can to satisfy you, but for this I must have resources. I have been preparing plans for five or six taxes, which are quite new, and not at all oppressive. You will see how willingly people will pay them."
Then comes a great exclamation:—"No! indeed! where is the merit of doing a thing with resources! Why, it does not deserve the name of a Government! So far from loading us with fresh taxes, we would have you withdraw the old ones. You ought to suppress
"The salt tax,
"The tax on liquors,
"The tax on letters,
"Custom-house duties,
"Patents."
In the midst of this tumult, and now that the country has two or three times changed its Government, for not having satisfied all its demands, I wanted to show that they were contradictory. But, what could I have been thinking about? Could I not keep this unfortunate observation to myself?
I have lost my character forever! I am looked upon as a man without heart and without feeling—a dry philosopher, an individualist, a plebeian—in a word, an economist of the English or American school. But, pardon me, sublime writers, who stop at nothing, not even at contradictions. I am wrong, without a doubt, and I would willingly retract. I should be glad enough, you may be sure, if you had really discovered a beneficent and inexhaustible being, calling itself the Government, which has
