PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 33 



be civilized ever could liave had such an experience. In order to | 

 effectually secure at the outset the payment of this tax, the right 

 to produce and sell salt was vested exclusively in the state. By 

 an ordinance in 1780, every person over seven years of age was 

 required to purchase, not at convenience, but on one stated day of 

 each year, seven pounds of salt, which in a peasant's family of 

 four, according to Taine, entailed an expense equal to the average 

 wage receipts of nineteen days' work. It was forbidden also to 

 divert a single ounce of the seven obligatory pounds to any use 

 but the "pot and the salt cellar." If any one failed in these 

 observances he was fined ; and he was also fined if he purchased a 

 smaller quantity than the law prescribed. To supplement the use 

 of salt with water from the ocean, or from saline springs, or to 

 water cattle in marshes or other places containing salt, was for- 

 bidden under severe penalties. In certain departments of France 

 it was also made incumbent on officials periodically to destroy, 

 often by defilement, all deposits of salt which were formed natu- 

 rally. No retail dealing in salt was permitted, but Government 

 warehouses were established, often at places at considerable dis- 

 tances from towns and villages, where their inhabitants were 

 compelled to make their purchases. According to a report made 

 by the comptroller-general in 1787, the salt tax at that time 

 annually occasioned " four thousand domiciliary seizures, three 

 thousand four hundred imprisonments, and five hundred sen-^l 

 tences to flogging, exile, and the galleys." 



But in addition to the so-called national system, which im- 

 posed a great variety of taxes upon all persons and property 

 in France which could not through favor procure exemption, 

 which exemption embraced practically all the nobility, clergy, 

 and gentry, there were a great number of taxes peculiar to 

 separate estates or seigniories, but at the same time more or less 

 general. Thus, all the various operations involved in production 

 and consumption were made, as far as possible, the occasion for 

 tax assessments. The tenants, or vassals, were bound to grind 

 their corn at the mill of the seigneur only ; to bake their bread 

 exclusively at his ovens ; to press their grapes and apples exclu- 

 sively at his presses ; and for every such industrial conversion a 

 toll or tithe was collected. One of the memoirs touching the 

 condition of the Tiers Etat, as the common people were called, 

 published about the time of the meeting of the National Con- 

 vention, expresses a hope that posterity may be ignorant that 

 feudal tyranny in Brittany, armed with judicial power, did not 

 blush at breaking hand mills and selling annually to the mis- 

 erable people the privilege of bruising between two stones a 

 measure of buckwheat or barley. 



Movements of persons or property from one town or parish to 



