(Du Tillet du Villars).
Vue d’un citoyen sur l’administration des terres & la confection d’un terrier perpetuel.
Par M. D. T. D. V.
Versailles, 1785. Manuscript

(Du Tillet du Villars).
Précis d’un projet d’établissement du cadastre dans le royaume.
Par M. D. T. D. V.
Paris: de L'Imprimerie de Clousier, et chez Pissot and Barrois, 1781.

Acquired through the Andrew B. Hammond Fund

In this manuscript, written only a few years before the French Revolution and never published, the author, Du Tillet de Villars, addresses the problem of uneven and arbitrary taxation and proposes a new national system of equitable taxation of all forms of wealth and property. To illustrate his proposal, the author includes a detailed inventory of the parish of St-Jean, in the Limousin. This inventory, the “terrier,” contains the names and accounts of property of 106 proprietors, and is followed by the financial profiles of each proprietor, including their holdings of real estate and personal property, livestock, household inhabitants and their professions or functions. The ideas presented in the manuscript and the published pamphlet, which contains further elaborations of the author’s views, are considered in relation to the views of Vauban and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, who slightly predated Du Tillet de Villars. This manuscript complements the Stanford University Libraries’ holdings of works by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, including a 1733 manuscript entitled “Memoire pour perfectioner la capitation, par la metode des declarations,” which addresses similar issues, and Vauban, as well as materials found in the Gimon Collection.