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Updated: July 15, 2025
About the middle of the twelfth century, the abbey of Tournus, in Burgundy, had, at Louhans, a little port where it collected salt-tax, whereof it every year distributed the receipts to the poor during the first week in Lent. Girard, count of Macon, established a like toll a little distance off. The monks of Tournus complained; but he took no notice.
They even hinted, that this consideration was one powerful motive for proposing the revival of an odious tax, which was in effect an excise, and would be deemed a step towards a general excise upon all sorts of provisions. Finally, they demonstrated that the salt-tax introduced numberless frauds and perjuries in different articles of traffic.
The keeper of the seals in his turn made a present of them to the town of Rochelle to found a hospital. But the ordinances as to the salt-tax were maintained in principle, and their extension led, some years afterwards, to a rising of a more serious character, and very differently repressed.
They abolished the salt-tax and the sales-duty, which had met with such opposition; but, stanch in their patriotism and loyalty, they substituted therefor an income-tax, imposed on every sort of folk, nobles or burghers, ecclesiastical or lay, which was to be levied "not by the high justiciers of the king, but by the folks of the three estates themselves."
It was not till nearly ten years later, when the Government began to feel the pinch of the ever-increasing arrears, that it recognised the necessity of relieving the rural population. For this purpose it abolished the salt-tax and the poll-tax and repeatedly lessened the burden of the redemption-payments.
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