The Duke of Sully.
By a statute of the year 1188, Philip Augustus imposed a tenth of the revenues of all benefices. Philip le Bel caused the fifth, afterwards the fifteenth, and finally the twentieth part, to be paid, of all the possessions of the clergy.
King John, by a statute of March 12, 1355, taxed bishops, abbots, chapters, and all ecclesiastics generally, to the tenth of the revenue of their benefices and patrimonies. The same prince confirmed this tax by two other statutes, one of March 3, the other of Dec. 28, 1358.
In the letters-patent of Charles V., of June 22, 1372, it is decreed, that the churchmen shall pay taxes and other real and personal imposts. These letters-patent were renewed by Charles VI. in the year 1390.
How is it that these laws have been abolished, while so many monstrous customs and sanguinary decrees have been preserved? The clergy, indeed, pay a tax under the name of a free gift, and, as it is known, it is principally the poorest and most useful part of the church—the curates (rectors)—who pay this tax. But, why this difference and inequality of contributions between the citizens of the same state? Why do those who enjoy the greatest prerogatives, and who are sometimes useless to the public, pay less than the laborer, who is so necessary? The Republic of Venice supplies rules on this subject, which should serve as examples to all Europe.
SECTION IV.
Churchmen have not only pretended to be exempt from taxes, they have found the means in several provinces to tax the people, and make them pay as a legitimate right.
In several countries, monks having seized the tithes to the prejudice of the rectors, the peasants are obliged to tax themselves, to furnish their pastors with subsistence; and thus in several villages, and above all, in Franche-Comté, besides the tithes which the parishioners pay to the monks or to chapters, they further pay three or four measures of corn to their curates or rectors. This tax was called the right of harvest in some provinces, and boisselage in others.
It is no doubt right that curates should be well paid, but it would be much better to give them a part of the tithes which the monks have taken from them, than to overcharge the poor cultivator.
Since the king of France fixed the competent allowances for the curates, by his edict of the month of May, 1768, and charged the tithe-collectors with paying them, the peasants should no longer be held to pay a second tithe, a tax to which they only voluntarily submitted at a time when the influence and violence of the monks had taken from their pastors all means of subsistence.