“Look at your great Government stud-farm of Trakehnen,” said he, in a speech on the old Breslau market-square. “Model stables, model granaries, fine pastures, all more than self-supporting, monthly auctions of forage and surplus horses. Oats are barreled in airy magazines, and, for greater security, the granary warden breeds cats, and hires two boys to take care of them. “All lovely, so far. But now suppose those boys were to break in a private cottage and snatch away a poor youngster’s kitten, on the pretext that the Government might have need of it? At sight of a club, the little lad would have to let his pet go, but could you blame him for growling?—Why don’t you get oats of your own? And let my little kitten alone?—And that is exactly what I am growling about when I see tax-collectors confiscate a poor man’s last milch-cow or nanny-goat.” The orator then described the estate of Prince Gorkas, a semi-independent land-magnate near Tiflis, in the southern Caucasus. The Prince’s tenants pay a moderate rent; freeholders keep his good will by buying his cattle and coal. Free schools, fairly good, and no tax-collectors—a pattern of what an empire ought to be on a large scale. Foreseeing the eventual need of money for the purchase of a neighboring estate, the Prince had a mountain-side planted with plum trees, to sell the dried fruit. His engineers opened a mine of cannel-coal, and soon had a large market. Their master hoarded and was thought capable of driving a sharp bargain, but gossips would have risked the lunatic-asylum if they had spread a report that Prince Gorkas had broken into the little crossroad store and helped himself to a share of the old storekeeper’s savings. Fruit plantations are also managed by the Shah of Persia, and mines of vast values by the Russian Government. Prussia and Austria own extensive timber forests and realize a handsome profit after paying reasonable wages to thousands of wardens, rangers and woodcutters. Saxony operates national mines and large national glass-works. Do kings need ordnance? Let them hire foundries to cast it for them. Do they need gunpowder? Hire chemists to mix it for them. Do they need money? Why, let them hire business-men to earn it for them. Not the faintest ghost of a doubt but it can be done. A little more difficult than raising royal race-horses? Perhaps so. But does that give His Majesty the right to race down a peddler and take his money away from him? Now reflect, and do not let your verdict be biased by the idea that might makes right, or that a long-established absurdity becomes reasonable. Why collect revenues by Government highway robbery, by Government hold-up methods, by harpies in Government uniform, when the test of practical experience proves that revenues can be raised by Government industries?