III.  Their Immunities.

Such is the total or partial exemption from taxation.  The tax-collectors halt in their presence because the king well knows that feudal property has the same origin as his own; if royalty is one privilege seigniory is another; the king himself is simply the most privileged among the privileged.  The most absolute, the most infatuated with his rights, Louis XIV, entertained scruples when extreme necessity compelled him to enforce on everybody the tax of the tenth.[12] Treaties, precedents, immemorial custom, reminiscences of ancient rights again restrain the fiscal hand.  The clearer the resemblance of the proprietor to the ancient independent sovereign the greater his immunity. — In some places a recent treaty guarantees him by his position as a stranger, by his almost royal extraction.  “In Alsace foreign princes in possession, with the Teutonic order and the order of Malta, enjoy exemption from all real and personal contributions.”  “In Lorraine the chapter of Remiremont has the privilege of assessing itself in all state impositions."[13] Elsewhere he is protected by the maintenance of the provincial Assemblies, and through the incorporation of the nobility with the soil:  in Languedoc and in Brittany the commoners alone paid the taille[14] -Everywhere else his quality preserved him from it, him, his chateau and the chateau’s dependencies; the taille reaches him only through his farmers.  And better still, it is sufficient that he himself should work, or his steward, to communicate to the land his original independence.  As soon as he touches the soil, either personally or through his agent, he exempts four plowing-areas (quatre charrues), three hundred arpents,[15] which in other hands would pay 2,000 francs tax.  Besides this he is excempt on “the woods, the meadows, the vines, the ponds and the enclosed land belonging to the chateau, of whatever extent it may be.”  Consequently, in Limousin and elsewhere, in regions principally devoted to pasturage or to vineyards, he takes care to manage himself, or to have managed, a certain portion of his domain; in this way he exempts it from the tax collector.[16] There is yet more.  In Alsace, through an express covenant he does not pay a cent of tax.  Thus, after the assaults of four hundred and fifty years, taxation, the first of fiscal instrumentalities, the most burdensome of all, leaves feudal property almost intact.[17] —­ For the last century, two new tools, the capitation-tax and the vingtièmes, appear more effective, and yet are but little more so. — First of all, through a masterstroke of ecclesiastical diplomacy, the clergy diverts or weakens the blow.  As it is an organization, holding assemblies, it is able to negotiate with the king and buy itself off.  To avoid being taxed by others it taxes itself.  It makes it appear that its payments are not compulsory contributions, but a “free gift.”  It obtains then in exchange a mass of concessions, is able to diminish