Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/107

Rh or leaving provinces, along the highroad and rivers, under and over bridges, on entering and leaving wine-shops, the barrel of wine encountered a fresh obstacle. For a system of internal custom-houses formed artificial frontiers, impeding all free circulation of provisions; so that a measure of wine which in Orléanais was worth one half-penny, by the time it arrived in Normandy cost a shilling!

These taxes were not levied by salaried Government officials, but were let out to fermiers-généraux (tax-farmers), who again underlet them to subordinates. Their method of procedure was perfectly arbitrary, and the mere fact that they were not paid, but expected to indemnify themselves when once they had apportioned its share to the Government, gave the rein to such a system of wholesale spoliation, only to be matched in Turkey at the present day, or by the extortions of the prefects in the conquered provinces of the Roman Empire. Adam Smith, who had visited France in 1765, and studied French finances, wrote in his Wealth of Nations: "The most sanguinary laws exist in those countries where the revenue is farmed out by the Government."

It is no wonder that under such a system the country was wretchedly cultivated; that whole regions, in spite of a capital soil, were, according to Arthur Young, mere barren tracts, desolate stretches of dreary bogs and arid wildernesses; that the villages and towns were often but a filthy heap of mud-houses and windowless hovels; that the children in their repulsive rags were, "if possible, worse clad than if with no clothes at all"; that the countrywomen—in the enforced absence of husbands and brothers, of carts and horses—were condemned to the heaviest field-work, till,