Book Description

Excerpt from The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature, Vol. 10: Extended and Improved; January-April, 1794 Hifiory, ancient or modern, affords no in ance of a country, in which defpotifm was reduced to fo complete afyftem as in France. The king levied taxes, by his fole authority, to a greater annual amount than are raifed by the whole of thole immenfe ter ritories which compofe the Germanic body. The people were fru diou y deprefi'ed by poverty, ignorance, and extortion. They had no rights, or were carefully imftrue'ted never to claim them. Every private citizen was liable to be forced by the ofiicers of government from his {tarving family to work in fome corvee of public concern, or of abfurd magnificence - He was taxed to more than half the amount of his income; and among thefe, one of the molt oppref five was the gabelle or {alt-tax, by which he was forced to pay at an exorbitant rate for that neceflary commodity, while he was neither allowed to purchafe when he pleafed, nor to aftertain the quantity, but both were left at the difcretion of the farmers of the revenue. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."