there is the octroi, a relic of medisevalism, the most unscientific,
futile, and vexatious of taxes; there are municipal dues to be paid on
animals bought and animals sold, on animals kept and animals killed, on
milk and vine-props and bricks, on timber for scaffolding and lead and
tiles and wine--on every conceivable object which the peasant produces
or requires for his existence. And one should see the faces of the
municipal _employes_ who extort these tributes. God alone knows from
what classes of the populace they are recruited; certain it is that
their physiognomy reflects their miserable calling. One can endure the
militarism of Germany and the bureaucracy of Austria; but it is
revolting to see decent Italian countryfolk at the mercy of these
uncouth savages, veritable cave-men, whose only intelligible expression
is one of malice striving to break through a crust of congenital
cretinism.

We hear much of the great artists and speculative philosophers of old
Italy. The artists of modern Italy are her bureaucrats who design and
elaborate the taxes; her philosophers, the peasants who pay them.

In point of method, at least, there is nothing to choose between the
exactions of the municipal and governmental ruffians. I once saw an old
woman fined fifty francs for having in her possession a pound of
sea-salt. By what logic will you make it clear to ignorant people that
it is wrong to take salt out of the sea, whence every one takes fish
which are more valuable? The waste of time employed over red tape alone
on these occasions would lead to a revolution anywhere save among men
inured by long abuses to this particular form of tyranny. No wonder the
women of the country-side, rather than waste three precious hours in
arguments about a few cheeses, will smuggle them past the authorities
under the device of being _enceintes;_ no wonder their wisest old men