o began his political career, as I
have shown, twenty years ago in a hopeless minority of Republicans under
the Empire, who has since worked his way up the municipal ladder at
Amiens and up the legislative ladder in Paris; and who, after reaching
the top of the tree, now finds himself in imminent peril of slipping
down again to the point from which he started. The force of the
testimony is certainly not weakened by the fact that at the legislative
elections in September, M. Goblet, standing as a candidate for the
Chamber, was completely beaten.

I have shown what a large part the _octroi_ plays in the revenue of a
city like Amiens. Nothing resembling it, I believe, exists in England
since the abolition, two or three years ago, of the coal dues in London;
and, though I suppose it would be within the power of any American State
to establish a tax of this sort within its own boundaries, it would be
practically impossible to enforce it without coming into collision with
the commercial rights of other States under the Federal Constitution. I
once had to pay the _octroi_ tax on two brace of Maryland canvas-back
ducks, which I was taking over from London to a Christmas dinner in
Paris. But Maryland would not submit to an _octroi_ upon her birds
entering New York.

The importance of the _octroi_ at this time in the financial system of
France is one of the most conclusive and most amusing proofs of the
essentially superficial and ephemeral character of the alleged 'Great
Revolution' of 1789. The _octroi_ was a revival in mediaeval France of
the Roman _portorium_ which survives in the Italian offices of the
_dazio consume_ and in the _garitas_ of Spain and Spanish America. It
was originally imposed as a local tax by a city, under the sanction of a
royal charter. To get such a charter from a sovereign strong enough to
enforce respect for it was essential to the citizens who bound
themselves to one another to maintain their local independence against
the barons in their neighbourhood; and when such a charter was granted
by a sovereign it was said to be _octroyee_ by him. The tax therefore is
rooted in a privilege. Amiens obtained the right to impose it in the
fourteenth century. Of course the 'Great Revolution of 1789' swept this
right away, one of the most obvious 'rights of man' being to pluck an
apple in an orchard, take it into a town in his pocket, and eat it
there. But equally, of course, the Republic in the year VII. on the