Salt, Tax on. An imposition in France that was formerly called the gabelle, an article that can readily be consulted; but as the modern author of the Considerations on Finance  [1] has said, a good citizen would not know how to handle the sad reflections which this tax casts into his heart. M de Sully, who worked with devotion for the good of his master and was not less devoted to his subjects, M. de Sully, I repeat, was not able to approve of this tax. He considered it an extreme hardship for poor people to have to buy such common provisions at so high a price. It is likely that if France had been sufficiently worthy to heaven to have possessed for a longer time this particular minister and his monarch, he would have brought some remedies to the plague of this imposition. Sorrow takes hold of our hearts at the reading of the gabelle ordinances. A provision which the favors of providence keep at a low price for one group of citizens is sold dearly to all the others. Poor men are forced to buy with the weight of gold a marked quantity of this provision, and they are forbidden under penalty of the total ruin of their family to receive any more of it, even as a pure gift. The person who obtains this provision from its source does not have the permission to sell it beyond certain limits; for he is threatened with the same penalty. Dreadful torture is decreed against such criminals (in truth, against the body politic), but they have still not violated natural law. Cattle languish and die because the help they need exceeds the resources of the farmer, already overcharged for the quantity of salt he must consume for himself. In some places the animals are prevented from approaching the seashore, where the instinct of conservation leads them.

Humanity would shudder while reading the list of all the tortures ordered in regard to this tax from its establishment. The authority of the legislator constantly compromised with greed for gain (which often prevails over necessity itself) would be less painful to him than the harshness of tax collection. The abandonment of farming, the discouragement of taxpaying, the decrease of commerce and work, the enormous cost of excise administration, should make him see that each million going into his coffers costs almost another to his people, either in cash payments or in nonproductive land. This is still not the entire issue: the tax at least in principle had the advantage of being levied on rich and poor alike. A considerable part of these rich people knew how to avoid paying it. people how to avoid paying it. By offering slight and momentary financial assistance to the authorities they obtained permanent exemptions, thereby creating a deficit that had to be filled by the poor.

Finally, if the arbitrary taille did not exist, the tax on salt would perhaps be the most pernicious one imaginable. Consequently all specialists of economics and the most intelligent ministers of finance have regarded the replacement of these impositions as the most useful operation for the relief of the people and the increase of public revenue. Diverse expedients have been proposed, but none up to the present has seemed to be sufficiently reliable.