French.                           British.
5 per cents              63      Bank stock, 5-1/2   159
4 per cent (not taxed)   57      4 per cent cons.    100
3 per cent    "   "      49      3 per cent cons.     88

This state of the funds of France and England is sufficient to convince even prejudice and obstinacy, that if France and England are not in the same condition (as the author affirms they are not) the difference is infinitely to the disadvantage of France.  This depreciation of their funds has not much the air of a nation lightening burdens and discharging debts.

Such is the true comparative state of the two kingdoms in those capital points of view.  Now as to the nature of the taxes which provide for this debt, as well as for their ordinary establishments, the author has thought proper to affirm that “they are comparatively light”; that “she has mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as ours”; his effrontery on this head is intolerable.  Does the author recollect a single tax in England to which something parallel in nature, and as heavy in burden, does not exist in France; does he not know that the lands of the noblesse are still under the load of the greater part of the old feudal charges, from which the gentry of England have been relieved for upwards of a hundred years, and which were in kind, as well as burden, much worse than our modern land-tax?  Besides that all the gentry of France serve in the army on very slender pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those who are not noble have their lands heavily taxed.  Does he not know that wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, are taxed in France?  Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly of that great article of salt? that they compel the people to take a certain quantity of it, and at a certain rate, both rate and quantity fixed at the arbitrary pleasure of the imposer?[66] that they pay in France the Taille, an arbitrary imposition on presumed property? that a tax is laid in fact and name, on the same arbitrary standard, upon the acquisitions of their industry? and that in France a heavy capitation-tax is also paid, from the highest to the very poorest sort of people?  Have we taxes of such weight, or anything at all of the compulsion, in the article of salt? do we pay any taillage, any faculty-tax, any industry-tax? do we pay any capitation-tax whatsoever?  I believe the people of London would fall into an agony to hear of such taxes proposed upon them as are paid at Paris.  There is not a single article of provision for man or beast which enters that great city, and is not excised; corn, hay, meal, butcher’s-meat, fish, fowls, everything.  I do not here mean to censure the policy of taxes laid on the consumption of great luxurious cities.  I only state the fact.  We should be with difficulty brought to hear of a tax of 50_s._ upon every ox sold in Smithfield.  Yet this tax is paid in Paris.  Wine, the lower sort of wine, little better than English small beer, pays 2_d._ a bottle.