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.