'6 CAUSES OF PHYSICAL DECAY, 



pression and the destructive forces of inorganic nature. "WTien 

 both are combined against him, he succumbs after a shorter or 

 longer struggle, and the fields he has won from the primeval 

 wood relapse into their original state of wild and luxuriant, but 

 unprofitable, forest growth, or fall into that of a diy and barren 

 wilderness. 



Rome unposed on the products of agricultural labor, in the ru- 

 ral districts, taxes which the sale of the entire harvest would 

 scarcely discharge ; she drained them of their population by mil- 

 itary conscription ; she impoverished the peasantry by forced and 

 unpaid labor on public works ; she hampered industry and both 

 foreign and internal commerce by absurd restrictions and unwise 

 regulations.* Hence, large tracts of land were left uncultivated, 



ants, of those who had work and bread, and they were then the few." — Peti- 

 tion d la Chamhre des Deputes pour les Villageois que Von empeche de danser. 



Arthur Young, who travelled in France from 1787 to 1789, gives, in the 

 twentj'-flrst chapter of his Travels, a frightful account of the burdens of the 

 rural population even at that late period. Besides the regular governmental 

 taxes and a multitude of heavy tines imposed for trifling offences, he enumer- 

 ates about thirty seignorial rights, the very origin and nature of some of 

 Tvhich are now unknown, while those of some others are as repulsive to 

 humanity and morality as the worst abuses ever practised by heathen despot- 

 ism. But Y'oung underrates the number of these oppressive impositions. Mo- 

 reau de JonnSs, a higher authority, asserts that in a brief examination he had 

 discovered upwards of three hundred distinct rights of the feudatory over the 

 person or the property of his vassal. See Etat Economique et Social de la 

 France, Paris, 1870, p. 389. Most of these, indeed, had been commuted for 

 money payments, and were levied on the peasantry as pecuniary imposts for 

 the benefit of prelates and lay lords, who, by virtue of their nobility, were 

 exempt from taxation. The collection of the taxes was enforced with unre- 

 lenting severity. On one occasion, in the reign of Louis XIV., the troops 

 sent out against the recreant peasants made more than 3,000 prisoners, of 

 whom 400 were condemned to the galleys for life, and a number so large that 

 the government did not dare to disclose it, were hung on trees or broken on 

 the wheel. — Moreau de JonneIs, Etat Economique et Social de la France, p. 

 420. Who can wonder at the hostihty of the French plebeian classes towards 

 the aristocracy in the days of the Revolution ? 



* Commerce, in common with all gainful occupations except agriculture, 

 was despised by the Romans, and the exercise of it was forbidden to the high- 

 er ranks. Cicero, however, admits that though retail trade, which could only 

 prosper by lying and knavery, was contemptible, yet wholesale commerce was 

 not altogether to be condemned, and might even be laudable, provided the 

 merchant retired early from trade and invested his gains in farm lands. — Z)« 

 ■Offidis, lib. i., 42. 



