"'Sir,' replied the man, 'our laws relating to thirst are much more excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished, physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by a single bottle; they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water. Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed from the supervisors of our health.' "I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities. His conversation raised my curiosity. 'Our nation,' said he, 'is so completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws, customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.' "I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,' because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas! must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay, after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous. "I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was superior to all the rest in industry.