In this way, the State would receive without cost or vexatious
hindrances an enormous revenue under three forms; namely, a duty on
wine, on the cultivation of vineyards, and on licenses, where now an
irritating array of taxes existed as a burden on itself and its
officials. Taxation was thus imposed upon the rich without
overburdening the poor. To give another example. Suppose a share
assessed to each person of one or two francs for the consumption of
salt and you obtain ten or a dozen millions; the modern "gabelle"
disappears, the poor breathe freer, agriculture is relieved, the State
receives as much, and no tax-payer complains. All persons, whether
they belong to the industrial classes or to the capitalists, will see
at once the benefits of a tax so assessed when they discover how
commerce increases, and life is ameliorated in the country districts.
In short, the State will see from year to year the number of her
well-to-do tax-payers increasing. By doing away with the machinery of
indirect taxation, which is very costly (a State, as it were, within a
State), both the public finances and the individual tax-payer are
greatly benefited, not to speak of the saving in costs of collecting.

The whole subject is indeed less a question of finance than a question
of government. The State should possess nothing of its own, neither
forests, nor mines, nor public works. That it should be the owner of
domains was, in Rabourdin's opinion, an administrative contradiction.
The State cannot turn its possessions to profit and it deprives itself
of taxes; it thus loses two forms of production. As to the
manufactories of the government, they are just as unreasonable in the
sphere of industry. The State obtains products at a higher cost than
those of commerce, produces them more slowly, and loses its tax upon
the industry, the maintenance of which it, in turn, reduces. Can it be