But The Truth Is, I Know No Country In Which Strangers Are Worse
Treated With Respect To Their Essential Concerns.
If a foreigner
dies in France, the king seizes all his effects, even though his
heir should be upon
The spot; and this tyranny is called the
droit d'aubaine founded at first upon the supposition, that all
the estate of foreigners residing in France was acquired in that
kingdom, and that, therefore, it would be unjust to convey it to
another country. If an English protestant goes to France for the
benefit of his health, attended by his wife or his son, or both,
and dies with effects in the house to the amount of a thousand
guineas, the king seizes the whole, the family is left destitute,
and the body of the deceased is denied christian burial. The
Swiss, by capitulation, are exempted from this despotism, and so
are the Scots, in consequence of an ancient alliance between the
two nations. The same droit d'aubaine is exacted by some of the
princes in Germany: but it is a great discouragement to commerce,
and prejudices every country where it is exercised, to ten times
the value of what it brings into the coffers of the sovereign.
I am exceedingly mortified at the detention of my books, which
not only deprives me of an amusement which I can very ill
dispense with; but, in all probability, will expose me to sundry
other inconveniencies. I must be at the expence of sending them
sixty miles to be examined, and run the risque of their being
condemned; and, in the mean time, I may lose the opportunity of
sending them with my heavy baggage by sea to Bourdeaux, to be
sent up the Garonne to Tholouse, and from thence transmitted
through the canal of Languedoc to Cette, which is a sea-port on
the Mediterranean, about three or four leagues from Montpelier.
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