VII.—The Finances.
We have no information touching the Muscovite Budget until the close of the sixteenth century. In the last years of that century, under the son of Ivan IV., Fletcher calculated the revenue of the Empire at 1,400,000 roubles, of which 400,000 were supplied by direct and 800,000 by indirect taxation. Taken in connection with such documents concerning the reign of Alexis as we possess, these figures seem near the truth, and lead us to suppose the receipts under the Terrible to have been about 1,200,000 roubles. In England, at that period, there was no direct taxation at all, and consumers' taxes only brought in 140,000 crowns, Henry VIII.'s whole revenue not exceeding a million of crowns. Taking the rouble of those days at 16s. 8d., Ivan IV. asked four times as much from his subjects as Henry VIII. demanded of his (see Philippson, Westeuropa im Zeitalter von Philipp II., 1882, p. 59).
In reality he got a great deal more out of them. The great resource of the Muscovite Sovereign was the land, which was parcelled out among his 'service men,' and supplied all the essential needs of the State, the upkeep of the army and administration. Thus it was that the Sovereign was able to hoard up riches. War material and the pay of the few troops who formed the nucleus of the regular army did, indeed, involve a fairly heavy outlay. Three-quarters of his revenue, according to some authorities, were swallowed up by it. But, at all events, he was able to put by the remaining quarter, for to keep up his Court the Grand Duke, like every other European Sovereign, had his own patrimony—thirty-six towns, with the villages and hamlets depending on them, and these, besides a money payment, sent him corn, cattle, fish, honey, and forage, which not only supplied the necessities of the Court, large as it was, but were sold in considerable quantities. Ivan IV. thus made an additional income of 60,000 roubles a year, and his successor, a more economical man, increased the sum to 230,000 roubles.
These features have come down, in a measure, to our own times. They formed an integral part of a régime which has stood the brunt of centuries, and has insured the country which had the docility to submit to it material greatness and strength at all events, if not prosperity, together with an enormous power of concentration and expansion. The secret of this docility remains to be discovered. We may discover it, perhaps, in the course of our endeavour to understand the mind of a people which, with such means, has accomplished so great things.
