This infraction of the principle of distributive justice is in favor of the poor. Through the almost complete exemption of those who have no property the burden of direct taxation falls almost entirely on those who own property. If they are manufacturers, or in commerce, they support still another burden, that of the license tax, which is a supplementary impost proportioned to their probable gains.3234 Finally, to all these annual and extra taxes, levied on the probable or certain income derived from invested or floating capital, the exchequer adds an eventual tax on capital itself, consisting of the mutation tax, assessed on property every time it changes hands through gift, inheritance or by contract, obtaining its title under free donation or by sale, and which tax, aggravated by the timbre,3235 is enormous3236 since, in most cases, it takes 5, 7, 9, and up to 10 1/2 % on the capital transmitted, that is to say, in the case of real-estate, 2, 3 and even 4 years' income from it. Thus, in the first shearing of the sheep the exchequer cuts deep, as deep as possible; but it has sheared only the sheep whose fleece is more or less ample; its scissors have scarcely touched the others, much more numerous, whose wool, short, thin and scant, is maintained only by day-wages, the petty gains of manual labor.—Compensation is to come when the exchequer, resuming its scissors, shears the second time: it is the indirect tax which, although properly levied and properly collected, is, in its nature, more burdensome for the poor than for the rich and well-off.

Through this tax, and through to the previous action of customs-duties, tolls, octrois or monopolies, the State collects a certain percentage on the price of various kinds of merchandise sold. In this way it participates in trade and commerce and itself becomes a merchant. It knows, therefore, like all able merchants, that, to obtain large profits, it must sell large quantities, that it must have a very large body of customers, that the largest body is that which ensures to it and embraces all its subjects, in short, that its customers must consist not only of the rich, who number merely tens of thousands, not only the well-to-do, who number merely hundreds of thousands, but likewise the poor and the half-poor, who number millions and tens of millions. Hence, in the merchandise by the sale of which it is to profit, it takes care to include staple articles which everybody needs, for example, salt, sugar, tobacco and beverages in universal and popular use. This accomplished, let us follow out the consequences, and look in at the shops over the whole surface of the territory, in the towns or in the villages, where these articles are disposed of. Daily and all day long, consumers abound; their large coppers and small change constantly rattle on the counter; and out of every large copper and every small piece of silver the national treasury gets so many centimes: that is its share, and it is very sure of it, for it is already in hand, having received it in advance. At the end of the year, these countless centimes fill its cash-box with millions, as many and more millions than it gathers through direct taxation.

And this second crop causes less trouble than the first one for the taxpayer who is subject to it has less trouble and like-wise the State which collects it.—In the first place, the tax-payer suffers less. In relation to the exchequer, he is no longer a mere debtor, obliged to pay over a particular sum at a particular date; his payments are optional; neither the date nor the sum are fixed; he pays on buying and in proportion to what he buys, that is to say, when he pleases and as little as he wants. He is free to choose his time, to wait until his purse is not so empty; there is nothing to hinder him from thinking before he enters the shop, from counting his coppers and small change, from giving the preference to more urgent expenditure, from reducing his consumption. If he is not a frequenter of the cabaret, his quota, in the hundreds of millions of francs obtained from beverages, is almost nothing; if he does not smoke or snuff, his quota, in the hundreds of millions derived from the tax on tobacco, is nothing at all; because he is economical, prudent, a good provider for his family and capable of self-sacrifice for those belonging to him, he escapes the shearing of the exchequer. Moreover, when he does come under the scissors, these hardly graze his skin; so long as tariff regulations and monopolies levy nothing on articles which are physically indispensable to him, as on bread in France, indirect taxation does not touch his flesh. In general, fiscal or protective duties, especially those which increase the price of tobacco, coffee, sugar, and beverages, do not affect his daily life, but merely deprive him of some of its pleasures and comforts.—And, on the other hand, in the collection of these duties, the exchequer may not show its hand; if it does its business properly, the anterior and partial operation is lost sight of in the total operation which completes and covers this up; it screens itself behind the merchant. The shears are invisible to the buyer who presents himself to be sheared; in any event, he has no distinct sensation of them. Now, with the man of the people, the common run of sheep, it is the positive, actual, animal sensation which is the cause of his cries, his convulsive shudders, and contagious alarms and panics. As long as he is not being excited he can be manipulated; at the utmost, he grumbles at the hard times; the high prices from which he suffers are not imputed to the government; he does not know how to reckon, check off and consider for himself the surplus price which the fiscal impost extorts from him. Even at the present day, one might tell a peasant in vain that the State takes fifteen out of the forty sous which he pays for a pound of coffee, and five centimes out of every two sous he pays for a pound of salt; for him, this is simply a barren notion, a vague calculation at random; the impression on his mind would be very different if, standing before the grocer who weighs out his coffee and salt, he saw with his own eyes, right before him, the clerk of the customs and of the salt-tax actually taking the fifteen sous and the five centimes off the counter.

Such are the good indirect taxes: in order that they may be correct, that is to say, tolerable and tolerated, three conditions, as we see, are requisite. In the first place, the taxpayer, in his own interest, must be free to buy or not to buy the merchandise taxed. Next, in the interest of the taxpayer and of the exchequer, the merchandise must not be so taxed as to be rendered too dear. After that, in the interest of the exchequer, its interference must not be perceptible. Owing to these precautions, indirect taxes can be levied, even on the smaller taxpayers, without either fleecing or irritating them. It is for lack of these precautions before 1789, when people were fleeced in such a clumsy way,3237 that, in 1789, they first rebelled against indirect taxation,3238 against the meal-tax, the salt-tax, the tax on liquors, the internal tariffs, and the town octrois, against fiscal officers, bureaux and registries, by murdering, pillaging, and burning, beginning in the month of March in Provence and after the 13th of July in Paris, and then throughout France, with such a universal, determined and persistent hostility that the National Assembly, after having vainly attempted to restore the suspended tax-levies and enforce the law on the populace, ended in subjecting the law to the populace and in decreeing the suppression of indirect taxation entirely.3239

Such, in the matter of taxation, is the work of the Revolution. Of the two sources which, through their regular afflux, fill the public Treasury, and of which the ancient RÉgime took possession and managed badly, violently, through loose and bungling measures, it has nearly dried up the first one, direct taxation, and completely exhausted the second one, indirect taxation. At present, as the empty Treasury must be filled, the latter must be taken in hand the same as the former, its waters newly gathered in and gently conducted without loss. The new government sets about this, not like the old one, in a rude, conventional manner, but as an engineer and calculator who knows the ground, its inclination and other obstacles, in short, who comprehends human sensibility and the popular imagination.3240—And, first of all, there is to be no more farming-out (of the collection of the revenues): the State no longer sells its duties on salt or on beverages to a company of speculators, mere contractors, who care for nothing but their temporary lease and annual incomes, solely concerned with coming dividends, bleeding the tax-payer like so many leeches and invited to suck him freely, interested in multiplying affidavits by the fines they get, and creating infractions, authorized by a needy government which, supporting itself on their advances, places the public force at their disposal and surrenders the people to their exactions. Henceforth, the exchequer collects for itself and for its own account. It is the same as a proprietor who, instead of leasing or renting out, improves his property and becomes his own farmer. The State, therefore, considers the future in its own interest; it limits the receipts of the current year so as not to compromise the receipts of coming years; it avoids ruining the present tax-payer who is also the future taxpayer; it does not indulge in gratuitous chicanery, in expensive lawsuits, in warrants of execution and imprisonment; it is averse to converting a profitable laborer into a beggar who brings in nothing, or into a prisoner for debt who costs it something. Through this course, the relief is immense; ten years previous to the Revolution,3241 it was estimated that, in principal and in accessories, especially in costs of collection and in fines, indirect taxation cost the nation twice as much the king derived from it, that it paid 371 millions to enable him to receive 184 millions, that the salt-tax alone took out of the pockets of the taxpayer 100 millions for 45 millions deposited in his coffers. Under the new government, fines became rarer; seizures, executions and sales of personal property still rarer, while the costs of collection, reduced by increasing consumption, are not to exceed one-twentieth in-stead of one-fifth of the receipts.3242—In the second place, the consumer becomes free again, in law as in fact, not to purchase taxed goods. He is no longer constrained, as formerly, in the provinces subject to high salt-tax, to accept, consume, and pay for duty-salt, 7 pounds per head at 13 sous the pound. Provincial, town or seignorial taxes on Bread, a commodity which he cannot do without, no longer exist; there is no piquet, or duty on flour, as in Provence,3243 no duties on the sale or of grinding wheat, no impediments to the circulation or commerce of grain. And, on the other hand, through the lowering of fiscal charges, in the suppression of internal duties, and the abolition of multitudinous tolls, other commodities, apart from bread reached by a different tax, now becomes affordable for those of small means. Salt, instead of costing thirteen sous and over, no longer costs more than two sous the pound. A cask of Bordeaux wine no longer pays two hundred livres before it is retailed by the tavern-keeper at Rennes.3244 Except in Paris, and even at Paris, so long as the extravagance of municipal expenditure does not increase the octroi the total tax on wine, cider and beer does not add, even at retail, more than 18 % to their selling price,3245 while, throughout France, the vine-grower, or the wine-maker, who gathers in and manufactures his own wine, drinks this and even his brandy, without paying one cent of tax under this heading.3246—Consequently, consumption increases, and, as there are no longer any exempt or half-exempt provinces, no more free salt (franc salÉ),3247 no more privileges arising from birth, condition, profession or residence, the Treasury, with fewer duties, collected or gained as much as before the Revolution: In 1809 and 1810, 20 millions on tobacco, 54 millions on salt, 100 millions on liquors, and then, as the taxpayer became richer and spent more, still larger and larger sums: in 1884, 305 millions on tobacco: in 1885, 429 millions on liquors,3248 without counting another 100 millions again raised on liquors through town octrois.—And lastly, the exchequer, with extreme prudence, keeps out of sight and succeeds in almost saving the taxpayer from contact with, or the presence of, its agents. There is an end to a domestic inquisition. The excise man no longer pounces in on the housewife to taste the pickle, to find out whether the ham has been cured with bogus salt, to certify that all the dutiable salt has been used in "the pot and the salt-cellar." The wine-inspector no longer comes suddenly on the wine-grower, or even on the consumer, to gauge his casks, to demand an account of what he drinks, to make an affidavit in case of deficit or over-consumption, to impose a fine should a bottle have been given to a sick person or to a poor one. The 50,000 customs officers or clerks of the ferme, the 23,000 soldiers without a uniform who, posted in the interior along a line of 1200 leagues, guarded the heavily taxed salt districts against the provinces which were less taxed, redeemed or free, the innumerable employees at the barriers, forming a confused and complicated band around each province, town, district or canton, levying on twenty or thirty different sorts of merchandise forty-five principal duties, general, provincial, or municipal, and nearly sixteen hundred tolls, in short, the entire body of officials of the old system of indirect taxation has almost wholly disappeared. Save at the entrance of towns, and for the octroi the eye no longer encounters an official clerk. The carters who, from Roussillon or Languedoc, transport a cask of wine to Paris, are no longer subject to his levies, humiliations and moods in twenty different places, nor to ascribe to him the dozen or fifteen days' useless extension of their trip due to his predecessor, and during which they had to wait in his office until he wrote a receipt or a permit. There is scarcely any one now but the inn-keeper who sees his green uniform on his premises. After the abolition of the house-inventory, nearly two millions of proprietors and wine mÉtayers are forever free of his visits;3249 from now on, for consumers, especially for the people, he seems absent and non existent. In effect, he has been transferred one or two hundred leagues off, to the salt-establishments in the interior and on the coasts, and on the frontier. There only is the system at fault, nakedly exposing its vice,—a war against exchanges, the proscription of international commerce, prohibition pushed to extreme, the continental blockade, an inquisition of 20,000 customs officials, the hostility of 100,000 defrauders, the brutal destruction of seized goods, an augmentation in price of 100 % on cottons and 400% on sugar, a dearth of colonial articles, privation to the consumer, the ruin of the manufacturer and trader, and accumulated bankruptcies one after the other in 1811 in all the large towns from Hamburg to Rome.3250 This vice, however, belongs to the militant policy and personal character of the master; the error that taints the external side of his fiscal system does not reach the internal side. After him, under pacific reigns, it is gradually modified; prohibition gives way to protection and then changes from excessive protection to limited protection. France remains, along with secondary improvements and partial amendments, on the course marked out by the Consulate and the Empire; this course, in all its main lines, is clearly traced, straight, and yet adapted to all things, by the plurality, establishment, distribution, rate of taxation and returns of the various direct and indirect taxes, nearly in conformity with the new principles of political economy, as well as in conformity with the ancient maxims of distributive justice, carefully directed between the two important interests that have to be cared for, that of the people who pays and of the State which collects.

Consider, in effect, what both have gained.—In 1789, the State had a revenue of only 475 millions; afterwards, during the Revolution, it scarcely collected any of its revenues; it lived on the capital it stole, like a genuine brigand, or on the debts it contracted, like a dishonest and insolvent bankrupt. Under the Consulate and during the first years of the Empire, its revenue amounts to 750 to 800 millions, its subjects being no longer robbed of their capital, while it no longer runs in debt.—In 1789, the ordinary taxpayer paid a direct tax to his three former or late sovereigns, namely, to the King, the clergy and the seigniors, more than three-quarters of his net income. After 1800, he pays to the State less than one-quarter, the one sovereign alone who replaces the other three. We have seen how relief came to the old taxable subject, to the rural, to the small proprietor, to the man without any property, who lived on the labor of his own hands; the lightening of the direct tax restored to him from 14 to 43 free days, during which, instead of working for the exchequer, he worked for himself. If married, and the father of two children over 7 years of age, the alleviation of one direct tax alone, that of the salt-tax, again restores to him 12 days more, in all from one to two complete months each year during which he is no longer, as formerly, a man doing statute-work, but the free proprietor, the absolute master of his time and of his own hands.—At the same time, through the re-casting of other taxes and owing to the increasing price of labor, his physical privations decrease. He is no longer reduced to consuming only the refuse of his crop, the wheat of poor quality, the damaged rye, the badly-bolted flour mixed with bran, nor to drink water poured over the lees of his grapes, nor to sell his pigs before Christmas because the salt he needs is too dear.3251 He salts his pork and eats it, and likewise butcher's meat; he enjoys his boiled beef and broth on Sunday; he drinks wine; his bread is more nutritious, not so black and healthier; he no longer lacks it and has no fear of lacking it. Formerly, he entertained a lugubrious phantom, the fatal image of famine which haunted him day and night for centuries, an almost periodical famine under the monarchy, a chronic famine and then severe and excruciating during the Revolution, a famine which, under the republic, had in three years destroyed over a million of lives.3252 The immemorial specter recedes and vanishes; after two accidental and local recurrences, in 1812 and 1817, it never again appears in France.3253