avia, the average worker pay more than 50% of
his income in direct and indirect taxes. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3234: Charles Nicolas, "Les Budgets de la France depuis le
commencement du XIXe Siecle," and de Foville, "La France economique,"
p. 365, 373.--Returns of licenses in 1816, 40 millions; in 1820, 22
millions; in 1860, 80 millions; in 1887, 171 millions.]

[Footnote 3235: The mutation tax is that levied in France on all
property transmitted by inheritance. or which changes hands through
formal sale (other than in ordinary business transactions), as in the
case of transfers of real-estate, effected through purchase or sale.
Timbre designates stamp duties imposed on the various kinds of legal
documents.-Tr.]

[Footnote 3236: Ibid. Returns of the mutation tax (registration and
timbre). Registration in 1820, 127 millions; in 1860, 306 millions; in
1886, 518 millions.--Timbre, in 1820, 26 millions; in 1860, 56 millions;
in 1886, 156 millions. Sum-total in 1886, 674 millions.--The rate of
corresponding taxes under the ancient regime (controle, insinuation
centieme denier, formule) was very much lower; the principal one, or
tax of centieme denier, took only 1 per 100, and on the mutations of
real-estate. This mutation tax is the only one rendered worse; it was
immediately aggravated by the Constituent Assembly, and it is rendered
all the more exorbitant on successions in which liabilities are not
deducted from assets. (That is to say, the inheritor of an indebted
estate in France must pay a mutation tax on its full value. He has the
privilege, however, of renouncing the estate if he does not choose to
accept it along with its indebtedness.)--The taxpayer's resignation to
this tax is explained by the exchequer collecting it at a unique moment,
when proprietorship just comes into being or is just at the point of
birth. In effect, if property changes hands under inheritance or through
free donation it is probable that the new owner, suddenly enriched, will
be only too glad to enter into possession of it, and not object to an
impost which, although taking about a tenth, still leaves him only a
little less wealthy. When property is transferred by contract or sale,
neither of the contracting parties, probably, sees clearly which pays
the fiscal tax; the seller may think that it is the buyer, and the buyer
that it is the seller. Owing to this illusion both are less sensible of
the shearing, each offering his own back in the belief