--Not the least in the world. The last purchaser must repay all the direct and indirect expenses of production. --No matter what you say, it is plain that such a measure would paralyze commerce; and cut off all exports. --That is an illusion. If you were to pay this tax besides all the others, you would be right. But, if the hundred millions raised in this way, relieve you of other taxes to the same amount, you go into foreign markets with all your advantages, and even with more, if this duty has occasioned less embarrassment and expense. --I will reflect on this. So now the salt, postage and customs are regulated. Is all ended there? --I am just beginning. --Pray, initiate me in your Utopian ideas. --I have lost sixty millions on salt and postage. I shall regain them through the customs; which also gives me something more precious. --What, pray? --International relations founded on justice, and a probability of peace which is equivalent to a certainty. I will disband the army. --The whole army? --Except special branches, which will be voluntarily recruited, like all other professions. You see, conscription is abolished. --Sir, you should say recruiting. --Ah, I forgot, I cannot help admiring the ease with which, in certain countries, the most unpopular things are perpetuated by giving them other names. --Like _consolidated duties_, which have become _indirect contributions_. --And the _gendarmes_, who have taken the name of _municipal guards_. --In short, trusting to Utopia, you disarm the country. --I said that I would muster out the army, not that I would disarm the country. I intend, on the contrary, to give it invincible power. --How do you harmonize this mass of contradictions? --I call all the citizens to service. --Is it worth while to relieve a portion from service in order to call out everybody? --You did not make me Minister in order that I should leave things as they are. Thus, on my advent to power, I shall say with Richelieu, "the State maxims are changed." My first maxim, the one which will serve as a basis for my administration, is this: Every citizen must know two things--How to earn his own living, and defend his country. --It seems to me, at the first glance, that there is a spark of good sense in this. --Consequently, I base the national defense on a law consisting of two sections. Section First. Every able-bodied citizen, without exception, shall be under arms for four years, from his twenty-first to his twenty-fifth year, in order to receive military instruction.-- --This is pretty economy! You send home four hundred thousand soldiers and call out ten millions. --Listen to my second section: SEC. 2. _Unless_ he proves, at the age of twenty-one, that he knows the school of the soldier perfectly. --I did not expect this turn. It is certain that to avoid four years' service, there will be a great emulation among our youth, to learn _by the right flank_ and _double quick, march_. The idea is odd.