34 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



another always involved taxation. If a farmer or laborer moved 

 from one parish to another, it was held that he conld not separate 

 himself from a residence once adopted, but remained there for 

 taxation, although he might actually and permanently have left 

 it and be paying taxes in another place. All movements of 

 property and persons were discouraged ; and it not infrequently 

 happened that there was grievous famine in some departments 

 of France, and a surplus of food at the same time in others, not 

 very far distant, because of the inability of producers in the lat- 

 ter to dispose of an abundant harvest for lack of any remuner- 

 ative market or demand. Every sale or transfer of property 

 also carried in it a payment to the seignior, or lord of the manor, 

 to the extent of one eighth, and sometimes one sixth of the en- 

 tire equivalent received in consideration. And it is interesting 

 here to note that this exaction was recognized and enforced in 

 French Canada until the abolition of seignioral tenure, forty 

 years ago. Arthur Young states that at the time he traveled in 

 France, 1787- , 89, the very terms used to designate the taxes im- 

 posed on the peasantry were in many instances untranslatable into 

 English ; and from a long list of such terms as he recorded, very 

 few can be found and denned in any ordinary French lexicon.* 

 In order, however, in some degree to satisfy curiosity as to the 

 nature of these abominations, it may be mentioned that one of 

 the local taxes in Brittany, which remained in force down to 

 1789, and was known as the "silence des grenouilles" was a 

 money payment in lieu of an ancient feudal obligation incum- 

 bent on the residents of marshy districts to keep the frogs still, 

 by beating the waters, that the lady of the seigneur might not 

 be disturbed " when she lies in " ; while another exaction, still 

 more outrageous, which was not repealed until the French revo- 

 lutionary convention in 1790 swept it from the statute book, was 

 a tax known as cuissage, or " droit du seigneur," which was paid 

 to the seignior as a substitute for his ancient and formerly undis- 

 puted right to the possession before marriage of the person of 

 every female, the daughter of any of his serfs or more dependent 

 vassals, f 



* Of such terms Mr. Young mentions the following as expressive of the tortures of the 

 peasantry in Bretagne (Brittany) without attempting to define their exact meaning : " Che- 

 vauches, guintaines, soule, saut de poisson, baiser de marices, chansons, transport d'eeuf un 

 charrette, silence des grenouilles, corvee d misericordes, milods, leide, couponage, cartilage, borage, 

 fouage, marechausse'e, ban vin, ban d'aout, trousses, gelinage, civerage, taillabilite, vingtain, 

 sterlage, bordelage, minage, ban de vendanges, droit d'accapite^ etc. 



f This exaction, the reality of which has been called in question, would seem to be a 

 necessary incidence or outcome of slavery or serfdom, inasmuch as the condition of 

 slavery implies no rights on the part of a slave that the master is bound to respect. Mr. 

 Thorold Sogers is authority for the fact that this droit du seigneur was recognized under 



