Their Immunities.
Such is the total or partial exemption from taxation.

The tax-collectors halt in their presence because the king well knows that feudal property has the same origin as his own; if royalty is one privilege seigniory is another; the king himself is simply the most privileged among the privileged.

The most absolute, the most infatuated with his rights, Louis XIV, entertained scruples when extreme necessity compelled him to enforce on everybody the tax of the tenth.[1212] Treaties, precedents, immemorial custom, reminiscences of ancient rights again restrain the fiscal hand.

The clearer the resemblance of the proprietor to the ancient independent sovereign the greater his immunity .-- In some places a recent treaty guarantees him by his position as a stranger, by his almost royal extraction.

"In Alsace foreign princes in possession, with the Teutonic order and the order of Malta, enjoy exemption from all real and personal contributions." "In Lorraine the chapter of Remiremont has the privilege of assessing itself in all state impositions."[1213] Elsewhere he is protected by the maintenance of the provincial Assemblies, and through the incorporation of the nobility with the soil: in Languedoc and in Brittany the commoners alone paid the taille[1214]--Everywhere else his quality preserved him from it, him, his chateau and the chateau's dependencies; the taille reaches him only through his farmers.