After having been connected with France for more than twenty years, the principality of Monaco was assigned, by the treaty of Vienna, to its hereditary claimants, who were to be under the protection of Piedmont. Delivered up to Honore V., as the reigning Grimaldi was designated, the unhappy people, to their dismay, soon felt themselves in the grasp of a rapacious tyrant. Honest, industrious, and confiding, they were willing to render loyal obedience to the old family; but so far from being sympathised with, they were viewed as mere objects of the most uncompromising extortion. What now occurred in the communes of Monaco, Roccabruna, and Mentone—such being the entire territory—would, if minutely told, form a history unexampled for despicable selfishness on the part of the ruling authority. The account given by Pemberton, and also by local French writers, regarding the fiscal abuses of Honore and his successor, raises the deepest emotions of compassion. It is painful even to allude to matters of this kind, and I do so only because a knowledge of what took place enables us to understand why Mentone has been absorbed into the French empire. The story—fit to form the subject of a romance—is also not without interest, as revealing to what lengths a despotic ruler may go when unchecked by considerations either of mercy or public policy. Living at a safe distance in Paris, and governing by deputies, Honore V. maintained a fair face to the world while issuing ordinance after ordinance calculated to reduce his patrimonial territory to utter poverty and ruin. Plausible and refined in manners, his hypocrisy was equalled only by his intense avarice. What he wanted was money, and that he was resolved to wring by every available means from his helpless subjects. He began operations by taking possession of all property belonging to communes, hospitals, and ecclesiastical establishments, all of which were in future to depend on his bounty. Next, he imposed duties on every article entering or going out of the country, or which was consumed as food. The principal produce consisting of olives, oranges, lemons, citrons, figs, and grapes, these were all placed under rigorous surveillance, and subjected to heavy imposts. There had long been manufactures of oils, essences, perfumes, and confections from one or other of these fruits, for purposes of export, and the taxes now levied upon them rendered the trade not worth carrying on. Then were issued ordinances assigning to the prince an entire monopoly in the manufacture and sale of linen, gunpowder, pipes, and tobacco. No one dared to purchase linens for clothing or domestic use, or to be used as sails for boats and shipping, unless they came from the prince’s factories at such prices as he was pleased to impose. Following on these arbitrary measures came the monopoly of selling vermicelli. This was a hard blow on the poor, but nothing in comparison to the next financial device,