Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/293

Rh twenty-two millions of surplusage of the territorial produce, so that no one was a sufferer.

.—My father then told me the truth when he said that the subject was in proportion more rich under the administration of the Duke of Sully than under that of our new ministers, who laid on the single tax, the sole tax, and who, out of my forty crowns, have taken away twenty. Pray tell me, is there another nation in the world that enjoys this precious advantage of the sole tax?

.—Not one opulent nation. The English, who are not much given to laughing, could not, however, help bursting out when they heard that men of intelligence among us had proposed this kind of administration. The Chinese exact a tax from all the foreign trading ships that resort to Canton. The Dutch pay, at Nagasaki, when they are received in Japan, under pretext that they are not Christians. The Laplanders and the Samoieds are indeed subjected to a sole tax in sables or marten-skins. The republic of San Marino pays nothing more than tithes for the maintenance of that state in its splendor.

There is, in Europe, a nation celebrated for its equity and its valor that pays no tax. This is Switzerland. But thus it has happened. The people have put themselves in the place of the dukes of Austria and Zähringen. The small cantons are democratical, and very poor. Each inhabitant pays but a trifling