offense, he enumerates about thirty seignorial rights, the very origin
and nature of some of which are now unknown, while those of some others
are as repulsive to humanity and morality, as the worst abuses ever
practised by heathen despotism. But Young underrates the number of these
oppressive impositions. Moreau de Jonnes, a higher authority, asserts
that in a brief examination he had discovered upwards of three hundred
distinct lights of the feudatory over the person or the property of his
vassal. See Etat Economique et Social de la France, Paris, 1890, p.
389. Most of these, indeed, had been commuted for money payments, and
were levied on the peasantry as pecuniary imposts for the benefit of
prelates and lay lords, who, by virtue of their nobility, were exempt
from taxation. The collection of the taxes was enforced with unrelenting
severity. On one occasion, in the reign of Louis XIV., the troops sent
out against the recreant peasants made more than 3,000 prisoners, of
whom 400 were condemned to the galleys for life, and a number so large
that the government did not dare to disclose it, were hung on trees or
broken on the wheel.--Moreau de Jonnes, Etat Economique et Social de la
France, p. 420. Who can wonder at the hostility of the French plebeian
classes towards the aristocracy in the days of the Revolution?

Rome imposed on the products of agricultural labor in the rural
districts taxes which the sale of the entire harvest would scarcely
discharge; she drained them of their population by military
conscription; she impoverished the peasantry by forced and unpaid labor
on public works; she hampered industry and both foreign and internal
commerce by absurd restrictions and unwise regulations. [Footnote:
Commerce, in common with all gainful occupations except agriculture, was
despised by the Romans, and the exercise of it was forbidden to the
higher ranks. Cicero, however, admits that though retail trade, which
could only prosper by lying and knavery, was contemptible, yet wholesale