The Third Estate of the town of Gavray, imbued with the liveliest gratitude for the paternal kindness of the King, who in his wisdom has determined to call to the feet of the throne the citizens of all orders of the State, to hear their grievances and listen to their opinions for the reform of the abuses which have long reigned in the different parts of the administration, and to procure the proper means to lighten the burden of impositions, in a word, to make his faithful subjects always happy, Has decreed that he shall be very respectfully represented to his Majesty by his deputies, and such are the wishes they express:1 ): In the next assembly of the States-General it shall be decided that in the future no impositions may be levied on the people except with the consent of the nation, the assembled Estates-General; 2): In response to His Majesty's wishes, that every citizen, of whatever order, exempt or not, privileged and non-privileged, should contribute to the expenses of the State in proportion to his revenues, without any pecuniary exemption, a territorial subsidy shall be established; To attain equality, every citizen shall be bound, either by persons holding his powers ad hoc, to make his declaration under oath of the annual and real value of his property and revenues; 4 ): The great decimators shall likewise be required, and also under oath, to make their declaration of the annual and real value of their tithes in all kinds, and the owners of the fiefs of the value of their wages demanded for a common year out of the last five years, of the thirteenths and duties of lods and sale collected by them or due to be collected; The declarations of property shall be received by the municipal officers of the towns, boroughs, and villages, and those who shall be convicted of false declarations shall be condemned by the judges of the place, on the denunciation of the municipal officers or any other inhabitants of the towns, towns, and villages, to a fine of four times, which shall serve for the benefit of the community of the said towns, towns and villages, in addition to the payment of what they should have paid; 6): Duties on beverages and salt will be abolished; and in lieu of these duties, in the event that the tax which shall be levied on the lands and those which shall be levied by the administrators of the estate, which shall however be reduced, without any land for books, on the posts and couriers, should not be sufficient to discharge the charges of the State, to take the place of the duties which shall be levied on beverages and salt, every town, town, and village shall be subscribed, and the communities shall impose themselves according to and in the manner which they shall see fit; All duties generally whatsoever, which shall be levied in the towns, towns, and villages, shall be collected by one and the same collector, who, in order to prevent all abuses, shall be bound to send them receipts of the sums which shall be paid into his hands by the taxpayers, in accordance with the endorsements which he shall be required to bear on his rolls. For this purpose, the collection will be carried out by auction at a discount, for one or more years, by giving by the successful bidder a good and sufficient guarantee; and shall be the auction prices imposed by the municipal officers at the mark per pound of territorial taxation;
There shall be established in each district a collector of sufficient wages, to whom the collectors of the towns, towns, and villages shall collect their receipts from month to month on triple receipts. This particular receiver shall then cause to be delivered to the royal treasury by courier and without charge the moneys received by him, with a duplicate of the receipts sent by him to the collectors and countersigned by them; 9 ): Parish priests and large decimators will in future be subject to the maintenance of repairs to presbyteries, both large and small; 10 ): Special courts will be abolished, and in future there will be only two levels of jurisdiction; 11 ): In order to bring litigants closer to their judges, so that they may go and return to their homes on the same day, districts shall be made, so that the litigant furthest from the place of his jurisdiction shall not be more than three leagues or three leagues and a half; The town of Gavray, by its position in the midst of the towns of Coutances, Saint-Lô, Vire, Avranches, and Granville, is a suitable place for the establishment of a bailiwick, its distance from Coutances being nearly five leagues, and being distant from the other towns by six and even seven leagues; The bailiwicks of the district shall have jurisdiction in the last resort, and to the number of seven judges, up to the amount of one thousand to twelve hundred livres, and they shall come out by appeal to the presidiums of their jurisdictions, who shall hear them up to the sum of eight or ten thousand livres, to the number of nine judges, and for cases beyond the jurisdiction of the presidials, the bailiwicks will be the responsibility of the Parliaments; 14 ): Offices of judicature shall be granted only to those who have given proofs of honesty and ability, and who have been admitted to the bar as advocates for at least five years; 15 ): To reimburse those who have been appointed to suppressed offices, on the price of their contracts or on the price of their valuation at their will, and to pay the debts of the State, the property of religious houses which is not sufficient to receive the number of religious provided for by the statutes of their orders, and the property of the State as moors and commons and other goods of the nature of those which are not in trade, will be sold; 16 ): There shall be established in the towns and villages where there are no established almshouses, and in the most considerable parishes, for the reception of the poor. These hospices will be administered by Grey Nuns, a chaplain, and a doctor. For the maintenance of these almshouses, in addition to the produce of the labour of the poor, there shall be levied in each parish, on each inhabitant, the land for the pound of the territorial tax, and the parish priests and great decimators to whom the tithes have been conceded for their food and that of the poor, who shall by this means be relieved of the care of giving alms. shall pay (to) the almshouse of their borough one-fifth of their income, with the exception of the congruous portion; A meeting shall be held every three months at the general office of the hospice, at which all the parish priests and syndics or other deputies (of) the parishes (of) the district shall be required to attend, to verify the accounts which shall be rendered by the administrators, and to ascertain whether the poor of their parishes receive in the hospice all the necessary assistance; 18 ): If in the parishes there were any poor fathers or mothers of families who fell ill and could not be taken to the hospice, they should be provided with suitable meat, linen, drugs and medicines on the certificates of the parish priests of their parishes and the syndics; No poor person shall be allowed to beg, and whoever is found to be a beggar shall be arrested and taken prisoner as a vagabond and without confession; The town of Gavray, in the domain of the King, is a place of passage for the troops who go from Brittany to the Cotentin, it is the seat of a very extensive viscounty and a very considerable market. Since the imposition of corvées for the construction of the main roads, the town of Gavray and the parishes of the canton have always paid very considerable sums, without their having had the advantage of the main roads, whatever claims they may have made. The town of Gavray demands, which cannot be refused, and what the assembly of the department of Coutances has already granted it, the construction of the main road from Coutances to Gavray, then from Gavray to the towns of Avranches, Vire, Saint-Lô and Granville. He also asked that a road be built from Gavray to Bricqueville-les-Salines. The construction of these roads will be a source of wealth for the whole canton, an advantage of which the country has hitherto been deprived; they will be an increase in the commerce of which Gavray, by its position near a royal forest and on the banks of a great river, is susceptible. The construction of these roads will facilitate the transport of sea manure, suitable for; to fertilize the land of all the neighbouring parishes, whose soil is of a bad nature, and which cannot be made fertile by the difficulty of procuring manure; 21 ): The local roads shall be maintained by the communities of towns, villages and villages, and all roads which are not of public utility shall be abolished; 22 ): The Third Estate of the town of Gavray will end with a final observation. The land adjacent to the local forest is annually plundered and devastated by wild beasts and wild boars and other destructive animals. Often the ploughman receives little or no crop; the King will be most humbly begged to allow them to run and kill them, without incurring any penalty. The Third Estate has, moreover, authorized its deputies to make such other observations as they may deem most suitable for the honour and advantage of its order, that of all other orders, and for the prosperity and happiness of the nation in general. This they did and decided on the 1st of March, 1789, in the assembly held in the auditorium of the Viscountcy of Gavray, before the Viscount, in conformity with the King's letters of the 24th of January, and of the regulations annexed thereto, and in execution of the ordinance of M. Desmarets de Montchaton, Lieutenant-General of the Bailiwick of Coutances, on the 13th of February also last. |
