This was to be divided according to the supposed wealth and quantity of circulation every where. Every district was ordered to report to the King’s council their opinion concerning the particular mode of raising their proportional part of it, in the best way relative to their situation. This report the council was to examine, and to approve or amend the proposal given in, according to information. This was perhaps the best plan of taxation, if properly executed, that ever has been thought of, for a nation already under a regular administration of government, and accustomed to pay considerable impositions. It removes the inconvenience attending all general taxes, which never fail to affect unequally different places and districts. It admits of a prudent mixture of excises, with taxes upon possessions, according to the internal circumstances of every place. It confines them to towns, where alone all excises at least can be levied with propriety. It lightens the oppression of tax-gatherers; because the corporation may employ whom they will for that purpose. In a word, it is a tax administred with all the advantages of a farm. This tax, the general subvention, after it had been imposed by edict, registred in a Bed of justice September 1759, fell to the ground, from the nature of the French constitution; because it could not be levied without a systematic administration, supported by the authority of the courts of law, to which the parliament would not give their concurrence, for a very plain reason. The general subvention being very extensive, and calculated for a fund of credit to borrow upon, was, by its nature, of a species proper to become a perpetual tax, as all excises are. The parliament of Paris seemed to think it agreeable to the constitution, which they are sworn to maintain, to preserve at all times in their hands a certain power over the King’s purse, in order to prevent an extravagant minister from impoverishing the King and the kingdom at once, or running them into the inextricable confusion of an infallible bankruptcy. This circumspection of the parliament was represented in another light at court; and odious parallels were drawn between what had happened in England about the middle of the last century, and what soon might be expected in France. Upon such topics every one judges as he is affected. The minister was railed at by the parliament-party, in the most virulent manner. Who was in the right, and who was in the wrong, upon the general question, of the propriety of raising so large an imposition, to serve as a fund of credit, under a government like that of France, I shall not here examine. But that a solid fund should be provided, in one way or other, proportional to the actual deficiency of the annual supplies, and to what could not be raised within the year, for the uses of the war, was, I think, entirely agreeable to principles.