ous terms. The crop often fails, "every doubtful crop ruining
the man without capital." In Burgundy, in Berry, in Soisonnais, in the
Trois-Eveche's, in Champagne,[5240] I find in every report that he
lacks bread and lives on alms. In Champagne, the syndics of Bar-sur-Aube
write[5241] 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 the soil."--Such is the
history of wine under the ancient regime. From the producer who grows
to the tapster who sells, what extortions and what vexations! As to
the salt-tax, according to the comptroller-general,[5242] this annually
produces 4,000 domiciliary seizures, 3,400 imprisonments, 500 sentences
to flogging, exile and the galleys.--

If ever two taxes were well combined, not only to despoil, but also to
irritate the peasantry, the poor and the people, here they were.

VI. Burdens And Exemptions.

Why taxation is so burdensome.--Exemptions and privileges.

Evidently the burden of taxation forms the chief cause of misery; hence
an accumulated, deep-seated hatred against the fisc and its agents,
receivers, store-house keepers, excise officials, customs 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 doubt. What renders the charge
oppressive is the fact that the strongest and those best able to bear
taxation succeed in evading it, the prime cause of misery being the
vastness of the exemptions[5243].

Let us look at each of these exemptions, one tax after another.--In
the first place, not only are nobles and ecclesiastics exempt from the
personal taille but again, as we have already seen, they are exempt from
the cultivator's taille, through cultivating their domains themselves
or by a steward. In Auvergne,[5244] in the single election-district
of Clermont, fifty parishes are enumerated in which, owing to this
arrangement, every estate of a privileged person is exempt, the taille
falling wholly on those subject to it. Furthermore, it suffices for a
privileged person to maintain that his farmer is only a steward, which
is the case in Poitou in several parishes, the subdelegate and the
elu not daring to look into the matter too closely. In t