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felf only, is of a constitution much more fimple, and in every refpect lefs exceptionable. It is a mere democratic body, unconnected with the crown or the kingdom; armed, and trained, and officered at the pleasure of the diftricts to which the corps feverally belong; and the perfonal service of the individuals, who compofe, or the fine in lieu of personal service, are directed by the fame authority. Nothing is more uniform. If, however, confidered in any relation to the crown, to the national affembly, to the public tribunals, or to the other army, or confidered in a view to any coherence or connection between its parts, it seems a monster, and can hardly fail to terminate its perplexed movements in fome great national calamity. It is a worse preservative of a general conftitution, than the fyftafis of Crete, or the confederation of Poland, or any other ill-devised corrective which has yet been imagined, in the neceffities produced by an ill-constructed system of government.

Having concluded my few remarks on the conftitution of the fupreme power, the executive, the judicature, the military, and on the reciprocal relation of all these establishments, I shall fay fomething of the ability shewed by your legiflators with regard to the revenue.

In their proceedings relative to this object, if poffible, ftill fewer traces appear of political judgment or financial resource. When the ftates met, it feemed to be the great object to improve the fyftem of revenue, to enlarge its collection, to cleanse it of oppreffion and vexation, and to establish it on the most folid footing. Great were the expectations entertained on that head throughout Europe. It was by this grand arrangement that France was to ftand or fall; and this became, in my opinion, very properly, the teft by which the skill and patriotifm of those who ruled in that affembly would be tried. The revenue of the ftate is the state. În effect all

* I fee by Mr. Necker's account, that the national guards of Paris have received, over and above the money levied within their own city, about 145,000l. fterling out of the public treafure. Whether this be an actual payment for the nine months of their exiftence, or an estimate of their yearly charge, I do not clearly perceive. It is of no great importance, as certainly they may take whatever they please.

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all depends upon it, whether for fupport or for reformation. The dignity of every occupation wholly depends upon the quantity and the kind of virtue that may be exerted in it. As all great qualities of the mind which operate in public, and are not merely fuffering and paffive, require force for their display, I had almost faid for their unequivocal existence, the revenue, which is the fpring of all power, becomes in its administration the sphere of every active virtue. Public virtue, being of a nature magnificent and splendid, inftituted for great things, and converfant about great concerns, requires abundant scope and room, and cannot spread and grow under confinement, and in circumstances. ftraitened, narrow, and fordid. Through the revenue alone the body politic can act in its true genius and character, and therefore it will difplay juft as much of its collective virtue, and as much of that virtue which may characterise those who move it, and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle, as it is poffeffed of a juft revenue. For from hence, not only magnanimity, and liberality, and beneficence, and fortitude, and providence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts, derive their food, and the growth of their organs, but continence, and self-denial, and labour, and vigilance, and frugality, and whatever elfe there is in which the mind fhews itself above the appetite, are no where more in their proper element than in the provifion and diftribution of the public wealth. It is therefore not without reason that the fcience of fpeculative and practical finance, which must take to its aid fo many auxiliary branches of knowledge, ftands high in the eftimation not only of the ordinary fort, but of the wifeft and beft men; and as this fcience has grown with the progrefs of its object, the profperity and improvement of nations has generally encreafed with the encrease of their revenues; and they will both continue to grow and flourish, as long as the balance between what is left to ftrenghten the efforts of indviduals, and what is collected for the common efforts of the state, bear to each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are

kept

kept in a clofe correfpondence and communication. And perhaps it may be owing to the greatness of revenues, and to the urgency of ftate neceffities, that old abufes in the conftitution of finances are difcovered, and their true nature and rational theory comes to be more perfectly understood; infomuch, that a smaller revenue might have been more diftreffing in one period than a far greater is found to be in another; the proportionate wealth even remaining the fame. In this ftate of things, the French affembly found something in their revenues to preserve, to fecure, and wifely to adminifter, as well as to abrograte and alter. Though their proud affumption might justify the feverest tefts, yet in trying their abilities on their financial proceedings, I would only confider what is the plain obvious duty of a common finance minifter, and try them upon that, and not upon models of ideal perfection.

The objects of a financier are, then, to fecure an ample revenue; to impofe it with judgment and equality to employ it economically; and when neceffity obliges him to make use of credit, to fecure its foundations in that inftance, and for ever, by the clearness and candour of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the folidity of his funds. On thefe heads we may take a short and distinct view of the merits and abilities of those in the national affembly, who have taken to themselves the management of this arduous concern. Far from any encrease of revenue in their hands, I find, by a report of M. Vernier, from the committee of finances, of the fecond of August last, that the amount of the national revenue, as compared with its produce before the revolution, was diminished by the fum of two hundred millions, or eight millions Sterling of the annual income, confiderably more than one-third of the whole!

If this be the result of great ability, never furely was ability difplayed in a more distinguished manner, or with so powerful an effect. No common folly, no vulgar incapacity, no ordinary official negligence, even no official crime, no corruption, no peculation, hardly any

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direct hoftility which we have feen in the modern world, could in fo fhort a time have made so complete an overthrow of the finances, and with them, of the strength of a great kingdom.-Cedò qui veftram rempublicam tantam amififtis tam cito ?

The fophifters and declaimers, as foon as the affembly met, began with decrying the ancient constitution of the revenue in many of its most effential branches, fuch as the public monopoly of falt. They charged it, as truly as unwifely, with being ill-contrived, oppreffive, and partial. This reprefentation they were not fatisfied to make use of in fpeeches preliminary to fome plan of reform; they declared it in a folemn refolution or public fentence, as it were judicially, paffed upon it; and this they difperfed throughout the nation. At the time they paffed the decree, with the fame gravity they ordered this fame abfurd, oppreffive, and partial tax to be paid, until they could find a revenue to replace it. The confequence was inevitable. The provinces which had been always exempted from this falt monopoly, fome of whom were charged with other contributions, perhaps equivalent, were totally difinclined to bear any part of the burthen, which, by an equal diftribution, was to redeem the others. As to the affembly, occupied as it was with the declaration and violation of the rights of men, and with their arrangements for general confufion, it had neither leifure nor capacity to contrive, nor authority to enforce any plan of any kind relative to the replacing the tax or equalizing it, or compensating the provinces, or for conducting their minds to any scheme of accommodation with the other districts which were to be relieved.

The people of the falt provinces, impatient under taxes damned by the authority which had directed their payment, very foon found their patience exhausted. They thought themselves as fkilful in demolishing as the affembly could be. They relieved themfelves by throwing off the whole burthen. Animated by this example, each district, or part of a district, judging of its own grievance by its own feeling, and of its

remedy

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remedy by its own opinion, did as it pleafed with other

taxes.

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We are next to fee how they have conducted themfelves in contriving equal impofitions, proportioned to the means of the citizens, and the leaft likely to lean heavy on the active capital employed in the generation of that private wealth, from whence the public fortune must be derived. By fuffering the feveral diftri&ts, and feveral of the individuals in each district, to judge of what part of the old revenue they might withhold, instead of better principles of equality, a new inequality was introduced of the moft oppreffive kind. Payments were regulated by difpofitions. The parts of the kingdom which were the most fubmiffive, the moft orderly, or the most affectionate to the commonwealth, bore the whole burthen of the state. Nothing turns out to be fo oppreffive and unjust as a feeble government. fill up all the deficiencies in the old impofitions, and the new deficiencies of every kind which were to be expected, what remained to a state without authority? The national affembly called for a voluntary benevolence; for a fourth part of the income of all the citizens, to be estimated on the honour of those who were to pay. They obtained fomething more than could be rationally calculated, but what was, far indeed, from answerable to their real neceffities, and much lefs to their fond expectations. Rational people could have hoped for little from this their tax in the difguife of a benevolence; a tax, weak, ineffective, and unequal; a tax, by which luxury, avarice, and felfifhnefs, were fcreened, and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon integrity, generofity and public fpirit-a tax of regulation upon virtue. At length the mask is thrown off, and they are now trying means (with little fuceefs) of exacting their benevolence by force.

This benevolence, the ricketty offspring of weakness, was to be fupported by another refource, the twin brother of the fame prolific imbecility. The patriotic donations were to make good the failure of the patriotic contribution. John Doe was to become fecurity for Richard

Roe.

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