13.19. 19. Which is more suitable to the Prince and to the People, the
farming the Revenues, or managing them by Commission?
The managing of the revenues by commission is like the conduct of a good father of a
family, who collects his own rents himself with economy and order.
By this management of the revenues the prince is at liberty to press
or to retard the levy of the taxes, either according to his own wants or
to those of his people. By this he saves to the state the immense
profits of the farmers, who impoverish it in a thousand ways. By this he
prevents the people from being mortified with the sight of sudden
fortunes. By this the public money passes through few hands, goes
directly to the treasury, and consequently makes a quicker return to the
people. By this the prince avoids an infinite number of bad laws
extorted from him by the importunate avarice of the farmers, who pretend
to offer a present advantage for regulations pernicious to posterity.
As the moneyed man is always the most powerful, the farmer renders
himself arbitrary even over the prince himself; he is not the
legislator, but he obliges the legislator to give laws.
I acknowledge that it is sometimes of use to farm out a new duty,
for there is an art in preventing frauds, which motives of interest
suggest to the farmers, but commissioners never think of. Now the manner
of levying it being once established by the farmer, it may afterwards be
safely entrusted to a commission. In England the management of the
Excise and of the Post-office was borrowed from that of the farmers of
the revenue.
In republics the revenues of the state are generally managed by
commission. The contrary practice was a great defect in the Roman
government.
[17]
In despotic governments the people are infinitely
happier where this management is established — witness Persia and
China.
[18]
The unhappiest of all are those where the prince farms out
his sea-ports and trading cities. The history of monarchies abounds with
mischiefs done by the farmers of the revenue.
Incensed at the oppressive extortions of the publicans, Nero formed
a magnanimous but impracticable scheme of abolishing all kinds of
imposts. He did not think of managing the revenues by commissioners,
but he made four edicts:
[19]
that the laws enacted against publicans,
which had hitherto been kept secret, should be promulgated; that they
should exact no claims for above a year backward; that there should be a
prætor established to determine their pretensions without any formality;
and that the merchants should pay no duty for their vessels. These were
the halcyon days of that emperor.
Footnotes
[17]
Cæsar was obliged to remove the publicans from the province of
Asia, and to establish there another kind of regulation, as we learn
from Dio, xlii. 6; and Tacitus, "Annals," i. 76, informs us that Macedonia
and Achaia, provinces left by Augustus to the people of Rome, and
consequently governed pursuant to the ancient plan, obtained to be of
the number of those which the emperor governed by his officers.
[18]
See Sir John Chardin's "Travels through Persia," vi.
[19]
Tacitus, "Annals," xiii. 51.
