PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 31 



their possession, and spoke of themselves as owners of property, 

 but in reality their property followed the condition of the servi- 

 tude of their persons, and both persons and property belonged 

 equally to the masters. The taille, furthermore, as a badge of 

 servitude, was supposed to dishonor whoever was subject to it, 

 and degrade him not only below the rank of a gentleman, but of 

 that of a " burgher," or inhabitant of a borough or town ; " and 

 no gentleman, or even any burgher," writes Adam Smith in 1775, 

 " will submit to this degradation." 



(Repulsive and barbarous as was the taille, it is curious to 

 note that the principle involved in it still survives and finds 

 recognition and practice in States claiming a high civilization ; 

 as, for example, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where personal 

 property is held to owe a servitude to the State and to be subject 

 to taxation by it in virtue of the citizenship or personal domicile 

 of its owner, although the property itself may be located beyond 

 the territory and jurisdiction of the taxing power.) 



The hardship and injustice of the practical working of the 

 taille may be thus illustrated : In all cases the nobility and the 

 clergy were exempt from its payment, as were also the holders of 

 a multitude of minor Government offices, which, however, did not 

 carry with them any patent of nobility. These exempt classes, 

 which in the time of Louis XVI are believed to have numbered 

 some 300,000 out of a total estimated population of 25,000,000 in 

 the kingdom, owned about one half of the whole soil of France ; 

 so that the burden of the taille, amounting in 1789 to 110,000,000 

 livres (francs), fell exclusively on the rural classes; especially 

 upon the agricultural interests, which it would have been sound 

 policy on the part of the State to favor. 



" But the mode in which the taille was levied still further illus- 

 trates its iniquity. The Comptroller- General of the Finances, in 

 the first instance, decreed that a certain aggregate sum was to be 

 raised, and then two subordinate officials and the local landlords 

 in each province and parish were left to decide among themselves 

 how the prescribed amount was to be exacted from the taxpayers. 

 The combined forces of jobbery and absolute authority rendered 

 its incidence grossly unfair, the poorer localities generally paying 

 the larger share, while the richer ones escaped lightly. Thus 

 there was brought about a condition of things in which the most 

 miserable sections of the community were made to feel their 

 inferiority in every relation of life. They were humbled in all 

 their feelings, and they could not but loathe those whom birth or 

 favoritism had placed above them." * 



Besides the taille, two other forms of direct exaction were in- 



* The Financial Causes of the French Revolution. By Ferdinand Rothschild. 



