k 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
corvee. This tax, attached, at first, to the vingtiemes and consequently
extending to all proprietors, through an act of the Council is attached
to the taille and, consequently, bears on those the most burdened[5250].
Now this tax amounts to an extra of one-quarter added to the principal
of the taille, of which one example may be cited, that of Champagne,
where, on every 100 livres income the sum of six livres five sous
devolves on the taille-payer. "Thus," says the provincial assembly,
"every road used by active commerce, by the multiplied coursing of the
rich, is repaired wholly by the contributions of the poor."--As these
figures spread out before the eye we involuntarily recur to the two
animals in the fable, the horse and the mule traveling together on the
same road; the horse, by right, may prance along as he pleases; hence
his load is gradually transferred to the mule, the beast of burden,
which finally sinks beneath the extra load.

Not only, in the corps of tax-payers, are the privileged disburdened to
the detriment of the taxable, but again, in the corps of the taxable,
the rich are relieved to the injury of the poor, to such an extent that
the heaviest portion of the load finally falls on the most indigent and
most laborious class, on the small proprietor cultivating his own field,
on the simple artisan with nothing but his tools and his hands, and,
in general, on the inhabitants of villages. In the first place, in
the matter of taxes, a number of the towns are "abonnees," or free.
Compiegne, for the taille and its accessories, with 1,671 firesides,
pays only 8,000 francs, whilst one of the villages in its neighborhood,
Canly, with 148 firesides, pays 4,475 francs[5251]. In the poll-tax,
Versailles, Saint-Germain, Beauvais, Etampes, Pontoise, Saint-Denis,
Compiegne, Fontainebleau, taxed in the aggregate at 169,000 livres, are
two-thirds exempt, contributing but little more than one franc, instead
of three francs ten sous, per head of the population; at Versailles it
is still less, since for 70,000 inhabitants the poll-tax amounts to only
51,600 francs[5252]. Besides, in any event, on the apportionment of a
tax, the bourgeois of the town is favored above his rural neighbors.
Accordingly, "the inhabitants of the country,