Stephen expressed his sorrow that his words had taken so much more effect than he had intended. He really would try,—he would do his very best, to avoid telling travellers’ tales for the future. “The oddest thing is,” said Janvrin, “that there are some who are no travellers that tell the very same tale. There are dwellers in England,— even speakers in her parliament, who ought to know the condition and interests of the people, who go on to insist that the filching system,— the taxing of commodities,—is the best way of raising a revenue. The wonder to me is why the mouths of such men are not stopped,—how such taxes come to be borne.” “Because it is the ignorant who have to bear the worst of the burden,” Stephen thought. “The payment is made unconsciously by those who pay in the long run. The trader feels the grievance at first, and makes an outcry; but when the time comes for him to repay himself out of his customers’ pockets, he drops his cry, and nobody takes it up. It saves some people much trouble that all should be hush. But the time cannot be far off when honest men will be set to inquire, and then——” “And what then?” “They will report that the truest kindness to the people will be rather to preserve the worst direct tax, be it what it may, that was ever devised, than to go on taxing glass and soap, and many other things nearly as necessary.” “If the people are so little aware as you say, I am afraid that day is a long way off.” “I think it is near at hand; and for this reason; that there has been a beginning made with the excise taxes. The government has set free candles, beer, cider and perry, hides and printed goods. What should hinder their going on to glass and soap, now that the mischief begins to be understood?” “Especially,” said Janvrin, “when they find what it is to have fewer officers to pay, and smaller regiments of spies to provide for, and less trouble in delivering money backwards and forwards, as they have to do now with drawbacks and import duties, and all such troublesome things. It is a pity they should not come here, and see what it is to have houses made of free bricks, and filled with furniture made of untaxed wood, and cleaned with home-made soap, andbut I need not tell the present company what it is to live in Jersey, before or after living in England. The English may have heard a little of our meadows, our cattle, and our fruits, the like to which they cannot make in a season, at their will; but they can hardly have heard much of our taxation, or else they would come and live here by thousands;—or rather, mend their own plans so as not to be beaten by us in butter-selling in their own markets,—not to be obliged to us for helping them underhand with such corn and oil and wine as we do not want,—not to reflect with shame that we have in proportion five newspapers to their one, and one tax-gatherer to their ten.”