The owner, thus rendered odious, finds himself obliged to tolerate his exactions to able to profit by them." Imagine, if you can, the evil which a country usurer exercises, armed against them with such burdensome rights; it is the feudal seigniory in the hands of Harpagon, or rather of old Grandet.

When, indeed, a tax becomes insupportable we see, by the local complaints, that it is nearly always a fermier who enforces it.[1346] It is one of these, acting for a body of canons, who claims Jeanne Mermet's paternal inheritance on the pretense that she had passed her wedding night at her husband's house.
One can barely find similar exactions in the Ireland of 1830, on those estates where, the farmer-general renting to sub-farmers and the latter to others still below them.

The poor tenant at the foot of the ladder himself bore the full weight of it, so much the more crushed because his creditor, crushed himself measured the requirements he exacted by those he had to submit to.
Suppose that, seeing this abuse of his name, the seignior is desirous of withdrawing the administration of his domains from these mercenary hands.

In most cases he is unable to do it: he too deeply in debt, having appropriated to his creditors a certain portion of his land, a certain branch of his income.

For centuries, the nobles are involved through their luxury, their prodigality, their carelessness, and through that false sense of honor, which consists in looking upon attention to accounts as the occupation of an accountant.