on their possessions, should they obtain no
relief[5120].

"It is a well-known fact," says the assembly of Haute-Guyenne, in 1784,"
that the lot of the most severely taxed communities is so rigorous as to
have led their proprietors frequently to abandon their property[5121].
Who is not aware of the inhabitants of Saint-Servin having abandoned
their property ten times, and of their threats to resort again to this
painful proceeding in their recourse to the administration? Only a few
years ago an abandonment of the community of Boisse took place through
the combined action of the inhabitants, the seignior and the decimateur
of that community;" and the desertion would be still greater if the
law did not forbid persons liable to the taille abandoning over-taxed
property, except by renouncing whatever they possessed in the
community. In the Soissonais, according to the report of the provincial
assembly,[5122] "misery is excessive." In Gascony the spectacle is
"heartrending." In the environs of Toul, the cultivator, after paying
his taxes, tithes and other dues, remains empty-handed.

"Agriculture is an occupation of steady anxiety and privation, in which
thousands of men are obliged to painfully vegetate."[5123] In a village
in Normandy, "nearly all the inhabitants, not excepting the farmers
and proprietors, eat barley bread and drink water, living like the most
wretched of men, so as to provide for the payment of the taxes with
which they are overburdened." In the same province, at Forges, "many
poor creatures eat oat bread, and others bread of soaked bran, this
nourishment causing many deaths among infants."[5124] People evidently
live from day to day; whenever the crop proves poor they lack bread.
Let a frost come, a hailstorm, an inundation, and an entire province
is incapable of supporting itself until the coming year; in many places
even an ordinary winter suffices to bring on distress. On all sides
hands are seen outstretched to the king, who is the universal almoner.
The people may be said to resemble a man attempting to wade through a
pool with the water up to his chin, and who, losing his footing at the
slightest depression, sinks down and drowns. Existent charity and the
fresh spirit of humanity vainly strive to rescue them; the water has
risen too high. It must subside to a lower level, and the pool be drawn
off through some adequate outlet. Thus far the poor man catches breath
only at intervals, running the ris