or that admirable Irish corps, which, when inquired
after by the General of the District, 'Where is the Donegal Light
Horse?' was met by the answer of, 'Here I am, yer honour!' And though
certainly nothing could possibly be more modestly devised than the whole
retinue of state, though the _fantassins_ be fifty, and the cavalry
five, still they must be fed, clothed, and kept in tobacco--a question
of some embarrassment, when it is considered that the Grand-Duchy
produces little grain and less grass, has neither manufacture nor trade,
nor the means of providing for other wants than those of a simple
and hard-working peasantry. There is, however, a palace, with its
accompaniments of grand marechal, equerries, cooks, and scullions--a
vast variety of officials of every grade and class, who must be
provided for. How is this done? Simply enough, when the secret is once
known--four yards of green baize, with two gentlemen armed with wooden
rakes, and a box full of five-franc pieces. Nothing more is wanting.
For the mere luxury of the thing, as a matter of pin-money to the
grand-duchess, if there be one, you may add a roulette-table; but _rouge
et noir_ will supply all the trumpery expedients of taxation, direct and
indirect. You neither want collectors, custom-houses, nor colonies;
you may snap your fingers at trade and import duties, and laugh at
the clumsy contrivances by which other chancellors provide for the
expenditure of other countries.

The machinery of revenue reduces itself to this: first catch a Jew. For
your petty villainies any man will suffice; but for your grand schemes
of wholesale plunder, there is nothing like an Israelite; besides,
he has a kind of pride in his vocation. For the privilege of the
gambling-table he will pay munificently, he will keep the whole
grand-ducal realm in beer and beetroot the year through, and give a very
respectable privy purse to the sovereign besides. To him you deliver up
all the nations of the earth outside your own little frontier, none of
those within it being under any pretext admitted inside the walls of the
gambling-house; for, like the sick apothecary, you know better than to
take anything in the shop. You give him a carte-blanche, sparing
the little realm of Hesse-Homburg, to cheat the English, pigeon the
Russians, ruin French, Swedes, Swiss, and Yankees to his heart's
content; you set no limits to his grand career of roguery; you deliver,
bound, into his hands all travel