To evade this violent and arbitrary taxation the French peasantry, in the midst of the eighteenth century, acted like the Jews in the Middle Ages. They were ostensibly paupers, even when by chance they were not so in reality. They were afraid to be well off; and not without reason, as may be seen from a document which I select, not from Guienne, but a hundred leagues off. The Agricultural Society of Maine announced in its Report of 1761, that it proposed to distribute cattle by way of prizes and encouragements. ‘This plan was stopped,’ it adds, ‘on account of the dangerous consequences to be apprehended by a low jealousy of the winners of these prizes, which, by means of the arbitrary assessment of the public taxes, would occasion them annoyance in the following year.’ Under this system of taxation each tax-payer had, in fact, a direct and permanent interest to act as a spy on his neighbours, and to denounce to the collector the progress of their fortunes. The whole population was thus trained to delation and to hatred. Were not such things rather to be expected in the domains of a rajah of Hindostan? There were, however, at the same time in France certain districts in which the taxes were raised with regularity and moderation; these were called the _pays d’état_.[62] It is true that to these districts the right of levying their own taxes had been left. In Languedoc, for example, the _taille_ was assessed on real property, and did not vary according to the means of the holder. Its fixed and known basis was a survey which had been carefully made, and was renewed every thirty years, and in which the lands were divided, according to their fertility, into three classes. Every taxpayer knew beforehand exactly what his proportion of the charge amounted to. If he failed to pay, he alone, or rather his land alone, was liable. If he thought the assessment unjust, he might always require that his share should be compared with that of any other inhabitant of the parish, on the principle of what is now termed in France an appeal to proportionate equality. These regulations are precisely those which are now followed in France; they have not been improved since that time, but they have been generalised: for it deserves observation, that although the form of the public administration in France has been taken from the Government anterior to the Revolution, nothing else has been copied from that Government. The best of the administrative forms of proceeding in modern France have been borrowed from the old Provincial Assemblies, and not from the Government. The machine was adopted, but its produce rejected.