fraud; and he insisted that the accounts of the public expenditure in its several departments should be annually audited.  He protected commerce, facilitated exchanges, and reduced, as far as possible, the rates and taxes on woven articles and manufactured goods.  He permitted Jews to hold funded property, and invited foreign merchants to trade with the country.  For the first time he required all gold and silver articles to be stamped, and called in all the old gold and silver coins, in order that by a new and uniform issue the value of money might no longer be fictitious or variable.  For more than a century coins had so often changed in name, value, and standard weight, that in an edict of King John we read, “It was difficult for a man when paying money in the ordinary course to know what he was about from one day to another.”

The recommencement of hostilities between England and France in 1370 unfortunately interrupted the progressive and regular course of these financial improvements.  The States-General, to whom the King was obliged to appeal for assistance in order to carry on the war, decided that salt should be taxed one sol per pound, wine by wholesale a thirteenth of its value, and by retail a fourth; that a fouage, or hearth tax, of six francs should be established in towns, and of two francs in the country,[*] and that a duty should be levied in walled towns on the entrance of all wine.  The produce of the salt tax was devoted to the special use of the King.  Each district farmed its excise and its salt tax, under the superintendence of clerks appointed by the King, who regulated the assessment and the fines, and who adjudicated in the first instance in all cases of dispute.  Tax-gatherers were chosen by the inhabitants of each locality, but the chief officers of finance, four in number, were appointed by the King.  This administrative organization, created on a sound basis, marked the establishment of a complete financial system.  The Assembly, which thus transferred the administration of all matters of taxation from the people at large to the King, did not consist of a combination of the three estates, but simply of persons of position—­namely, prelates, nobles, and bourgeois of Paris, in addition to the leading magistrates of the kingdom.

[Footnote *:  This is the origin of the saying “smoke farthing.”]

The following extract from the accounts of the 15th November, 1372, is interesting, inasmuch as it represents the actual budget of France under Charles V.:—­

Article 18.  Assigned for the payment of men at arms ...... 50,000 francs.
"     19.  For payment of men at arms and crossbowmen
newly formed .............................. 42,000  "
"      "  For sea purposes .............................  8,000  "
"     20.  For the King’s palace ........................  6,000  "
"      "  To place in the King’s coffers................  5,000  "
"     21.  It pleases the King that the receiver-general
should have monthly for matters that daily
arise in the chamber ...................... 10,000  "
"      "  For the payment of debts ..................... 10,000  "

Total ..................... 131,000  "

[Illustration:  Settlement of Accounts by the Brothers of Cherite-Dieu of the Recovery of Roles