REFORM OF RUSSIA'S FINANCES AND CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION 91partition of the taxes on the net profits of productive capital in pro-
portion to the country's ability, it would be desirable to have complete
and correct information on the flow of merchandise and on the
exchanges in each province. Furthermore, as this tax primarily affects
merchants and townspeople, it would be most efficient, just, and cheap
to let the merchant groups take care of the repartition of the total tax
assessment among themselves. 1 This participation of the merchants at
some stage of the fiscal administration, however limited their role and
independence, would greatly contribute to instilling confidence in the
government's economic policies.
These measures - desirable as they are - are not sufficient, for they
do not increase the treasury's receipts so as to cover the current expen-
ditures and the cost of redeeming the assignats. New taxes, therefore,
are unavoidable, the more so since the country has had the same taxes
for the last quarter of a century. New sources of taxable revenue,
however, cannot be found overnight, for they are only the consequence
of expanding national income. In the promotion of new sources of
national income, the government is hampered by its inadequate know-ledge of the country's economy, actual and potential. It will be a long
time before complete and adequate statistical data can be gathered,
and much preparatory work will have to be done first. 2 But one
source of new income for the state is immediately at hand: the sale of
state domains to the peasants who live and work on them now. The
advantages of such a measure are obvious. "The number of owners of
land will increase, the land will be worked better, the treasury will
receive regularly the payment of capital and interest, the ordinary
quitrent revenues will, in due course of time, be replaced by a general
land tax. These lands should be sold to entire villages with the right
to re-sell them if other land is bought or found [by the peasants] for
settlement." 3 In other words, Speransky wants to give the state peasants
not only possession of the land, but full ownership, a most important
idea in the history of the peasant question in Russia. In any case, he
clearly favors the extension of independent peasant land holdings. It
is also to be noted that he envisages the possibility of migration from
areas where the land was becoming scarce or depleted and resettlement
in other parts of the country.
The phrase, "replaced by a regular land tax," used by Speransky,
1 Plan Finansov, Sec. 106, p. 22.
2 Plan Finansov, Sees. 9, 10, p. 6. It may be noted that Speransky was the first
Russian statesman to attempt basing the financial and economic policies of the
state on statistical data and their analysis.
3 Plan Finansov, Sec. 166, p. 62.