94 REFORM OF RUSSIA'S FINANCES AND CENTRAL ADMINISTRATIONinsists most energetically that dues in kind and services be replaced
by taxes payable in money. This applies more particularly to local
service obligations of road maintenance, the furnishing of horses for
postal relays, the convoying of prisoners, etc. The government gains
little from these services, Speransky argues, and for the popUlation
they are sources of hardship, innumerable abuse, and hence quite
ruinous. The replacement of these services by monetary contributions
would go a long way towards restricting the opportunities of abuse
by local officials; this in turn would permit the government to collect
the tax regularly in full. As to the services performed by the popUlation,
they would not suffer either. Instead of their being performed by
reluctant and unskilled peasants, they could be conducted by a small
efficient corps of specially trained employees, as in Western Europe.It should be noted that while this proposal concerning government dues
in form of service was not adopted in 1810, Speransky was able to
introduce it in Siberia in 1822. Its success there led to its eventual
implementation in European Russia after Speransky's death.^1
Reformed along the lines we have just noted, the financial structure
of the Russian state would rest, Speransky maintains, on a monetary
system working with controlled regularity. Such a system cannot be
introduced overnight. But some things can be initiated, and they alone
would take the country a long way in the right direction. First,
stability and faith in the monetary structure must be secured. The
people's natural propensity to speculate on the instability and fluc-
tuation of the currency has to be checked, at least until the value of
assignats and silver are brought into a stable relationship. There is
only one perfect type of money: silver and notes of credit based on
silver. These should be the standard of measure and accounting for
all transactions, both private and public. 2 Speransky proposes to bring
about such a state of affairs by the creation of private banks, based on
silver. These banks will draw out the capital in silver available inRussia and which constitutes a most important source of credit. To
regulate the flow of credit on the spot, the banks would have many
local branches, and they would be allowed to purchase and sell silver
and gold - but nothing else. As copper coins are a very common and
an important form of currency for small exchanges, these banks would also
function as regulators of the value of copper. To do this, they should
always be able and ready to buy silver in bullion and exchange it for
copper currency, and vice versa. In this fashion the banks will limit
1 Plan Finansov, Sec. 108, p. 23.
2 Plan Finansov, p. 44.