He was at Rouen when, in 1756, the Seven Years’ War broke out. At that moment the annual receipts of the State were two hundred and fifty-three million livres, the expenses between three hundred and twenty and three hundred and thirty millions. That year Roland saw the people obliged to pay a twentieth of their revenue—the detested _vingtième_. No one was exempt, and no doubt the bill fell heavily on the manufacturing interests. This tax was in addition to the _taille_, which tormented the small proprietors of the country, and from which the nobles and clergy were free. In addition were the special taxes of which Roland must have felt the injury especially, both in the Lyonnais and at Rouen. These included the _aides_, or tax on drinks; the _octroi_, at the gate of every city; the salt-tax; the special duties on iron, leather, and paper; the impost on tobacco, cards, and oils; the custom duties at the frontier of every province of France, as well as at the frontier of the kingdom. Two years later at Rouen, 1758, Roland no doubt felt the effect in his personal expenses of the result of the gift which the city, in common with all the cities, boroughs, and seignioralties of the kingdom, was obliged to pay to help on the war, and to meet which they received permission to put a tax on all drinks, on meat, hay, and wood. When one has to pay more for his wood and fire, he reflects why. Two years later the Parlement of Rouen, in common with several others of the kingdom, flatly refused to register the royal edicts creating new taxes, declaring, with a hardihood superior even to that of the Parlement of Paris, that the system of taxation was unjust, and the people the victims of royal abuse, and suggesting audaciously a parlement of France composed of all the parlements of the kingdom. So eloquent and so free was this declaration that it was even printed and sold in Paris. Roland’s position made him familiar with all these revolts; he heard them discussed as well as the King’s haughty, energetic reply to the deputation of the Parlement. “I am your master. I ought to punish you for the impudence of your principles. Go back to Rouen, register my decrees and declaration without further delay. I will be obeyed.” He was touched, no doubt, by the remonstrance which the same body sent to the King in 1763: “Your people, Sire, is unhappy. Everything shows this sad fact. Your parlements, the only organs of the nation, repeat it unceasingly.... A deluge of taxes pitilessly ravages our towns and our provinces; the property, the industry, the person of citizens, all are a prey to these extraordinary imposts; poverty itself, and the charity which aids it, have become its tributaries and its victims. The farming out of the _aides_, whose rules attack all conditions and commerce in general, weighs on the poor in a most inhuman manner. The farming of the salt-tax presents a spectacle not less revolting.”