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By its charter the company was entitled to collect the revenues of the colony; that is to say, the taxes levied on the sale of beaver and moose skins. The tax on beaver skins was twenty-five per cent, called le droit du quart; the tax on moose skins was two sous per pound, le droit du dixieme.
Taillable, roturier, were terms of social ostracism impatiently borne by thousands. Other direct taxes were the capitation, bringing in over 50 millions, the dixiéme, the don gratuit. But more important than any of these was the great Government indirect tax, the monopoly on salt, or gabelle.
Boileau declaims as follows against human reason in his "Satire on Man:" "Cependant a le voir plein de vapeurs legeres, Soi-meme se bercer de ses propres chimeres, Lui seul de la nature est la baze et l'appui, Et le dixieme ciel ne tourne que pour lui. De tous les animaux il est ici le maitre; Qui pourroit le nier, poursuis tu? Moi peut-etre.
Le dixième jour, nous allâmes
An interesting fact for the notice of physiologists is that when the officers of the engineer corps lose a comrade from insanity, they say, "Il s'est passé au dixième," in allusion to the fact that their loss in numbers from this cause amounts to practical decimation. This is attributed to the close study of the exact sciences. French slang is saturated with irreverence.
A man in blue, with a gun, came and sat by his fire, slept in his bed, and laid hands on any money that might come into the house, thus collecting the tax and his own wages. Necker, De l'Administration, i. 8. Mercier, iii. 98, xi. 96. Mercier thinks that the capitation was more feared than the dixieme, and than the entrees, because it attached more directly to the individual and to his person.
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