which had been always exempted from this salt monopoly, some of whom were charged with other contributions, perhaps equivalent, were totally disinclined to bear any part of the burden, which by an equal distribution was to redeem the others.  As to the Assembly, occupied as it was with the declaration and violation of the rights of men, and with their arrangements for general confusion, it had neither leisure nor capacity to contrive, nor authority to enforce, any plan of any kind relative to the replacing the tax, or equalizing it, or compensating the provinces, or for conducting their minds to any scheme of accommodation with the other districts which were to be relieved.  The people of the salt provinces, impatient under taxes damned by the authority which had directed their payment, very soon found their patience exhausted.  They thought themselves as skilful in demolishing as the Assembly could be.  They relieved themselves by throwing off the whole burden.  Animated by this example, each district, or part of a district, judging of its own grievance by its own feeling, and of its remedy by its own opinion, did as it pleased with other taxes.

We are next to see how they have conducted themselves in contriving equal impositions, proportioned to the means of the citizens, and the least likely to lean heavy on the active capital employed in the generation of that private wealth from whence the public fortune must be derived.  By suffering the several districts, and several of the individuals in each district, to judge of what part of the old revenue they might withhold, instead of better principles of equality, a new inequality was introduced of the most oppressive kind.  Payments were regulated by dispositions.  The parts of the kingdom which were the most submissive, the most orderly, or the most affectionate to the commonwealth, bore the whole burden of the state.  Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.  To fill up all the deficiencies in the old impositions, and the new deficiencies of every kind which were to be expected, what remained to a state without authority?  The National Assembly called for a voluntary benevolence,—­for a fourth part of the income of all the citizens, to be estimated on the honor of those who were to pay.  They obtained something more than could be rationally calculated, but what was far indeed from answerable to their real necessities, and much less to their fond expectations.  Rational people could have hoped for little from this their tax in the disguise of a benevolence,—­tax weak, ineffective, and unequal,—­a tax by which luxury, avarice, and selfishness were screened, and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon integrity, generosity, and public spirit,—­a tax of regulation upon virtue.  At length the mask is thrown off, and they are now trying means (with little success) of exacting their benevolence by force.