United States or Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The impost of talliage was, indeed, voted just as it had stood under Charles VII., but it became a temporary aid granted for two years only; at the end of them the estates were to be convoked and the tax augmented or diminished according to the public wants.
The Parliament, like the noblesse, had taken up the cudgels; they made representation after representation. "The populace of France," said the court boldly, "is liable to talliage and forced labor at will, and that is a part of the constitution which the king cannot change." Louis XVI. summoned the Parliament to Versailles, and had the edicts enregistered at a bed of justice.
He ordered that short-lived meeting of the states-general about which we have no information left us, save that it voted the principle that "no talliage could be imposed on the people if urgent necessity or evident utility should not require it, and unless by concession of the estates."
At the same time that she thus gave some satisfaction to the cravings of popular wrath, Anne de Beaujeu threw open the prisons, recalled exiles, forgave the people a quarter of the talliage, cut down expenses by dismissing six thousand Swiss whom the late king had taken into his pay, re-established some sort of order in the administration of the domains of the crown, and, in fine, whether in general measures or in respect of persons, displayed impartiality without paying court, and firmness without using severity.
The legislature of Massachusetts, employed in establishing a code of laws under their new charter, passed an act containing the general principles respecting the liberty of the subject, that are asserted in magna charta, in which was the memorable clause, "no aid, tax, talliage, assessment, custom, benevolence, or imposition whatsoever, shall be laid, assessed, imposed, or levied, on any of his majesty's subjects or their estates, on any pretence whatsoever, but by the act and consent of the governor, council, and representatives of the people, assembled in general court."
The Duke of Noailles had entered upon a course of severe economy; the king's household was diminished, twenty- five thousand men were struck off the strength of the army, exemption from talliage for six years was promised to all such discharged soldiers as should restore a deserted house, and should put into cultivation the fields lying waste.
He would also revise his finances, in such sort as to levy on the people but twelve hundred thousand francs, and that in form of talliage, besides his own property on which he would live, as did the kings of old."
He ordered that short-lived meeting of the states-general about which we have no information left us, save that it voted the principle that "no talliage could be imposed on the people if urgent necessity or evident utility should not require it, and unless by concession of the Estates."
From 1137 to 1178, during the administration of Suger, Louis the Young in four successive ordinances gives, in respect of Orleans, precise guarantees for freedom of trade, security of person and property, and the internal peace of the city; and in 1183 Philip Augustus exempts from all talliage, that is, from all personal impost, the present and future inhabitants of Orleans, and grants them divers privileges, amongst others that of not going to law-courts farther from their homes than Etampes.
He left Rouen in the hands of its own inhabitants; in Guienne, in Auvergne, at Tours, he gave the burgesses authority to assemble, and his orders to the royal agents were, "Whatever is done see that it be answered for unto us by two of the most notable burgesses of the principal cities." At Rheims the rumor ran that under King Louis there would be no more tax or talliage.
Word Of The Day