and the limitations naturally arising from such a connection. Even a moment's reflection on the close interdependence that subsists between police and financial regulations is sufficient to convince us of this. There are then, it seems to me, but three sources of State revenue:—1. The property which has been previously reserved for the State, or subsequently acquired; 2. Direct taxation; 3. Indirect taxation. The possession of any State property is attended with inju- rious consequences. I have already shown that the State must, by its very nature, obtain a preponderating power compared with private individuals; and in becoming proprietor, it must necessarily become mixed up with many private relations, while it preserves all its peculiar attributes. Now, it is the necessity for security which alone dictates the expediency of a political organization. But this necessity does not presuppose any particular division of properly, or any determination of proprietors; and yet the State, in becoming proprietor, will extend all that influence to its interests of property, which has been granted for wholly different purposes, and will thus be able to outweigh all private individuals in this respect. Indirect taxation likewise is not free from hurtful consequences. Experience teaches us what a multiplicity of institutions is required to arrange and levy them; and of all these, according to our previous reasoning, we must unhesitatingly disapprove. Direct taxation, then, is all that remains. Now, of all the possible systems of direct taxation, the physiocratical[1] is unquestionably the simplest. But, as it has been frequently objected, one of the most natural products of all is overlooked
- ↑ According to this system, agriculture alone gives a clear profit or surplus over the yearly expenditure and original outlay, such as the cost of clearing, etc. Hence, agriculturists alone constitute the productive class; the other industrial classes are not productive; and between these come the landowners: the productive class creates the means of subsistence for the others and the material of their labour, and hence retains them in its service, as it were, for board and wages. Hence it follows that all impediments should be removed
