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of all such taxes every penny is paid by them.
I will shew you how much more you could get in this way from them than from foreigners. You could not, it must be confessed, get, unless by accident, more per cent. on what they took from you, than on what foreigners took from you: for smuggling, which limits the rate per cent. you could thus levy upon foreigners, limits in like manner the rate per cent. you could levy upon your vassals. Remote countries like the colonies might indeed afford less facility for smuggling out of France than contiguous countries, and so the expence of smuggling being the greater, the tax would admit of being set higher without having the productiveness of it destroyed by smuggling: but whatever latitude is thus given, is given you fee not by alienship but by distance.
You could not, I say, get more per cent. in this way from your vassals, as such, than if they were foreigners; but what you could get from them, is that same rate of profit, with greater certainty as to the extent of it. Foreigners might quit your market at any time: and would quit it, if after the tax
