the income of which is estimated at ten livres per arpent it is supposed that he is likewise the owner of the house he occupies, the site being valued at forty livres."5206 This tax-payer pays for his real taille, personal and industrial, thirty-five livres fourteen sous, for collateral tax

of his income, and that, in the communities wronged by the assessments, the proprietors are reduced to the status of simple farmers scarcely able to get enough to restore the expenses of cultivation." In Auvergne,5208 the taille amounts to four sous on the livre net profit; the collateral taxes and the poll-tax take off four sous three deniers more; the vingtièmes, two sous and three deniers; the contribution to the royal roads, to the free gift, to local charges and the cost of levying, take again one sou one denier, the total being eleven sous and seven deniers on the livre income, without counting seigniorial dues and the tithe. "The bureau, moreover, recognizes with regret, that several of the collections pay at the rate of seventeen sous, sixteen sous, and the most moderate at the rate of fourteen sous the l

Common

axes on the c

self a part of their quota, otherwise, being without anything to eat, they cannot work,5213 even in the interest of the master; man must have his ration of bread the same as an ox his ration of hay. "In Brittany,5214 it is notorious that nine-tenths of the artisans, though poorly fed and poorly clothed, have not a crown free of debt at the end of the year," the poll-tax and others carrying off this only and last crown. At Paris5215 "the dealer in ashes, the buyer of old bottles, the gleaner of the gutters, the peddlers of old iron and old hats," the moment they obtain a shelter pay the poll-tax of three livres and ten sous each. To ensure its payment the occupant of a house who sub-lets to them is made responsible. Moreover, in case of delay, a "blue man," a bailiff's subordinate, is sent who installs himself on the spot and whose time they have to pay for. Mercier cites a mechanic, named Quatremain, who, with four small children, lodged in the sixth story, wh

zures.-Observe the syst

a collector about every six years." In many of the villages the artisans, day-laborers, and métayer-farmers perform the service, although requiring all their time to earn their own living. In Auvergne, where the able-bodied men expatriate themselves in winter to find work, the women are taken;5217 in the election-district of Saint-Flour, a certain village has four collectors in petticoats.-They are responsible for all claims entrusted to them, their property, their furniture and their persons; and, up to the time of Turgot, each is bound for the others. We can judge of their risks and sufferings. In 1785,5218 in one single district in Champagne, eighty-five are imprisoned and two hundred of them are on the road every year. "The collector, says the provincial assembly of Berry,5219 usually passes one-half of the day fo

dy groans and complains and nobody pays it. The term having expired, at the hour and minute, constraint begins, the collectors, although able, taking no trouble to arrest this by making a settlement, notwithstanding the installation of the bailiff's men is costly. But this kind of expense is habitual and people expect it instead of fearing it, for, if it were less rigorous, they would be sure to be additionally burdened the following year." The receiver, indeed, who pays the bailiff

ence innumerable mistakes and frauds. Besides a scribe they take along the bailiff's subordinates, persons of the lowest class, laborers without work, conscious of being hated and who act accordingly. "Whatever orders may be given them not to take anything, not to make the inhabitants feed them, or to enter taverns with collectors," habit is too strong "and the abuse continues."5225 But, burdensome as the bailiff's men may be, care is taken not to evade them. In this respect, writes an intendant, "their obduracy is strange." "No person," a receiver reports,5226 "pays the collector until he sees the bailiff's man in his house." The peasant resembles his ass, refusing to go without being beaten, and, although in this he may appear stupid, he is clever. For the collector, being responsible, "naturally inclines to an increase of the assessment on prompt payers to the advantage of the negligent. Hence the prompt payer becomes, in his turn, negligent and, although with money in his chest, he allows the process to go on."5227 Summing all up, he calculates that the process, even if expensive, costs less than extra taxation, and of the two evils he chooses the least. He has but one resource against the collector and receiver, his simulated or actual poverty, voluntary or involuntary. "Every one subject to the taille," s

irect

tax and t

merely their advances and the interest on their advances, but, again, every possible benefit. This suffices to indicate the mode of levying indirect taxes.-In the second place, by means of the salt-tax and the excises, the inquisition enters each household. In the provinces where these are levied, in Ile-de-France, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Orleanais, Berry, Bourbonnais, Bourgogne, Champagne, Perche, Normandy and Picardy, salt costs thirteen sous a pound, four times as much as at the present day, and, considering the standard of money, eight times as much5232. And, furthermore, by virtue of the ordinance of 1680, each person over seven years of age is expected to purchase seven pounds per annum, which, with four persons to a family, makes eighteen francs a year, and equal to nineteen days' work: a new direct tax, which

cs per annum, it is the usual case.-It is forbidden to make use of any other salt for the pot and salt-cellar than that of the seven pounds. "I am able to cite," says Letrosne, "two sisters residing one league from a town in which the warehouse is open only on Saturday. Their supply was exhausted. To pass three or four days until Saturday comes they boil a remnant of brine from which they extract a few ounces of salt. A visit from the clerk ensues and a procès-verbal. Having friends and protectors this costs them only forty-eight livres."-It is forbidden to take water from the ocean and from other saline sources, under a penalty of from twenty to forty livres fine. It is forbidden to water cattle in marshes and other places containing salt, under penalty of confiscation and a fine of three hundred livres. It is forbidden to put salt into the bellies of mackerel on returning from fishing,

rmed, and they pounce down unexpectedly on every suspected domicile; their instructions prescribe frequent inspections and exact registries "enabling them to see at a glance the condition of the cellar of each inhabitant."5236-The manufacturer having paid up, the merchant now has his turn. The latter, on sending the four casks to the consumer-again pays seventy-five francs to the ferme. The wine is dispatched and the ferme prescribes the roads by which it must go; should others be taken it is confiscated, and at every step on the way some payment must be made. "A boat laden with wine from Languedoc,5237 Dauphiny or Roussillon, ascending the Rhone and descending the Loire to reach Paris, through the Briare canal, pays on the way, leaving out charges on the Rhone, from thirty-five to forty kinds of duty, not comprising the charges on entering Paris." It pays these "at fifteen or sixteen places, the multiplied payments obliging the carriers to devote twelve or fifteen days more to the passage than they otherwise would if their duties could be paid at one bureau."-The charges on the routes by water are particularly heavy. "From Pontarlier to Lyons there are twenty-five or thirty tolls; from Lyons to Aigues-Mortes there are others, so that whatever costs ten sous i

that he lacks bread and lives on alms. In Champagne, the syndics of Bar-sur-Aube write5241 that the inhabitants, to escape duties, have more than once emptied their wine into the river, the provincial assembly declaring that "in the greater portion of the province the slightest augmentation of duties would cause the cultivators to desert

y to despoil, but also to irritate the peasan

ns And Ex

burdensome.-Exempti

officers and clerks.-But why is taxation so burdensome? As far as the communes which annually plead in detail against certain gentlemen to subject them to the taille are concerned, there is no dou

ir property, including their farms.-Now, the taille, ever augmenting, is that which provides, through its special delegations, such a vast number of new offices. A man of the Third-Estate has merely to run through the history of its periodical increase to see how it alone, or almost alone, paid and is paying5245 for the construction of bridges, roads, canals and courts of justice, for the purchase of offices, for the establishment and support of houses of refuge, insane asylums, nurseries, post-houses for horses, fencing and riding schools, for paving and sweeping Paris, for salaries of lieutenants-general, governors, and provincial commanders, for the fees of bailiffs, seneschals and vice-bailiffs, for the salaries of financial and election officials and of commissioners dispatched to the provinces,

of the taille-payer has increased tenfold. In the Ile-de-France,5248 on an income of 240 livres, the taille-payer pays twenty-one livres eight sous, and the nobles three livres, and the intendant himself states that he taxes the nobles only an eightieth of their revenue; that of Orléanais taxes them only a hundredth, while, on the other hand, those subject to the taille are assessed one-eleventh.-If other privileged parties are added to the nobles, such as officers of justice, employee's of the fermes, and exempted townsmen, a group is formed embracing nearly everybody rich or well-off and whose revenue certainly greatly surpasses that of those who are subject to the taille. Now, the budgets of the provincial assemblies inform us how much each province levies

should pay 2,400 livres, pays only 1,216. The case is much worse with the princes of the blood; we have seen that their domains are exempt and pay only 188,000 livres instead of 2,400,000. Under this system, which crushes the weak to relieve the strong, the more capable one is of contributing, the less one contributes.-The same story characterizes the fourth and last direct taxation, namely, the tax substituted for the corvée. This tax, attached, at first, to the vingtièmes and consequently extending to all proprietors, through an act of the Council is attached to the taille and, consequently, bears on those the most burdened5250. Now this tax amounts to an extra of one-quarte

these ignorant and partial hands the scales are not held by equity but by self-interest, local hatreds, the desire for revenge, the necessity of favoring some friend, relative, neighbor, protector, or patron, some powerful or some dangerous person. The intendant of Moulins, on visiting his generalship, finds "people of influence paying nothing, while the poor are over-charged." That of Dijon writes that "the basis of apportionment is arbitrary, to such an extent that the people of the province must not be allowed to suffer any longer."5255 In the generalship of Rouen "some parishes pay over four sous the livre and others scarcely one sou."5256 "For three years past that I have lived in the country," writes a lady of the same district, "I have remarked that most of the wealthy proprietors are the least pressed; they are selected to make the apportionment, and the people are always abused."5257-"I live on an estate ten leagues from Paris," wrote d'Argenson, "where it was desired to assess the taille proportionately, but only injustice has been the outcome since the seigniors made use of their influence to relieve their own tenants." 5258 Besides, in addition to those who, through favor, diminish their taille, there are others who buy themselves off entirely. An intendant, visiting the subdelegation of Bar-sur-Seine, observes" that the rich cultivators succeed in obtaining petty commissions in connection with the king's household and enjoy the privileges attached to these, which throws the burden of taxation on the others."5259 "One of the leading causes of our prodigious taxation," says the provincial assembly of Auvergne, "is the inconceivable number of the privileged, which daily increases through traffic in and the assignment of offices; cases occur in which these have ennobled six families in less than twenty years." Should this abuse continue, "in a hundred years every tax-payer the most capable of supporting taxation

icipal T

ns.-The poor the g

and to such an extent that, in 1774, they have contributed 2,071,052 livres, the provisional octroi being still maintained.-Now, this exorbitant octroi bears heavily everywhere on the most indispensable necessities, the artisan being more heavily burdened than the bourgeois. In Paris, as we have seen above, wine pays forty-seven livres a hogshead entrance duty which, at the present standard of value, must be doubled. "A turbot, taken on the coast at Harfleur and brought by post, pays an entrance duty of eleven times its value, the people of the capital therefore being condemned to dispense with fish from the sea."5266 At the gates of Paris, in the little parish of Aubervilliers, I find "excessive duties on hay, straw, seeds, tallow, candles, eggs, sugar, fish, faggots and firewood."5267 Compiegne pays the whole amount of its taille by means of a tax on beverages and cattle5268. "In Toul and in Verdun the taxes are so onerous that but few consent to remain in the town, except those kept there by their offices and by old habits."5269 At Coulommiers, "the merchants and the people are so severely taxed they dread undertaking any enterprise." Popular hatred everywhere is profound against octroi, barrier and clerk. The bourgeois oligarchy everywhere first cares for itself before caring for those it governs. At Nevers and at Moulins,5270 "all rich persons find means to escape their turn to

ple over which you reign has given unmistakable proofs of its patience. . . . They are mart

nts In The Re

have parted with fifty-three francs, and more, to the collector, I am obliged again to give fourteen francs to the seignior, also more than fourteen for tithes,5273 and, out of the remaining eighteen or nineteen francs, I have additionally to satisfy the excise men. I alone, a poor man, pay two governments, on

ing to ferment in the popular brain and encountered

take into his own hands the defense of the miserable citizen p

the miserable tenements in which we live, the poor food we eat, you would feel for us; this would prove to you better than words that we can support this no longer and that it must be lessened. . . . That which grieves us is that those who possess the most, pay the least. We pay the tailles and for our implements, while the ecclesiastics and nobles who own the best land pay nothing. Why do the rich pay the least and the poor the most? Should not each pay according to his ability? Sire, we entreat that things may be so arranged, for that is just. . . . Did we dare, we should undertake to plant the slopes with vines; but we are

ular registers, are the two enemies again

t. . . . Feudalism is the most disastrous of abuses, the evils it causes surpassing those of hail and lightning. . . . Subsistence is impossible if three-quarters of the crops are to be taken for field-rents, terrage, etc. . . . The propriet

under which more than 500,000 persons still suffer in Lower Brittany." "You have in your armies, Sire, more than 30,000 Franche-Comté serfs;" should one of these become an officer and be pensioned out of the service he would be obliged to return to and live in the hut in which he was born, otherwise; at his death, the seignior will take his pittance. Let there be no more absentee prelates, nor abbés-commendatory. "The present deficit is not to be paid by us but by the bishops and beneficiaries; deprive the

cureur, the lawyer, who places professional metaphors and theories at his service. B

(re

stes," II. 832. See a tab

(re

en," IX. 15; an article

(re

es économistes,

(re

semblée provinciale de Ch

(re

37.-A register of grievances of the parish of Epreville; on 100 francs income the Treasury takes 2

(re

emblée provinciale de Ile-

(re

. prov de la Haute-Guyenne

(re

3.-Doléances, by Gautier de Biauzat, member of the council

(re

at the end of

(re

3). Wages at this time are from 7 t

(re

-General, V. 59, p. 6. Memorandum to M. Necker from M. d'Orgeux,

(re

er of the intendant of

(re

ot, II

(re

(remonstrances of the Parlia

(re

; XI. 59;

(re

(February 17, 1782) one by the intendant of Moulins (April, 1779); the tria

(re

de l'ass. prov. d'

(re

, "Histoire de

(re

'ass. prov. de Berry"

(re

cquevil

(re

A letter of M. de Cypièrre, inten

(re

Population,"

(re

A letter of M. de Cypièrre, inten

(re

8. (Letter of

(re

the intendant of To

(re

ort by Raudon, receiver of tailles in

(re

l'ass. prov. de Ber

(re

mpfor

(re

de l'ass. prov.

(re

Young,

(re

ss. prov. of the generalsh

(re

38.-Archives nationales, H. 138 (1782). Cahier de Bugey, "Salt costs a person living in the countrysi

(re

VI. 367 (Ma

(re

p.44. (Cahiers of Br

(re

Young, II

(re

isters and instructions of various local di

(re

sne, ib

(re

ed at the gates of a city on

(re

6 (Papers of the Parliament

(re

rliament of Metz, 1768). "The class of indigents form more than twelve-thirteenths of the whole number of villages of

(re

abeau, I.

(re

he Assembly of Notables, by

(re

and their administrative staffs are today taxed even though such taxation is on

(re

193, 225. "Procès-verbaux de l'as

(re

de Bianz

(re

ates-General, V. 59. P. 6. (Letter of M. Orgeux to M. Necker),

(re

t in mind, the silver "marc," worth 59 francs in 1965, being w

(re

rov. de Ile-de-France," 132,

(re

Notables (1787), p. 1.-See note 2 at the

(re

ation of June 2, 1787, the tax substituted for the corvée may be extended to one-sixth of the taille, wi

(re

orandum on the excise dues of Comp

(re

l'ass. prov. de l'Ile

(re

rléanais, p. 225." "Arbitrariness, injustice, inequality, are inse

(re

people who decrease in numbers all the time: these are the workers of the land. The countryside has become deserted and no one will any longer plow the land. I testif

(re

erseau, March 16, 1781); H, 200 (l

(re

'ass. prov. de la géné

(re

u, VI. 2

(re

enson.

(re

es, H. 200 (Memoir

(re

de l'ass. prov.

(re

ieurs of the elections, Messieurs the post-masters, Messieurs the presidents and other attachés of the salt-wareh

(re

rocès-verbaux de l'ass. p

(re

M. d'Aine, intendant, also of the receiver f

(re

ueville,

(re

Letters of M. de la Bove, September 1

(re

ier, I

(re

of the parish o

(re

, 300; G, 322 ("Mémoires

(re

l'ass. prov. des Tr

(re

422 (Letter of the intendan

(re

e excise court (May 19, 1783), and of the Archbishop of Aix (June 15, 1783).)-Pr

(re

grieviances', brought with them by the representatives of the people

(re

47).-Isolated instances, in other provinces, indicate similar results. The dime ranges from a tenth to the thirteenth of the gross product, and commonly the tenth. I regard the aver

(re

-Champea

(re

ommunity of Culmon (E

(re

l'Artuis," 301, 308).-Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and cahiers of the St

(re

of forcing a resident to remain on his property under penalty of forfeitu

(re

ahiers," III. passim, and e