whole sum passed into the French treasury would only represent an
assessment of 12s. 6d. per head of the French population.[194]
Taxation ought thus to be really lighter in France than in Great
Britain, but it was made into a scourge by vicious modes of assessment
and collection. Smith even suggested for France various moderate
financial reforms, repealing some taxes, increasing others, making a
third class uniform over the kingdom, and abolishing the farming
system; but though these reforms would be sufficient to restore
prosperity to a country with the resources of France, he had no hope
of it being possible to carry them against the active opposition of
individuals interested in maintaining things as they were.

Smith was thus perfectly alive to the prevailing poverty and distress
of the French population, to the oppression they suffered, to the
extreme difficulty, the hopelessness even, of any improvement of their
situation while the existing distribution of political forces
continued, and was able to defeat all efforts at reform. Now from all
this it was not very far to the idea of a political upheaval and a new
distribution of political forces, and Smith saw tendencies abroad in
that direction also. He told Professor Saint Fond in 1782 that the
"Social Compact" would one day avenge Rousseau for all the
persecutions he had suffered from the powers that were.

FOOTNOTES:

[159] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Partially published in Burton's _Life_.

[160] _Correspondance Litteraire_, I. iv. 291.

[161] _Burton's Letters of Eminent Persons to David Hume_, p. 238.

[162] Lady Minto, _Memoirs of Hugh Elliot_, p. 13.

[163] Morellet's _Memoires_, i. 237.

[164] Schelle, _Dupont de Nemours et les Physiocrates_, p. 159.

[165] _i.e._ the Royal Society of Edinburgh, to whom Stewart first
read his _Life of Smith_.

[166] Stewart's _Works_, v. 47.

[167] Clayden's _Early Life of Samuel Rogers_, p. 95.

[168] _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, Part VI. sec. ii.

[169] Mackintosh, _Miscellaneous Works_, iii. 13.

[170] Brougham's Men of Letters, ii. 226.

[171] Burton's Hume, ii. 348.

[172] Garrick Correspondence, ii. 550.

[173] Garrick Correspondence, ii. 549.

[174] Ibid. ii. 501.

[175] Ibid. ii. 511.

[176] Stewart's _Works,_ x. 49, 50.

[177] "Essay on the Imitative Arts," _Works_, v. 281.

[178] _Works_, v. 294.

[179] Say, _Cours Complet, OEuvres_, p. 870.

[180] Turgot's _OEuvres_, v. 136.

[181] _W