Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/332

 310 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL the system the duties were farmed out, a policy specially favoured under the monarchy; and this, combined with the heavy penalties inflicted for contra, vention of the law, sufficiently explains the intense dislike to the tax, quite apart from the element of mono- poly. The inequality of distribution in the charge was of itself a crying evil. Thus the price of salt varied from sixty-two livres per quintal in the most heavily:taxed districts to eight or uine livres per quintal in the exempted ones; in the intermediate provinces it stood at thirty-three and a half livres per quintal. We have no difficty in understanding that the Constituent Assembly was unable to continue the charge in the face of the disturbed condition of the country, and acting on the advice of Du Pont de Nemours replaced it by an addition to direct taxation. Under the Empire, however (in 1806), salt became again a subject of taxation, but without monopoly, and it remains so still.  A somewhat similar policy was pursued in Prussia. First came the general rule requiring the consmnption by each person of a definite quantity of salt (salz-conscription), and when this was removed in 1816, the state monopoly of sale was the form in which revenue was collected, until after the formation of the North German Confederation (1867) it was changed into an ordinary tax. In Russia also the earlier monopoly has been abandoned in favour of. a duty. The Austrian taxation of salt has passed through the same earlier stages as that of Prussia, but it has not as yet abandoned the form of monopoly, probably because most of the sources of production are in the hands of the state, and because it is necessary for financial reasons to tax the product heavily. Italy is the only other large European country that main- rains the salt monopoly. It inherited it from the smaller Italian states, who had applied the method with different degrees of rigour. The existing government has made the charge unifo for all Italy (Sicily and Sardinia being altogether exempt), and placed it at a very high point over double that in France--with the result of bringing in a considerable yield--63 million lire for 1889-90, i.e. about 2,500,000. 2 Outside Europe the only country that we need notice is India, and here we find that part of the salt tax, which constitutes  For the history o! the Gabelk, see Clamageran, Histoire de l'lmpt en France, especially vol. i. pp. 354, et seq.; vol. ii. pp. 141, et seq.; Stourm, Les Finances de l'Ancie R&jime, chap. xii. g For the earlier Prussian and Austrian salt monoplies, see Wagner, Finanzwissen- schaft, vol. iii. p. 103 and p. 119. For the Italian system, Alessio $aggio sul Sistema Tributario, vol. ii. pp. 298-9. Greece, Roumania, and Servia also have monopolies of salt.