judicature, the military, and on the
reciprocal relation of all these establishments, I shall say something
of the ability showed by your legislators with regard to the revenue.

In their proceedings relative to this object, if possible, still fewer
traces appear of political judgment or financial resource. When the
States met, it seemed to be the great object to improve the system of
revenue, to enlarge its collection, to cleanse it of oppression and
vexation, and to establish it on the most solid footing. Great were the
expectations entertained on that head throughout Europe. It was by this
grand arrangement that France was to stand or fall; and this became, in
my opinion very properly, the test by which the skill and patriotism of
those who ruled in that Assembly would be tried. The revenue of the
state is the state. In effect, all depends upon it, whether for support
or for reformation. The dignity of every occupation wholly depends upon
the quantity and the kind of virtue that may be exerted in it. As all
great qualities of the mind which operate in public, and are not merely
suffering and passive, require force for their display, I had almost
said for their unequivocal existence, the revenue, which is the spring
of all power, becomes in its administration the sphere of every active
virtue. Public virtue, being of a nature magnificent and splendid,
instituted for great things, and conversant about great concerns,
requires abundant scope and room, and cannot spread and grow under
confinement, and in circumstances straitened, narrow, and sordid.
Through the revenue alone the body politic can act in its true genius
and character; and therefore it will display just as much of its
collective virtue, and as much of that virtue which may characterize
those who move it, and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle,
as it is possessed of a just revenue. For from hence not only
magnanimity, and liberality, and beneficence, and fortitude, and
providence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts derive their
food, and the growth of their organs, but continence, and self-denial,
and labor, and vigilance, and frugality, and whatever else there is in
which the mind shows itself above the appetite, are nowhere more in
their proper element than in the provision and distribution of the
public wealth. It is therefore not without reason that the science of
speculative and practical finance, which must take to its aid so many