It is perhaps in the sphere of taxation that Frederick’s unflinching autocracy is most remarkably displayed. He claimed not only to regulate the consumption of his people according to his own standard of propriety, but also to select agents to enforce his rules without the smallest consideration for their feelings. Frederick wished to make existence easier for the poor, especially for the soldier. He therefore abolished the tax on grain, but subjected meat, beer, and wine to progressive imposts. Every Prussian was forced to buy from the State a fixed quantity of inferior salt at a price equal to four times its cost of production. The King’s delight in coffee did not make him blind to the fact that the State would gain more profit if his subjects were forced to abandon it in favour of Prussian beer. Accordingly in 1781 coffee became, like salt and tobacco, a monopoly of State and a tax of 250 per cent. upon its value was imposed. Frederick strove to refute the remonstrances of the Pomeranian gentry with the words: “His Majesty’s high person was reared in youth on beer-soup, therefore the people in that part can equally well be reared on beer-soup; it is much more wholesome than coffee.” The people, however, seem to have mitigated the inconvenience to which they were put by their King in part by brewing decoctions of herbs, but chiefly by smuggling. It has been estimated that no less than two-thirds of the coffee which they used was contraband. It boded ill for the State when to knock one of the King’s spies on the head excited none of the odium of murder. The measure which most of all estranged the hearts of the Prussians from their King dates, however, from the year 1766, when Frederick resolved to introduce the French system of farming out the indirect taxes, or Regie. Not the system alone, but also the chief agents who carried it into effect, were brought from France. The lessee-in-chief, de Launay, exercised great influence over the King, who accepted his opinion as to the possibilities of taxation in preference to that of his Prussian commissioners. The people, as was natural, detested an innovation which both wounded their Teutonic sensibilities and raised the price of food. De Launay and his assistants were caricatured as marching behind beasts laden with rackets, foils, and fiddles, to avenge the shame of Rossbach on the inhabitants of Berlin. Patriots might well chafe at the thought that a new and foreign department was introduced into the General Directory itself, and that whereas a Prussian minister was paid only 4000 thalers a year, each of the four chief Frenchmen received 15,000. Less than ten per cent. of the 2000 tax-gatherers were foreigners, but the Germans were insulted at being deemed fit for the lower grades alone.