The universal voice in England is, that so many taxes should be laid, as are necessary to answer the exigences. Ministry, Opposition, Subjects, all agree in this essential point; but if we except some taxes which bear principally on the land proprietor, who never says any thing, and whose silence commands that of every one who shares in his burden, the ablest man in the three kingdoms is not capable of proposing one, on any article, which would not be followed by a petition from those very men who do not even wait till it has received the royal sanction, in order to derive from it an extravagant advantage, if it be within the meaning of licences, and perhaps only a profit rather above a reasonable one, if it bears on an object properly specified.

I have perused several of these petitions; and the substance of what has appeared to me most striking in every one of them is nearly this: “Let every thing be taxed in England, nothing more equitable; let every thing be taxed, every thing, except all the things that concern your humble petitioners: you cannot tax them, without ruining their trade; and not only their trade, but also the whole trade of the nation at large; and not only without ruining the whole trade of the nation at large, but without stifling that principle of liberty, that noble spirit of life, which has so highly distinguished her above all the nations in the world.”

Were any one to infer, from the foregoing extract, that my intention is to stigmatize the use of petitions,—notwithstanding the most invincible antipathy I bear to exclamations, which, for the most part, betray either weakness or hypocrisy, I should exclaim, O Divine Liberty, of humbly shewing, to the most respectable parts of a nation, all kinds of ideas, whether absurd or reasonable! Divine Liberty, never treated in England but with that regard which is due from one man to whatever comes from another man! Divine Liberty, who givest to the Legislator, the time, knowledge, and often the means, necessary to prevent him from falling into such errors as it is not beyond the power of human nature to avoid, ... be thou ever blessed, and mayest thou be worshipped wherever men are not infallible, and wherever millions of men may suffer from a single mistake!

In England, the produce of taxes on the various articles of consumption, amounts, I suppose, to 8,000,000l.: in order to procure the 5 or 6 other millions required, a part of which is necessary, a part of which is supposed to be so on account of the plan of a reimbursement, the land continues to be taxed for 2 millions, and the other 3 or 4 are taken from perhaps 30 different articles, one of which will bring in 150, another 100, a third 60, a fourth 30 thousand pounds, &c. with a salvo for Government to tax half a score more articles, if it should be robbed rather too unconscionably on the produce of the former; for, in all countries throughout the world, this is all the conjuration in that part of the administration of finances which relates to the collecting of taxes; if you rob Government in one point, be sure Government will ransom you, if required, on ten others; nothing more just, but nothing more easy.

Now, if we lay it down for an indubitable maxim, that the most able Administrator of finances, cannot take from an individual, more than what he possesses, it seems to me then that it remains only to examine, whether that very individual from whom, one way or another, out of the 20 he is possessed of, 5 may be wrested,—will be less aggrieved if the 5 be taken out of his pocket, and he be sent to market with the remaining 15, than he would be, were he permitted to go with the whole 20 to market, where he would find those 15 which he used to purchase for 15, charged with the 5 which might have been taken from him at home?

The question more to the point is yet more singular; for it goes to this enquiry:

First, Whether the land proprietor, who is obliged to give at a fixed period three millions in taxes for his land, windows, domestics, and other objects more recently taxed, would think himself more injured if those three millions were divided and laid upon some objects of his consumption, while he should observe that by this new order of things he would gain the convenience, not only of paying these three millions by different and remote installments, but also of making use of the money previous to such payment,—without injury to the trader, to whom the interest would be one way or other repaid,—while on the other hand, a part of the money, laid out upon his land, would furnish new resources for augmenting the produce of the taxes, by increasing his faculties of consumption:

Secondly, Whether those unfortunate licensed persons, and others (who so bitterly complain of all the various taxes that produce to them three or four times the sum which they advance to Government) would not be justly, as they ought to be, relieved from the oppression (that is the word) if such taxes were taken off, and laid on articles of which they would themselves be the consumers:

Thirdly, Whether all those extraordinary, usurious, and unjust benefits, arising from those oppressive taxes which I have been mentioning, reduced to their proper point, by taxes that would not increase the price of any article beyond a known degree, would not naturally reduce the value of every thing to that necessary price I have spoken of,—to that price which every thing ought to maintain, that the imaginary oppressed might not actually oppress the imaginary oppressors,—that all things may be preserved in a just balance, without any person experiencing a change in his condition;—and consequently, without the consumption of any article being diminished, unless fancy or fashion should transfer it to another article that will indemnify for the deficiency.[9]

From England let us pass over to France, and always taking for granted that a Minister of finance is not a conjurer, and that he can take from the pockets of the people no more money than they possess; I wish it could be examined:

Whether the 41 millions of livres Tournois, produced by the poll-tax, and which should be paid no longer, when that tax should be transferred to, and divided between all the articles of the most general consumption, and of course the most productive, would diminish the general faculties, by increasing the value of those objects, to the whole of that sum which the contributors would gain by paying no longer the poll-tax.

I would have it also enquired into, whether the clergy, finding the objects of that general consumption loaded with 11 millions more, could be aggrieved by the sole disappointment of giving no longer gratuitously to his Majesty, those 11 millions which they are now compelled to pay; and whether they would not be left in possession of all the faculties necessary to satisfy the first article, as soon as they should be freed from the other.

I should also wish the French to examine whether the 76 millions Tournois, paid in that country for the three twentieths, instead of being very often called for, at a time when the Subject has them not, transferred to those objects which cannot be consumed but by means of the money remaining after those 76 millions are discharged, would impair the means of the contributors, although after having eased them of that truly terrible tax, the Minister should, in a manner, juggle them out of the whole amount of it, by another impost on consumption. Supposing even they had some suspicion of the trick, I wish it were examined whether they would think themselves injured by paying in the new way that amount, by installments at their own time, and till then laying out a part of it upon their lands, the revenues of which would of course increase in proportion.

But above all, I wish it should be examined, whether 91 millions of another kind of subsidy, called la taille, added to 7 millions and a half more, laid out in expences for warrants and distresses, necessary to enforce the law of the subsidy, transferred upon the consumption of those from whose hands the subsidy is directly wrested, against whom the warrants are issued, upon whose goods or body the distresses are executed, would diminish the faculty of that poor people’s consumption, if, by means of that consumption, by the suppression of the old subsidy, of warrants, and distresses attending the same, they should acquire the faculty of consuming cheerfully, what they often consume in bitterness and sorrow; and whether the department of the finances could lose by it any thing more than the pleasure or trouble, or rather the necessity of assessing a dreadful subsidy, issuing out warrants, and distressing the body—when there are no goods to be distrained.

But in this scheme the expence is more considerable.

This is the grand objection: The expence is more considerable! Reduce the unfortunate to a bed of straw, or cast him into prison, to spare the purse ... of whom?—For after all, supposing even that a few additional charges ought to be compared with millions of inconveniences, injuries, and acts of barbarity, which are inseparable from the other methods, let it be examined whether the extra charges can produce any other effect, than that of advancing by a few deniers pour livrè the general price of merchandise; let it be examined whether that advance is not a matter of perfect indifference, provided that the price of the provisions sold by the land proprietor, who is stiled rich, and that of the wages of the labouring man, who is called poor, rise in the same proportion as the goods of the capitalist of industry, who stands equally and as essentially in need of the ease of the poor, as of the opulence of the rich.

In fine, Let it be examined whether there is any thing great, courageous, just, and fair, that may not be expected from the French nation, when she shall be admitted to the honour of being heard,—or when they will be kind enough to convince her.—A King of France, with the trifling help of his provincial administrations, may do, and play with every thing: a King of France is truly a despot; not from that absurd right of giving his will for reason, but from that principle which is congenial to the French, that the People and the King are but one, have but one interest, and have nothing to fear but the ignorance of a Minister, conscious of his inability, without the least thought of the resources he has at hand in such a case, without principles to guard him against committing those injuries which seem to him unavoidable, in order to conceal the errors which he has been, or fears to be, guilty of; a Minister, in fine, whose insignificant little self, wrests from the King and People, the fruit of that identity which forms the acknowledged essence of the French constitution.

What seems to be in France no more than a fortunate prejudice, is every where an irrefragable truth: in every country the strength, power, and riches of the Prince, are but the sum of the force, power, riches, energy, honour and susceptibility, which actually exist in the mass of his subjects.—But if the Sovereign be the most powerful man in his kingdom, only because all its strength centers in him; if in this age, the most complaisant, the meanest Minister should not dare even to insinuate a contrary idea before the Prince the most jealous of his authority; how can he presume to think, or to hope, that it will be in his power to persuade the Prince, that he, the Minister, is the best informed man in the Empire, before he has collected all the information that can be got on every object that does not call for an immediate execution?—And how can he pretend to have collected every such information, when in addition to his own ideas, he goes only by those of the few dependents who surround him, dependents as much on their guard before him, as he himself is circumspect before the Sovereign, when the Sovereign, before he asks his advice, has the misfortune to let a single word escape that betrays even the appearance of an opinion on the object under deliberation?