the monarchical party throughout this whole
region.... _Le petit conscrit_ will be the prince of the people from
this day forth. The gray-beards among the peasants shake their heads and
say, "All the same, it is not such a nice thing, this conscription, and
since he was out of it why run into it?" But the women reply, "Since our
lads have to go in, it is plucky of the Comte de Paris to put his son in
too!"'

To make a handsome young prince a martyr of patriotism in the eyes of
the women and the conscripts of France, is a highly original way of
blocking the progress of his father to the throne!

The Mayors at Peyreguilhot were all of one mind as to the fiscal conduct
of the Republican Government. It was 'making life impossible for the
agriculturists of all categories. The tax on the revenue of the land in
the Lot-et-Garonne was levied still on a _cadastre_ drawn up in 1837; so
that lands now lying idle were taxed as they were taxed fifty years ago
when covered with vines. Thanks to this system, forty-two departments in
France pay more than their due proportion of this tax, and the others
less than their due proportion. The Aude, which is a very rich
department, producing, if you take good and bad years together, more
than 20,000,000 francs of wine alone every year, pays a million of
francs less, and the Lot-et-Garonne nearly a quarter of a million more,
than its due share of this tax.'

M. de Witt confirmed these statements. The inequalities in national
taxation, he tells me, are one of the crying grievances of France under
the existing regime. Corsica, for example, pays only ninety-five
centimes _per cent._ of revenue tax, while the Correze pays seven francs
ninety cents, and there is one commune in the Gironde which actually
pays ninety francs per cent. Besides the people pay the door and window
tax, the furniture tax, the _prestations en nature_, the permanent
personal tax, and the octrois and the _centimes additionnels_ levied for
educational and other purposes.

The taxes levied as _centimes additionnels_ for the Departments of
France increased from 1878 to 1886 by 24,692,266 francs, and the taxes
levied as _centimes additionnels_ for the Communes (exclusive of Paris)
by 34,246,647 francs, while from 1878 to 1885 the total of the debts of
the Communes increased at the rate of 55,000,000 francs a year! The
departmental loans during the same period increased no less than 95 per
cent., or from 128,417,499 francs in