France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs
and demand, at their death, not only the property left by them on
his domain, but, again, the pittance acquired by them elsewhere. At
Saint-Claude he acquires this right over any person that passes a year
and a day in a house belonging to the seigniory. As to ownership of the
soil we see still more clearly that he once had entire possession of it.
In the district subject to his jurisdiction the public domain remains
his private domain; roads, streets and open squares form a part of it;
he has the right to plant trees in them and to take trees up. In many
provinces, through a pasturage rent, he obliges the inhabitants to pay
for permits to pasture their cattle in the fields after the crop, and
in the open common lands, (les terres vaines et vagues). Unnavigable
streams belong to him, as well as islets and accumulations formed in
them and the fish that are found in them. He has the right of the chase
over the whole extent of his jurisdiction, this or that commoner being
sometimes compelled to throw open to him his park enclosed by walls.
One more trait serves to complete the picture. This head of the State, a
proprietor of man and of the soil, was once a resident cultivator on his
own small farm amidst others of the same class, and, by this title, he
reserved to himself certain working privileges which he always retained.
Such is the right of banvin, still widely diffused, consisting of the
privilege of selling his own wine, to the exclusion of all others,
during thirty or forty days after gathering the crop. Such is, in
Touraine, the right of préage, which is the right to send his horses,
cows and oxen "to browse under guard in his subjects' meadows." Such
is, finally, the monopoly of the great dove-cot, from which thousands
of pigeons issue to feed at all times and seasons and on all grounds,
without any one daring to kill or take them. Through another effect of
the same qualification he imposes quit-claims on property on which he
has formerly given perpetual leases, and, under the terms cens, censives
(quit-rents), carpot (share in wine), champart (share in grain), agrier
(a cash commission on general produce), terrage parciere (share of
fruits). All these collections, in money or in kind, are as various as
the local situations, accidents and transactions could possibly be. In
the Bourbonnais he has one-quarter of the crop; in Berry twelve sheaves
out of a hundred. Occasionally his debtor or tenant is a community: one
deputy in the National Assembly owned a fief of two hundred casks
of wine on three thousand pieces of private property.[1229] Besides,
through the retrait censuel (a species of right of redemption), he
can "retain for his own account all property sold on the condition of
remunerating the purchaser, but previously deducting for his benefit the
lord's dues (lods and ventes)." The reader, finally, must take note
that all these restrictions on property constitute, for the seignior, a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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