horror. It would have been, at once, insulting the order of Roman knights and the emperor himself; nothing could have been more ill-advised.

In all civilized countries the imposts are very great, because the charges of the state are very heavy. In Spain the articles of commerce sent to Cadiz, and thence to America, pay more than thirty per cent. before their transit is accom

If by chance a clown goes to the capital, he sees with astonishment a fine lady dressed in a gown of silk embroidered with gold, drawn in a magnificent carriage by two valuable horses, and followed by four lacqueys dressed in a cloth of twenty francs an ell. He addresses himself to one of these lacqueys, and says to him-Sir, where does this lady get money to make such an expensive appearance? My friend, says the lac-plished. quey, the king allows her a pension of forty thousand livres. Alas! says the rustic, it is my village which pays this pension. Yes, answers the servant; but the silk that you have gathered and sold has made the stuff in which she is dressed; my cloth is a part of thy sheep's wool; my baker has made my bread of thy corn; thou hast sold at market the very fowls that we eat: thus thou see'st that the pension of madaine returns to thee and thy comrades.

In England all duty upon importation is very considerable: however, it is paid without murmuring; there is even a pride in paying it. A merchant boasts of putting four or five thousand guineas a-year into the public treasury. The richer a country is, the heavier are the taxes. Speculators would have taxes fall on landed productions only. What! having sown a field of flax, which will bring me two hundred crowns, by which flax a great manufacturer will gain two hundred thousand crowns by converting it into lace-must this manufacturer pay nothing, and shall I pay all, because it is produced by my land? The wife of this manufacturer will furnish the queen and

The peasant does not absolutely agree with the axioms of this philosophical lacquey; but one proof that there is something true in his answer is, that the village exists, and produces children who also complain, and who bring forth chil-princesses with fine point of Alençon, dren again to complain.

SECTION II.

If we were obliged to read all the edicts of taxation, and all the books written against them, that would be the greatest tax of all.

she will be patronised; her son will become intendant of justice, police, and finance, and will augment my taxes in my miserable old age. Ah! gentlemen speculators, you calculate badly; you are unjust.

The Duke de Sulli relates, in his Political Economy, that in 1585 there were just twenty lords interested in the leases of farms, to whom the highest bidders gave three millions two hundred and fortyeight thousand crowns.

The great point is, that an entire people be not despoiled by an army of alWe well know that taxes are neces-guazils, in order that a score of town or sary, and that the malediction pronounced court leeches may drink its blood. in the gospel only regards those who abuse their employment to harass the people. Perhaps the copyist forgot a word, as for instance the epithet pravus. It might have meant pravus publicanus: this word was much more necessary, as the general malediction is a formal contradiction to the words put into the mouth of Jesus Christ: "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's." Certainly those who collected the dues of Cæsar ought not to have been held in

It was still worse under Charles IX. and Francis I. and Louis XIII. There was not less depredation in the minority of Louis XIV. France, notwithstanding so many wounds, is still in being. Yes; but if it had not received them it would

nave been in better health. It was thus on this subject, which should serve as exwith several other states.

SECTION 1II.

It is just that those who enjoy the advantages of a government should support the charges. The ecclesiastics and monks, who possess great property, for

this reason should contribute to the taxes in all countries, like other citizens.

In the times which we call barbarous, great benefices and abbeys were taxed in France to the third of their revenue., By a statue of the year 1188, Philip Augustus imposed a tenth of the revenues of all benefices.

amples 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, above all, in Franche Comté, besides the tithes which the parishioners pay to the Philip le Bel caused the fifth, after-monks or to chapters, they further pay wards the fifteenth, and finally the twen-three or four measures of corn to their tieth part, to be paid, of all the posses

sions of the clergy.

curates or rectors.

This tax was called the right of harvest

others.

King John, by a statute of the 12th of in some provinces, and boisselage in March, 1355, taxed bishops, abbots, chapters, and all ecclesiastics generally, It is no doubt right, that curates should to the tenth of the revenue of their bene-be well paid, but it would be much betfices and patrimonies. The same prince ter to give them a part of the tithes which confirmed this tax by two other statutes, the monks have taken from them, than to one of the third of March, the other of overcharge the cultivator. poor the 28th of December, 1358.

In the letters-patent of Charles V. of the 22nd of June, 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 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 labourer, who is so necessary?

The republic of Venice supplies rules

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, 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.

The king has abolished this second tithe in Poictou, by letters-patent of the month of July, 1769, registered by the parliament of Paris the 11th of the same month.

It would be well worthy of the justice and beneficence of his majesty to make a similar law for other provinces, which are in the same situation as those of Poictou, Franche Comté, &c.

By M. CHн. Advocate of Besançon.

IMPOTENCE.

tion, and impotence in another. They have inquired into all the imaginary in

I COMMENCE by this question, in fa-ventions to assist nature; and with the

vour of the impotent-' frigidi et maleficiati,' as they are denominated in the decretals-Is there a physician, or experienced person of any description, who can be certain that a well-formed young man, who has had no children by his wife, may not have them some day or other? Nature may know, but men can tell nothing about it. Since then it is impossible to decide that the marriage may not be consummated some time or other, why dissolve it?

Among the Romans, on the suspicion of impotence, a delay of two years was allowed, and in the Novels of Justinian three are required; but if in three years Nature may bestow capability, she may equally do so in seven, ten, or twenty.

Those called "maleficiati' by the ancients were often considered bewitched. These charms were very ancient, and as there were some to take away virility, so there were others to restore it; both of which are alluded to in Petronius.

avowed object of distinguishing that which is allowable from that which is not, have exposed all which ought to remain veiled. It might be said of them-" Nox nocti indicat scientiam."

Above all, Sanchez has distinguished himself in collecting cases of conscience which the boldest wife would hesitate to submit to the most prudent of matrons. One query leads to another in almost endless succession, until at length a question of the most direct and extraordinary nature is put, as to the manner of the communication of the Holy Ghost with the Virgin Mary.

These extraordinary researches were never made by anybody in the world'except theologians; and suits in relation to impotency were unknown until the days { of Theodosius.

In the gospel, divorce is spoken of as allowable for adultery alone. The Jewish law permitted a husband to repudiate a wife who displeased him, without speciThis illusion lasted a long time among fying the cause. "If she found no favour us, who exorcised instead of disenchant-in his eyes, that was sufficient." It is ing; and when exorcism succeeded not, the law of the strongest, and exhibits huthe marriage was dissolved.

Iman nature in its most barbarous garb. The Jewish laws treat not of impotence; it would appear, says a casuist, that God would not permit impotency to exist among a people who were to multiply like the sands on the sea-shore, and to whom he had sworn to bestow the immense country which lies between the Nile and Euphrates, and, by his prophets, to make lords of the whole earth. To fulfil these divine promises, it was necessary that every honest Jew should be It is impossible to help admiring the occupied without ceasing in the great sagacity displayed by the canonists, and work of propagation. There was cerabove all by the religious of irreproach-tainly a curse upon impotency; the time able manners, in their development of the mysteries of sexual intercourse. There is no singularity, however strange, on which they have not treated. They have discussed at length all the cases in which capability may exist at one time or situa

The canon law made a great question { of impotence. Might a man who was prevented by sorcery from consummating his marriage, after being divorced and having children by a second wife-might { such man, on the death of the latter wife, reject the first, should she lay claim to him! All the great canonists decided in the negative-Alexander de Nevo, Andrew Alberic, Turrecremata, Soto, and fifty more.

not having then arrived for the devout to make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.

Marriage in the course of time having arrived at the dignity of a sacrament and a mystery, the ecclesiastics insensibly be

came judges of all which took place between husband and wife, and not only so, but of all which did not take place.

being desirous of dethroning him, and marrying the infant Don Pedro his brother, was aware of the difficulty of wedWives possessed the liberty of present-ding two brothers in succession, after the ing a request to be embesognées-such known circumstance of consummation being our Gallic term, although the causes with the elder. The example of Henry were carried on in Latin. Clerks pleaded, VIII. of England intimidated her, and and priests pronounced judgment, and she embraced the resolution of causing the process was uniformly to decide two her husband to be declared impotent by points-whether the man was bewitched, the chapter of the cathedral of Lisbon; or the woman wanted another husband. after which she hastened to marry his What appears most extraordinary is, { brother, without even waiting for the disthat all the canonists agree, that a hus-pensation of the pope. band whom a spell or charm has rendered impotent, cannot in conscience apply to other charms or magicians to destroy it. This resembles the reasoning of the regularly-admitted surgeons, who having the exclusive privilege of spreading a plaister, assure us that we shall certainly die if we allow ourselves to be cured by the hand which has hurt us. It might have been as well in the first place to inquire whether a sorcerer can really operate upon the virility of another man. It may be acded, that many weak-minded persons feared the sorcerer more than they conrided in the exorcist. The sorcerer having deranged nature, holy water alone would not restore it.

The most important proof of capability required from persons accused of impo{tency, is that called " the congress." The President Bouhier says, that this combat in an inclosed field was adopted in France in the fourteenth century. And he asserts that it is known in France only.

This proof, about which so much noise has been made, was not conducted pre{cisely as people have imagined. It has been supposed that a conjugal consummation took place under the inspection. of physicians, surgeons, and midwives. but such was not the fact. The parties went to bed in the usual manner, and at a proper time the inspectors, who were assembled in the next room, were called on to pronounce upon the case.

In the cases of impotency in which the devil took no part, the presiding ecclesi- In the famous process of the Marquis astics were not less embarrassed. We de Langeais, decided in 1659, he dehave, in the Decretals, the famous head {manded "the congress:" and owing to "De frigidas et maleficiatis," which is the management of his lady (Marie de St. very curious, but altogether uninforming. Simon) succeeded not, He demanded a The political use made of it is exempli- second trial, but the judges, fatigued with fied in the case of Henry IV. of Castile, the clamours of the superstitious, the who was declared impotent, while sur-plaints of the prudes, and the raillery of "ounded by mistresses, and possessed of a wife by whom he had an heiress to the throne; but it was an archbishop of Toledo who pronounced this sentence, not the pope.

Alfonso, King of Portugal, was treated in the same manner, in the middle of the seventeenth century. This prince was known chiefly by his ferocity, debauchery, and prodigious strength of body. His brutal excesses disgusted the nation; and the queen his wife, a princess of Nemours,

the wits, refused it. They declared the marquis impotent, his marriage void, forbade him to marry again, and allowed his wife to take another husband. The marquis however disregarded this sentence, and married Diana de Navailies, by whom he had seven children!

His first wife being dead, the marquis appealed to the grand chamberlain against the sentence which had declared him impotent, and charged him with the costs. The grand chamberlain, sensible of the

ridicule applicable to the whole affair, ing to this jurisprudence, every king may confirmed his marriage with Diana de acquire the dominions of another, while Navailles, declared him most potent, re-incapable of losing any of his own. fused him the costs, but abolished the that, in the end, each would be possessed ceremony of the congress altogether. of the property of somebody else. The The President Bouhier published a de-kings of France and England possess fence of the proof by congress, when it very little special domain: their genuine was no longer in use. He maintained, and more effective domain is the purses that the judges would not have committed of their subjects. the error of abolishing it, had they not been guilty of the previous error of refusing the marquis a second trial.

Persians espoused their daughters, although in the time of the Cæsars the Romans accused them of it, to render them odious. It might be that some Persian prince committed incest, and the turpiAll the kings of Europe, who affect totude of an individual was imputed to the imitate the emperors, have had their in-whole nation. alienable domain. Francis I., having effected his liberty by the cession of Burgundy, could find no other expedient to preserve it, than a state declaration, that Burgundy was inalienable; and was so fortunate as to violate both his honour

and the treaty with impunity. Accord-permitted to marry with their sisters, just