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96 it in portion) may be enumerated the Gabelle, the Taille, the Corvée, and the Aides.

As is well known, the Gabelle, a tax on salt, was so oppressively administered, that in some provinces, when this article was scarce, the people, down to every child, were forced to buy a regulation quantity, whether they wanted it or not; whereas, in other provinces, such as Provence, where salt was naturally formed on the coast, soldiers were stationed at certain times of the year to prevent even the cattle from imbibing the saline properties of the soil. The Taille, a tax raised on property and income, was equally oppressive, because, as must be remembered, it was a tax raised only on the property and income of the unprivileged classes. Thirdly, there was the detested Corvée—the unremunerated service, originally due from serf or tenant to his Seigneur—copied by the Government in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the public Corvées were instituted. Then might be seen groups of peasants—hungry, sullen, wrathful—pressed like malefactors into the unpaid labour of constructing and repairing the public roads. And while they were making the highways for the easier locomotion of the Grand Seigneur and the wealthy financier, their own field of grass or patch of wheat was in the meanwhile ruined for want of the requisite labour. Next came the Aides, or subsidies on all fermented liquors, which bore so heavily on the wine trade as to check this, the most productive source of wealth in the country. The vintage was no sooner over than gaugers appeared ransacking the cellars, and confiscating what had not been duly registered and declared. The very owners were taxed for everything but a very small quantity. On entering and leaving towns, on