x-payers for two years, provided
the parish to which they have removed is within the same district; and
if otherwise, then farmers to pay for two years, and other persons for
three years" (_Taille_). Thus a man under the given circumstances would
have to pay double taxes for three years as a penalty for changing his
dwelling. We already hear the murmur of the _cahiers_ of five-and-twenty
years later in the account of the transports of joy with which the
citizens of Lisieux saw the _taille proportionelle_ established (1718),
and how numerous other cities sent up prayers that the same blessing
might be conferred on them. "Reasons that it is not for us to divine,
caused the rejection of these demands; so hard is it to do a good act,
which everybody talks about, much more in order to seem to desire it,
than from any intention of really doing it.... To illustrate the
advantages of this plan, the impost of 1718 with all arrears for five
years was discharged in twelve months without needless cost or dispute.
By an extravagance more proper than any other to degrade humanity, the
common happiness made malcontents of all that class whose prosperity
depends on the misery of others,"--that is the privileged class.[161]

It is no innate factiousness, as flighty critics of French affairs
sometimes imply, that has made civil equality the passion of modern
France. The root of this passion is an undying memory of the curse that
was inflicted on its citizens, morally and materially, by the fiscal
inequalities of the old _regime_. The article, _Privilege_, urges the
desirableness of inquiring into the grounds of the vast multitude of
fiscal exemptions, and of abolishing all that were no longer associated
with the performance of real and useful service. "A bourgeois," says
the writer, anticipating a cry that was so soon to ring through the
land, "a bourgeois in comfortable circumstances, and who could himself
pay half of the _taille_ of a whole parish, if it were imposed in its
due proportion,--on payment of the amount of his taxes for one or for
two years, and often for less; without birth, education, or talents,
buys a place in a local salt office, or some useless charge at court, or
in the household of some prince.... This man proceeds to enjoy in the
public eye all the exemptions possessed by the nobility and the high
magistracy.... From such an abuse of privileges spring two very
considerable evils: the poorer part of the citizens are