."

It must not be supposed that time renders the tax less onerous or that,
in other provinces, the cultivator is better treated. In this respect
the documents 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 official figures to what extent the fisc may
abuse the men who labor, and take bread out of the mouths of those who
have earned it by the sweat of their brows.

II. Local Conditions.

State of certain provinces on the outbreak of the
Revolution.--The taille, and other taxes.--The proportion of
these taxes in relation to income.--The sum total immense.

Direct taxation alone is here concerned, the tailles, collateral
taxes, poll-tax, vingtiemes, and the pecuniary tax substituted for
the corvee[5204] In Champagne, the tax-payer pays on 100 livres
income fifty-four livres fifteen sous, on the average, and in many
parishes,[5205] seventy-one livres thirteen sous. In the Ile-de-France,
"if a taxable inhabitant of a village, 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 taxes seventeen livres
seventeen sous, for the poll-tax twenty-one livres eight sous, for the
vingtiemes twenty-four livres four sous, in all ninety-nine livres three
sous, to which must be added about five livres as the substitution for
the corvee, in all 104 livres on a piece of property which he rents for
240 livres, a tax amounting to five-twelfths of his income.

It is much worse on making the same calculation for the poorer
generalities. In Haute-Guyenne,[5207] "all property in land is taxed
for the taille, the collateral taxes, and the vingtiemes, more than
one-quarter of its revenue, the only deduction being the expenses of
cultivation; also dwellings, one-third of their revenue, deducting
only the cost of repairs and of maintenance; to which must be added the
poll-tax, which takes about one-tenth of the revenue; the tithe, which
absorbs one-seventh; the seigniorial rents which take another seventh;
the tax substituted for the corvee; the costs of compulsory collections,
seizures, sequestration and constraints, and