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.