§ XXII
The Trap of Tax Farming
The king is asked whether he has allowed tax farmers to use ambiguous decrees to exploit merchants, harming both trade and the public.
Haven't you granted the tax farmers, so they could raise the price of their farms, edicts, or declarations, or decrees with ambiguous wording, to extend your rights at the expense of trade, and even to set traps for merchants and confiscate their goods, or at least wear them down and hinder them in their business, so that they'll buy themselves free with some sum of money?1 That wrongs both the merchants and the public, whose whole trade is little by little destroyed by it.
Read the original French
N'avez-vous point accordé aux traitants, pour hausser leurs fermes, desédits, ou déclarations, ou arrêts, avec des termes ambigus, pour étendre vos droits aux dépens du commerce, et même pour tendre des pièges aux marchands, et pour confisquer leurs marchandises, ou du moins les fatiguer et les gêner dans leur commerce, afin qu'ils se rachètent par quelque somme? C'est faire tort et aux marchands, et au public, dont on anéantit peu-à-peu par là tout le négoce.
Notes
- 1 ↩Source reading desédits is treated as des édits (edicts), in parallel with déclarations and arrêts; OCR/spacing corruption is likely.
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