38 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the king had heen thus satisfied by his confessor, no time was 

 lost in establishing the tax. The effect upon the masses was one 

 of great sadness, but there was no revolt. Many of the property 

 holders in the kingdom endeavored to convince the state officials 

 that under the former condition of affairs they did not enjoy a 

 tenth part of their income, and representatives of the province of 

 Languedoc offered to give up its entire wealth to the crown, if 

 they might be allowed to enjoy, free of every tax, the tenth part 

 of it. All these remonstrances and propositions were not only 

 not listened to, but their presentation was regarded in the light 

 of insubordination. 



The product of this new tax was not nearly so much as had 

 been expected ; and its most marked result was, that it enabled 

 the king to augment all his infantry to the extent of five men per 

 company. 



In this record of tax experience, which, commencing at least 

 as far back as 1667, under Louis XIV, continued with increasing 

 popular oppression and misery until 1789, we find the origin 

 and the horrors of the French Revolution which began in the 

 latter year. During its continuance six thousand persons, mostly 

 of the ranks of the nobility, clergy, and gentry, are said to 

 have perished under the hands of public executioners and upon 

 '■ the scaffold. But when one calls to mind the multitudes that, for 

 many successive generations, were starved and tortured out of 

 . existence by a system of exactions under the name of taxation, 

 ! and for which system the king, the nobility, the clergy, and the 

 1 influential classes of France were responsible, the wonder is, that 

 the masses of a brutalized and infuriated people should have 

 / shown so much clemency and restraint in the hour of their ven- 

 geance and of triumph.* 



* On this point, Arthur Young, whose observations on the condition of the French 

 people were made before the great revolution had culminated, or in 1789, writes: "It is 

 impossible to justify the excesses of the people or their taking of arms. They were clearly 

 guilty of great ciuelties. But is it really the people to whom we are to impute the whole, 

 or to their oppressors, who had kept them so long in a state of bondage ? He who chooses 

 to be served by slaves, and by ill-treated slaves, must know that he holds both his property 

 and life by a tenure far different from those who prefer the service of well-treated freemen ; 

 and he who dines to the music of groaning sufferers, must not, in the moment of insurrec- 

 tion, complain that his daughters are ravished and then destroyed, and that his sons' throats 

 are cut. When such evils happen they surely are more imputable to the tyranny of the 

 master than to the cruelty of the servant. The analogy holds with the French peasants. 

 The murder of a seigneur, or a chateau in flames, is recorded in every newspaper. The 

 rank of the person who suffers attracts notice. But where do we find the register of that 

 seigneur's oppressions of his peasantry, and his exactions of feudal service from those 

 whose children,were dying around them for want of bread ? Where do we find the minutes 

 that assigned these starving wretches to be fleeced by impositions, and a mockery in the 

 seigneural court ? Who gives us the award of the iuteudant and his sub-dclegues, who 



