on merchandise brought to his fair or to his market. - At Angoulême a
forty-eighth of the grain sold, at Combourg near Saint-Malo, so much
per head of cattle, elsewhere so much on wine, eatables and fish[26]
Having formerly built the oven, the winepress, the mill and the
slaughterhouse, he obliges the inhabitants to use these or pay for
their support, and he demolishes all constructions, which might enter
into competition with him[27]. These, again, are evidently monopolies
and octrois going back to the time when he was in possession of public
authority.

Not only did he then possess the public authority but also
possessed the soil and the men on it. Proprietor of men, he is so
still, at least in many respects and in many provinces. "In Champagne
proper, in the Sénonais, in la Marche, in the Bourbonnais, in the
Nivernais, in Burgundy, in Franche-Comté, there are none, or very few
domains, no signs remaining of ancient servitude . . . . A good many
personal serfs, or so constituted through their own gratitude, or that
of their progenitors, are still found."[28] There, man is a serf,
sometimes by virtue of his birth, and again through a territorial
condition. Whether in servitude, or as mortmains, or as cotters, one
way or another, 1,500,000 individuals, it is said, wore about their
necks a remnant of the feudal collar; this is not surprising since, on
the other side of the Rhine, almost all the peasantry still wear it.
The seignior, formerly master and proprietor of all their goods and
chattels and of all their labor, can still exact of them from ten to
twelve corvées per annum and a fixed annual tax. In the barony of
Choiseul near Chaumont in Champagne, "the inhabitants are required to
plow his lands, to sow and reap them for his account and to put the
products into his barns. Each plot of ground, each house, every head
of cattle pays a quit-claim; children may inherit from their parents