Taxes! So many taxes! They make my blood boil. Will anything
ever change, or will we all just go on being driven into the dirt by all these
taxes?
I am a poor French peasant, trying to make a living off the
land to feed my family. I have to admit that that there are others who are
worse off than me – at least we’re not actually starving – but sometimes it
almost comes to that. There have been food riots round here, which should have
surprised nobody.
Let me put you in the picture. Nearly everyone in France is
a peasant. They reckon that there are 25 million French people, of whom 23
million are peasants. Above us are the bourgeoisie, the lawyers, doctors and
teachers – people with an education. And above them are the nobles, the rich
ones who own the land and charge us rent to scrape a living off it.
You know what? Those nobles, the filthy rich, they don’t pay
anything like the taxes that we do.
I’ll spell it out.
First of all, there’s the “taille”. You pay that if you have
any property or earn any money. If you get lucky and earn enough to buy
something of your own, you pay more “taille”. So where’s the incentive to
better yourself, then? It’s no wonder that agriculture is so backward in this
country – why buy a horse or a plough if you have to pay the government more in
tax when you do?
Next in line is the poll tax. The head of the household pays
this – no exemptions. Unless you’re a nobleman of course. They can find ways of
not paying it. Do you know, somebody has worked out that we peasants pay eight
times our fair share in poll tax and the nobles only one eighth. Where’s the
justice in that?
The third tax we have to pay is the “vingtiรจme”.
That means one twentieth, and you pay it on the value of all your property, on
top of the taille. Did I say one twentieth, five percent? If only that were
true! One sixth would be nearer the mark! And do the nobles pay it? Do they
Hell! There are all sorts of loopholes they can squirm through to get out of
it.
That guy who worked out what we pay in poll tax has also
calculated that the total tax bill for a peasant, however poor he might be, is
around 50 percent of his income. That can’t be right and just, can it?
And do you know who has to collect these taxes for the
Government? We do! We have to appoint one of our own people to go round and
demand the money from all of his neighbours. Not surprisingly, this does not
make him very popular, and quite often we have to gang up on somebody and force
him to do it. If you’re the poor mug who gets the post you have the devil’s own
job to get everyone to pay up, and if you don’t you have to pay the missing tax
out of your own pocket. If you can’t do that, you go to jail.
It has been known for a group of villagers to use this as a
way getting rid of somebody who they really don’t like. They make him the tax
collector, refuse to pay him, and he gets sent to chokey. It’s a nasty trick,
but that’s what the system does to people.
I’ve just been telling you about the taxes we have to pay
direct to the Government, but that’s not the end of the miseries we peasants
have to put up with. The list just goes on and on.
Have you ever heard of the “gabelle”, the salt tax? It’s a
scam of the first order and the peasants are its victims. The law says that
everyone over the age of eight has to buy at least seven pounds of salt from
the government every year. You don’t only have to buy it, but you also pay
purchase tax on top of the price. Salt is useful stuff, don’t get me wrong, but
you have no choice about buying government salt. If you live near the sea
you’re not allowed to use sea salt or let your cattle get salt from the
marshes.
If you try to avoid the gabelle you are in big trouble. You
can go to jail – thousands do every year, including children. Some people have
been sent to the galleys, and some have even been hanged.
They have special people to collect this tax. They get to
take a cut of the proceedings and actually pay the Government to be allowed to
be tax collectors. They are nasty people, these tax farmers. I’ve heard stories
about them banging on doors in middle of the night to demand payment and
ransacking houses to seize anything of value they can find. There was a case in
a village not far from here where one of these devils cut off a woman’s hand as
she tried to keep hold of her cooking pot.
Not only do we get taxed on everything we earn and have to
buy salt, but we have to pay for everything we need to do our work. There are
dues to be paid for using the mill, the wine-press or the communal oven. We
have to pay the landowner to use the roads and bridges, or to take our cattle
through his estate.
By the way, those roads are the same ones that we are forced
to keep in good repair – they call that the “corvee” – and that work time is
time we can’t use to work on our farms.
And just for good measure, we have to pay tithes to the
priest.
Is there justice in France? Not for the peasant, there
isn’t. We can’t complain to the landlord because he’s never here – he lives in
a swanky big house in town. We can take him to court, but he appoints the judge
and the lawyers, so guess who wins every time?
We are the only class in France who can’t appeal against
military service, which lasts for six years. We pay for the King’s wars through
our taxes, then we have to fight and get killed in them.
Will things ever change? I’ve heard rumours that something
might happen, but I’m not holding my breath. Will tomorrow be any different
from today? It’s unlikely.
It’s time for bed. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. What’s
the date tomorrow? Oh yes – it’ll be the 14th of July, 1789.
© John Welford
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