The heavy taxes on salt (_la gabelle_) and on Tobacco are suppressed, and those two articles are allowed to be objects of commerce.[40] [Note 40: Salt, which was formerly sold at fourteen _sols_ per pound, is now at a single sol. Tobacco is permitted to be cultivated by "whoever will."] "No city in the world can offer such a spectacle as that of Paris, agitated by some great passion, because in no other the communication is so speedy, and the spirits so active. Paris contains citizens from all the provinces, and these various characters blended together compose the national character, which is distinguished by a wonderful impetuosity. Whatever they will do is done." Witness the taking of the _Bastille_ in a single day, which had formerly withstood the siege of a whole army during three and twenty days. And witness the 10th of August. I have been frequently told by persons in England, that a regular and disciplined army may easily crush a herd of raw and inexperienced rabble, such as they supposed the French were, although ten times more numerous. This may possibly be the event in small numbers, but if we state the case with large numbers, for instance fifty thousand men of the greatest courage, and of the most perfect discipline, and who are fighting for pay, without any personal motive, against five hundred thousand men, whom we shall suppose utterly ignorant of the art of war, but who conceive they are fighting for their liberty and their country, for their families and their property, and then reflect on the courage and bravery of these very men, on their impetuosity, their _acharnement_, or desperate violence in fight, which may be compared to the irresistible force of water-spouts, and of whirlwinds, it may not appear too partial to conjecture, that such persons may perceive some little reason for suspending, if not for altering, their opinion,[41] and may now estimate the degree of danger this nation may apprehend from the attacks of extraneous powers, _provided its own people are unanimous_.