the district roads, which, if he pays in kind, are
not worth more than 50 sous.[4213] Add to this his portion, very small
and often null, of the additional centimes on the tax on doors and
windows, on the personal tax, and on the tax on real estate, in all 4
or 5 francs a year. Such is the amount by which the poor or half-poor
taxpayer in the villages liberates himself toward his department and
commune.--In the towns, he apparently pays more, owing to the octroi.
But, at first, there are only 1525 communes out of 36,000 in which the
octroi[4214] has been established; while in the beginning, under the
Directory and Consulate, it was revived only on his account, for his
benefit, in behalf of public charity, to defray the expenses of asylums
and hospitals ruined by revolutionary confiscation. It was then "an
octroi for charity," in fact as well as in name, like the surplus tax on
theater seats and tickets, established at the same time and for the same
purpose; it still to-day preserves the stamp of its first institution.
Bread, the indispensable provision for the poor, is not subjected to the
octroi nor the materials for making it, either grain or flour, nor
milk, fruits, vegetables, or codfish, while there is only a light tax
on butcher's meat. Even on beverages, where the octroi is heavier, it
remains, like all indirect taxes, nearly proportional and semi-optional.
In effect, it is simply an increase of the tax on beverages, so many
additional centimes per franc on the sum of indirect taxation, as
warrantable as the impost itself, as tolerable, and for the same
motives.[4215] For the greater the sobriety of the taxpayer, the less is
he affected by this tax. At Paris, where the increase is excessive,
and adds to the 6 centimes paid to the state, on each quart of wine, 12
centimes paid to the city; if he drinks but one quart a day, he pays,
under this heading, into the city treasury 43 francs 80 centimes per
annum: but, as compensation for this, he is free of personal tax of 11
3/4%, which this adds to the amount of each rental of the 11 3/4%,
whereby this would have added to his rent, and therefore 47 francs per
annum as a rent of 400 francs. Thus what he has paid with one hand
he gets back with the other. Now, at Paris, all rentals under 400
francs[4216] are thus free of any personal tax; all rentals between 400
and 1000 francs are more or less free, and, in the other octroi towns,
an analogous discharge reimburses to the