ce
of tobacco, coffee, sugar, and beverages, do not affect his daily life,
but merely deprive him of some of its pleasures and comforts.--And, on
the other hand, in the collection of these duties, the exchequer may
not show its hand; if it does its business properly, the anterior
and partial operation is lost sight of in the total operation which
completes and covers this up; it screens itself behind the merchant. The
shears are invisible to the buyer who presents himself to be sheared;
in any event, he has no distinct sensation of them. Now, with the man of
the people, the common run of sheep, it is the positive, actual, animal
sensation which is the cause of his cries, his convulsive shudders, and
contagious alarms and panics. As long as he is not being excited he can
be manipulated; at the utmost, he grumbles at the hard times; the high
prices from which he suffers are not imputed to the government; he does
not know how to reckon, check off and consider for himself the surplus
price which the fiscal impost extorts from him. Even at the present day,
one might tell a peasant in vain that the State takes fifteen out of the
forty sous which he pays for a pound of coffee, and five centimes out
of every two sous he pays for a pound of salt; for him, this is simply a
barren notion, a vague calculation at random; the impression on his mind
would be very different if, standing before the grocer who weighs out
his coffee and salt, he saw with his own eyes, right before him, the
clerk of the customs and of the salt-tax actually taking the fifteen
sous and the five centimes off the counter.

Such are the good indirect taxes: in order that they may be correct,
that is to say, tolerable and tolerated, three conditions, as we see,
are requisite. In the first place, the taxpayer, in his own interest,
must be free to buy or not to buy the merchandise taxed. Next, in the
interest of the taxpayer and of the exchequer, the merchandise must not
be so taxed as to be rendered too dear. After that, in the interest of
the exchequer, its interference must not be perceptible. Owing to
these precautions, indirect taxes can be levied, even on the smaller
taxpayers, without either fleecing or irritating them. It is for lack of
these precautions before 1789, when people were fleeced in such a
clumsy way,[3237] that, in 1789, they first rebelled against indirect
taxation,[3238] against the meal-tax, the salt-tax, the tax on liquors,
the internal ta