The public revenues are derived from customs taxes and charges on imports and exports, transit taxes, cattle taxes, profits on coinage, receipts from state monopolies, receipts from various public services such as the post office, telegraph, Caracas waterworks, &c., and sundr y taxes, fines and other sources.
At the beginning of his reign he ordered a recast of the coinage, with serious results to commerce; civil officials were deprived of offices, which had been conferred free, but were now put up to auction; duties were imposed on exported merchandise and on goods brought into Paris; the practice of exacting heavy fines was encouraged by making the salaries of the magistrates dependent on them; and on the pretext of a crusade to free Armenia from the Turks, Charles obtained from the pope a tithe levied on the clergy, the proceeds of which he kept for his own use; he also confiscated the property of the Lombard bankers who had been invited to France by his father at a time of financial crisis.
In some states it has become necessary to provide for fines and even imprisonment of men disobeying the regulations regarding explosives.
Originally intended as assistants to the tribunes, they exercised certain police functions, were empowered to inflict fines and managed the plebeian and Roman games.
Practically the entire code of 7Ethelberht, for instance, is a tariff of fines for crimes, and the same subject continues to occupy a great place in the laws of Hlothhere and Eadric, Ine and Alfred, whereas it appears only occasionally in the treaties with the Danes, the laws of Withraed, Edward the Elder, lEthelstan, Edgar, Edmund and Ethelred.
