The Man of Forty Crowns.—Why am I not a Swiss? That cursed tax, that single and singularly iniquitous tax, that has reduced me to beggary! But then again, three or four hundred taxes, of which it is impossible for me to retain or pronounce the bare names, are they more just and more tolerable? Was there ever a legislator who, in founding a state, wished to create counsellors to the king, inspectors of coal-measurers, gaugers of wine, measurers of wood, searchers of hog-tongues, comptrollers of salt butter? or to maintain an army of rascals twice as numerous as that of Alexander, commanded by sixty generals, who lay the country under contribution, who gain every day signal victories, who take prisoners, and who sometimes sacrifice them in the air, or on a boarded stage, as the ancient Scythians did, according to what my vicar told me?
Now, was such a legislation, against which so many outcries were raised, and which caused the shedding of so many tears, much better than the newly imposed one, which at one stroke cleanly and quietly takes away half of my subsistence? I am afraid that on a fair liquidation it will be found that under the ancient system of the revenue they used to take, at times and in detail, three-quarters of it.
The Geometrician.—Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra. Est modus in rebus. Caveas ne quid nintis.
The Man of Forty Crowns.—I have learned a
