A few copies of the annual Budget are published; they are
certainly not in everybody's reach. The statement of receipts and
expenditure is prodigiously laconic. I have now before me the
estimates prepared for 1858, in four pages, the least blank of which
contains just fourteen lines. The Finance Minister sums up the
receipts and the outgoings, both ordinary and extraordinary. Under the
head of Receipts, he lumps the whole of "the direct contributions, and
the State property, 3,201,426 scudi."
Under the head of Expenditure, we read "Commerce, Fine Arts,
Agriculture, Manufactures, and Public Works, 601,764 scudi." A
tolerable lump, this.
This powerful simplification of accounts enables the Minister to
perform some capital tricks of financial sleight of hand. Supposing,
for instance, the Government wants half a million of scudi for some
mysterious purpose, nothing is easier than to bring their direct
contributions in as having paid half a million less than they really
have. What will Europe ever know about the matter?
"Speech is silver, but silence is gold."
Successive Finance Ministers at Rome have all adopted this device,
even when they are forced to speak, they have the art of not saying
the very thing the country wants to hear.
In almost all civilized countries the nation enjoys two rights which
seem perfectly just and natural. The first is that of voting the
taxes, either directly or through the medium of its deputies; the
second, that of verifying the expenditure of its own money.
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