tions on the thoughtlessness and indolence of the deputies, and the public is at a loss to understand how, after taking two months to discuss the chapters of the Budget of expenses, the Budget of receipts can be voted so rapidly.

The reason is because in reality the Budget of receipts is not voted at all. It is included entire in an article of the Financial Act which runs thus: "The ways and means applicable to the ordinary expenses of the Budget for 1889 are estimated, in accordance with schedule C of the present Act, at the total sum of £120,450,000." That article is completed by another, which runs thus: "The collection of the customs, dues, and revenues specified in schedule B annexed to the present Act will continue to be carried out, for the benefit of the State, in conformity with existing laws." Then comes a terrible article with which the Financial Act closes: "All contributions, direct and indirect, other than those that are authorized by the Financial Acts for the year 1889, under whatever title or denomination they are collected, are formally prohibited, and the authorities who order them, the employés who make out the rolls and tariffs for them, and the officers who receive payment of them will be prosecuted as extortioners, without prejudice to an action for recovery of the money within a period of three years against all receivers, collectors, or other individuals who have done the work of collection." It was owing to this article that the Chamber obliged Marshal MacMahon to resign after the elections of the 14th of October 1877.

Save some rhetorical flourishes about the direct taxes, that is everything the Financial Act contains relating to the revenue, unless in the event of the Government, the Budget Committee, or the deputies proposing reforms or fiscal alterations. Then it may entail discussions like those, for example, that were provoked last year by the reforms in the duty on liquors, which it fell to my lot to propose in the name of the Budget Committee in my capacity of reporter-general. All the great fiscal laws are comprehended in the finance laws, the law of 1807 on the cadastre as well as the law of 1816 on the indirect taxes, and all the modifications introduced into them since then.

How is the estimate of the revenue made? It is made according to the receipts of the last year but one; the estimate for the Budget of 1889 is made upon the receipts of 1887; and it is subject to no other modifications except those which result from new fiscal laws or changes of tariffs, which can be reckoned with more or less certainty. For the Budget of 1883 M. Léon Say added to the receipts of 1881 the average surplus from indirect taxes during the three preceding years. mode of proceeding facilitates the adjustment-the "buckling"-of the Budget, but it prepares the way for deficits and deceptions.

This

The receipts are derived from the following different sources :

(The revenue as well as the expenditure of Algeria is included in the total of the ordinary Budget.)

This division is not strictly correct, for there ought to be added to the direct taxes the impost of 3 per cent. that is laid on the revenue from shares and securities of all kinds, and which, in the above statement, is included under indirect taxes, because it depends on registration. The sums derived from the Post and Telegraphs may be considered a remuneration for services rendered, but it is evident that the tobacco monopoly, which raises the price of the product above its value, constitutes a genuine tax. Under the head of divers sources of revenue is reckoned the charge for professional licences, which is undoubtedly a tax; and among the service receipts are included the university revenues. These classifications are certainly very arbitrary.

The direct taxes are classified thus:

The three first of these taxes are taxes of distribution, of which each department, each arrondissement, each commune, has to pay a certain proportion. From this there result the most shocking inequalities. The land tax is assessed on a pretended net revenue, determined by the cadastre, made from 1821 to 1850. This revenue

has remained unaltered. According to the inquiry of 1880-1883, the average rate of contribution was 4.49 per cent. of the net revenue, but forty-six departments paid more than this rate to the extent in all of £446,000, and forty-one departments paid less. Corsica paid less than a franc, and other departments paid six or eight. The proprietors complain greatly of the burden of the land tax, but it was £9,600,000 in 1791 and is only £7,238,000 for 1889, so that the present figure is only 75 per cent. of the figure of a century ago, and if we take into account the additional centimes for the departments and communes, it is only 125 per cent. On the other hand, the average price of the hectare of agricultural

land was only £20 in 1789, while it had risen to £80 in 1874, and, even after making due allowance for the fall in more recent years, we see what a reduction has taken place in the land tax between 1791 and our own time.

The indirect taxes and revenues are as follow:

When we include Algeria, the monopolies yield a total revenue of £15,980,000, and the entire indirect taxation a total revenue of £88,160,000. The indirect taxes stand, therefore, to the direct taxes as 496 to 100.

Taxes which obstruct the freedom of labour or of circulation of things and persons, such as the tax of 6.88 per cent. (raised by necessary expenses to 10 per cent.) on real property at every change of possessor; capitation taxes, like that on salt; taxes graduated the wrong way, like those on drinks-these are taxes which the political factions never fail to promise to abrogate when they are in opposition, but they always forget their promises when they come to power. The "men of government pretend that the sum of a good fiscal policy is to make the taxpayer pay without perceiving it, though he may pay dearer. It ought to be stated, however, that if the war of 1870 created twenty-eight millions of new taxes, which have all, save forty-five centimes on patents, been imposed in the shape of indirect contributions, the Chamber of Deputies has made reductions between the years 1877 and 1885 to the extent of

*The difference between this figure and that given in the general table arises from this, that I have deducted the two millions of the tax on shares and securities and carried them to the head of direct taxes.

eleven millions and a quarter, or about two-fifths.

It has made the

great mistake, however, of utilizing its surpluses to shuffle out of fiscal reforms instead of undertaking them.

themselves when they are in health.

CONCLUSION.

But people take no care of

Such is the situation of our finances as exactly as I am able to trace it. Far, on the one hand, from the alarmists who under all governments and at all epochs have cried that France was lost and ruined, and equally far from the optimists, on the other hand, who with a sort of Mussulman fatalism refuse to see danger, I conclude that a severe financial policy is the duty of France. The prosecution of such a policy needs statesmen who have the courage of responsibilities, citizens who repudiate what Buckle calls the Protectionist spirit, and, above all, the conviction that sound finance is impossible without respect for the laws of political economy.

YVES GUYOT, Deputy.

A WINTER IN SYRIA.

HE

II.

E who would visit, to much purpose, a country which has been the scene of so many extraordinary events as that in which I awoke on the morning of the 20th of November must have access to a good many books. One of my first objects, accordingly, on that day, was My survey was highly satis

to see what helps I had got at hand.

much as I could get through

factory, for I found that I had quite as in the four months which I proposed to spend in Syria, and that I should have an opportunity of contemplating the ancient history of Palestine from every possible point of view. I occupied a bright little room looking across the main street of the colony, though street is hardly a proper term for a line of detached houses, and I was nearly always at work before the sun came over the hills in the neighbourhood of Nazareth and lit up the beautiful bay.

Haïfa is stronger in its sunrises than in its sunsets, for thoroughly to enjoy the latter one has either to climb to the top of Carmel or to go round the promontory under the monastery, which involves crossing the little plain to the westward. The weather was still, in the end of November, rather too hot, for the rains which usually begin to fall in October had been scanty. It was not, I think, till the 6th of January that we lighted a fire, even in the evening, in any of the living rooms.

At Ootacamund, in the centre of the Tropic of Cancer, I was hardly ever without a fire in the height of what, for want of a better name, one must describe as summer. We took exercise at Haïfa by riding or walking. There were two admirable riding grounds. The one was to the south-west of the town, round the promontory above alluded to; which passed, we soon came upon a long stretch of delightfully firm sand, with the full force of the Mediterranean breaking