From time immemorial, direct taxes in France have been collected only by bailiffs and seizures; which is not surprising, as they take away a full half of the net income.

Now that the peasants of each village are armed and form a band, let the collector come and make seizures if he dare!--" Immediately after the decree on the equality of the taxes," writes the provincial commission of Alsace,[1328] "the people generally refused to make any payments, until those who were exempt and privileged should have been inscribed on the local lists." In many places the peasants threaten to obtain the reimbursement of their installments, while in others they insist that the decree should be retrospective and that the new rate-payers should pay for the past year.

"No collector dare send an official to distrain; none that are sent dare fulfill their mission."-- " It is not the good bourgeois" of whom there is any fear, "but the rabble who make the latter and every one else afraid of them;" resistance and disorder everywhere come from "people that have nothing to lose."-- Not only do they shake off taxation, but they usurp property, and declare that, being the Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to them.

The forests of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as communal, and wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or of maniacs.

"In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods, they are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the ashes."-- After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite of the law which licenses the proprietor only to hunt on his own grounds, the impulse to break the law becomes irresistible.