I will throw the first one.

--We agreed that the majority were enlightened.

--Enlightened! Can you claim that an export duty is not onerous?

--All taxes are onerous, but this is less so than others.

--The carnival justifies many eccentricities. Be so kind as to make this
new paradox appear specious, if you can.

--How much did you pay for this wine?

--A franc per quart.

--How much would you have paid outside the city gates?

--Fifty centimes.

--Why this difference?

--Ask the _octroi_[14] which added ten sous to it.

--Who established the _octroi_?

--The municipality of Paris, in order to pave and light the streets.

--This is, then, an import duty. But if the neighboring country
districts had established this _octroi_ for their profit, what would
happen?

--I should none the less pay a franc for wine worth only fifty centimes,
and the other fifty centimes would pave and light Montmartre and the
Batignolles.

--So that really it is the consumer who pays the tax?

--There is no doubt of that.

--Then by taxing exports you make foreigners help pay your
expenses.[15]

--I find you at fault, this is not _justice_.

--Why not? In order to secure the production of any one thing, there
must be instruction, security, roads, and other costly things in the
country. Why shall not the foreigner who is to consume this product,
bear the charges its production necessitates?

--This is contrary to received ideas.

--Not the least in the world. The last purchaser must repay all the
direct and indirect expenses of production.

--No matter what you say, it is plain that such a measure would paralyze
commerce; and cut off all exports.

--That is an illusion. If you were to pay this tax besides all the
others, you would be right. But, if the hundred millions raised in this
way, relieve you of other taxes to the same amount, you go into foreign
markets with all your advantages, and even with more, if this duty has
occasioned less embarrassment and expense.

--I will reflect on this. So now the salt, postage and customs are
regulated. Is all ended there?

--I am just beginning.

--Pray, initiate me in your Utopian ideas.

--I have lost sixty millions on salt and postage. I shall regain them
through the customs; which also gives me something more precious.

--What, pray?

--International relations founded on justice, and a probability of peace
which is equivalent to a certainty. I will disband the