If by chance a clown goes to the capital, he sees with astonishment a fine lady dressed in a gown of silk embroidered with gold, drawn in a magnificent carriage by two valuable horses, and followed by four lackeys dressed in a cloth of twenty francs an ell. He addresses himself to one of these lackeys, and says to him: "Sir, where does this lady get money to make such an expensive appearance?" "My friend," says the lackey, "the king allows her a pension of forty thousand livres." "Alas," says the rustic, "it is my village which pays this pension." "Yes," answers the servant; "but the silk that you have gathered and sold has made the stuff in which she is dressed; my cloth is a part of thy sheep's wool; my baker has made my bread of thy corn; thou hast sold at market the very fowls that we eat; thus thou seest that the pension of madame returns to thee and thy comrades." The peasant does not absolutely agree with the axioms of this philosophical lackey; but one proof that there is something true in his answer is that the village exists, and produces children who also complain, and who bring forth children again to complain. SECTION II. If we were obliged to read all the edicts of taxation, and all the books written against them, that would be the greatest tax of all. We well know that taxes are necessary, and that the malediction pronounced in the gospel only regards those who abuse their employment to harass the people. Perhaps the copyist forgot a word, as for instance the epithet _pravus_. It might have meant _pravus publicanus_; this word was much more necessary, as the general malediction is a formal contradiction to the words put into the mouth of Jesus Christ: "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's." Certainly those who collected the dues of Cæsar ought not to have been held in horror. It would have been, at once, insulting the order of Roman Knights and the emperor himself; nothing could have been more ill-advised. In all civilized countries the imposts are great, because the charges of the state are heavy. In Spain the articles of commerce sent to Cadiz, and thence to America, pay more than thirty per cent. before their transit is accomplished.