l and extra taxes,
levied on the probable or certain income derived from invested or
floating capital, the exchequer adds an eventual tax on capital itself,
consisting of the _mutation_ tax, assessed on property every time it
changes hands through gift, inheritance, or by contract, obtaining its
title under free donation or by sale, and which tax, aggravated by the
_timbre_, is enormous, since, in most cases, it takes five, seven, nine,
and up to ten and one-half per cent, on the capital transmitted.

One tax remains, and the last, that by which the state takes, no longer
money, but the person himself, the entire man, soul and body, and for
the best years of his life, namely, military service. It is the
revolution which has rendered this so burdensome; formerly it was light,
for, in principle, it was voluntary. The militia, alone, was raised by
force, and, in general, among the country people; the peasants furnished
men for it by casting lots. But it was simply a supplement to the active
army, a territorial and provincial reserve, a distinct, sedentary body
of reinforcements, and of inferior rank which, except in case of war,
never marched; it turned out but nine days of the year, and, after 1778,
never turned out again. In 1789 it comprised in all 75,260 men, and for
eleven years their names, inscribed on the registers, alone constituted
their presence in the ranks.

Napoleon put this military system in order. Henceforth every male
able-bodied adult must pay the debt of blood; no more exemptions in the
way of military service; all young men who had reached the required age
drew lots in the conscription and set out in turn according to the order
fixed by their drafted number.

But Napoleon is an intelligent creditor; he knows that this debt is
"most frightful and most detestable for families," that his debtors are
real, living men, and therefore different in kind, that the head of the
state should keep these differences in mind, that is to say, their
condition, their education, their sensibility and their vocation; that,
not only in their private interest, but again in the interest of the
public, not merely through prudence, but also through equity, all should
not be indistinguishably restricted to the same mechanical pursuit, to
the same manual labour, to the same indefinite servitude of soul and
body.

Napoleon also exempts the conscript who has a brother in the active
army, the only son of a widow, the eldest of