nearly 2 million livres, cost Napoleon, with the same series of fetes, only 150,000 francs, while the total expense of his civil household, instead of amounting to 25 million livres, remains under 3 million francs.[3214] The pomp is thus equal, but the expense is ten times less; the new master is able to derive a tenfold return from persons and money, because he squeezes the full value out of every man he employs and every crown he spends.

Nobody has surpassed him in the art of turning money and men to account, and he is as shrewd, as careful, as sharp in procuring them as he is in profiting by them.
II.

Equitable Taxation.
The apportionment of charges .-- New fiscal principle and new fiscal machinery.
In the assignment of public burdens and of public offices Napoleon therefore applies the maxims of the new system of rights, and his practice is in conformity with the theory.

For the social order, which, according to the philosophers, is the only just one in itself, is at the same time the most profitable for him: he adds equity because equity is profitable to him .-- And first, in the matter of public burdens, there shall be no more exemptions.

To relieve any category of taxpayers or of conscripts from taxation or from military service would annually impoverish the treasury by so many millions of crowns, and diminish the army by so many thousands of soldiers.