4102 ([return])
[ That is what has happened during communism where men worked as little as possible since the principle of equality made most effort rest without reward.]
4103 ([return])
[ The so-called "Centimes additionels" was an increase in certain taxes to be paid to the communes and departments.]
4104 ([return])
[ Rocquain, "L'État de la France au 18 Brumaire" (report by Fourcroy, pp. 138, 166)": A sack of wheat worth 18 francs at Nantes costs an equal sum for its cartage to Brest. I have seen carters plodding along, seven or eight in a line, each with six or eight strong horses dragging their vehicles and alternately helping each other, their horses hauling their carts out of ruts into which they had got stuck... In many places, I was grieved to see carts and wagons leaving the high-road and traversing, in spaces from 100 to 200 yards wide, the plowed ground, when each made his own road.... The carters sometimes make only three or four leagues from morning to night."—Hence, a dearth of provisions at Brest. "We are assured that the people have long been on half-rations, or even quarter rations."—And yet, "There is now in the river, at Nantes, from four to five hundred boats loaded with grain; they have been there for months, and their number increases daily. Their cargoes are deteriorating and becoming damaged.">[
4105 ([return])
[ Ibid., preface and summary, p.41 (on the dikes and works of protection against inundations at Dol in Brittany, at Fréjus, in Camargue, in Lower Rhine, in Nord, in Pas-de-Calais, at Ostende and Blankenberg, at Rochefort, at La Rochelle, etc.). At Blankenberg, a gale sufficed to carry away the dike and let in the sea. "The dread of some disaster which would ruin a large portion of the departments of the Lys and of the Escaut kept the inhabitants constantly in a state of frightful anxiety.">[
4106 ([return])
[ Hence the additional centimes to the tax on doors and windows, the number of which indicates approximately the value of the rent. Hence also the additional centimes to the personal tax, which is proportionate to the rent, this being considered as the most exact indication of domestic expenditure.]