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The core of the financial means available to eighteenth-century states was made up of tax revenues, the magnitude of which varied from state to state with the number and economic resources of taxpayers and the comprehensiveness and efficiency of tax assessment and collection. Although the construction of a time series of revenues and expenditures among all states for the whole century is not possible, sufficient data exist to approximate the relative position of revenues in seven governments during part of the second half of the century. Chart 5-1 gives tax-revenue estimates using current exchange rates and converting into Dutch guilders.

The general pattern of increasing revenues evident in the chart should be interpreted in the light of both simultaneous inflation in the cost of goods and services acquired by government and frequent international conflict between 1740 and 1815. Tax income advanced, but lagged behind increasing expenditures. Chart 5-2 portrays deficits in Great Britain and Austria during the years within the period 1763–1800 for which data are available. Where similar information exists for other states it indicates that the Austrian pattern of almost perennial deficits was more common than the British pattern of small-scale peacetime surpluses interspersed with massive wartime deficits. In any case there is no question that deficits were regularly larger than surpluses among all major powers except Prussia (until the 1790s) and among many secondary powers as well.