mer. I want a bounty of three francs for each bushel of wheat.

"A Weaver. And I two francs for each yard of cloth.

"The Presiding Officer. That is understood. Our meeting will have
originated the system of _drawbacks_, and it will be its eternal glory.
What branch of manufacturing can lose hereafter, when we have two so
simple means of turning losses into gains--the _tariff_ and _drawbacks_.
The meeting is adjourned."

Some supernatural vision must have shown me in a dream the coming
appearance of the _bounty_ (who knows if I did not suggest the thought
to M. Dupin?), when some months ago I wrote the following words:

"It seems evident to me that protection, without changing its nature or
effects, might take the form of a direct tax levied by the State, and
distributed in indemnifying bounties to privileged manufacturers."

And after having compared protective duties with the bounty:

"I frankly avow my preference for the latter system; it seems to me more
just, more economical, and more truthful. More just, because if society
wishes to give gratuities to some of its members, all should contribute;
more economical, because it would save much of the expense of
collection, and do away with many obstacles; and, finally, more
truthful, because the public could see the operation plainly, and would
know what was done."

Since the opportunity is so kindly offered us, let us study this
_robbery by bounties_. What is said of it will also apply to _robbery by
tariff_, and as it is a little better disguised, the direct will enable
us to understand the indirect, cheating. Thus the mind proceeds from the
simple to the complex.

But is there no simpler variety of robbery? Certainly, there is _highway
robbery_, and all it needs is to be legalized, or, as they say
now-a-days, _organized_.

I once read the following in somebody's travels:

"When we reached the Kingdom of A---- we found all industrial pursuits
suffering. Agriculture groaned, manufactures complained, commerce
murmured, the navy growled, and the government did not know whom to
listen to. At first it thought of taxing all the discontented, and of
dividing among them the proceeds of these taxes after having taken its
share; which would have been like the method of managing lotteries in
our dear Spain. There are a thousand of you; the State takes a dollar
from each one, cunningly steals two hundred and fifty, and then divides
up seven hundred and fifty, in greate