University of Virginia Library

30.15. 15. That what they called Census was raised only on the Bondmen and
not on the Freemen.

The king, the clergy, and the lords raised regular taxes, each on the bondmen of their respective demesnes. I prove it with respect to the king, by the capitulary de Villis; with regard to the clergy, by the codes of the laws of the Barbarians [67] and in relation to the lords, by the regulations which Charlemagne made concerning this subject. [68]

These taxes were called census; they were economical and not fiscal claims, entirely private dues and not public taxes.

I affirm that what they called census at that time was a tax raised upon the bondmen. This I prove by a formulary of Marculfus containing a permission from the king to enter into holy orders, provided the persons be freeborn, [69] and not enrolled in the register of the census. I prove it also by a commission from Charlemagne to a count [70] whom he had sent into Saxony, which contains the enfranchisement of the Saxons for having embraced Christianity, and is properly a charter of freedom. [71] This prince restores them to their former civil liberty, [72] and exempts them from paying the census, It was, therefore, the same thing to be a bondman as to pay the census, to be free as not to pay it.

By a kind of letters patent of the same prince in favour of the Spaniards, [73] who had been received into the monarchy, the counts are forbidden to demand any census of them, or to deprive them of their lands. That strangers upon their coming to France were treated as bondmen is a thing well known; and Charlemagne being desirous they should be considered as freemen, since he would have them be proprietors of their lands, forbad the demanding any census of them.

A capitulary of Charles the Bald, [74] given in favour of those very Spaniards, orders them to be treated like the other Franks, and forbids the requiring any census of them; consequently this census was not paid by freemen.

The thirtieth article of the edict of Pistes reforms the abuse by which several of the husbandmen belonging to the king or to the church sold the lands dependent on their manors to ecclesiastics or to people of their condition, reserving only a small cottage to themselves; by which means they avoided paying the census; and it ordains that things should be restored to their primitive situation: the census was, therefore, a tax peculiar to bondmen.

Thence also it follows that there was no general census in the monarchy; and this is clear from a great number of passages. For what could be the meaning of this capitulary? [75] "We ordain that the royal census should be levied in all places where formerly it was lawfully levied." [76] What could be the meaning of that in which Charlemagne [77] orders his commissaries in the provinces to make an exact inquiry into all the census that belonged in former times to the king's demesne? [78] And of that [79] in which he disposes of the census paid by those [80] of whom they are demanded? What can that other capitulary mean [81] in which we read, "If any person has acquired a tributary land [82] on which we were accustomed to levy the census?" And that other, in fine, [83] in which Charles the Bald [84] makes mention of feudal lands whose census had from time immemorial belonged to the king.

Observe .that there are some passages which seem at first sight to be contrary to what I have said, and yet confirm it. We have already seen that the freemen in the monarchy were obliged only to furnish particular carriages; the capitulary just now cited gives to this the name of census, and opposes it to the census paid by the bondmen.

Besides, the edict of Pistes [85] notices those freemen who are obliged to pay the royal census for their head and for their cottages, [86] and who had sold themselves during the famine. The king orders them to be ransomed. This is because those who were manumitted by the king's letters [87] did not, generally speaking, acquire a full and perfect liberty. [88] but they paid censum in capite; and these are the people here meant.

We must, therefore, waive the idea of a general and universal census, derived from that of the Romans, from which the rights of the lords are also supposed to have been derived by usurpation. What was called census in the French monarchy, independently of the abuse made of that word, was a particular tax imposed on the bondmen by their masters.

I beg the reader to excuse the trouble I must give him with such a number of citations. I should be more concise did I not meet with the Abbé du Bos' book on the establishment of the French monarchy in Gaul, continually in my way. Nothing is a greater obstacle to our progress in knowledge than a bad performance of a celebrated author; because, before we instruct, we must begin with undeceiving.

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