Most proper, surely. But what if it were not a swell of the abating kind? There are swells that come of upper tempest and wind-gust. But again there are swells that come of subterranean pent wind, some say; and even of inward decomposition, of decay that has become self-combustion:—as when, according to Neptuno-Plutonic Geology, the World is all decayed down into due attritus of this sort; and shall now be _exploded_, and new-made! These latter abate not by oil.—The fool says in his heart, How shall not tomorrow be as yesterday; as all days,—which were once tomorrows? The wise man, looking on this France, moral, intellectual, economical, sees, “in short, all the symptoms he has ever met with in history,”—unabatable by soothing Edicts. Meanwhile, abate or not, cash must be had; and for that quite another sort of Edicts, namely “bursal” or fiscal ones. How easy were fiscal Edicts, did you know for certain that the Parlement of Paris would what they call “register” them! Such right of registering, properly of mere _writing down_, the Parlement has got by old wont; and, though but a Law-Court, can remonstrate, and higgle considerably about the same. Hence many quarrels; desperate Maupeou devices, and victory and defeat;—a quarrel now near forty years long. Hence fiscal Edicts, which otherwise were easy enough, become such problems. For example, is there not Calonne’s _Subvention Territoriale_, universal, unexempting Land-tax; the sheet-anchor of Finance? Or, to show, so far as possible, that one is not without original finance talent, Loménie himself can devise an _Edit du Timbre_ or Stamp-tax,—borrowed also, it is true; but then from America: may it prove luckier in France than there!