the income tax which had been usual hitherto into a property tax, which on the basis of 13½ per cent, would produce an increment of about a million. How direly needed, indeed how inadequate such an increment was, was clear from the main budget for the new financial year, which, leaving out of account the imposition of new burdens on the Treasury, concluded with an adverse balance, which was calculated to damp the courage of any economical expert. But when it was realized that practically only the towns would be hit by the property tax, the combined indignation of the urban deputies turned against the assess ment at 13½ per cent., and they demanded as compensation at least the abolition of the meat tax, which they called undemocratic and antediluvian. Add to this that the Commission adhered resolutely to the long-promised and always postponed improvement of Civil servants' pay—for it could not be denied that the salaries of the Government officials, clergy, and teachers of the Grand Duchy were miserable.
But Doctor Krippenreuther could not make gold—he said in so many words, "I've never learnt to make gold," and he found himself equally unable to abolish the meat tax and to ameliorate the conditions in the Civil Service. His only resource was to anchor himself to his 13½ per cent., although no one knew better than he that its sanction would not really bring things any nearer their solution. For the position was serious, and despondent spirits painted it in gloomy colours.
The "Almanac of the Grand Ducal Statistical Bureau" contained alarming returns of the harvest for the last year. Agriculture had a succession of bad years to show; storms, hail, droughts, and inordinate rain had been the lot of the peasants; an exceptionally cold and snowless winter had resulted in the seed freezing; and the critics maintained, though with little proof to show for it, that the timber-
