Letter 7045: Although we all live from the utility of our land and everyone expects fair profit from it, you complain that the...

45. FORMULA BY WHICH THE TAX MAY BE RELIEVED FOR ONE WHO POSSESSES A SINGLE OVERBURDENED HOMESTEAD. [1] Since one lives from the yield of the field, and since it is therefore certain to all that a just profit comes from it, you complain that the tribute of your holding situated in that province is so burdensome that this most vast gulf of the public obligation has devoured all your resources, and that what can be gathered from elsewhere with great labor seems to be consumed by it, whose profit the excessive levy surpasses, since more is paid out to the tax-collectors than is rendered by the diligent cultivator. Therefore we believe that you are able to escape destitution if you give up the ownership of this estate, to which a perpetual barrenness comes from the collectors, lest under a wretched condition you become a slave to necessity in that very thing whose master you had deserved to be. [2] But because the most sacred laws have determined that this kind of benefit be granted to persons of modest means, so that he who is weighed down by the excessive burden of a single plot and is not relieved by the advantage of another ought, with due moderation, to be assisted, we decree by the present authority to Your Magnitude, whose concern it is to ponder justice, that, if it is so, you have so many solidi of tribute of the aforesaid holding, by issuing the warrants to those whom it concerns, diligently scraped away from the public revenue-registers, so that no double trace of this matter ought to be found, but that for all ages there be preserved without error what is comprised in one sum alone.

XLV. FORMULA, QUA CENSUS RELEVETUR EI QUI UNAM CASAM POSSIDET PRAEGRAVATAM. [1] Cum de agri utilitate vivatur et omnibus inde certum sit iustum venire compendium, tributum illud possessionis in illa provincia constitutae ita quereris onerosum, ut universas tibi voraverit facultates hiatus ille vastissimus functionis et quod aliunde magno labore potest colligi, per illam videatur absumi, cuius utilitatem nimia transcendit illatio, dum plus compulsoribus redditur quam a sedulo cultore praestetur. quapropter credimus te evadere posse nuditatem, si dominium huius ruris amiseris, cui iugis sterilitas de compulsoribus venit, ne condicione miserabili servias necessitati, cuius dominus esse meruisti. [2] Sed quia hoc genus beneficii praestari mediocribus leges sacratissimae censuerunt, ut qui unius cespitis enormitate deprimitur nec alterius commodo sublevatur, moderatione habita ei debeat subveniri, magnitudini vestrae, cui cordi est cogitare iustitiam, praesenti auctoritate decernimus, ut, si ita est, tot solidos tributarios supradictae possessionis datis praeceptionibus ad eos quorum interest ita faciatis de vasariis publicis diligenter abradi, ut huius rei duplex vestigium non debeat inveniri, sed per saecula sine errore servetur quod una tantum summa concluditur.