advantage the expedients of his enemies. He reimposed the _gabelle_ on salt, and the _aides_ or taxes on the sale of commodities, the two financial expedients of the States of 1355. He retained the _élus_, the local collectors whom the States had nominated to levy these charges, though he was careful to take their appointment into his own hands. He gave tardy expression to the will of the estates by putting an end to the debasement of the currency, the worst of all grievances, and by imposing strict limitations on the right of purveyance. When his brother, Louis of Anjou, provoked discontent by his brutal administration in Languedoc, Charles did not hesitate to dismiss him from the governorship, and to grant redress to the complainants. Such a government was a great and a novel boon in the fourteenth century, and it is only on its financial side that it is open to hostile criticism. The expenses, both civil and military, were enormous, and the people were subjected to a heavier burden of taxation than they had ever experienced before. And the taxes were not only excessive in amount and arbitrary in their imposition, they were also oppressive and unequal. To increase the receipts from the _gabelle_, Charles V. introduced the practice of requiring every family to purchase at least a fixed amount of salt from the royal granaries; and the principle of equality, which is enjoined in his ordinances, was infringed by the frequent grant or sale of exemptions, sometimes to a class, sometimes to a district or a corporation. It is these exemptions, multiplied as time goes on, which make the financial system of France, down to the Revolution, so unjust, so disorderly, and so inefficient. And Charles V. was also responsible for a disastrous innovation. His predecessors had received a revenue from customs duties levied on the frontiers of their kingdom. Charles was the first to hamper domestic trade by imposing customs on the transit from one province to another.