riffs, and the town octrois, against fiscal officers,
bureaux and registries, by murdering, pillaging, and burning, beginning
in the month of March in Provence and after the 13th of July in Paris,
and then throughout France, with such a universal, determined and
persistent hostility that the National Assembly, after having vainly
attempted to restore the suspended tax-levies and enforce the law on the
populace, ended in subjecting the law to the populace and in decreeing
the suppression of indirect taxation entirely.[3239]

Such, in the matter of taxation, is the work of the Revolution. Of
the two sources which, through their regular afflux, fill the public
Treasury, and of which the ancient Regime took possession and managed
badly, violently, through loose and bungling measures, it has nearly
dried up the first one, direct taxation, and completely exhausted the
second one, indirect taxation. At present, as the empty Treasury must
be filled, the latter must be taken in hand the same as the former,
its waters newly gathered in and gently conducted without loss. The
new government sets about this, not like the old one, in a rude,
conventional manner, but as an engineer and calculator who knows the
ground, its inclination and other obstacles, in short, who comprehends
human sensibility and the popular imagination.[3240]--And, first of all,
there is to be no more farming-out (of the collection of the revenues):
the State no longer sells its duties on salt or on beverages to a
company of speculators, mere contractors, who care for nothing but
their temporary lease and annual incomes, solely concerned with coming
dividends, bleeding the tax-payer like so many leeches and invited to
suck him freely, interested in multiplying affidavits by the fines they
get, and creating infractions, authorized by a needy government which,
supporting itself on their advances, places the public force at their
disposal and surrenders the people to their exactions. Henceforth, the
exchequer collects for itself and for its own account. It is the same
as a proprietor who, instead of leasing or renting out, improves his
property and becomes his own farmer. 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 lawsuit