By doing away with the machinery of indirect taxation, which is very costly (a State, as it were, within a State), both the public finances and the individual tax-payer are greatly benefited, not to speak of the saving in costs of collecting.
The whole subject is indeed less a question of finance than a question of government.

The State should possess nothing of its own, neither forests, nor mines, nor public works.

That it should be the owner of domains was, in Rabourdin's opinion, an administrative contradiction.
The State cannot turn its possessions to profit and it deprives itself of taxes; it thus loses two forms of production.

As to the manufactories of the government, they are just as unreasonable in the sphere of industry.

The State obtains products at a higher cost than those of commerce, produces them more slowly, and loses its tax upon the industry, the maintenance of which it, in turn, reduces.