Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/273

Rh "Another cause of our poverty lies in our new wants. We pay our neighbors four millions of livres on one article, and five or six upon another; such, for example, as a stinking powder for stuffing up our noses, brought from America. Our coffee, tea, chocolate, cochineal, indigo, spices, cost us above sixty millions a year. All these were unknown to us in the reign of Henry IV., except the spices, of which, however, the consumption was not so great as it is now. We burn a hundred times more wax-lights than were burnt then, and get more than half of the wax from foreign countries, because we neglect our own hives. We see a hundred times more diamonds in the ears, round the necks, and on the hands of our city ladies of Paris, and other great towns, than were worn by all the ladies of Henry IV.'s court, the queen included. Almost all the superfluities are necessarily paid for with ready specie.

"Observe especially that we pay to foreigners above fifteen millions of annuities on the Hotel de Ville, and that Henry IV., on his accession, having found two millions of debt in all on this imaginary hotel, very wisely paid off a part, to ease the state of this burden.

"Consider that our civil wars were the occasion of the treasures of Mexico being poured into the kingdom, when Don Philip el Discreto took it into his head to buy France, and that since that time our foreign wars have eased us of a good half of our money.