[Sidenote: Resources.]
As to the rest, they have shot out three branches of revenue to supply
all those which they have destroyed: that is, _the Universal Register of
all Transactions_, the heavy and universal _Stamp Duty_, and the new
_Territorial Impost_, levied chiefly on the reduced estates of the
gentlemen. These branches of the revenue, especially as they take
assignats in payment, answer their purpose in a considerable degree, and
keep up the credit of their paper: for, as they receive it in their
treasury, it is in reality funded upon all their taxes and future
resources of all kinds, as well as upon the Church estates. As this
paper is become in a manner the only visible maintenance of the whole
people, the dread of a bankruptcy is more apparently connected with the
delay of a counter-revolution than with the duration of this republic;
because the interest of the new republic manifestly leans upon it, and,
in my opinion, the counter-revolution cannot exist along with it. The
above three projects ruined some ministers under the old government,
merely for having conceived them.
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