This authorized robber,
moreover, gives him nothing in exchange; it is an entire loss. On
leaving the dealer's shop he goes away with a jug of wine, a pot of
salt, or similar commodities; on leaving the tax office he has
nothing in hand but an acquittance, a miserable bit of scribbled
paper. - But now he is master in his own commune, an elector, a
National Guard, mayor, the sole authority in the use of armed force,
and charged with his own taxation. Come and ask him to unearth the
buried mite on which he has set all his heart and all his soul, the
earthen pot wherein he has deposited his cherished pieces of silver
one by one, and which he has laid by for so many years at the cost
of so much misery and fasting, in the very face of the bailiff in
spite of the prosecutions of the sub-delegate, commissioner,
collector, and clerk!
>From the 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790,[47] the general
returns, the taille and its accessories, the poll-tax and
"twentieths," instead of yielding 161.
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