THE FATE OF 1C IO DO RUM, 



octroi is to benefit the laborers of Issoire, why 

 don't you put it on the outside fellows who swarm 

 in Issoire, and not on the Issoire laborers' food and 

 clothing? It seems to me, sir, that when a city 

 begins to fix things to help one set of men and 

 then another, rather than to consider the common 

 good of all, it is on dangerous ground. Once 

 started on this sort of thing, everybody clamors for 

 his share. Every man too lazy to work, and every 

 man whose business does not pay, seems to think 

 that the rest of the town owe him a living." 

 Warming up with the subject, he continued : 

 " Take .this millstone business of yours, for ex- 

 ample. It is all folly to talk of the wealth in your 

 stone-quarries, if you have to hire their owners to 

 work them. If we can buy millstones in Clermont 

 for less than it costs to cut them in Issoire, it is 

 money in our pockets to leave them in the ground. 

 If any line of business needs to be constantly 

 propped up, and cannot live except at the expense 

 of its neighbors, it is no industry at all. It is a 

 beggary. And this octroi of yours has made a 

 beggar or a brigand of every industry in Issoire ! " 

 But the mayor waved his hand and smiled, and said 

 that some men were never satisfied. They would 

 grumble about the golden pavements of the New 

 Jerusalem, if they could not turn them into legal 

 tender. Then he referred to a conspiracy among 

 men suborned by Clermont gold, to flood the 

 streets of Issoire with cheap bread and meat and 

 potatoes and clothing. He asked all who wanted 

 to be slaves to Clermont to rise and be counted, 

 He showed that, of all people on earth, the people 



