more than a century. Aided by sixteen of the "Bounty" mutineers, and armed with guns procured from Bligh and a Swedish vessel, Pomare greatly strengthened his power and brought to a successful close a long struggle with Eimeo.
The attempt at colonization by the Spaniards in 1774 was followed by the 'settlement of thirty persons brought in 1797 by the missionary ship "Duff." Though befriended by Pomare I. (who lived till 1805), they had many difficulties, especially from the constant wars, and at length they fled with Pomare II. to Eimeo and ultimately to New South Wales, returning in 1812, when Pomare renounced heathenism. In 1815 he regained his power in Tahiti. For a time the missionaries made good progress — a printing press was established (1817), and coffee, cotton and sugar were planted (1819); but soon there came a serious relapse into heathen practices and immorality. Pomare II. died of drink in 1824. His successor, Pomare III., died in 1827, and was succeeded by his half-sister Aimata, the unfortunate " Queen Pomare (IV.)." In 1828 a new fanatical sect, the " Mamaia," arose, which gave much trouble to the missions. The leader proclaimed that he was Jesus Christ, and promised to his followers a sensual paradise. In 1836 the French Catholic missionaries in Mangareva attempted to open a mission in Tahiti. Queen Pomare, advised by the English missionary and consul Pritchard, refused her consent, and removed by force two priests who had landed surreptitiously and to whom many of the opposition party in the state had rallied. In 1838 a French frigate appeared, under the command of Abel Dupetit-Thouars, and extorted from Pomare the right of settlement for Frenchmen of every profession. Pritchard opposed this, and caused Pomare to apply for British protection; but this was a failure, and the native chiefs compelled the queen, against her will, to turn to France. A convention was signed in 1843, placing the islands under French protection, the authority of the queen and chiefs being expressly reserved. Dupetit-Thouars now reappeared, and, alleging that the treaty had not been duly carried out, deposed the queen and took possession of the islands. His high-handed action was not countenanced by the French government; but while, on formal protest being made from England, it professed not to sanction the annexation, it did not retrace the steps taken. Two years were spent in reducing the party in the islands opposed to French rule; an attempt to conquer the western islands failed; and at length, by agreement with England, France promised to return to the plan of a protectorate and leave the western islands to their rightful owners. Pomare died in 1877, and her son Aiiane (Pomare V.) abdicated in 1880, handing over the administration to France, and in the same year Tahiti, including Eimeo, was proclaimed a French colony. In 1903 the whole of the French establishments in the Eastern Pacific were declared one colony, and the then existing elective general council was superseded by the present administration.
Besides the narratives of early voyages, and general works covering the Society Islands (for which see Pacific) , see Vincendon-Dumoulin, Les Iles Tahiti, esquisses historiques et géographiques, Paris, 1844; A. Gonfil, "Tahiti," in La France coloniale, Paris, 1886; H. Le Chartier, Tahiti, Paris, 1887; Monchoisy, La Nouvelle Cythère, Paris, 1888; G. Collingridge, "Who discovered Tahiti?" in Journ. Polynesian Soc, xii., 1903. Among the narrative works of visitors to Tahiti may be mentioned Pierre Loti, Le Mariage de Loti, Paris, 1881; Dora Hort, Tahiti: the Garden of the Pacific, London, 1891.
TAHR, the native name of a shaggy-haired brown Himalayan wild goat characterized by its short, triangular and sharply keeled horns. Under the name of Hemitragus jemlaicus, it typifies a genus in which are included the wariatu, or Nilgiri ibex (H. hylocrius), from the Nilgiri and Anamalai hills of Southern India, and a small species, H. jayakeri, from South Arabia. Tahr frequent the worst ground of almost all ruminants.
TAILLANDIER, SAINT-RENÉ (1817-1879), French critic, whose original name was Rene Gaspard Ernest Taillandier, was born in Paris on the 16th of December 1817. He completed his studies at Heidelberg, and then became professor of literature successively at Strassburg, Montpellier and the Sorbonne, where he was nominated to the chair of French eloquence in 1868. Most of the articles included in his published volumes first appeared in the Revue des deux mondes. In January 1870 he became general secretary of the ministry of education, and continued in this office after the fall of the Empire. He became officer of the Legion of Honour in 1870, and was elected to the Academy
in 1873. He died in Paris on the 22nd of February 1879.
His works include:—Allemagne et Russie, études historiques et litteraires (1856), Le Polte du Caucase . . . Michel Lermontoff (1856), Maurice de Saxe (2 vols. 1865), Tchiques et Magyars (1869), Le Gintrai Philippe de Sigur'(1875).
TAILLE (from Fr. lailler, to cut or divide; late Lat. taliare, said to come from (alia, talea), the equivalent of the English tallage (q.v.), was in France the typical direct tax of the middle ages, just as the word tonlieu was the generic term for an indirect tax. Other words used in certain districts in the same sense as taille were queste (questa, quista) fouage (joragium), cote. The essence of the tax denoted by these names was that the amount was fixed en bloc for a whole group of persons, and afterwards divided among them in various ways. In ancient French law we find three forms of taille: the taille servile, taille seigneuriale, and taille royale.
The taille servile can scarcely be termed a tax; it was rather a tax which had degenerated into a source of profit for certain individuals. Every lord who possessed serfs could levy the taille on them, and originally this was done arbitrarily (a volonté) both as to frequency and amount. It always remained a characteristic feature of serfdom, but was limited and fixed, either by contracts or concessions from the lord (taille abonnée), or by the customs.
The taille seigneuriale was a true tax, levied by a lord on all his subjects who were neither nobles nor ecclesiastics. But, in our opinion, when feudalism was established, the right of levying it did not belong to every lord, but only to the lord having the haute justice. But he levied it by right, without the necessity for any contract between him and those who paid it. He fixed the sum to be paid by each group of inhabitants, who then had to see that it was assessed, collected, and paid to the lord, electing commissaries (preuà hommes) from among themselves for this purpose. This was reducing the administration of taxation to its simplest form. Custom, however, or an order of the lord generally fixed the principle upon which the division was made. It was often a "hearth tax" (fouage), when each fire, i.e. each head of a family, paid the same sum, arrived at by dividing the local contingent of the taille by the number of fires. But this equality, which took no account of wealth or poverty, was felt to be unjust, and the assessment began to be made according to the resources of each family, "the strong bearing the weak, and the weak relieving the strong." The seigniorial taille, like the servile, had the character of a personal tax (taille personelle), a rudimentary tax on income, every man being taxed according to his wages or other income. The king originally had only the right of levying the taille in places where he had retained the exercise of the haute justice. At that time there was no royal taille, strictly speaking; it was only the seigniorial taille transferred to the crown, but it was one of the first taxes his right to levy which upon all the inhabitants of the domain of the crown, whether serfs or roturiers, was recognized. In the course of the 13th century the idea began to prevail that it was fair for the king, in time of war, to levy a taille upon the subjects of the lords having the haute justice in various parts of the royal domain. Moreover, tailles were often granted him by the provincial estates or the states-general. Thus the general taille, raised for the benefit of the king, became more and more frequent, and naturally tended to become permanent. This transformation was confirmed, rather than effected, by the ordonnance of 1439. Its immediate object was, not the regulation of the taille, but the organization of the compagnies d' ordonnance, i.e. the heavy cavalry which the king from that time on maintained on a permanent footing. Military expenses thus becoming permanent, it was natural that the taille, the tax which had long been devoted to meeting the expenses of the royal wars, should also become permanent. This was contained implicitly in the ordonnance of 1439, which at the same time suppressed the seigniorial taille, as competing too closely with the royal taille by imposing a double burden on the taxpayer. A kind of seigniorial taille continued to exist besides the servile taille, but this kind presupposed a tide, a contract between the taxable roturier and the lord, or else immemorial possession, which amounted to a title.
The royal taille naturally retained the distinctive characteristics of the seigniorial, as can be seen from an examination of the way in which it was assessed and collected ; the chief characteristic being that ecclesiastics and nobles, who were exempt from the seigniorial taille, were also exempt from the royal. The royal taille, though levied by the king by right, did not fall upon the whole kingdom. The pays d'elections were subject to it, the pays d'états were not (see France: Law and Institutions).
Throughout the pays d'ilections the taille was almost universally personal (taille personnelle), i.e. a tax on the whole income of the
